Steam On Linux Gaming Usage Grew In April

[Vermilion]

The same is valid for every PC, you don't need to fill any form with your system specs, but you need to agree to send them
I hope is the same for the Steam Deck or maybe Valve asks you to send them automatically when you first power on its device?

What I'm saying is, there's no point in including the Steam Deck in the survey. Valve knows the hardware, the software and have the sales figures.

[geearf]

What I'm saying is, there's no point in including the Steam Deck in the survey. Valve knows the hardware, the software and have the sales figures.

You can install Windows on it, so they wouldn't know the OS at sales' time.
Though likely most would keep whatever is already on it, as with any other hardware.

[Citan]

Honestly plain percentage figures have absolutely no bearing or interest imo, because Steam's total population is constantly growing, if in an irregular way (remember people when I-don't-remember-name's Asian game was published on steam and we witnessed a massive surge of new users for Steam... On Windows).

What's important is seeing if the total number of people using Linux grows steadily, and, if possible (sadly doubt it though), having the informations to witness how much having X or Y popular game being released on Linux, especially at Day 1 (porting after the fact I really doubt brings people to Linux except maybe occasional gamers that just didn't have Windows on their computer, only Linux for work, and let themselves fall into temptation of installing Steam on Linux because they randomly heard/read a game appealing to them was finally available. As you guess from this sentence, probably not a common occurence at all xd).

Anyways, I could finally finalize my order for the Steam Deck, which is currently in preparation for shipment, and my feelings are torn. xd
On one hand, the hype that had completely died over waiting months has been reborn, kinda, although more as a gentle spark than a bonfire.
On the other hand, I've read here and there that not only is there still a fair amount of bugs (not a problem, I'm confident Valve will iron out everything ASAP) there is also some randomness in actual hardware's build quality and some people received kinda faulty pieces... :/
With my usual luck... xd

Anyways, back on Steam Survey: in all my life, with Linux Steam having been present and regularly launched for several times, I have seen it pop once. On Windows, several dozen times. Part of it is obviously explained by respective frequencies of Windows Steam vs Linux Steam, still I wonder if this is the only cause.
And honestly I'd really just prefer they do a massive, 100% user-base attempt (like first time you're launching Steam on fresh install) or for people that have multiple systems set a "preferred system" in user profile or something...

[Nth_man]

The tendency is up-moving:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/05/linux-user-share-on-steam-hits-second-highest-percentage-in-years/

[darkbasic]

I don't think this includes the Steam Deck because Valve already knows the figures and because such small bump makes sense considering all the publicity the Steam Deck launch gave to Linux gaming.

[novhack]

How many Steam Decks have shipped? I would expect to see way more than 0.5% AMD share boost with Steam Deck figures being included.

There is now an item called "AMD AMD Custom GPU 0405" in the GPU part of the survey. That seems to be the Steam Deck and it sits at 1.82% of all Linux survey responses. It's 12th in the list.

I am completely winging these numbers but Steam supposedly has 120 milion monthly active users. If 1.14% of them use Linux that means 1.368 milion. If 1.82% of those have a Steam Deck that would make at least 24 898 active devices.

[MrCooper]

Well VRR does not enable or function correctly with multi-display under X11 and unsure about Wayland, probably same issue. (this is with main screen VRR and another non-VRR screen).

That’s a Xorg architecture issue, it doesn’t affect Wayland compositors.

[Setif]

Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS 64 bit	14.28%	+1.10%
"Arch Linux" 64 bit	12.32%	+0.38%
"Manjaro Linux" 64 bit	11.55%	-0.97%
Linux Mint 20.3 64 bit	6.36%	-0.19%
Description:Freedesktop.org 21.08.12 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit	5.96%	+5.96%
Ubuntu 21.10 64 bit	5.60%	-1.69%
Pop!_OS 21.10 64 bit	5.32%	-1.20%
Other	38.61%	-3.38%

[skeevy420]

What I'm saying is, there's no point in including the Steam Deck in the survey. Valve knows the hardware, the software and have the sales figures.

So what? Do you think Microsoft is gonna say to themselves, "Toss out all the Surface telemetries. We know what we sold. That's good enough." or do you think they're gonna use the Surface telemetries in addition to all the info Windows gathers from random PCs and laptops?

All they know is what they've sold. With that information only they don't know what the user changed, installed, bought, what they did, how they did it, or any other piece of information that's actually useful towards developing better products and software in the future. Am I talking about Valve or Microsoft there?

[Vermilion]

So what? Do you think Microsoft is gonna say to themselves, "Toss out all the Surface telemetries. We know what we sold. That's good enough." or do you think they're gonna use the Surface telemetries in addition to all the info Windows gathers from random PCs and laptops?

All they know is what they've sold. With that information only they don't know what the user changed, installed, bought, what they did, how they did it, or any other piece of information that's actually useful towards developing better products and software in the future. Am I talking about Valve or Microsoft there?

You're comparing apples to oranges. A Hardware and Software survey is just that, not telemetry. Do you also think Microsoft collects what kind of CPU their customers have in their Xbox? What are you gonna change in the Steam Deck, CPU instructions? Core count? Display resolution? Amount of RAM? The most a user would do in Steam OS is probably change the Kernel or upgrade Mesa, until they change the whole OS (which would trigger the survey normally because the normal Steam client would be used.)