Steam Linux Usage Dropped Lower In October But With More Questionable Data

[slalomsk8er]

The survey is shit: I've basically never got it before and recently I've got it ten times in a row when trying different properties for my steam dataset.
Basically every single time I flushed the steam profile and reopened the steam client I've got it.

You mean it can be gamed or it was just luck?

Steam survey will not be accurate until its run on 100% of active devices.

Not necessary, for a survey to be representative it needs to query a certain random number of the total, if I remember correctly.

Yep. typical Linux fan logic:

Steam survey results are always questionable unless there is a notable increase in Linux users. Then it's all rainbows and unicorns.

It would be enough if we could be certain, that it shows up random enough and for a big enough subset of the total users.

[SofS]

Not necessary, for a survey to be representative it needs to query a certain random number of the total, if I remember correctly.

Except that the probing in itself can be a bias. Relative to this this case Linux users tend to be much more privacy conscious and as such less prone to accept being probed in a survey. Same thing regarding browsers with the "other" category and, to a certain extent, Firefox compared to Chrome.

[slalomsk8er]

Except that the probing in itself can be a bias. Relative to this this case Linux users tend to be much more privacy conscious and as such less prone to accept being probed in a survey. Same thing regarding browsers with the "other" category and, to a certain extent, Firefox compared to Chrome.

That's, why it would be great to know the total number of active accounts.
I would also log the client version (incl. OS and account) if I would be the Steam server admin.
And I would hope that there resident or consulting statistician correlates all of this to make sure a representative number of all OSs was queried.

I would love to read a blog post about all of this from the person at Valve overseeing the survey.

[Daktyl198]

So, When Survey represents the true percentage to users (Given that Mandarin is the most spoken language in the world) It will be questionable.

The issue is that there is a separate Steam client entirely for Chinese users, and it’s weird to see a giant influx (millions of players) suddenly joining the global steam data.

[Veto]

When running Steam on Ubuntu are there any technical pros/cons for using the Flatpak version instead of snap or .deb version?

(Please keep your political opinion out of the merits of snap or Flatpak...)

[blackiwid]

When running Steam on Ubuntu are there any technical pros/cons for using the Flatpak version instead of snap or .deb version?

(Please keep your political opinion out of it...)

That's funny you go completely off topic and say people should not talk about the news.

Yeah the steam numbers are the "linux" variant of astrology or laying out cards to see the future or even the present I goes sales rates of steam deck would be a more robust number to track than this fake numbers, of 1 PC in some chinese internet cafe that has 1000 steam accounts on it for some reason.

[skeevy420]

When running Steam on Ubuntu are there any technical pros/cons for using the Flatpak version instead of snap or .deb version?

(Please keep your political opinion out of it...)

The Flatpak version can be a lot harder to get things like mods and 3rd party accessories running since you have to install everything inside Flatpak. That's especially true with Windows games where you have to install stuff inside the Proton prefix, too. I got too annoyed with setting up 3rd party stuff to stick with the Flatpak version. I've read that some games have issues with the Flatpak version, but I didn't stick around long enough to find out. One upside to the Flatpak version is you can copy/paste its userdata to backup and restore your Steam account. If you do a lot of OS installs that can be handy.

I've read that the Snap version is in a similar state to the Flatpak version, only less games run on it.

Given the option, I'd go with the .deb version.

[NeoMorpheus]

Not necessary, for a survey to be representative it needs to query a certain random number of the total, if I remember correctly.

There are problems with this approach though.

Perfect example, do a search and see how often people have reported never getting a survey when using an AMD gpu but when the same people swapped those for Ngreedias GPUs they magically started getting surveys.

I will add, I am one of those people. Wehn I swapped my GTX 970 for a 6900 XT, never got one. Sold the 6900 XT and installed the 970 back in a temp basis and boom! survey time!

Replaced the 970 for a 7900 XTX and again, no survey.

I dont know whats going on, not accusing Valve or anything funny like that, simply stating my experience and for what i gathers, the same for many others.

Which brings me back to my original point, this will only be accurate if its run on all endpoints, not just "random" ones.

For all I care, they can do this twice a year or hell, every month if wanted.

[discordian]

Except that the probing in itself can be a bias. Relative to this this case Linux users tend to be much more privacy conscious and as such less prone to accept being probed in a survey. Same thing regarding browsers with the "other" category and, to a certain extent, Firefox compared to Chrome.

indeed, linux gamers are completely unlikely to use steam due to do privacy/drm/abudive monopoly, so whoever does use steam on linux is more likely to just eff up the stats and do a survey compared to, say windows users, which play games instead.

[theriddick]

The Steam Deck has a lot of competition now and while it is still the cheapest option, it is also decently slower. The issue is all these devices are windows based.

Valve should release a Steam Deck 1.5 which will be mostly the same but with Z1 Max inside and maybe a OLED option at top end. THAT would go down quite well and still be just as easy to support as the original SD.

On top of that Valve should release the VR headset with Linux support. I don't know if it is meant to be AIO but there are some hints that it might be. ESPECIALLY if they are able to get one of those 40CU AMD CPU's in it (unlikely to happen, but never know)