Steam On Linux Drops Below 2% For August 2024 Survey

[Phoronos]

Proton came a long way my friend. Something not running on Linux/SteamDeck is the exception these days.
Games don't need to be developed natively for Linux anymore. As long as devs don't go overzealous with DRM, it just works. Proton is _that_ good.

I tried it , but not so easy and doesnt work for too many games.
Games need to be native or they wont work good on linux.

[Gabbb]

Linux is good, but not for games....Most of the games are native for windows only....
Game developpers should also port their games to linux....But they wont do it, because it is too expensive !!!
So linux will always stay bad for games until those games are ported to it natively.

This information is years out of date. Almost all modern games not protected by invasive anticheat work fine on Linux. The performance is usually on pair with Windows, some run a bit worse some run a bit better. A very tiny fraction runs significantly worse, but also a very tiny fraction runs significantly better.
YES, THAT'S HOW MUCH OF AN OVERHEAD THE WINDOWS DESKTOP ENVIRONMENT/SPYWARE SUITE IS OVER JUST THE WINDOWS KERNEL & various syscalls wine/proton needs to translate for.

>I tried it , but not so easy and doesnt work for too many games.

If you are not addicted to one of the anticheat titles, then picking great games to play is simplicity itself on Linux. Native ports are often worse than using proton as well. Perhaps your experiences are years out of date, or it's a user error, such as using syswine to run games etc.. It is true that a certain degree of fiddling is required outside of the Steam client to run stuff well.

[goetz]

Liam on GamingOnLinux tracks this data. SteamTracker

Interesting! (in particular english vs non-english). I was wondering what fraction of linux users (outside of gaming) does change the language to something else than English.

[MillionToOne]

I tried it , but not so easy and doesnt work for too many games.
Games need to be native or they wont work good on linux.

LMAO what are you on? Native games barely function. They generally have low performance and no Wayland support, among with other issues.

[Ladis]

I tried it , but not so easy and doesnt work for too many games.
Games need to be native or they wont work good on linux.

As pointed above, native games get old fast and nobody rewrites them later again. WinAPI is the only stable API in Linux. And native version solves nothing, as the anti-cheat code will not be written for Linux. Often it's from external companies, so the game's company can't affect it anyway.

[Tuxee]

Linux is good, but not for games....Most of the games are native for windows only....
Game developpers should also port their games to linux....But they wont do it, because it is too expensive !!!
So linux will always stay bad for games until those games are ported to it natively.

Glad you found Phoronix since you must have been living under a rock without any internet access whatsoever for the last 10+ years.

[Tuxee]

I tried it , but not so easy and doesnt work for too many games.
Games need to be native or they wont work good on linux.

You are aware that 16,000 games have been tested as "working" for the Steam Deck and therefore Linux? Seriously I have hardly ever checked whether bought games work on Linux since as a rule of thumb they just do.

[Ladis]

You are aware that 16,000 games have been tested as "working" for the Steam Deck and therefore Linux? Seriously I have hardly ever checked whether bought games work on Linux since as a rule of thumb they just do.

Sometimes they even work better than on Windows. Going over how old DirectX is not fully supported in last versions of Windows, the Linux community's gamepad mapping automatically installed with a Windows game allow you to play it on Steam Deck. Unlike on the Windows handheld consoles where this mapping is missing and the game e.g. needs physical keyboard for some actions.

[r1348]

Lots of Chinese playing monke

[mSparks]

Let me just add that this fluctuation continues for the third month:
June: -0.24%
July: 0.00%
August: -0.16%
---------------------------------------------------------------

Getting back to my main topic - an addition to the survey:

Linux has: 1.92%
AMD AMD Custom GPU 0405: 27.79%
AMD Radeon Graphics (RADV VANGOGH): 12.79%


So GNU/Linux without Deck for the month of August has: 1.92 * (1 - (0.278 + 0.128)) = 1.14%

I wonder how this statistic would look like if W11 had a better reputation .

Fairly normal cycle now over the years. Clearly Linux gamers just take much longer holidays than windows gamers.

Also CS2 is smth of a shtshow right now.

I wonder how this statistic would look like if W11 had a better reputation .

With windows coming in to its end of life in around 12 months, I wonder how this will look when windows is no longer a supported platform.