Steam Survey Results For November 2024: Linux Gaming Marketshare Slightly Higher

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Survey Results For November 2024: Linux Gaming Marketshare Slightly Higher

During October the Steam Linux marketshare crawled back up to 2.0% while overnight Valve published the Steam Survey results for November 2024...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Steam-Survey-November-2024

[anda_skoa]

Let's see if this comment makes it before the usual troll arrives and claims the Steam Deck does not count because

• It does not run a Linux distribution? Wait, it does!
• It doesn't give access to a "normal" desktop? Wait, it does!
• You can't install other Linux applications? Wait, you can!

[skeevy420]

Let's see if this comment makes it before the usual troll arrives and claims the Steam Deck does not count because

• It does not run a Linux distribution? Wait, it does!
• It doesn't give access to a "normal" desktop? Wait, it does!
• You can't install other Linux applications? Wait, you can!

It's not a real distribution until Valve offers it as more than a recovery image for a single device. The ISOs they do offer are for the janky SteamOS based on Debian.

I agree with the points you're trying to make. I'm just salty over Valve not releasing an actual OS and leaving the greater Linux community to have to hack something together. While these solutions are close enough and work good enough, it would still be nice to run something official so I'm not worrying if some oddball issue is caused by some difference like Arch-based being on a newer kernel and userspace than what SteamOS is offering.

[jeisom]

It's not a real distribution until Valve offers it as more than a recovery image for a single device. The ISOs they do offer are for the janky SteamOS based on Debian.

I thought it is Arch based?

I agree with the points you're trying to make. I'm just salty over Valve not releasing an actual OS and leaving the greater Linux community to have to hack something together.

Isn’t this what the linux community does anyway?

[avis]

Let's see if this comment makes it before the usual troll arrives and claims the Steam Deck does not count because

• It does not run a Linux distribution? Wait, it does!
• It doesn't give access to a "normal" desktop? Wait, it does!
• You can't install other Linux applications? Wait, you can!

Let's phrase your lies differently:

• Can it run any other Linux distro and everything will work right out of the box without a heavy amount of tinkering? No.
• "Normal" desktop as in what Valve has forced on you? Yeah, you're right. Good luck using anything else.
• Install them systemwide? Nope, you can't. Then is SteamOS a normal/average Linux distro? Well, it isn't, it's an immutable image, something like Fedora Silverblue (run mostly by uber geeks). How do you install updates? Well, in an average Linux distro you may choose to update or not update each installed package. SteamOS? Update the whole image once Valve has released it.

Yeah, totally a Linux distro. Just like Android is also a Linux "distro". No glibc, no Xorg/Wayland, no native packages by default, no Linux desktop environments or packages. Proper API/ABI compatibility including at the kernel level which no Linux distros offers aside from RHEL. Basically zero Linux components aside from a heavily patched fixed kernel.

Linux fans love to lie to themselves. It's like saying that Sony Playstation runs ... FreeBSD. Never heard a single FreeBSD fan ever say or claim that. Won't stop Linux fans from claiming that SteamOS is Linux.

People who buy consoles do NOT want to deal with a crazy amount of Linux bugs and regressions. They want the whole package. No Linux distro comes even close to providing a whole package. RHEL is close but it's mostly for enterprise, not for gaming.

[skeevy420]

I thought it is Arch based?

What the Steam Deck uses is SteamOS 3 which is Arch-based. What Valve offers for download for general PC use the previous Debian-based SteamOS. HoloISO is the closest thing we have to the SteamOS 3 that the Steam Deck uses.

Isn’t this what the linux community does anyway?

Yeah, but, traditionally, using something community provided has been used as a reason to not accept bug reports and to write-off issues.

[anda_skoa]

Can it run any other Linux distro and everything will work right out of the box without a heavy amount of tinkering? No.

I wrote that it runs a Linux distribution, not that it would run any random Linux distribution.
Given that people have apparently even managed to run Windows on it that makes it very likely one could do that with a different Linux distribution as well.

Normal" desktop as in what Valve has forced on you?

It does run KDE Plasma desktop.
Most people consider that a "normal" desktop

Install them systemwide?

Care to point out where I claimed that?

It comes with KDE Discover and that enables you to browse/search for applications and install/uninstall/update applications.
Same program used by many more KDE users on other hardware.

Additionally you can obviously also install software via the Steam store client itself, though it is mostly specialized on games and has only few non-game applications.

I guess they could make the Linux applications appear in the Deck's Steam store client or make the Steam store's inventory show up in Discover.
But since even iOS users seem to be capable of handling game stores in parallel to the app store I'd say Steam Deck users can handle it as well.

[skeevy420]

Let's phrase your lies differently:

• Can it run any other Linux distro and everything will work right out of the box without a heavy amount of tinkering? No.
• "Normal" desktop as in what Valve has forced on you? Yeah, you're right. Good luck using anything else.
• Install them systemwide? Nope, you can't. Then is SteamOS a normal/average Linux distro? Well, it isn't, it's an immutable image, something like Fedora Silverblue (run mostly by uber geeks). How do you install updates? Well, in an average Linux distro you may choose to update or not update each installed package. SteamOS? Update the whole image once Valve has released it.

Yeah, totally a Linux distro. Just like Android is also a Linux "distro". No glibc, no Xorg/Wayland, no native packages by default, no Linux desktop environments or packages. Proper API/ABI compatibility including at the kernel level which no Linux distros offers aside from RHEL. Basically zero Linux components aside from a heavily patched fixed kernel.

Linux fans love to lie to themselves. It's like saying that Sony Playstation runs ... FreeBSD. Never heard a single FreeBSD ever say or claim that. Won't stop Linux fans from claiming that SteamOS is Linux.

People who buy consoles do NOT want to deal with a crazy amount of Linux bugs and regressions. They want the whole package. No Linux distro comes even close to providing a whole package. RHEL is close but it's mostly for enterprise, not for gaming.

A lot of that just described Fedora Kinoite and immutable Linux distributions in general

Different distributions do things differently. Under your criteria only Glibc counts. Does that make only the Glibc half of Void Linux a real distribution? Are the MUSL repositories Fake Void Linux?

Not that this discussion matters. In its current state, SteamOS is an OS, not a distribution. That's pedantic, but it matters. There's a wide berth of what constitutes being a distribution, but the biggest one is actually being distributed. It's in the name. A single recovery image for a single devices isn't distributed.

[moonwalker]

Let's phrase your lies differently:

• Can it run any other Linux distro and everything will work right out of the box without a heavy amount of tinkering? No.
• "Normal" desktop as in what Valve has forced on you? Yeah, you're right. Good luck using anything else.
• Install them systemwide? Nope, you can't. Then is SteamOS a normal/average Linux distro? Well, it isn't, it's an immutable image, something like Fedora Silverblue (run mostly by uber geeks). How do you install updates? Well, in an average Linux distro you may choose to update or not update each installed package. SteamOS? Update the whole image once Valve has released it.

Yeah, totally a Linux distro. Just like Android is also a Linux "distro". No glibc, no Xorg/Wayland, no native packages by default, no Linux desktop environments or packages. Proper API/ABI compatibility including at the kernel level which no Linux distros offers aside from RHEL. Basically zero Linux components aside from a heavily patched fixed kernel.

Linux fans love to lie to themselves. It's like saying that Sony Playstation runs ... FreeBSD. Never heard a single FreeBSD ever say or claim that. Won't stop Linux fans from claiming that SteamOS is Linux.

People who buy consoles do NOT want to deal with a crazy amount of Linux bugs and regressions. They want the whole package. No Linux distro comes even close to providing a whole package. RHEL is close but it's mostly for enterprise, not for gaming.

Do you actually have a Steam Deck? Because you sound like you don't and are clueless about what it is, how it works, and its actual capabilities. It's actually not too far off from a plethora of other recent handheld PCs, as in it uses standard x86-64 ISA CPU with standard UEFI firmware, capable of interfacing with standard PC industry USB peripherals (just need a USB hub/dock), and capable of booting pretty much any x86-64 OS that has the necessary drivers. Will every aspect of every OS work seamlessly right out of the box? Of course not, even Windows on Windows-certified laptops almost never does without first installing a bunch of manufacturer/device-specific bloatware.

• Can it run any other Linux distro and everything will work right out of the box without a heavy amount of tinkering? No. - Actually, yes it can, it's a fairly normal x86-64 PC under the hood, just with built-in gamepad instead of built-in keyboard.
• "Normal" desktop as in what Valve has forced on you? Yeah, you're right. Good luck using anything else. - If you dislike KDE Plasma you don't have to be a dick about it, you can just use options like systemd-sysext and/or Nix to install your preferred DE. Or install a different Linux distro altogether and do your own filing and sanding to make it behave as seamlessly as SteamOS in its main handheld mode.
• Install them systemwide? Nope, you can't. - again, see above about options like Nix. You'd want to use https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer

Then is SteamOS a normal/average Linux distro? Well, it isn't, it's an immutable image, something like Fedora Silverblue (run mostly by uber geeks).

Immutable images may be deployed by uber geeks, but are actually intended to be used by laymen that don't really care whether it is Linux under the hood or something else, they just want their applications (games in case of Steam Deck) to run. Yes, immutable images do make things more difficult for power users that want to twist and bend their system to their will, but they make things significantly simpler for an average Joe that just wants to run specific apps and then go back to worrying about getting laid instead of tinkering with individual packages within the OS. Especially since so many Linux problems are actually self-inflicted, speaking from experience of supporting some fairly large-scale enterprise deployments of Linux where I've seen users shooting themselves in the foot in many dozens of weirdest ways that would be made difficult to impossible if we were to use immutable images.

P.S.: IIRC you're from Russia? If yes, good luck with Пр-563, п. 1г), let us know if it actually gets anywhere.

[moonwalker]

I wrote that it runs a Linux distribution, not that it would run any random Linux distribution.

You can write that it would run any random Linux distribution, it won't hurt. Go on... XD

Steam Deck is pretty much just an x86-64 PC, it can run everything such a PC can run. The question is not whether Steam Deck can run a Linux distro X, it's whether Linux distro X has all the necessary drivers and firmware blobs, which is the same question for virtually every PC out there.

Given that people have apparently even managed to run Windows on it that makes it very likely one could do that with a different Linux distribution as well.

Valve officially provides drivers for running Windows on Steam Deck: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faq...ECCD-D643-BAA8