Steam Survey Results For November 2024: Linux Gaming Marketshare Slightly Higher
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Possibly was the tablet models. I just remember staying clear because MS and the reports coming in, it was a bit of effort to get going. This was ten years ago.
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Originally posted by stiiixy View PostI remember the first few models being particularly aggressively anti-linux.
I even flashed its firmware from Linux.
Power profiles are supported, which is not true for the Deck.
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Originally posted by avis View PostCan it run any other Linux distro and everything will work right out of the box without a heavy amount of tinkering? No.
But you're right, the amount of Deck features that don't run properly (or at all) on mainline Linux is staggering, especially contrasted to Microsoft's Surface laptops which are generally flawless with Linux out of the box.
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Originally posted by sarmad View Post
I don't think that's the criteria for defining a Linux distribution. I think the criteria is the compatibility with Linux apps, and SteamOS is indeed compatible; any Steam Deck game can run on any distro, and any Linux app can run on SteamOS, therefore I consider SteamOS to be a Linux distro.
The other problem with your assessment is that "Steam Deck" games are simply Steam Games. They were running on Linux desktops using Steam years before the Steam Deck existed. Any Steam game that runs on Linux will also run on the Steam Deck. The problem with that very broad statement is that LTS like RHEL, SLED, and even the OG SteamOS are in that list and they don't run all games on Linux. Only New Linux like Fedora and Arch can accomplish that.
There's also the niggling issue of SteamOS. I mean the original Debian-based SteamOS that's still an actual distribution and still being distributed. It doesn't run the majority of Steam games. The Steam Deck is Valve's way of prototyping SteamOS before rolling it out to everyone. They really, really fucked up with their first attempt at creating SteamOS. By not distributing the next iteration of SteamOS to the masses they'll be able to have a lot more control than they did when they rolled out what was essentially Debian with Steam preinstalled over a decade ago.
When it finally leaves the Deck and is available for general purpose computers then it'll go from a prototype OS to a distribution.
Yeah, they picked Debian as a gaming OS 11 years ago. It works as brilliantly as that idea sounds.
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Originally posted by avis View PostMeanwhile Linux has had 30 years to increase its market share and it hasn't increased much at all. Around 2% give or take.
2. Let's think of a other market comparison let's say Walmart vs a small store in the Area or "market" to use the old metaphor, usually the big corporation that bribes the government or corrupts them can crush this small stores and they get smaller and have less and less market share, and if they build 10% more stores the small stores closes some of there's here it's the opposite if Walmart opens 10% more this small stores (Linux) opens up also 10% more stores successfully and not only locally but worldwide.
I think that is a success, meanwhile this Walmart has other competitions like Aldi (Playstation) yet this Walmart also bought now big food producing companies and they would earn more if they also sell this products to as much stores as possible, so even selling them to the small stores would earn maybe eventually Wallmart more than trying to crush them.
I am not worried, things take a while AMD needed 10-15 years to get the ATI drivers in a good state not even close to perfectthey slowly getting near there, why would valve be there in 2 years since the steamdeck is out? It was a big stepping stone compared to the steam machines that totally failed, so give it time.
Also I think the real opportunity to gain Market share is with new Windows Releases, Windows 11 came out 2021 there was no steamdeck at least available, and even if it would been announced nobody knew prices and if it had not proven that it works / is great, also of course it's by very few used as all-purpose PC but more a appliance not even as gaming pc only... so we will need a mix of extending the use cases like VR is in the making and maybe get some other form factors, maybe steam deck Notebooks...
It takes a while, now I personally use also Linux on my gaming PC that uses a rx 5600xt but I thought about not upgrade it, at all, currently the hardwareprices even used are to high for me and the question becomes does it make sense to upgrade both systems in the future. So with a normal user using Windows on that machine they might have the same question.
But again most people don't "change a running system" but do or buy different decisions they already made when it's time to replace the Os or PC. Now because there are no Steam Deck Laptops preinstalled, there will not be soon a growth to 20% still having to manually install it, is a huge burden, but could it come to 4% steam deck numbers by some users install it, sure.
Also I suspect because mostly high Chinese Numbers hurt the Linux numbers always, in the West so locally it already grows and not only the world wide numbers matter but if it can grow in certain countries it proofs that it can grow everywhere.
And there is also a concept of leading markets if as example in the US certain trends happen often months or years later you see in other markets similar trends and I wouldn't call China as a leading market, MS might have high market share in China, but how much of the licenses are bought and how much do they pay on average per license 2 dollar? So it's not a very profitable / valuable market share.
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Originally posted by tenchrio View PostJust that the X86 iso for Windows doesn't enable the touchscreen HID drivers during the install process like how moonwalker pointed out before.
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Originally posted by Espionage724 View PostIf I had Steam Deck, I'd probably toy with SteamOS for a bit, install Fedora Workstation if I found SteamOS usable, but likely have Windows on it because... it's a portable X86 gaming console, and I know the general gist of Linux gaming enough since 2016 that Linux gaming is more about being able to do it, vs doing it well(I'm more into the form-factor and hardware vs the software bits making that hardware work well)
If I had PCVR still, I'm not convinced Linux can be usable for that better than Windows. Linux is too-much about slower abstraction to make stuff easier for people (Lutris, Proton, Steam, Wayland, Brtfs, CoW, etc) and it's tiring after a while to have to workaround around each piece of newly introduced slower tech
Granted, I did that benchmarking a whole year ago, so it is possible 7840u Windows drivers have since been optimized and may outperform SteamOS on Steam Deck if I were to benchmark it now.
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Originally posted by avis View PostYou're correct with Windows you get all the drivers you need granted your hardware is not ancient.
Originally posted by avis View PostWhen you install an average Linux distro on your SteamDeck its multiple feature just won't work at all. It looks like the Steam Linux kernel is heavily patched: https://static.sched.com/hosted_file...ss-eu-2023.pdf
I glanced over this PDF, and it looks like SteamOS is kind of like a "standard" Linux distro, except it has a ton of extra tidbits here and there.
Originally posted by avis View PostYep, I can install Windows on a Steam Deck no problem, detach the keyboard and it will work. Windows has come with a software keyboard since Windows 7 or something while the vast majority of Linux distros don't provide it out of the box and I'm far from sure it will work for your DE screen even if you install it. No such issue with SteamOS.
Originally posted by avis View PostBTW, it's called SteamOS, not Steam Linux OS.
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Originally posted by avis View PostI've never claimed Linux is incapable of doing things.
Originally posted by avis View PostLinux is incapable of working reliably, for all use cases and all people (in the most recent Wayland thread people seriously told me I should abandon my DE and switch to Gnome/KDE just to get all the features of Wayland, isn't it some kind of cringe? I mean Linux used to require special hardware, now Linux needs special software to be usable? LMAO what?) and that's only a concern on the desktop. On the server it's been super strong for more than two decades now. In my company we've had servers with over 600 days of uptime (isolated, don't think we're idiots). But those servers churn data and send it via wires. They do nothing else. No UI, no graphics, no input, no audio, no video, nothing.
Then to address your claim that "Linux is incapable of working reliably, for all use cases and all people" on its face value - first, lets define "reliably". If you mean 100% of the time, then while your claim would be technically correct, it would also be useless, as you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of disappointment in everything you do in life, because nothing works with 100% reliability in this universe, except for maybe laws of physics, and even that is a mere maybe - we just haven't seen them being broken as we currently know them. Second, if we accept that there is no 100% reliability and we have to compare varying degrees of reliability then your claim is immediately untrue, because of all the operating systems, at least for my use cases Linux works the best, and that means Linux is already "incapable of working reliably" not for all use cases and not for all people. And I use Linux not only on servers, but also on my work laptop, my personal laptops, my media center, handhelds, tablets, ebook reader, and smartphones (and I'm not talking Android, I'm talking Mobian). For my use cases and on my hardware Linux works exceptionally well, much better than any other operating system, and when it does fail to work as expected, most of the times I've been able to trace the breakage to something stupid I did myself. The cases when it is not a breakage resulting from my own tinkering are exceedingly rare, compared to the same Windows where I still get an occasional blue screen out of nowhere simply plugging/unplugging USB devices.
Originally posted by avis View PostThe reason Valve forces an immutable image on their devices is because they want to make sure people get the experience they want with as few regressions or bugs as possible. You just can't get that with run-of-the-mill Linux distributions, except maybe RHEL, which is not a suitable gaming platform due to a severely outdated software stack.
My point being, with a reasonable distro choice the biggest problem of traditional R/W rootfs is not the regressions, it's the end users that have more permissions and confidence than knowledge. Shipping immutable OS images doesn't free you up from having to have a robust CI/testing infrastructure, if you don't have it you're just as likely to ship a regression in an immutable image as in traditional one. What it does free you up from is end users mucking up the core OS.
Originally posted by avis View PostAnd I totally agree that the PC market has been dying as PC has become a luxury hobby and most people are better served by their smartphones/tablets or consoles.Last edited by moonwalker; 03 December 2024, 12:07 AM.
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