Steam's Hardware Survey Shows Not Much For Linux

[Alderon]

About market share: yes, this is in important measure, a very important measure to be more exact. Then again, there's one other side to the medal: some markets tend to be under heavy competition. In such situations it is - indeed - more profitable to aim for niche markets as you can sell your product there more easily, due to reduced competition.
Then again, this numbers are very, very small and I fear that Linux desktops might soon be where they were a year ago when it comes to gaming: non existent.

Then again, the guy who posted "Windows > Linux" is still a troll as Windows won't make it either. Windows is only leading in one single market: desktops. While they're indeed important and will stay for a while consoles, smartphones, tablets, etc... are the future and Windows is nearly non existent on those platforms. Additionally Windows is very weak on servers and embedded devices. So one might argue that Windows is superior on the desktop but in the same moment you would've to admit that it's the other way round on every other platform.

*BSD is a strong platform, too, just not on the desktop.

So, yeah, Linux might not make it on the desktop but it's everywhere else. Windows is only on the desktop, a market that is becoming smaller and smaller. In other words: Windows is the leader on a dying platform, while other systems like *BSD (MacOS/iOS) and Linux (Android, Bada, etc...) are leaders on platforms with exponential growth rates.

[Gps4l]

For Valve this has been a failed experiment. The return on investment just isn't there. Porting everything to Linux doesn't bring enough value to justify it. It is important for other companies to learn from the mistakes of Valve and not bring their applications to Linux because there isn't enough market share to recoup the money. Everybody should just use Windows and those who are hellbent on using Linux should have another partition running windows in order to play their games. That is the only sane solution. It also goes on to show what most people already know but Linux hardcore fanbois would never admit: Windows > Linux.

Windows is made by a company who hires professional programmers and fires them when they don't perform. Linux is just a little toy created by guys who are learning the basics of programming and try to hone their skills before making the jump to real professional grade work. You can argue as much as you want but the truth is that in 2013 Linux still has issues when it comes to basic things like video drivers. Windows has already found the solution to those issues 20 years ago. If Bill Gates was at the helm of Linux everybody in the Linux world would have been fired for gross incompetence. Linux is similar to what a 747 would have looked like if Boeing would have hired 5 year old kids in order to build it. It's so amateurishly designed it continuously falls apart and never reaches a place where it's actually usable. They patch a hole here but open another one some place else.

Hopefully the mistake didn't cost Valve too much since I think they make great games and wouldn't want them to go under.

Thank you for making my smile.

Now tell me that you were serious and I laugh even harder.

And btw never again use google, because they use an os build by kids.
This same os is used for the supercomputers.

windows > Linux only on the desktop, and only in quantity.

[blackout23]

The survey is a monthly snapshot. No need to do a screenshot.

[aironeous]

Just got the survey. Running kubuntu 13.04 on my little dell d630 laptop.
Here is what the results look like. I took a snapshot.

[blackout23]

For Valve this has been a failed experiment. The return on investment just isn't there. Porting everything to Linux doesn't bring enough value to justify it. It is important for other companies to learn from the mistakes of Valve and not bring their applications to Linux because there isn't enough market share to recoup the money. Everybody should just use Windows and those who are hellbent on using Linux should have another partition running windows in order to play their games. That is the only sane solution. It also goes on to show what most people already know but Linux hardcore fanbois would never admit: Windows > Linux.

Windows is made by a company who hires professional programmers and fires them when they don't perform. Linux is just a little toy created by guys who are learning the basics of programming and try to hone their skills before making the jump to real professional grade work. You can argue as much as you want but the truth is that in 2013 Linux still has issues when it comes to basic things like video drivers. Windows has already found the solution to those issues 20 years ago. If Bill Gates was at the helm of Linux everybody in the Linux world would have been fired for gross incompetence. Linux is similar to what a 747 would have looked like if Boeing would have hired 5 year old kids in order to build it. It's so amateurishly designed it continuously falls apart and never reaches a place where it's actually usable. They patch a hole here but open another one some place else.

Hopefully the mistake didn't cost Valve too much since I think they make great games and wouldn't want them to go under.

*yawn*

"Your message has to be longer than 10 characters".

[dee.]

For Valve this has been a failed experiment. The return on investment just isn't there. Porting everything to Linux doesn't bring enough value to justify it. It is important for other companies to learn from the mistakes of Valve and not bring their applications to Linux because there isn't enough market share to recoup the money. Everybody should just use Windows and those who are hellbent on using Linux should have another partition running windows in order to play their games. That is the only sane solution. It also goes on to show what most people already know but Linux hardcore fanbois would never admit: Windows > Linux.

Windows is made by a company who hires professional programmers and fires them when they don't perform. Linux is just a little toy created by guys who are learning the basics of programming and try to hone their skills before making the jump to real professional grade work. You can argue as much as you want but the truth is that in 2013 Linux still has issues when it comes to basic things like video drivers. Windows has already found the solution to those issues 20 years ago. If Bill Gates was at the helm of Linux everybody in the Linux world would have been fired for gross incompetence. Linux is similar to what a 747 would have looked like if Boeing would have hired 5 year old kids in order to build it. It's so amateurishly designed it continuously falls apart and never reaches a place where it's actually usable. They patch a hole here but open another one some place else.

Hopefully the mistake didn't cost Valve too much since I think they make great games and wouldn't want them to go under.

Well well well, the troll is back!

Weren't you gathering your toys and leaving forever, bozley? You already got everyone's hopes up...

[duby229]

For Valve this has been a failed experiment. The return on investment just isn't there. Porting everything to Linux doesn't bring enough value to justify it. It is important for other companies to learn from the mistakes of Valve and not bring their applications to Linux because there isn't enough market share to recoup the money. Everybody should just use Windows and those who are hellbent on using Linux should have another partition running windows in order to play their games. That is the only sane solution. It also goes on to show what most people already know but Linux hardcore fanbois would never admit: Windows > Linux.

Windows is made by a company who hires professional programmers and fires them when they don't perform. Linux is just a little toy created by guys who are learning the basics of programming and try to hone their skills before making the jump to real professional grade work. You can argue as much as you want but the truth is that in 2013 Linux still has issues when it comes to basic things like video drivers. Windows has already found the solution to those issues 20 years ago. If Bill Gates was at the helm of Linux everybody in the Linux world would have been fired for gross incompetence. Linux is similar to what a 747 would have looked like if Boeing would have hired 5 year old kids in order to build it. It's so amateurishly designed it continuously falls apart and never reaches a place where it's actually usable. They patch a hole here but open another one some place else.

Hopefully the mistake didn't cost Valve too much since I think they make great games and wouldn't want them to go under.

It's a catch 22 dude... If you don't like that then, oh well?

Clearly this isnt the forum you should be replying to.

[dee.]

Convenience is far more important than privacy and security to the vast majority of people. People will either not switch or switch right back when they realise that learning to use Linux is not as convenient as continuing to use Windows. Most people don't know or care about DRM, security holes or bloat.

Learning to use Linux? Please, what learning does an average user need to do? Launching programs, using firefox and moving files around works just the same on an average Linux distro as it does on windows. Arguably, moving from, say, XP to windows 8 requires more learning than moving from XP to, say, Cinnamon or KDE.

Certainly not everyone is going to migrate to Linux because of privacy issues, people in general aren't that smart or informed unfortunately. However, it will be something that increases the attractiveness of Linux as an operating system.

It takes 1. A better development platform that Windows (not hard, Windows is horribad to develop for outside .net projects, even then there is no way to pack distribute stuff unless you use a service like Steam), Unity is already here, for example. 2. Games people can't get on their Windows systems and 3. New systems with Linux as the default.

The last one demands that Canonical or Suse (the only real big corporate pushers of consumer linux in any way, Fedora is just a red hat test bed, and Mint doesn't have a strong corporate backing) get computers running their OSes in front of people at stores. That or hopefully a Steam Box platform will pop up, and will be some stripped down Linux on the inside that is cross compatible with current distros. We need Linux by default in peoples faces.

Or, Intel could bring to market ultrabooks that run Tizen OS. There was already a demo of a ultrabook running Tizen OS with modified gnome shell, running Steam. If this happens, it'll probably do considerably more to grow the Linux marketshare than Canonical ever did.

[dee.]

Only because tech is stagnated. The end game of gaming (heyo) is real time raytracing, which modern hardware is no where close to performing. To get there, we will need every technological advantage we can get.

No, it's realtime sparse voxel octrees. Polygons are so last decade.

[shmerl]

My X-Plane works perfectly thank you! Now only waiting to be able to use the FLOSS drivers. THEN the only instability I have with Linux is gone.

Try playing Witcher 2 in Wine with anything besides Nvidia drivers.