Steam Linux Usage Drops During August

[Kivada]

Every decent portal should boycott Valve's 'statistics' until they publish proper, transparent statistics.

*COUGH*There is a bug keeping Linux users form getting surveyed https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ste...ux/issues/2286 *COUGH*

*COUGH*Larabel never does any damn research*COUGH*

*COUGH*You're a fool to trust anything he posts on face value alone*COUGH*

I really need to see a doctor about this cough...

[edoantonioco]

well, I use dual-boot, and something I've noticed is that last month they asked me for information while I was using linux and I gave it, but when I was using windows they does not ask me any info. This month, they asked me for information when I was using steam in windows, but when I was using linux steam did not asked me anything, which leads me to believe that there are some problems getting information of PC's that use dual-boot.

[Luke]

No, you can use Xorg-Edgers instead of updating your whole distro

Do you really have to upgrade the whole OS just to get the latest video driver?

This is a serious weakness if true.

If your distro isn't so old as to be unsupported by the Xorg-Edgers PPA, you can run the current Mesa drivers and Xserver using it. Also install the latest kernel.
You can install later kernels in older distros. If you are just after kernel features (AMD power management, etc) you may not need to change Mesa or X. For max
performance you want the latest versions of all three.

You MIGHT be able to get away with using a current Mesa/X/kernel in a distro too old for the Xorg-Edgers PPA to
support (add the oldest xorg-edgers PPA entry to /etc/apt/sources.list), but if you do this be SURE you can run ppa-purge from the console and deal with a broken
X server before trying this in an unsupported older version. For that matter, Xorg-Edgers does occasionally get a bad update, be sure you know what you are doing
when using PPAs in general. Since I have system backup partitions and snapshot images, I have little to worry about even if something gets REALLY screwed up. If you hack
your install you should do the same.

I used the PPA versions of X and Mesa for years, ever since my Evergreen (Radeon HD 5***) cards were not yet supported in Ubuntu Natty/early development Oneiric in 2011.

[Kivada]

The results are pretty pathetic but not surprising. It seems to match the overall desktop trend. It's interesting to see that the unreleased Windows 8.1 has about as much marketshare on Steam as all of Linux combined.

Devs and pirates. It's not uncommon for pirates to take the dev releases from Microsoft and strip out the self lockout after it's EOL date.

I've done this for those pesky BIOS updates on OEM mobos that only seem to work from within Windows.

[allenmaher]

Assuming it is a good random survey with a good methodology, small groups (those under 10% for most surveys) will tend to have a large variation in reported numbers and those figures will be less reliable than the larger groups. That coupled with the 0.6% or so under the other category (most of which is lilkely a linux of some type) makes the month to month changes hard to interpret.

Likely causes in decline are bad graphics drivers for everyone not using the NVIDIA binary blobs, lack of games (AAA titles), and decent windows only titles dragging many users back to wine and dual boot (most real gamers will dual boot for the best experience of a game sory wine). Lastly most linux folks are older males, it is summer, we still work (http://www.pcworld.com/article/25301..._insight_.html). A large proportion of the windows gaming crowd are younger people who have the summer off and have way more time to play games. An influx of windows users due to seasonality can also shift those numbers.

The least likely cause mentioned in the thread is the Unity/Gnome Shell issue. Ubuntu alone makes up aprox 75% (.75% of the less than 1%) of reported linux steam users. If that was an issue, Ubuntu's domination of the steam linux crowd would not be so complete.

[johnc]

If your distro isn't so old as to be unsupported by the Xorg-Edgers PPA, you can run the current Mesa drivers and Xserver using it. Also install the latest kernel.
You can install later kernels in older distros. If you are just after kernel features (AMD power management, etc) you may not need to change Mesa or X. For max
performance you want the latest versions of all three.

You MIGHT be able to get away with using a current Mesa/X/kernel in a distro too old for the Xorg-Edgers PPA to
support (add the oldest xorg-edgers PPA entry to /etc/apt/sources.list), but if you do this be SURE you can run ppa-purge from the console and deal with a broken
X server before trying this in an unsupported older version. For that matter, Xorg-Edgers does occasionally get a bad update, be sure you know what you are doing
when using PPAs in general. Since I have system backup partitions and snapshot images, I have little to worry about even if something gets REALLY screwed up. If you hack
your install you should do the same.

I used the PPA versions of X and Mesa for years, ever since my Evergreen (Radeon HD 5***) cards were not yet supported in Ubuntu Natty/early development Oneiric in 2011.

Ahh, thanks for the info. Whenever I use xorg-edgers I'm always careful to only target the package I need, and then disable the PPA. lol. This protects me from accidentally installing a beta driver or something.

[johnc]

*COUGH*There is a bug keeping Linux users form getting surveyed https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ste...ux/issues/2286 *COUGH*

*COUGH*Larabel never does any damn research*COUGH*

*COUGH*You're a fool to trust anything he posts on face value alone*COUGH*

I really need to see a doctor about this cough...

Valve hasn't confirmed any such bug yet. It's just in review.

[smitty3268]

Do you really have to upgrade the whole OS just to get the latest video driver?

This is a serious weakness if true.

Of course you don't.

[leonmaxx]

Don't forget about the whole "The survey doesn't pop up on Linux" issue for people who have an install on both Windows and Linux.

There are several people who report the survey popping up when they log into steam on Windows several times (not filling it out) but it never once popping up on Linux, even though their "account" was selected.

I have linux only steam installation, and last time i got survey pop-up was in january.

[tmpdir]

Seriously, are all of you running P4s?

Jup... my p4 runs better than ever with Linux, thank you.

(steam not so much... still waiting for pacman to arrive)