Reported Steam Linux Use Still Right Around 1.0%

[DanLamb]

I hate Steam. Most of the PC games that I want now require Steam and force it on the user. I hate that there is no option. That is completely opposite of the whole user-choice philosophy of Linux.

Your argument proves itself wrong .

The amount of valve-linux-games has grown significantly, althougt the amount of valve-linux-players has not. This concludes your arguments is false.

You can't port some crusty, 5+ year old back catalog garbage over, charge nearly full price, and call that proof of anything.

Most gamers want new games and they want selection. They don't one company's old, legacy junk that only this cultish circle of Valve fanatics play.

I'd kill for the ability to play Dark Souls or Dark Souls 2 on Linux, and please, please, give me a non-Steam option.

[deanjo]

We'll see what comes out of the January dev conference.

I think someone needs to make a Linux distro based around SteamOS to give people incentive to move over to Linux.

Why would you need to create a distro of a distro?

[Temar]

I still don't get how this information is collected. Does the users answer to it manually? Why doesn't Valve not just automatically detect it when clients connect to the servers? I can chime in with the choir on "I've been running Steam every day for a couple of months now, and I've never seen that survey". But I've never seen it on Windows either, but I've only used Steam about 10 times on that platform.

I've been using Steam on Windows for years and never got the survey. But I got it once on Linux although I do no start the client very often, due to the lack of games.

So pretty much every statistics out there seems to indicate a ~1% market share for desktop Linux. Well, I don't really mind. It works for me and low market share keeps most of the virus developers away. That's fine for me.

[johnc]

Why would you need to create a distro of a distro?

I guess I meant a "full desktop" distro. Or something that could reasonably replace Windows.

I don't think people are going to reboot into SteamOS just to play their games. I hate doing that with Windows now.

[deanjo]

I guess I meant a "full desktop" distro. Or something that could reasonably replace Windows.

I don't think people are going to reboot into SteamOS just to play their games. I hate doing that with Windows now.

You will more then likely be able to add your favorite desktop onto SteamOS. Creating another distro would be a wasted effort when all that would need to be done is to create packages for the various projects for SteamOS (which could probably be easily done on openSUSE build service once the package format is known and build support added to the OBS).

[toni]

I'm laughing at you. Really I am.

Glad you laugh, be careful don't choke with your own tongue man

[johnc]

You will more then likely be able to add your favorite desktop onto SteamOS. Creating another distro would be a wasted effort when all that would need to be done is to create packages for the various projects for SteamOS (which could probably be easily done on openSUSE build service once the package format is known and build support added to the OBS).

Yeah but are Windows people going to know how to do that? They're going to want something that "just works" with a simple install.

[RealNC]

Maybe it's just a crazy theory, but it could be that the lack of Linux support by the warez scene (no cracked Linux games) contributes to people not using it.

I suspect that warez have a lot in common with porn, in that respect ;-) Or I might be talking BS. The only sure thing is that the amount of people who download illegal copies of games on Windows is rather large.

[Luke]

Linux users include many who uee no paid games or software

Fascinating! So Linux isn't at around 24% as some of the delusional rabid Linux fans claim..... It's still exactly at 1%. Just like well, forever.

You have to remember that only a subset of Linux users ever install paid software of any kind. I am glad there are efforts to attrack Steam users, etc to Linux, but it must also be remembered that Linux is also popular with those of us who do not conduct online financial transactions of any type. Therefore, the percentage of Steam users on Linux will be less than the percentage of Linux users as a whole unless Steam OS (linux based) takes off and counts as Linux. That means they are doing well with 1% unless the market share on Linux on machines capable of playing games has gone up a lot.

[CrvenaZvezda]

Steam? PS4 just launched!