Steam On Linux Competes To Stay Above 1%

[edoantonioco]

I'm using Manjaro Linux kernel 3.16 (arch based)
so, according to the survey, these are the distros used by linux gamers:
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64 bit (Im not using it)
Linux Mint 17 Qiana 64 bit (Im not using it)
Linux 3.10 64 bit (No, my kernel is 3.16)
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (Im not using it)
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit (Im not using it)

And there is not any category named "others" or similar.
So, I (and a lot of other people) am not included in the survey, or am I wrong? So these numbers are incorrect? I just found it interesting.
Or maybe im included in ubuntu 64 bits, and they prefer to do that than to add an "other" category

[Dukenukemx]

There's really only one gaming OS and that's SteamOS. A good gaming OS is just a good desktop OS, cause like many people we do other things than just game. Cause once you start a game the UI and the entire OS's functionality is rendered unimportant. At that point you want it to have as little impact in your game as possible. But when I'm done playing my game I don't want to go back to Windows 8 Metro UI either.

[verde]

I'm using Manjaro Linux kernel 3.16 (arch based)
so, according to the survey, these are the distros used by linux gamers:
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64 bit (Im not using it)
Linux Mint 17 Qiana 64 bit (Im not using it)
Linux 3.10 64 bit (No, my kernel is 3.16)
Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (Im not using it)
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64 bit (Im not using it)

And there is not any category named "others" or similar.
So, I (and a lot of other people) am not included in the survey, or am I wrong? So these numbers are incorrect? I just found it interesting.
Or maybe im included in ubuntu 64 bits, and they prefer to do that than to add an "other" category

You are included but the percentage is so small that they can't refer to every single distro detected by hardware survey.

It seems that more than 55% of Linux users are using Ubuntu. Maybe it is more because as you, some Ubuntu versions didn't make it inside Top 5

[Kivada]

Roughly 1-1.5 percent is not bad. Out of 75 million, thats almost a million Linux Steam users.

Also I think some of the delay isn't all on Valve. Just look at the steam statistics, Intel has 20 percent of GPUs, but they only have opengl 3.3 support. The new Metro it requires opengl 4, so I doubt Valve would release their steam machines without propper Intel iGPU support.

Yes they can, the Intel IGPs are too slow to RUN Metro at 640x480 with minimum settings. Nobody is going to buy an IGP based Steambox. The small ones like the Gigabyte Brix are going to be running high end MXM notebook GPUs. The whole point is to have something that looks better then the consoles that max out a 1280x720@30FPS.

Take a look at the R9 M290X http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Rad....108643.0.html and the GTX 880M http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-....107622.0.html

[Kivada]

I consider 12 hours per week quite a lot!
That's almost two hours per day on average.
I wouldn't even have the time for it.

Thats far less then most people spend watching TV.

[Passso]

...when I'm done playing my game I don't want to go back to Windows 8 Metro UI either.

Nobody ever wanted to go back to Windows 8 Metro UI...

[sthalik]

CSMT is needed just as well, despite being a stopgap measure.

Within the bounds of D3D9 on top of opengl, that needs to support drivers from several vendors, for three different major hardware manufacturers.

Stuff's getting better after so much mediocre years, with no signs of return to mediocrity again. Whether it's good within 5 years, 10 or 15 isn't that important.

[Pecisk]

There are some good points in this discussion - in nutshell, it is very hard for gamer to move to Linux completely even if he/she runs Steam on both OS - because most likely there's game running only on Windows. In that light, ~700k players who has answered survey on Linux is quite a lot. It's also good observation that quite a lot people use Ubuntu, but just for work and they even might don't know that Linux games exist. SteamOS in this regard will be more solid platform, as people will buy it knowing it's limitations.

One way to help this is to advertise Linux based games to other Linux users. I have done this a lot, and got my friend to buy and play CivV, which we enjoy a lot. It will be slow uptake, but keeping doing this, we will get there.

p.s. never got survey, despite sinking huge amount of hours in TF2/CivV/Witcher/etc. Of course on Linux.

[Pecisk]

Yes they can, the Intel IGPs are too slow to RUN Metro at 640x480 with minimum settings. Nobody is going to buy an IGP based Steambox. The small ones like the Gigabyte Brix are going to be running high end MXM notebook GPUs. The whole point is to have something that looks better then the consoles that max out a 1280x720@30FPS.

Take a look at the R9 M290X http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Rad....108643.0.html and the GTX 880M http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-....107622.0.html

It would be to soon to rule out atractivity of very cheap IGP based Steam Machine. If it's cheap, it can deliver solid stream from PC, and you can play huge colleciton of indies on it, it's viable.

[Dukenukemx]

I would think Intel HD 4000's and 4600's would be what you'd find in Steam machines. It'll most likely be Intel Iris Pro graphics which can do amazingly well against even some mid range graphic cards.

As a gamer I only use Linux on my laptops cause I don't really game on them. I don't need MS Office cause I'm fine with Libre. I don't like not have Photoshop but I really don't use it that often. Seriously why hasn't Adobe made Photoshop for Linux yet? The rest of the applications on my Windows desktop machines is open source, except my games. My games are not and that's the only reason I haven't erased Windows and installed Mint 17.

I do play some games on my laptop to see how things are going in Linux but Wine 1.7 is just not there. I seriously can't get Mass Effect 1 running perfectly yet on Wine1.7. Origin requires a patch to get working and it's still slow to download games. Any games I do get working are at best 50% the performance if running on Windows. I have CSMT in Win1.7 and it doesn't do much on a Intel i3. Gallium-Nine increases performance drastically but even fewer games work fine with it.

Wine really needs to get there. I'm really surprised that Valve hasn't stepped in and do something about it. Like make a fork of Wine or donate code.