Steam Linux Usage Drops Lower... Below 0.9%

[dungeon]

The only way to spread Linux systems is the pre-installation (because it overcomes the psychological threshold of the common user).

What to preinstall as Linux systems? Android? i use Debian, someone else uses Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, SuSE, Gentoo, LFS...

But yeah Valve wants SteamOS preinstalled on their machines, that is the only way to start gaming easier

[Pecisk]

Bummer, I guess I install Windows 10 then and give up on Linux gaming. Survey tells me so

[haagch]

Why does nobody mention the obvious method for counting installations? The steam client regularly downloads updates - different updates for different operating systems. Couldn't they just count full downloads of the updates per account?

[rdnetto]

One weakness of the Steam survey is that there doesn't seem to be any way to view a graph of Linux usage over time, which would make any seasonal trends obvious. e.g. it's exam season right now, and I wouldn't be surprised if students were more likely to use Linux.

[the303]

I don't dual boot and only have Arch Linux installed. I used to get survey in Windows years ago but have never received a survey request on Linux for years now.

[wateenellende]

After the upgrade from Ubuntu 14.10 to 15.04, X stopped working on my NVidia card. Solution: get screwdriver, remove NVidia card, use intel integrated graphics. Stopped playing games since. I wouldn't be surprised if that bug hit more people. Unfortuntely no numbers to back that up.
I did file a bug (1454817 in launchpad): if you experience the same, please acknowledge so that it gets fixed faster...

[adakite]

What about the absolute number of Linux players ? If the Steam community increases but with a faster increase on the Windows side, this will end up with a lower Linux %. Although the absolute number of Linux users could also potentially increase as well. % is not the only metric to look at.

[Passso]

Haha I've been surveyed maybe 6 times in the past 2 years. In fact I was just inquired yesterday.

Keep in mind - these surveys ONLY come up whenever you sign into Steam. If you keep your computer and Steam on for days at a time, you're greatly reducing your chances of ever being asked. I sign on steam on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day. So I'm much more likely to be asked.

I run Steam from start every day and never saw the survey at all. I see my friends regularly get it, I do not even know if this survey is a legend on Linux...
Maybe Valve does not need it for Linux, but I really doubt about this!

[klaphark]

[offtopic]

After the upgrade from Ubuntu 14.10 to 15.04, X stopped working on my NVidia card. Solution: get screwdriver, remove NVidia card, use intel integrated graphics. Stopped playing games since. I wouldn't be surprised if that bug hit more people. Unfortuntely no numbers to back that up.
I did file a bug (1454817 in launchpad): if you experience the same, please acknowledge so that it gets fixed faster...

NVidia cards work fine although not always out-of-the-box (especially true if you have a Kepler series card or newer).

Solution:
- Boot with -nomodeset kernel parameter
- Uninstall or blacklist nouveau
- Download the latest proprietary nvidia drivers and give it execution permissions (chmod +x NVIDIA....run)
- Switch to tty (CTRL+ALT+F1) and login.
- Stop the lightdm service (sudo service lightdm stop)
- Install the drivers (sudo ,/NVIDIA....run). I advise you to enable DKMS so you don't have to manually reinstall everytime the kernel is updated.
- After completing the installation start the lightdm service and off you go!
[/offtopic]

Sad to see the usage is dropping. Steam is pretty solid for me in Ubuntu 15.04. The biggest problem I run into when using Steam on Linux (and makes me bootup Windows) isn't related to Steam itself but to games performing much worse than their Windows counterpart. A good example is Cities Skylines; in Windows it runs a solid 60fps while Ubuntu averages 20-30 fps with the same quality settings. It's probably due to the Unity 3D engine not being fully optimized for OpenGL which is a shame because a lot of games depend on it. I Hope Vulkan will enable developers to bring the overall game performance/experience on-par with Window so Linux and OSX users are no longer treated as second-class citizens.

[finalzone]

I finally got a survey from Steam. From what I understand, it is more about data gathering to improve support.