Even With Steam Machines, Steam Linux Usage Stays Below 1%

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Even With Steam Machines, Steam Linux Usage Stays Below 1%

While Steam Machines began shipping a few weeks ago, so far it hasn't made much of a dent into Steam's Windows market-share...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Survey-Nov-2015

[philips]

On SteamOS (used on Steam Machines) you don't get the HW survey.

[eydee]

A few weeks probably aren't enough to cover the US, not to mention the whole world. Let's see what happens in 3-6 months. By that time, people who wanted to get one probably will. We will also be past the holiday season, when an increase in sales is possible.

[chimpy]

Well what's the current number of steam accounts? Last time I checked around February, there were 125 million, so 1% if that is 1.25 million. Not bad actually.

[horizonbrave]

'cause people are turds.
Look at me now, trying to setup a machine for my parents.. ok that could possibly be force fed Linux as long as it works but then what? They have the right to want Skype because other family turds have it, whose had been force fed Windows/Skype all together and don't even know about Linux existence, let alone Google Hangouts (and alternatives).
So what to do? Well, I tried it, Skype under Linux run.. but like crap: huge delays while typing, cpu fan starting to spin like nuts (this under Fefora/openSUSE, trying Antergos soon.. if any difference).
So this lately talking about MS opening the source of their crap (I'm not a developer but I have a racial stand against this fucking company).. and not able yet to provide a decent Linux Skype binary. Don't what's their plan, but for sure not helping the FOSS comunity, not the integration across different OSes. I'll propably even waste some money on Apple iCrap if no choice other than that, at least it looks usable.

I correct my self: people are not turds, we are turds and the right to be it.
Sorry for the a bit OT rant.. but majority people don't care about Linux, they're happy whatever system/machine let them go on facebook, do video calls, playing games at shooting someone. I can't blame manufacturers they're in it for the money but they're the one that can start selling machine with Linux pre-installed. But I never so one in any shop not even online (Dell, HP, Acer or whatever). At least Google (evil or not) released in the mainstream the Chromebook/box machines, what a relief.. but unfortunately that's a very limited OS.

[Prescience500]

On SteamOS (used on Steam Machines) you don't get the HW survey.

I wonder if that's because of something that distros do when they package Steam. I can't imagine Valve doing something that would make their own business efforts look ineffective.

[philips]

I wonder if that's because of something that distros do when they package Steam. I can't imagine Valve doing something that would make their own business efforts look ineffective.

Well, you don't get the HW survey on Big Picture Mode more exactly, regardless of the distro used. Is not (yet?) implemented in BPM.
You do get the HW survey even in SteamOS if you modify it to use the desktop client, but that's not the default in Steam Machines.

So no matter how many Steam Machines are sold, that percentage is not gonna budge unless Valve is changing the way the HW survey is conducted.

[johnc]

I heard a rumor that Valve put less than a handful of people working on SteamOS.

[nitroflow]

Well I don't recall any steam survey this year under linux but you can bet that the very second I log on in a windows box a survey will pop up.

[ParticleBoard]

I used to put some weight on these numbers but not any more. I thought it was for gauging platform usage but my last few installs of steam followed a pattern.

- installed steam on my Win7 laptop (small niche partition for testing) and after a few boots the steam survey pops up. Annoyed I closed it over and over and over again waiting for it to pop up on linux on my main computer on the same account, it never did. Eventually I just filled it out.
- just installed steam a few days ago on my linux pvr to try the nvenc hardware accelerated streaming stuff (which works really well even on a low end box). After a few boots of that I get the survey.

I think the survey just wants to return the specs on as many NEW systems as it can, to get the same specs on the same box over and over it doesn't seem too keen. 1% is probably in line with how many windows machines have steam compared to linux but I doubt it's a fair indicator of actual usage. Hell I'm down for 3 windows and 2 linux surveys over the years.