Steam Linux Usage Shows A Decline For August

[Zoll]

Before Steam, playing games on Linux was an absolute nightmare. Now we take it for granted. I don't have any issues with Steam on KDE Neon + NVidia 1080, everything works flawlessly, don't remember the last time I had any problems playing any game. We're just few in number and accept it as is. Unless Steam Machines get magically popular overnight, the Linux market share would unlikely ever cross the initial 2% threshold.

[s_j_newbury]

I would say it's actually worse in terms of input lag and performance as of now. Its just not mature enough yet. On Ubuntu-GNOME 17.04, if I switch over to Wayland, Steam and most games still run, but there's noticeably more input lag (that includes desktop work, not just games), and even though the frame-rate counter says the same as on X, it's obvious that not all of the frames actually reach my monitor under Wayland, with noticeable and quite annoying stutter in games which are perfectly smooth on X. I do use a 120hz monitor and gaming mouse. It's possible it's less noticeable on a typical system with 60hz monitor, but for me, the issues on Wayland are very obvious.

I strongly suspect you're running the games under Xwayland rather than natively on Wayland; SDL2 still defaults to the X11 backend unless you set SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland. Input lag is a separate issue to dropped frames under Xwayland, but you're right it's currently certainly no better than X. The solution is to have arbitrated direct access to the kernel evdev devices and/or raw HID access from the games themselves via a support library which is fortunately something under development for Wayland.

[ElectricPrism]

Michael i suggest using slightly different titlewording like "Steam Linux Usage Shows Linux Gamers Percent Diluted"

Maybe someone else has the golden words.

Saying "decline" implies a loss of users when in reality what is more likely is that the number of windows and mac users has simply increased while the linux users havent increased equally as much.

[sdack]

Michael i suggest using slightly different titlewording like "Steam Linux Usage Shows Linux Gamers Percent Diluted"

Maybe someone else has the golden words. ...

The word is "noise".

With such small numbers do you have to account for measurement noise, which Phoronix ignores and instead turns it into click bait... So the title should probably say "Look! It moved, now click it."

[zoner]

Wow! I thought my problems with Steam was all my fault. On Manjaro/KDE, it is a total mess.

[Dukenukemx]

Just find a way to get those Windows games working on Linux, cause right now it's better to get them working with less than optimal performance than to not have them working at all. Even native games for Linux aren't actually 100% native, which is why they too have less than optimal performance compared to Windows.

Also keep in mind that any game that someone plays that isn't on Linux won't bother with Linux. And what's the most played games right now? League of Legends is still not on Linux, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, GTAV, and Heartstone are games not on Linux and also games not on Steam. DOTA2, CS:GO, and Minecraft are top 10 games played online that are on Linux, but with the exception of Minecraft the other games are Valve games and also on Steam, and therefore on Linux.

Wine sucks balls, and isn't reliable enough to get Windows games working on Linux. Worst yet, they don't support features like Vulkan and Gallium-Nine which could be the key to achieving acceptable performance compared to Windows. We need a tool that not only allows Windows games to work on linux but also reports how many people play this game on Linux so that devs can at least acknowledge they need to port their game. Otherwise the way things are going we'll never get anywhere with Steam on Linux.

[sarmad]

The main reason Steam numbers are low on Linux is Linux users themselves. Most people who complain about the survey themselves dual boot with Windows or run Steam under Wine for the games that don't exist on Linux. Otherwise how would they know that the survey pops up on Windows more than Linux? Just stop running Steam under Windows and stick to the games that natively support Linux and you'll see the numbers rise.

[ssokolow]

The main reason Steam numbers are low on Linux is Linux users themselves. Most people who complain about the survey themselves dual boot with Windows or run Steam under Wine for the games that don't exist on Linux. Otherwise how would they know that the survey pops up on Windows more than Linux? Just stop running Steam under Windows and stick to the games that natively support Linux and you'll see the numbers rise.

...or it could also be people like me who refuse to run Steam and stick to games purchasable as GOG or Humble DRM-free downloads. (Or, given that I'm running out of desirable things to buy there, cartridges for my Retrode, PSX CDs, etc.)

After all, I'm running Linux out of a mixture of principle and "It's MY computer. It will do what I say." Steam isn't exactly in line with either of those.

[oooverclocker]

The main reason Steam numbers are low on Linux is Linux users themselves. Most people who complain about the survey themselves dual boot with Windows [...] Otherwise how would they know that the survey pops up on Windows more than Linux?

Yeah I don't play on Windows, however I have friends and some Software doesn't work on Linux. I haven't bought any Linux game since ~2-3 years. The Steam on Windows ist just for communication because what would you decide to put on your PC? - Skype or Steam? I would say Steam is way more trustworthy. So when i'm on Windows I used Steam for communication only and then the survey popped up.
By the way I log in on Windows extremely rarely and even then the survey was shown way more often than on Linux where it was only displayed twice in the last years and only immediately after the first start after the installation.

[Azrael5]

if steam shows the benefit on playing the same game on linux the users will switch... depends on linux and gaming development.