Steam Linux Usage For November: 0.27%

[Dukenukemx]

One game won't change anything in the long term. It's like an obsession with Linux fanboys, they always believe little things may change the overall state of fucked up'ness.

You don't solve a platform issue with little things. You either have a platform (Windows, Android, MacOS X), or you have an ever changing play ground where no one is responsible for anything (Linux).

One game could influence developers to also port their games over to Linux. Doom for example outsold Windows 95 that in 1995 Microsoft thought about buying ID Software. Instead they hired Gabe Newell to port games like Doom over to Windows 95. Doom was installed on more machines than Windows 95. It took a while before games were made for Windows 95, like Duke Nukem 3D which was released in 1996 but still for DOS.

If the Chinese don't have money for a legit copy of Windows then going Linux makes sense if they can play their favorite games. No one is going to port their games over to Linux unless they have an incentive or someone else does it for free. Valve needs to do what Microsoft made Gabe Newell do, and that's port games over to Linux. Specifically AAA games like Witcher 3 and Fallout 4, which are games made in 2015. Indie games have a much better track record for porting their games over to Linux. But you have to get the most popular games over to Linux, even games not sold on Steam. If lots of people are playing Overwatch then Valve needs to sit down and talk to Blizzard about porting their games over to Linux.

Even as an active user of Linux I still have one Windows 10 machine because I need to play my games reliably. Linux's problem is still a lack of games, not a lack of consistency. It doesn't help that I have to use unreliable PPA's to get the latest features that can break easily with the next update. There's no such thing as a stable PPA, cause a massive bug always creeps in and cause's issues. I was using the stable Padoka PPA and one update broke my graphics driver. Same bug that was on the unstable PPA. Same goes for Kodi except with the stable PPA something was causing Kodi to freeze and crash while the unstable PPA had it fixed. This needs to be handled better.

[mlau]

Michael_S
In and by itself Windows works exceptionally. It's rock solid, it's stable, it can work for years without a single issue. It's install and forget.

I did hardware development in the early 2000's, and let me tell you: hw developers bend over backwards to accomodate windows. they work around windows bugs in their drivers, BIOSes, you name it. No other OS enjoys that much third party attention.
As to the desktop: the amount of manpower (and therefore money) MS invests to ensure each and every (shitty) piece of ancient software continues to work in new windows versions is mind-boggling. There's simply not enough manpower in the open source world to maintain tons of different software stacks that each shipped 2-3 years after the other and are incompatible. MS has to do that, otherwise people will start to complain about the same things you are complaining about now on linux.
Personally I don't see the linux desktop situation as bleak as you.

[Guest]

If they can't fix freaking bug which makes steam to forget user login credentials it's not surprising.

[andyprough]

I did hardware development in the early 2000's, and let me tell you: hw developers bend over backwards to accomodate windows. they work around windows bugs in their drivers, BIOSes, you name it. No other OS enjoys that much third party attention.

When you have close to 90% desktop market share for decades at a time, I'm sure the hardware developers take notice and give it a lot of extra attention.

[HenryM]

According to that survey, Windows 10 "lost" an equal percentage of its user share as Linux. Linux 0.27% (-0.05) = 18.5% loss, Win10 23.65% (-4.97) =21% loss. Accounting for rounding error, they are probably both actually growing at about the same rate as ever.

Meanwhile, Win7 is now over 70%, up from around 30% a few months ago.

Also, Intel quad-core and Nvidia GPUs saw a sharp increase since PUBG and CSGO went to China.

[HenryM]

hmmm as for the whole Os vs OS thing, the Windows machines in my house give me more trouble than Linux boxes. for example, the Wacom and Nvidia drivers have been a fairly regular source of frustration, and windows update always cripples my network, and occasionally fails etc. - and software is not totally backwards-compatible. some things are a mess on 10, others on 7, and some Razer software only works safely on XP...

Ubuntu mostly just works, in my experience. Other that a lack of manufacturer support, most of my Linux trouble is either the result of my own meddling, or just Adobe being Adobe.


Also, I just noticed that VR headsets are down 20%, now just 0.1% of users have one.
EDIT: 0.2%-ish have a headset. 0.1% have an HTC.

and 64%+ use Chinese (!) vs 17% English...

[Amarildo]

No wonder why:

* Hundreds of distros to chose;
* Numerous tinkering required in quite a lot of them;
* Majority of 'huge titles' still on Windows;
* Crap Linux ports all over the place;
* Crap driver functionally all over the place for AMD;
* OS-braking OpenGL bugs that take 1 year to fix;
* Horribly small fonts in Source games;

Unless we appeal to the masses in all senses, Linux won't grow as it can. Having tons of games proved that; games alone are not gonna make Linux a popular choice. Having games is useless if the Linux-based OS's differ from one to the other and need a steep learning curve to get things working or require dual-booting.

What I think should happen:

* Standardize as much as possible: package formats, package managers, window managers, DE's;
* Reduce the numbers of distros. By this time, all the efforts needed to maintain all package formats, all package managers, all f-king egoistic DE and distro forks, can be focused on user-friendly features for, e.g, not requiring the terminal because of library mismatches, or drivers that can actually be managed through a GUI;
* A big developer should realize that Microsoft might screw them in favor of the Windows store. With this in mind, they should create a game engine (e.g. Unreal) that works greatly on all platforms, and develop a game that works just as good on Linux as it does on Windows, or better;
* AMD should invest more in driver developers. How many are on Linux now, 6 to 12? That's laughable;
* Linux ports should be refined, although for most studios that's a big no since they'll lose money in doing so;

The more division we have, less people are focused on their jobs. Instead of, e.g having 200 distros that barely differ from one to another, why not have 5 that have standards and work great? This would allow the hundreds of people working on these useless distro forks to work on things that matter, like better video drivers, better racing wheel drivers; game profiles.
Or hell, even make WINE work well on all games DX11 and DX12. It's not my ideal solution since I think all games should run natively, but at least that will bring more users: if the OS works OK and the newer games run well, there really is no reason to use Windows. Problem is, a LOT of newer games run poorly on WINE, or just don't run at all.

I think a configuration tool like YaST should be standard on all distros. However, since it only exists on openSUSE AFAIK, new Linux users will likely not stay on it or at least get a very bad impression on Linux since they would 1) Have programs that require 'non-free' plugins not working e.g. VLC, and 2) would have to question themselves why the hell they need to add the "packman" repository to use programs that work on other distros, and 3) would get scared when the big red prompt to change repositories would appear.
PS: Yes, I know VLC is GPL. Go ask openSUSE developers why they consider their OS "FOSS" but VLC-Plugins is not installed and why the Packman repo needs to be added in order for the user to have basic multimedia functionality already present in many distros.

To me, Linux Mint is one of the best distros for beginners. It's beautiful, it shaves most Ubuntu bugs (some are just plain stupid), and AFAIK everything can be done via GUI.

What would the perfect distro be like to attract more users?

* .tar.xz package format, Pacman used to install things. Go figure, it easily installs programs 10x faster than .deb;
* KDE, the most complete and "windows-like" DE;
* Arch based? Perhaps, with a more stable repo for regular users and the bleeding edge repos for advanced users (isn't this what Manjaro does?);
* Whatever openSUSE or Mint/Ubuntu use as the installer;
* Regular terminal installer for us advanced users;
* YaST;
* flatpak for all, easily usable like on Mint;
* That thing ubuntuMATE introduced, like a Store for packages, it's a beauty!
* An actual easy way to disable mouse acceleration;
* No need to go looking on a Wiki to solve problems. There should be close to zero problems for the end user;

Anyway, it's late and I'm starting to lose my points on this. Whatever.

[Michael_S]

Michael_S

God, here we come again: "try another distro", "try filing a bug report", "you're doing it wrong" mantras. It doesn't fucking matter. What matters is quality, reliability and support. Linux offers only the second and only when things work perfectly. For instance, Nouveau ostensibly supports what it claims to support however in practice there is a ton of issues related to it. Likewise with many other hardware drivers in Linux.

I've been using Linux since middle 90s. I know it inside out. I can solve most such problems in a matter of minutes. Average people, who you all want to be using Linux, will not solve such problems. They are not there to waste their lives trying to make Linux work where there are at least two OSes where everything works right out of the box.

Stop talking about Linux share on the desktop or in the Steam stats when often basic features like hardware devices require certain skills to make them work and in certain cases nothing works because you face a problem, you file a bug report and then the respective developer just doesn't give a fuck because he's developing his driver in his spare time in he couldn't care less about your use case. The amount of bug reports in regard to drivers on bugzilla.kernel.org is staggering. Here, on Phoronix and various other pro-Linux forums you won't hear about that, because it's gonna be your fault that you've bought something which is not perfectly supported by Linux.

It's always someone else's fault. Linux is fucking perfect. You're just not using it right. Fuck my life. No wonder Linux'es share on the desktop is close to zero. You won't win people's hearts with such an attitude.

Almost all problems in Windows can be reduced to just one thing: you're doing everything to wreck Windows by installing/reinstalling/removing shady software. In and by itself Windows works exceptionally. It's rock solid, it's stable, it can work for years without a single issue. It's install and forget.

I'll address your last point first. Windows is good but not great and definitely not exceptional.

Installing Windows is time-consuming and tedious, and painfully complicated if some piece of your install hardware didn't have drivers on the install media. If I remember right Windows 7 install media didn't include SSD drivers, so getting it installed on SSDs was a real headache. So keep that in mind when you complain about Linux installs - if you want to compare two similar things, then compare the Windows pre-configured device experience with the Linux pre-configured device experience, or compare installing both.

Ever have your work interrupted because a Windows Update is required and even though you specifically clicked "remind me later" or scheduled the update to happen overnight, it starts the update immediately? I've had that happen, repeatedly - most recently within the last month. Ever had Windows Update hang for 24 hours until you pulled out the laptop battery, and then work just fine after you plug the battery back in? I had that in August. And I'm not installing/reinstalling/removing shady software, some of these problems are on a work-provided device where everything on it was installed before I even got the thing. And even when Windows Update works properly, a few times a year it takes a half hour or longer even on fast hardware. That's fine if it runs overnight... unless you use Bitlocker, when you have to enter a password for the update process to resume after a restart.

And anti-virus? My new work-provided Windows laptop to replace the old work-provided Linux laptop has McAfee Anti-virus, and it makes the 2017 Core i7, 512GB m2 SSD, and 16GB of RAM run like ENIAC. At my previous company my colleagues had Kaspersky Anti-virus instead, and it was just as bad. People quit because they were so frustrated with the performance, and I'm damn tempted to quit now.

And how about installing software on Windows? Open the Software Center on my home Windows 10 PC, and then install VLC, Kodi, Java, Minecraft, LibreOffice, Steam, Firefox, Notepad++, and Chrome, right? Oh wait, no, I can't do that. I have to go to nine different websites and download and run nine different installers. And then every one except Chrome periodically pops up some kind of mechanism asking me to update it, and it disrupts whatever I'm doing while I wait. Contrast that to the nice GUI Software Center in Ubuntu, which provides me most of those applications with a few clicks, and then pops up periodically to remind me to apply upgrades to *everything* - installed applications and the core operating system. And I almost never have to restart.

How about moving your Windows installation between hardware? When I take the SSD with Linux on it out of my laptop and stick it in my desktop, all I have to do is plug in the cables and press the power button and I have it running on that desktop. And vice versa. So if the screen on the laptop breaks, or the power supply on the desktop fails, I can run that same Linux installation *as-is* in another device. But with Windows, it either won't boot on the new hardware or it will boot but then ask for re-activation.

Last but not least, there's the issues of privacy and control, all the things the Free Software Foundation care so much about. How many of their four freedoms does Windows grant? None. I grant that most computer users don't care, but a.) I do care and b.) all of my other reasons for being frustrated with Windows are valid even if you're indifferent to the four freedoms.

I didn't say Linux is perfect. I said Linux can work just fine for PC users that aren't Linux enthusiasts under some circumstances - they don't ride the cutting edge, and they use distributions targeted at novices. "Linux novice" is not an insult. I only use Linux novice distributions because I want to be able to tell friends and family members "yes, this works" or "no, it doesn't" instead of "Well, I would do that by typing 'pacman -S' or 'xbps-install' but you will have to search the web to figure it out, sorry." (I'm not trying to malign Arch Linux or the outstanding pacman packaging tool or Void Linux and the excellent XBPS tool. But it's not something my brother that has only ever worked blue collar jobs would care to learn. He's been using Xubuntu without problems for years, though.) So I'm happy using Ubuntu on this computer and Ubuntu MATE on another one, and I've been using Linux for just over fifteen years.

I don't want to alienate new users (or as the case may be, existing ones). And I'm not one of the people making any claims with respect to the 0.27% Steam survey.

[Kano]

It is interesting that the only problem you see when you swap drives between other systems is the activation. Basically you have got more options but even if you don't activate Win 10 all you lose is customizing the background (it stays black). If you configure the HD controller the same it is always bootable. Saidly you get often laptops with enabled RAID mode, switching is in that case a bit tricky. Configure everything as AHCI and you won't have boot problems.

If your target system has a different gfx card Win would use a vesa like driver. For Linux it depends, if you configured binary drivers manually before you usually don't get a running X. So not everything is the way you described. A pro can fix everything independent of OS.

[cybbro]

Well Asians are also people you know. And they, as most people choose windows. Even though I have Linux I am a windows user too, because it just works better, and it has more awesome features to offer compared to Linux. I do have virtual reality setup. On linux, it's useless, on windows, many apps, and tools are already created. Overall windows has so much more to offer. Proprietary apps, open source apps, everything works there.