Valve's Steam Survey Data Shows Linux Usage Pulling Back During June

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve's Steam Survey Data Shows Linux Usage Pulling Back During June

While Linux usage of Steam as a percentage has generally been flat or ticking up slightly each month since last year when Valve introduced Steam Play for allowing many Windows games to run gracefully on Linux, during June was the first time in a while seeing a decline...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-Usage-For-June-2019

[boxie]

heh, I *just* submitted my Linux steam survey before reading this article, maybe July will have a slight uptick?

[b8e5n]

heh, I *just* submitted my Linux steam survey before reading this article, maybe July will have a slight uptick?

0.8% up

[aht0]

heh, I *just* submitted my Linux steam survey before reading this article, maybe July will have a slight uptick?

Reason: Summer in Northern hemisphere, gaming overall takes a hit. Each year. Especially so during warm weather.

[schmidtbag]

Until Valve allows surveys for beta users, these results are always going to sound much worse than they really are.

Reason: Summer in Northern hemisphere, gaming overall takes a hit. Each year. Especially so during warm weather.

You say that as though Linux users are known to go out and get some sun...

On a more serious note though, these percentages shouldn't really change much regardless of season. It's a percentage of which OS is in use, so, I don't see why that'd be particularly seasonal. Remember, there's a finite amount of surveys sent out (40k I think?).

[Kayote]

Reason: Summer in Northern hemisphere, gaming overall takes a hit. Each year. Especially so during warm weather.

the southern hemisphere also exists, there's loads of Linux users in South America, and I bet that in Australia, NZ, oceania, africa as well. Why there always some friction between south and north?? I feel ignored sometimes, but I wonder how ppl that live in caribean or the equator feel... jeez those ppl don't have winter do you realize??

[birdie]

Until Valve allows surveys for beta users, these results are always going to sound much worse than they really are.


You say that as though Linux users are known to go out and get some sun...

On a more serious note though, these percentages shouldn't really change much regardless of season. It's a percentage of which OS is in use, so, I don't see why that'd be particularly seasonal. Remember, there's a finite amount of surveys sent out (40k I think?).

Until we have Linux as a platform which offers a rich set of stable APIs/ABIs supported for at the very least 10 years, we won't have any gains in Linux gaming market share.

And then maybe we shouldn't deprecate and throw away the things which still work great vs. something which is lacking huge desktop oriented features like global keyboard shortcuts. I mean seriously? An X.org replacement which has been in development for over a decade doesn't offer an API for global keyboard shortcuts. Then what about remote screen sharing? Only recently some work has been done towards it. And again no APIs for sending keyboard/mouse events remotely.

WTF is wrong with Linux developers?

[doctorx69]

Until we have Linux as a platform which offers a rich set of stable APIs/ABIs supported for at the very least 10 years, we won't have any gains in Linux gaming market share.

And then maybe we shouldn't deprecate and throw away the things which still work great vs. something which is lacking huge desktop oriented features like global keyboard shortcuts. I mean seriously? An X.org replacement which has been in development for over a decade doesn't offer an API for global keyboard shortcuts. Then what about remote screen sharing? Only recently some work has been done towards it. And again no APIs for sending keyboard/mouse events remotely.

WTF is wrong with the Linux developers?

you get an upvote! seriously... i am beginning to question my love for linux. These idiots are starting to make me look bad. When my friends come up to me and ask why should i even try linux if they will just kill working features... i dont have an answer for them.

[aht0]

the southern hemisphere also exists, there's loads of Linux users in South America, and I bet that in Australia, NZ, oceania, africa as well. Why there always some friction between south and north?? I feel ignored sometimes, but I wonder how ppl that live in caribean or the equator feel... jeez those ppl don't have winter do you realize??

Southern hemisphere has smaller population density, it's something that reflects in gaming.

[Kayote]

Southern hemisphere has smaller population density, it's something that reflects in gaming.

that's correct obviously because the northern hemisphere has a bigger land mass. also the eastern hemisphere has bigger land mass than the western, and so?, I thought that China low linux user count was hitting the linux market share on steam. I don't see the relation between higher number of gamers, and higher linux gaming market share.