Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

I've probably said this a bunch of times already, but based on my past experience, any analysis built on month-to-month changes in the Steam Hardware Survey should be taken with a very large grain of salt, if not considered outright useless for any serious conclusions.

The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers." If you actually think about what that implies, it raises more questions than answers. A 31.85% monthly drop is obviously not organic, so yes, it makes sense to call it a "correction." But then why was the previous month's data so far off in the first place? Is there something fundamentally flawed in the survey methodology, like sampling bias, non-uniform distribution, regional skew, or something else?

And if this kind of correction happens this month, what's stopping it from happening in previous months? The reality is: it does happen all the time. You can usually spot at least one clearly unrealistic data point in almost every release.

At that point, it's hard to argue there's any real value in trying to analyze these results in a rigorous way.

A few weeks ago, I installed linux (Nobara, if you're curious) on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console. I have absolutely no regret. I did it initially because apparently playing games on a shared screen is better for my kid. But I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly Windows only games run on Linux. The whole experience has been great, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have an nvidia gpu as well, which apparently does not work very well on Linux. For me, on Nobara, it's been working flawlessly.

The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route.

I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.

Massive props needs to be given to the Proton and Wine teams and Valve and Codeweavers commercial efforts to help fund work on this.

I wish things were working so seamlessly for me, as people describe in the comments. There seems to be something wrong with Steam and how it works, so that in my machine (and CPU and GPU from 2019, with official Linux drivers from standard repos, running Debian KDE) it almost never manages to start a Windows game. I will click the green "Play" button, it will change to a blue "Stop" button, as if the application was running, then shortly after silently switches back to the green Play button again, without any visible error and without actually starting the game. This has been going on for years and I have tried various things, Including HWE kernel, OS reinstall from Linux Mint to Debian, installing the steam client via various means, and whatnot.

I have a suspicion, that somehow Steam has issues when Guix is installed, which I am always using, but then the question is, why Steam is incapable of just shipping with whatever it needs and using the things it shipped with properly, instead of getting confused by Guix, which only puts things in the GNU store, and not in a place that Steam should ever look at. But like I said, it is only a hunch or suspicion, and I need Guix more than Steam on Linux.

Then there are games that just work, like Stardew Valley. And maybe Terraria. I suspect, that it is somehow also about what engine the games use and what those engines rely on. But these games are very few, and most bigger mainstream games like AoE2 simple won't start, like I described.

So for me it still seems, that it is not actually working that reliably on just any GNU/Linux system, and that there are still blind spots, that Valve or whoever is clearly not seeing or considering in their whole Proton development or how Proton is used by Steam. Probably some isolation thing that they are completely missing for several years now.

I got my Steam Deck that month, so pleased to be a part of it. The Deck fills a gap that has been empty in my soul since the PSP was discontinued, and feels like a genuine step forward that makes technology fun again.

It's fully open! It has a KDE desktop that I can access any time! I can shove in any size of SSD I like!

And I'm playing Halo 3... on Linux... on hardware made by Steam. If you spoke that sentence to me in 2009, I'd suggest you ought to be sectioned.

When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the tracking and noise (like news articles)

When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use.

Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu.

My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)

I was waiting for the steam machine and grew impatient. I instead built a PC to go behind our family room TV. I gave bazzite a chance before committing to a copy of Windows. I'm glad I did. It runs perfectly. Zero hassle, no chasing down drivers. The only thing to be aware of is that a handful of games are not compatible, generally due to their anti-cheat software (e.g. marathon won't run, but arc raiders does.)

I am part of the 5%. But not on Steamdeck. Proton has made gaming on Ubuntu feasible, and I usually don't have issues with compatibility.

It’s great. Moving on from Windows has been like leaving an abusive relationship.

Gaming is more than viable on a Linux PC these days.

I'm using CachyOS with a PS2 controller or mouse and keyboard. I had to do virtually zero tinkering.

That's possibly the first time that "skyrocketed" and "5%" have been used together in one sentence.

Go Linux. Gamers will have a better experiance in Linux. Predict that Windows will become an legacy emulation layer.

I was keeping a Windows install around solely to play Fortnite with my kids but they've finally found other games.

Rocket League performance on Linux used to be the other big reason but about 4 months ago I fired it up and found it ran smoother (the random stutters I have suffered through on Windows are not there on Linux).

Now that those two are no longer relevant I can finally reclaim that wasted SSD storage.

When playing eve online on Linux (via Proton), the moment any other window gets focus, or the mouse slights off the game screen onto the second monitor on the side, game minimizes.

I have a feeling it's just wine things. Can anybody understand what happens and maybe explain it a little?

I remember that 13 years ago I did everything on Linux and only switched to Windows to play eve online. Now the game works beautifully (graphics and all) on Linux with just one slight modification in the "run command" in Steam.

This is nothing, as anybody who tried to play games on Linux using wine can attest. It used to be a hell of modifications, dependency hunting and obscure hacks to get any windows game to work.

Proton and Vulcan are Awesome.

“I'm still working on it. It's been 25 years. I can do this for another 25. I'll wear them down.” —Linus Torvalds

2026 is the year of Steam Linux.

Skyrocketed above 5% is an expression I would discourage anyone from using because it's a broken metaphor. Unless the trajectory of that rocket was a few degrees from horizontal.

How about grasshopper-ed above 5%?

Long time Linux user, but I got lazy into the Windows ecosystem for too many years. My son convinced me to move over and I haven't looked back. I haven't found a game that hasn't run, the worst I have to do is change Proton version. Ubuntu was good, but Nobara is amazing (ndivia 5000 series drivers out of the box).

Only blocker for Linux gaming are intrusive Anti-cheats.

They can be bypassed on Windows, but with too much work (custom hypervisor etc.)

To bypass them on Linux, a lot more easier.

Just another post saying stuck kde with the new plasma on it for my kids first computer and was blown away by the polish. Switching over my workstation this month for sure. Highly recommended

Even if this is largely due to a change in how PCs in China are being counted, it's still amazing to watch Linux usage continue to climb like this.

It's really the only opposing force to Microsoft's enshittification of Windows.

I've been happy with my Bazzite setup for play and work. Took a little time to get used to fedora atomic and the changes in installing and running stuff but used to it now.

The top distro is Arch - implying that the Steam Deck userbase is moving the needle.

Linus has said on a few occasions that the main thing holding back user adoption for desktop is a single distro with a clear focus. What Android did for mobile.

It's clear that SteamOS could be "that guy" if Valve wants it to be.

This means nothing. There is so much up and down based on the active Chinese user base. PHoronox making headlines out of thin air again

Phoronix lost the plot in the last year with their click bait garbage headlines and articles. February/March user data is always skewed because of the Chinese holidays. They know it, we know it, they even write about it in the article but still a dumbass hype bait headline and article. Just fucking stop it, the quality of your reviews took a dive as well. Go ahead and produce more garbage and you have lost all value as a news site by the end of the year.

AI fixes Linux on the desktop. Whatever obscure issues you’re facing, you’re a quick prompt away from the solution.

SteamDeck should be excluded from “Linux use” imho. Especially when it comes to click bait headlines.

Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!

It will reach 10% in 2050 thereabouts, given current velocity, assuming current computing models are still relevant by then.