It’s been a long time coming, but Linux has finally begun to climb the charts among Steam users thanks to the Steam Deck and SteamOS. Much like a saying from a book made into a movie, “Build it and they will come”, Valve has made a path for Linux to enter the mainstream. The October Steam survey shows the open-source OS passing the 3% mark just as Windows usage dropped below 95%.
While 3% may seem laughable, it still deserves recognition since, for many years, it was below 1%. Linux on Steam has been gaining traction since the introduction of the Steam Deck, as can be seen in the chart above from GamingOnLinux, with its Proton-based Steam OS, and just one year ago was at 2% on the Steam survey. It should also be noted that Steam recently hit an all-time concurrent player count of 41,666,455, and if using that number as a basis could be allowed, it could mean there are roughly 1,249,993.65 Linux users on Steam now. This is a purely hypothetical calculation since there are many other factors to consider with a total count of Steam users vs concurrent player counts, but in either case, it’s a safe assumption that, despite being a low number like 3%, that probably translates to a much larger number of users than most would expect.
Meanwhile, speaking of numbers, the survey (via Phoronix) has some other interesting data to be aware of. SteamOS takes the #1 spot for Linux users on Steam at 27%, with “other” being #2 at 18%, and then Arch Linux at 10.3%. In terms of total usage, the rest of Linux builds are still in the just over 0% range, with Arch Linux at 0.31%. Clearly, the open-source OS still has a long way to go before being considered having achieved a more definitive mainstream position but given the huge amount of Steam users, even 3% means there’s a significant amount of folks out there using it in the palm of their hands, even if they don’t know it.
Discussion (3 replies)
Join Discussion →I don't have a Steam Deck, though my brother and a bunch of my friends do, and that sh1t is pretty awesome. But I've been gaming in Linux more and more on my desktop PC (also laptop and secondary PC). I dual-boot Linux and Windows, but Linux has been my main OS for the past few years, so I've been testing the gaming waters there. My experimentation has been providing positive results. One of my friends switched to gaming only in Linux, and that's been working out well for him. I hope the numbers only continue to rise.
My living room Steambox exists only for the sake of playing computer games like a console on my TV.
Right now it's janky as heck, auto launching into windows, then launching steam in big picture mode.
I'd love to just slap Steam OS on there and have a dedicated gaming OS if I could guarantee my entire gaming library would work without issue.
You should do it... let us know once you get all of the kinks worked out. ... No I don't mean Dating Sims..