Okay great. Call me when it’s 10%.
It’s sounds snarky but the reality is not much will change from software and hardware developers until it reaches that level. Right now the direct support we get is from developers that just happen to like Linux. After around 10% most other developers can no longer afford to ignore that market even if they aren’t adept or comfortable with it.
Most Linux users on Steam use Arch btw.
Mostly because Arch is Arch while Ubuntu and such are divided into the different release versions.
Most as in SteamOS + Arch = 49.25%.
It’s interesting how fragmented the Linux user base is in the survey. Excluding steam deck from the equation, the visible versions of Ubuntu are getting roughly 18.6%, Arch is getting like 14% of the desktop and Mint 21.3 getting 8.5%. The Flatpak version does put confusion into the data (hiding 11% of desktop versions) and the missing “other” 22.94% group accounts for 39% of the desktops so there may be lots of other version fragments hidden away, but regardless no single distro version seem to dominate.
It’d be nice to see the whole list.
It’d be nice to see the whole list.
@robocall @mr_MADAFAKA Steamdeck is arch based, isn’t?
its a different os in the survey, real arch linux is really this popular.
Awesome stuff, a consistent percentage is what we want. Sadly, I don’t think we’ll see developers flocking to Linux as they did when Macs had a similar percentage.
honestly, linux native games often run worse than windows binaries through proton and dxvk. game developers really only need to get the anti cheat working, if there is any and fix potential issues.
Had that happen to me with Last Epoch. At launch the native linux version had graphical issues where as proton ran the windows version almost perfectly.
YSK that Steam counts Macs running Windows games through Game Porting ToolKit as Windows machines.
Game developers will do the bare minimum. IMO they won’t bother with a native Linux build if their games run good enough through Proton, at least for the time being.
Linux needs to get more market share, like way more, to move things unfortunately. I know the feeling very well. It was the case on Mac when Bootcamp was still a thing, even though macOS had great OpenGL support.
I think we‘re in a very different situation right now. Proton has become so good that it‘s just not necessary for most developers to do anything to get their game running on Linux. When Macs peaked in the hardware survey, the compatibility tools were far less powerful and developers had to actually invest time and resources, if they wanted their game running on Mac.
I also think that the Steam Deck is absolutely being recognized by many developers. Even big publishers proudly announce their games being playable on it. And having games optimized for Deck often improves them on Linux in general.
So I really wouldn’t worry about developers not specifically targeting Linux. Even without that, gaming on Linux is in the best spot it has ever been and is steadily improving.
When a new game is released I usually check if it’s steam deck compatible, if it isn’t for no specific reason (like, a 2d platformer, I’m not going to expect a high fidelity 3d game to work) I’m way less inclined to buy it. The market is there and really should be picked up.
Even with steam deck verified I was skeptical but I finally made the jump to linux on my gaming pc and installed starfield and it booted right up, didn’t notice any difference it’s amazing. I imagined I was going to have to go into steam settings and do stuff and keep retrying but nope just worked right away
50% still on Windows 10 is crazy. What is Microsoft going to tell them next year when the support runs out?
Does anyone know if the Steam Hardware Survey identifies your OS even in the Flatpak version? Or will it detect the Freedesktop SDK?
