Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

gamingonlinux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 560 posts

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#21

Post by jeroenhd »

tredre3 wrote: post #12
haunter wrote: post #2

27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.

> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been…

Alternative options:

- International Data Corporation is overestimating the amount of shipped Steam Decks.

- Modified Steam Decks (i.e. running Bazzite) don't report themselves to be Steam Decks

- Most likely: most Steam Deck users opt out of participating in the Steam Hardware survey/analytics.

Last year, I didn't participate in the Steam Hardware survey on my Deck, only on my PC. This year, I participated on my Deck and my desktop, but not my laptop. I still have three devices running Steam. To any survey, it'll look like the amount of Steam devices doubled even though I'm only reporting 67% of my devices to analytics.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#22

Post by rafaelmn »

tredre3 wrote: post #12
haunter wrote: post #2

27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.

> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been…

Why would it be strange that there are steam decks that sit unused ? I have a switch and a PS 5 that go untouched for months (even with a 4 year old who I occasionally let play some games). I think most people in my friend group are similar in that they have some gaming gear but rarely the time to use it. Still nice to have once you do.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#23

Post by netule »

tredre3 wrote: post #12
haunter wrote: post #2

27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.

> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been…

They likely stopped using them altogether.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#24

Post by [deleted] »

tredre3 wrote: post #12
haunter wrote: post #2

27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck.

> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been…

[deleted]

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#25

Post by IshKebab »

WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #6
haunter wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the most played games, half of them won't work under Linux because of the online components / anti cheat system. BF6, PUBG, Rust, GTAV Online etc.

https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount only 6 out of the 50 most played right now aren't working 10 millions players ingame, 90% of players are not playing these titles

6 out of 50 is a huge number in terms of annoyance.

It's the same reason alternative web browser engines like Ladybird are probably never going to take off. It might support 99.99% of web features - which sounds amazing! - but that probably means it's going to fail in some way on like 0.1% of sites which in practice is extremely frustrating.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#26

Post by TACIXAT »

I just made the switch. I had been developing on Windows for the last couple of years, mostly to get used to the ecosystem. I wanted to be able to write C and C++ like I do on Linux, without an IDE and with the native toolchain (i.e. no cygwin). On top of that, I play Overwatch every night.

Windows just seems to have zero focus on performance though. React based start menu with visible lag, file Explorer (buggily) parsing files to display metadata before listing them, mysterious memory leaks not reflected in task manager processes.

I installed Linux Mint. While it didn't just work (TM), and I had to go into recovery mode to install Nvidia drivers, it worked well enough. I can run Overwatch via Steam and pull comparable FPS to Windows (500 FPS on a 3090 with dips into the 400s). Memory usage is stable and at a very low baseline.

It is nice to come back to Linux, and with games I don't really have a need to run Windows anymore.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#27

Post by jeroenhd »

periodjet wrote: post #3

I honestly can’t believe it’s not much higher. It’s so easy these days with SteamOS and Bazzite.

The lack of accessible devices with first party support make mainstream Linux gaming rather annoying.

For many games, people prefer Nvidias's graphical tricks over AMD's, making AMD cards a worse deal, while at the same time Nvidia's Linux support remains abysmal for most cards. It's not impossible to use their hardware anymore, but you need to know of their bullshit beforehand and even then you run the risk of messing up.

I hope Valve can get something similar to a Steam Machine programme off the ground now that games actually run on Linux. Unfortunately, I kind of doubt any vendors will bother to go through the effort of supporting their hardware on a firmware level for anything but Windows (and even at that level Windows is full of ACPI patches and driver workarounds to clean up their trash).

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#28

Post by BoredPositron »

lawn wrote: post #13
BoredPositron wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people use their PCs as general computing devices. Immutable distros are irritating for people that are used to Windows or macOS.

Linux is miles better than Windows as a general computing device, it's not even close.

Ignorance is bliss. We are not talking about general Linux in this chain.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#29

Post by Hasz »

Steam and Ubuntu has worked really well for me, big picture mode + hdmi switch has made for a very-close-to-console experience

I am playing mostly single player campaign type games (Assassins creed, RDR2, etc) which certainly improves the picture.

If steam really wanted to put a knife in games on windows, it would develop an anticheat and give it away for free. That is AFAICT the only thing keeping people on windows for modern, multiplayer games.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#30

Post by Dedime »

lawn wrote: post #13
BoredPositron wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because people use their PCs as general computing devices. Immutable distros are irritating for people that are used to Windows or macOS.

Linux is miles better than Windows as a general computing device, it's not even close.

I wouldn't say it's perfect quite yet. I just installed Debian on my Framework, and my microphone isn't working. Debugging it for the last 30 minutes has gotten me nowhere, and half the answers on the internet don't apply to my distro. Until basic issues like this go away or have easy solutions, it's hard to recommend it to anyone.
Post reply on HN