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Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

phoronix.com

51–60 of 373 posts

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#51

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 Stea…

The explanation I've heard is simply: Chinese New Years happened, which means a lot more Chinese gamers are online in February during the week long national holiday.

It happened in last year's March stats too: https://web.archive.org/web/20250404061527/https://store.ste... -25%

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#52
post #18

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 hav…

Keyboard & mouse user here. To lessen the pain, I moved to gyro-based gaming. I think 8bitdo has those. I specifically use the Switch joycons. I recommend you just get yourself a good BT dongle.

Me too. My weapon of choice is the Dualsense. Lots of great things about it in addition to gyro controls: as of late last year you can pair 4 devices with it. I have one Dualsense and roam between PS5, Bazzite desktop and Steam Deck seamlessly.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#53

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.

It's not just the single distro, but single Desktop Environment upon which app and ecosystem developers will standardise. I'm glad that the latest generation of gaming distros are converging on Plasma.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#54
post #27

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

Whilst I tend to agree, I also don't recommend just pasting every command from ChatGPT into your machine without having some understanding/validating process.

Best flow is

Llm -> manual research -> apply

But no one has the time to validate everything llm writes via manually researching it unfortunately /s

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#55
post #7
post #4

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 co…

On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there. On all of my machines bar one, window…

Sadly, the original Assetto Corsa is also borked on Linux (AC Evo and AC Rally, on the other hand, run great).

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#57
post #23
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think for the not-so-tech-savvy gamer, there are better distros than Ubuntu. Ubuntu(and Debian) tend to lag behind the cutting edge a bit too. For such users I'd probably recommend fedora (or one of it's variants) or just straight up steamOS

I tried cachy, but I decided I hate the kde plasma environment, I should have chosen some other window manager but wanted to try the recommended one there is also something to be said, negatively, for the number of distros now, cambrian explosion since the good old days of slack, deb, redhat, suse lol

Doesn't Cachy support all of the DEs? Use it to try them all. (I don't know how CachyOS handles it; EndeavourOS lets you pick the DE on login.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#58

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.

Let me know how rainvow 6 runs for you :) I wish you were right, though

yes games with kernel anticheat won't work.

And those games are easily ignored, as they should be.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#59
post #38

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

Well, in the overall kernel space there is nothing but Linux-based kernels right now.

You should broaden your hardware horizons.

Straight out of Linux Foundation, https://www.zephyrproject.org/

There are no Linux kernels on Sony PlayStation nor Nintendo's Switch, or even Microsoft's XBox.

Windows with its 80% market share has no Linux kernel.

Zero Linux kernel running on the ca 15% Apple desktops.

Zero Linux kernels running on iOS and iPadOS.

No Linux kernels on Arduino or ESP32, althought they certainly can run ESP-IDF and FreeRTOS.

And then there are INTEGRITY, vxWorks, QNX, NutXX, FreeBSD, OpenBDS, DragonFly, IBM i, z/OS, ClearPath MCP, OS 2200, ThreadX, SphereOS, Fuchsia,.... and plenty more I won't bother to list, none of them with Linux kernel.

Re: Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

#60

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

Was not the case when I wanted to use a GameCube controller via Wii U adaptor without a lot of extra lag. Yeah that's a niche, but it works fine in Windows and even Mac.

I believe most of those work with controller drivers in the application (Dolphin Emulator or Steam/SDL) rather than the OS level. That's why the Windows solution requires Zadig to replace the HID driver.

On Linux instead of replacing the driver, you have to add an udev rule that allows applications to communicate with the USB device directly: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/blob/master/6... And you can see in this list, it's not the only controller with that requirement.

SteamOS includes this by default.

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