Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by WhereIsTheTruth » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 8:46 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #59

vkazanov wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 certai…

You are right, in the grand scheme of things, Windows is probably only 20% of gaming market share

PlayStation and Roblox have the same MAU as Steam, that says it all

Steam's MAU probably includes people who boot their PC and have steam open in the systray

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

#132

Post by Levitating » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 8:47 AM UTC

HeckFeck wrote: post #127

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…

Yep it's crazy. The SteamDeck alone gives me the hope that we will see mainstream use of (desktop) linux within my lifetime.

People need to get their hands on real, working, consumer-friendly devices running Linux out-of-the-box.

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

#133

Post by petu » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 8:47 AM UTC

deafpolygon wrote: post #93

manbash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do you use the gyro sensors to play? I looked into it before but couldn’t wrap my mind around how we’re supposed to do that.

If you're asking how it's setup/configured, then Valve ships "Steam Input" that can do a lot of things and one of them is translating gyro data to mouse events.

Some games support gyro directly, but even then AFAIK people prefer Steam Input due to how configurable it is.

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

#134

Post by mchinen » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 8:51 AM UTC

zelphirkalt wrote: post #121

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…

This is similar to my experience. I find many people on the forums that can't resolve the crashes in Red Dead Redemption 2, so I suspect a lot of it depends on the specific games you've picked.

It is clearly getting better globally, so I expect in 3 years or so things will be ready for me to try again.

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

#135

Post by petu » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 8:53 AM UTC

nananana9 wrote: post #128

komali2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're entering a world where developers are going to need to start implementing anti cheat that works on Linux. It's clearly possible, and as we break past 5% it's no longer economically viable to ignore Linux. Especially once the GabeCube comes out...

The goal of kernel mode anticheat is to prevent other kernel-mode modules from tampering with the game's memory. This can kind of be done on Windows, as there's a pretty short list of kernel binaries, and all device drivers are signed. This is out of the question on Linux, where there's probably 100,000 distro kernel binaries floating around, plus the ability to build your own with whatever modules you wish. The only…

We probably could run Linux distros under hypervisor (just like default Windows install those days runs not on bare metal, but under Hyper-V).

And then games that wish for anticheat start a separate VM in hypervisor with complete secure boot chain of trust. Would require GPUs to support SR-IOV though.

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

#136

Post by unixhero » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 9:04 AM UTC

faangguyindia wrote: post #20

thrdbndndn wrote: post #5

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…

This time it's different. Linux was already stable enough 10 years ago as daily driver, i used Arch. everything worked just fine, i remember only having issue with graphic drivers and glitches I never really wanted anything more from it but when i moved to Mac, i saw how it prevents me from opening apps i downloaded from trusted site and every now and then i need to set xattr to open the files, and go through bunch o…

I have tried Arch btw

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

#137

Post by blackmage8532 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 9:08 AM UTC

pantalaimon wrote: post #126

helterskelter wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was probably a lot more true in the past but Linux users tend to be more privacy conscious and do things like spoof their user agent, so this is almost certainly an undercount. You basically used to have to do this to browse the web before Firefox became one of the dominant browsers.

I don't know anyone who goes through the trouble to spoof their user agent and I know plenty Linux users.

I do, to access YouTube TV on my Ubuntu HTPC.

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

#138

Post by scbrg » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 9:09 AM UTC

BatteryMountain wrote: post #130

zelphirkalt wrote: post #121

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…

Honestly, don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind. Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages. I use Fedora + KDE and everything just works. Fedora's packages are at most a month behind but usually get updates within a week of upstream changes. Debian can be months behind (which makes it rock solid for server workloads). So give Fedora+KDE a try, it works great. It's the one combo that solves a…

> Gaming stuff needs a bit more bleeding edge packages.

Not sure I agree. I've been gaming on Debian since 2005, and while it certainly was some work in the beginning, it's been pretty painless for the last five years or so. I'm on Debian stable (mostly) at the moment, and don't really know what "bleeding edge" packages I would be missing.

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

#139

Post by simonask » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 9:10 AM UTC

matja wrote: post #129

simmanian wrote: post #10

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…

The "Nvidia on Linux compatibility" issues are something I wonder if I have side-stepped somehow either by lucky choice of GPUs, or lucky choice of Linux distros. Was/is this a distro thing, or an actual issue? Every Nvidia I've used [1] has worked perfectly, from the change for Xfree86 to Xorg, through the Compiz desktop wobbly window craze, to the introduction of GPGPU APIs like CUDA/OpenCL and recently Vulkan. I d…

I've also never had any trouble with NVIDIA on the desktop. I think most issues people have are on laptops, which have odd hybrid/dual GPU setups, and which exercise suspend/hibernate much more aggressively.

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

#140

Post by hrmtst93837 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 9:12 AM UTC

DiabloD3 wrote: post #21

sonzohan wrote: 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…

I will warn you, Ubuntu is basically dead now. Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base, but the unvetted packages compiled and uploaded by random people on Snap. Please switch to Linux, but find a distro that actually wants you as a user.

[flagged]