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Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

phoronix.com

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

#141

Post by PurpleRamen »

legitster wrote: post #12

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.

The top distro is SteamOS, which is based on Arch, but does not appear as such in the stats. The Arch appearing in the stats has to be CachyOS and other gaming-distros, as also real Arch-users.

But yes, SteamOS makes ~25% of the users. Though, thinking about, do they collect per account, or per device? I do have a Steamdeck, but mainly play on the big desktop running on debian, so I'm curious if I'm appearing as one or two entries in that stat.

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

#142

Post by matja »

simonask wrote: post #139
matja wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's a good point that I hadn't considered. I've never had a laptop with Nvidia, I probably subconsciously avoided those dual GPU setups as they sounded hacky and I never really needed fast 3D on a laptop.

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

#143

Post by toofy »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #98
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’ve heard there are issues with anticheat. Have you had any issues?

i thought it would bother me, but honestly, tehre are just too many good games that dont require eac.

i would imagine eac on linux will have to be addressed once steam machines drop, but for now i look at it like, if a game requires eac, at this point the game studio is just too lazy or cheap [0] to be linux compatible so we just play something else. far too many great games.

[0] its even more silly considering eac doesnt seem to stop cheaters at all. every single popular game that requires eac is still absolutely overflowing with more than obvious cheaters.

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

#144

Post by braiamp »

BoredPositron wrote: post #122
HDBaseT wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key word in the article is "again" 'Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers.' This seemingly is a common problem with the Steam Hardware Report, with Chinese users being erroneously represented. It constantly gets fixed, although takes a bit. It could be the hardware surveys are sent out at a different time compared to the rest of the world, then combined in the following month. This is proven by "Ended 20…

It's because of the Chinese user influx during their holiday season. Valve is not correcting anything they are just showing the data. As usual, Phoronix is misinterpreting what they're looking at.

It's about oversampling. Due how the survey is sent, a massive influx of machines coming online all at once will be more likely to trigger the survey. They know the general composition of their users, so they need the survey to be around the ballpark of that.

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

#145

Post by darkteflon »

rounce wrote: post #99
darkteflon wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

AC works fine just requires a little extra setup, either use this script[0] or use the latest GE-Proton (with a fresh prefix), I recently updated protonfixes to fix a CM/CSP issue. The latter is better as newer Proton has some definite performance improvements. 0: https://github.com/sihawido/assettocorsa-linux-setup

That’s excellent, thanks for the heads up! By chance, RPS covered the Mulholland Drive mod recently and I’m keen to try it on Bazzite.

I would definitely prefer to go the GE-Proton route. To clarify, what do you mean by “fresh”? Just the most recent release or something more specific?

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

#146

Post by keyringlight »

HDBaseT wrote: post #25
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…

The key word in the article is "again" 'Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers.' This seemingly is a common problem with the Steam Hardware Report, with Chinese users being erroneously represented. It constantly gets fixed, although takes a bit. It could be the hardware surveys are sent out at a different time compared to the rest of the world, then combined in the following month. This is proven by "Ended 20…

The other aspect I find interesting is the February spike in win10 usage, presumably from Chinese users. Where will they migrate to over the coming years as support goes away. They seem to be both resisting win11 and resisting linux perhaps as either it's not suitable for the games (online?) they play or not great for Chinese users, or perhaps along with the nvidia spike because of getting more out of those GPUs on windows.

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

#147

Post by braiamp »

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…

> don't use debian for gaming, as it is too far behind

I use Debian stable on my laptop and testing on desktop. It is fine. Only the newest games that need a specific 0 day patch may suffer a bit but that's only for 1-2 weeks even on testing. You want a stable system first, then to unlock the full performance out of everything, and most bleeding edge fail in the former and are a coin toss on the later.

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

#148

Post by helterskelter »

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.

The archwiki Firefox privacy guide comes to mind, which mentions UA spoofing:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox/Privacy

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

#149

Post by BatteryMountain »

scbrg wrote: post #138
BatteryMountain wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Kernel updates.

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

#150

Post by BoredPositron »

braiamp wrote: post #144
BoredPositron wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the Chinese user influx during their holiday season. Valve is not correcting anything they are just showing the data. As usual, Phoronix is misinterpreting what they're looking at.

It's about oversampling. Due how the survey is sent, a massive influx of machines coming online all at once will be more likely to trigger the survey. They know the general composition of their users, so they need the survey to be around the ballpark of that.

They are still only reporting the data they see. They are not correcting or manipulating the data like phoronix implies in their article.
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