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Steam on Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% in March

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

#201

Post by nickserv »

My last Windows install was XP, but I stopped using Steam a couple years back. I prefer to own what I buy, so now only purchase on GOG.

However I'm very thankful for the work Valve has done, as this has made Wine much much better.

I can now just download a game from GOG, set it up with a winetricks one-liner, and expect it to work. Even the latest games that just came out.

Although to be fair I usually wait a couple months to get a good discount. But, before, you had to wait years for support, if any at all.

I'm also seeing some studios releasing support for Vulkan either day one or in updates, which is great.

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

#202

Post by ThatPlayer »

Gander5739 wrote: post #154
toofy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

Easy anti cheat works on linux, if the game developers permit it.

It's not the same as EasyAntiCheat and doesn't support the same features. It's like saying Excel works on iPad, but you can't even use VBA on that.

Or a game example: I have Minecraft (Bedrock) on my phone so therefore I should be able to do the same things as Minecraft (Java) on Windows. The problem is they're the same names for different software with similar, but not the same, functionality.

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

#203

Post by zelphirkalt »

mchinen wrote: post #134
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.

Maybe I didn't emphasize sufficiently just how many games don't work for me on GNU/Linux. Out of 100 games, I estimate that I get 3-5 games that work, while many people in my circles are proclaiming how great the support now is, that so many games just run fine.

I actually have more luck getting games to run when I myself make WINE prefixes using WINE and try running games that way, than running any games on Steam. Only very few games work with Steam on Linux for me. This is also part of the reason, why I think something Steam does with Proton prefixes might be the reason it is broken.

I also tried things like not putting games in my Steam library on an NTFS drive that is shared with Windows, and instead put them on my GNU/Linux partition in a new Steam library. Didn't help. Tried various Proton versions, including experimental ones. Didn't help. Simply nothing seems to make a difference.

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

#204

Post by tmtvl »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #17
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…

I use an 8bitdo controller and they work very good in linux, I use the dongle instead of the bluetooh connection

I have an 8bitdo Pro 2 and it's... kinda okay? 90% of the time it works great, but if I don't have an application running which looks for a controller then the controller gets disconnected and reconnected every 10 seconds or so.

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

#205

Post by ThatPlayer »

hkmaxpro wrote: post #197
ThatPlayer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%

How does a Jan/Feb holiday affect this year’s March number (that was reported in early April)? I’m not talking about the Feb number that is reported in March.

The number being discussed is not March alone, but the percent change. So March's number relative to February's number.

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

#206

Post by GCUMstlyHarmls »

manbash wrote: post #18
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…

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.

8Bitdo does have a gyro controller, I have the Ultimate 2. It does have some requirement to configure the gyro though, you have to boot it in `dinput` mode by holding down a button.

I have included a link from my notes, I have not actually tested it much beyond seeing that the gyro does work in steams "configure controller" thing, never got around to correctly mapping any game.

https://pastebin.com/YP4CD6BX

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

#207

Post by Gander5739 »

ThatPlayer wrote: post #202
Gander5739 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy anti cheat works on linux, if the game developers permit it.

It's not the same as EasyAntiCheat and doesn't support the same features. It's like saying Excel works on iPad, but you can't even use VBA on that. Or a game example: I have Minecraft (Bedrock) on my phone so therefore I should be able to do the same things as Minecraft (Java) on Windows. The problem is they're the same names for different software with similar, but not the same, functionality.

So you're saying that easy anti cheat on linux is different from on windows? I am aware it is not as effective as detecting cheating on linux, but does this affect gameplay itself? Or do game developers not want reduced efficacy of detecting cheaters, and so they don't support linux at all?

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

#208

Post by PurpleRamen »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #179
PurpleRamen wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number doubled in the last year. April 2025 it was around 2.3%, and has been jumping around 2-3% for several years. Skyrocking seems justified when looking at a greater picture. Though, it's a longer process, not something that suddenly happened immediately. The combination of Steamdeck, proton, good gaming-distributions and Windows 10 phasing out, while Windows 11 sucks and becoming an AI+Ads-infested mess, seem…

Right but clearly 5% is still much closer to the ground than it is to the sky. Not that ground-rocketed makes any more sense because it doesn't.

Skyrocketing in this context is a fast steep rise, moving fast toward the sky; so it's about relative height in a specific timeframe, not absolute height. I mean, nobody would say Windows is skyrocketing, because it already is the sky (here).

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

#209

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #14

SteamDeck should be excluded from “Linux use” imho. Especially when it comes to click bait headlines. Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!

What you say is not even remotely true. SteamOS is basically just Arch with steam preinstalled.

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

#210

Post by threetonesun »

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…

We've had open source AMD drivers for... 20ish years now? Meanwhile Nvidia begrudgingly added drivers support in the last year or two. So maybe some recency bias.
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