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

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

#261

Post by dismalaf » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:09 PM 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.

Tons of people did and do this to get higher resolution on a certain streaming site.

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

#262

Post by rshackleford1 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:16 PM 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…

I have been running Guix System as my daily driver for 7 years now and I have not had any trouble using Steam as packaged by nonguix with my cursed nvidia GPU. My computer is from 2008 with a CPU/GPU upgrade in 2018.

There have only been a handful of games that I haven't been able to play, like Hitman Absolution. But other AAA games like RD2 and Witcher1-3 run without issue. Even Starcraft2, run through proton, works well.

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

#263

Post by arafeq » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

[flagged]

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

#264

Post by aeyes » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:29 PM 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.

Unfortunately I have to use some government websites which refuse to work when my user agent contains "Linux x86_64". So I just always spoof it.

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

#265

Post by bombcar » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC

aeyes wrote: post #264

pantalaimon wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unfortunately I have to use some government websites which refuse to work when my user agent contains "Linux x86_64". So I just always spoof it.

This is the reality - most people won't spoof until they figure out it's the way to make a specific site work; and then they'll likely spoof for everything.

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

#266

Post by coldpie » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

akimbostrawman wrote: post #79

jabwd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes games with kernel anticheat won't work. And those games are easily ignored, as they should be.

>yes games with kernel anticheat won't work. *unless the developers explicitly enabled linux userspace support which some do https://areweanticheatyet.com/

> linux userspace support

Note that this is a much less robust form of anti-cheat, which is why many developers do not enable it.

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

#267

Post by cogman10 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:41 PM 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…

nvidia x11 support has been pretty good for quite some time. It's nvidia wayland support that has been less than stellar. That has gotten better in the last year to year and a half now.

Now, I think it's no big issue so long as you are using a distro that supports up to date drivers. That should be about everyone now as I think even debian stable currently has decent drivers.

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

#268

Post by fwip » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

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…

If you haven't tried it, the Steam controller does a pretty good job of playing mouse&keyboard games. The original is probably hard to find now, but allegedly they'll release a new one later this year.

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

#269

Post by cogman10 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

malbs wrote: post #7

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…

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…

Seriously the only thing stopping me from putting linux on my wife's laptop is the fact that she uses a cricut, which has software that doesn't work well on linux.

Also, I really dislike cricut as a company. Such a scammy business model.

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

#270

Post by coldpie » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 2:45 PM UTC

wafflemaker wrote: post #64

When playing eve online on Linux (via Proton), the moment any other window gets focus, or the mouse slights off the game screen onto the second monitor on the side, game minimizes. I have a feeling it's just wine things. Can anybody understand what happens and maybe explain it a little? I remember that 13 years ago I did everything on Linux and only switched to Windows to play eve online. Now the game works beautiful…

> Can anybody understand what happens and maybe explain it a little?

I spent a lot of time squashing bugs like this.

Windows has one window manager. Linux has dozens. Windows apps are written to make assumptions about how the Windows window manager works. Things like windowing event message sequences, side-effects on values returned by other APIs, the exact sequence of fullscreen status side-effects such as window size and mouse cursor capture and window chrome presence. That's valid because those always work the same way on Windows. But Linux window managers all do all of those things differently, and trying to get all dozens of window managers to behave exactly the same way as Windows's does is near impossible.

Another possibility is it's just how the game works, even on Windows. It was pretty common to get windowing bugs reported, test them on Windows, and see the exact same behavior as we had on Linux.