Live data from Hacker News

Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

gamingonlinux.com

451–460 of 560 posts

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm explaining how most games work in practice. You're right a game could be made that works that way. I'm not aware of one, but I don't have exhaustive knowledge and it wouldn't surprise me if examples exist, but that was not the question.

I would not at all be surprised that there are examples out there, although I don't know of them. Tying the game state to the render loop is decision made very deep in the game engine, so you'd have to do extensive modifications to change any of the mainstream engines to do something else. Not worth the effort. But a greenfield code shouldn't be perpetuating this mistake.

I can give an example. I'd heard that Super Meat Boy was hard, and it was, but it turned out, if you ran it at the 60hz it was designed for instead of 75hz, it was considerably easier. At 120hz it was unplayable.

You kind of understand how the game loop is tied to the refresh rate in games like this, though. Practicing "pixel perfect" jumps must be challenging if the engine updates aren't necessarily in sync with what goes on on screen. And in the really old days (when platformers were invented!) there was no real alternative to having the engine in sync with the screen.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#452
post #26

I just made the switch. I had been developing on Windows for the last couple of years, mostly to get used to the ecosystem. I wanted to be able to write C and C++ like I do on Linux, without an IDE and with the native toolchain (i.e. no cygwin). On top of that, I play Overwatch every night. Windows just seems to have zero focus on performance though. React based start menu with visible lag, file Explorer (buggily) pa…

I did the same, I had jumped into POP OS instead, which is also Ubuntu based, then a year back I got into EndeavourOS an Arch based distro, and have not looked back since. I use it on everything I can put Linux on.

Plus one for an Arch-based system, way better than Ubuntu/Debian for gaming. All these Nvidia driver issues totally disappeared when I switched.

Rolling release is a hell of a lot better in this context. SteamOS is Arch, IIRC.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#453
post #26

I just made the switch. I had been developing on Windows for the last couple of years, mostly to get used to the ecosystem. I wanted to be able to write C and C++ like I do on Linux, without an IDE and with the native toolchain (i.e. no cygwin). On top of that, I play Overwatch every night. Windows just seems to have zero focus on performance though. React based start menu with visible lag, file Explorer (buggily) pa…

Out of curiosity, why are such high fps numbers desirable? Maybe I don't understand how displays work, but how does having fps > refresh rate work? Aren't many of those frames just wasted?

If you're not using V-sync, if a new frame is rendered while the previous one wasn't fully displayed yet, it gets swapped to the fresher one half-way through. This causes ugly screen tearing, but makes the game more responsive. You won't see the whole screen update at once, but like 1/5th of it will react instantly.

I used to do that until I switched to Wayland which forces vsync. It felt so unresponsive that I bought a 165hz display as a solution to that.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple really shot themselves in the foot with their insistence on dropping OpenGL and not having an in house Vulkan implementation. Games that want to support macs need to add Metal renderers.

Seems this kind of comments will keep coming no matter what. Nevertheless, here's some points on the matter: Apple was the company that boosted OpenGL popularity by using it as the graphics API for OS X. In Apple platforms world there's only one graphics API that is guaranteed to work across their hardware, so it was a big deal. However, they could not keep up with OpenGL updates, as they overlapped poorly with their…

Did anything I say is actually untrue?

Maybe there's subtleties on why the situation is like it is, but the matter of the fact is that most developers need to go out of their way to support Apple (maybe even to a larger extent even than to support linux).

> spends resources on helping with porting games to Macs natively.

This is news to me, is there some writing about it somewhere?

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#455

Evidently it's not all Steam Deck either; I checked our internal stats and on PC yesterday 1.24% of Warframe players were using WINE and another 0.76% were playing on Deck!

I’ll never forget a rep from Warframe joined the teamspeak server I was in for a Planetside 2 group back in 2012 to pitch us on playing the game. :)

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#456
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish they had to toggle to use proton by default for all games, regardless of if a Linux version exists. There have been several games where I ended up with the buggy abandoned Linux version (Rocket League is a particularly egregious example of this) instead of the much better supported Windows + Proton version.

Another example of this is Left 4 Dead 2, ironically made by Valve. The Windows client is far better, but unfortunately Valve hasn't fixed a bug that prevents joining VAC-secure servers when playing on Proton. This means you need to find an "insecure" server or host your own game.

Civ 5 is another sad example. It has a native port by Aspyr, but it's clearly inferior to getting it to work with proton (and not just for lacking mods).

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#457
post #455

Evidently it's not all Steam Deck either; I checked our internal stats and on PC yesterday 1.24% of Warframe players were using WINE and another 0.76% were playing on Deck!

I’ll never forget a rep from Warframe joined the teamspeak server I was in for a Planetside 2 group back in 2012 to pitch us on playing the game. :)

Coming from PS1, I am still waiting on PlanetSide 3 :(

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#458
post #153
post #29

Steam and Ubuntu has worked really well for me, big picture mode + hdmi switch has made for a very-close-to-console experience I am playing mostly single player campaign type games (Assassins creed, RDR2, etc) which certainly improves the picture. If steam really wanted to put a knife in games on windows, it would develop an anticheat and give it away for free. That is AFAICT the only thing keeping people on windows…

I really wish there was an (k)Ubuntu-like Linux distro - apt-based, semi-annual updates, kde default or selectable - but without all the stupid Ubuntu-isms like snap and alpha quality rust coreutils and whatnot. I run Gentoo and Debian for myself, but I'd like something normie-friendly I can put on other peoples machines and not get a ton of support questions.

Imho the future (or present) of normie friendly distros is in atomic linux. Fedora Silverblue, Bazzite, Aurora, SteamOS. It seems to me that Ubuntu on desktop is traditional but quite behind. For normies its gonna be some Fedora based distro and they choose Gnome or KDE.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#459
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been…

Why would it be strange that there are steam decks that sit unused ? I have a switch and a PS 5 that go untouched for months (even with a 4 year old who I occasionally let play some games). I think most people in my friend group are similar in that they have some gaming gear but rarely the time to use it. Still nice to have once you do.

These stats are probably skewed by how much people play. Competitive FPSers and MMOers play a lot, and the genres are the least friendly to Linux for various reasons.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#460
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 27% of that 3% is the Steam Deck / Lenovo Legion Go S. So most Linux players are in fact not on the Steam Deck. If that is true then one of those other two claims has to be false: 1. Using the latest months recorded share (Oct-2025 - 3.05%): 4,026,000 estimated "monthly active users" for Linux+Steam. 2. Market research firm International Data Corporation estimated that between 3.7 and 4 million Steam Decks had been…

I have a Steam Deck. Haven't booted it up in months. It convinced me that I could game on Linux, now I game on my Desktop.

Similar thing happened to me. I borrowed steamdeck, realized that i don't like handhelds but i liked gaming on Linux. So i bought a laptop that replaced my macbook for work but it games better than steamdeck.
Post reply on HN