Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1.85% of Steam users run Linux

itsmdaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 123 posts

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#91

Post by Rampoina »

amscanne wrote: post #5

Anecdote. I actually installed steam yesterday (for the first time, I'm not a gamer) to see the available games for Linux. I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few that looked okay. So I bought a couple. None worked -- mysterious launch errors, etc. No luck after a couple hours of debugging. DISAPPOINTED! I seriously question how many people actually run on Linux vs. login and browse the store? That said, I'm…

I'm sorry to hear that, I tried ~50 games and they all work. Out of curiosity what were those games?

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#92

Post by maaaats »

sontek wrote: post #34

This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

But at the same time, it may be just a temporarily boost from all the Linux coverage. I myself tested it recently and abandoned it fast, and will not probably try again for a long time as long as almost none of my games are playable in Linux.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#93

Post by maaaats »

yaeger wrote: post #81
1qaz2wsx3edc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ergo StreamOS. I wouldn't bother running Steam on a non-valve distro, it just doesn't seem practical given the options available (Win/OSX/SteamOS). Full disclosure: I use Steam on OSX & inside a Windows VM. My biggest peeve is that Valve restricts the Steam client to a single runtime (meaning: I can't run steam on OSX & Windows at the same time "This account is logged in elsewhere"). So I'm always switching between t…

Steam on Windows isn't all that great either. It's 2014 now and Steam still ignores the "multi user" aspect of Windows. Have Steam installed and want to logon automatically so you don't have to enter your password everytime? Great, just tick the appropriate checkbox. Works great for me, but when my brother uses the PC with his own Windows account, you already know what happens when he tries to start Steam and wants t…

Last time I tried, I solved this with just copying the Steam folder and each person starts Steam from their own Steam folder. A lot of wasted space since we got duplicates of all games, but it worked.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#94

Post by maaaats »

greyfade wrote: post #38
amscanne wrote: post #5

Anecdote. I actually installed steam yesterday (for the first time, I'm not a gamer) to see the available games for Linux. I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few that looked okay. So I bought a couple. None worked -- mysterious launch errors, etc. No luck after a couple hours of debugging. DISAPPOINTED! I seriously question how many people actually run on Linux vs. login and browse the store? That said, I'm…

Of the two hundred or so games I bought on humble bundles and so forth, I've tried a few dozen of the games I've bought (haven't had time to try them all), and with the exception of two Early Access games, they work just fine.

The Humble Bundles I've bought are mostly indie games already ported to many platforms. Few of the AAA titles I have bought work on Linux.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#95

Post by throwaway2048 »

maaaats wrote: post #93
yaeger wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam on Windows isn't all that great either. It's 2014 now and Steam still ignores the "multi user" aspect of Windows. Have Steam installed and want to logon automatically so you don't have to enter your password everytime? Great, just tick the appropriate checkbox. Works great for me, but when my brother uses the PC with his own Windows account, you already know what happens when he tries to start Steam and wants t…

Last time I tried, I solved this with just copying the Steam folder and each person starts Steam from their own Steam folder. A lot of wasted space since we got duplicates of all games, but it worked.

windows supports symlinks, you might want to try symlinking the steamapps folder, each steam user has their own settings bits inside steam anyways.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#96

Post by sandGorgon »

Very exciting times for Linux gaming this year. With next quarter's Intel Broadwell chipset - which incidentally runs off official open source drivers on Linux [1] [2] - we should have a pretty awesome Steam experience on Linux. As the Intel dude puts it :

* Intel’s Ben Widawsky, who works on Intel’s Linux graphics driver efforts, says that “Broadwell graphics bring some of the biggest changes we’ve seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU… [the changes] dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes.”*

Pretty the much the only reason I'm putting off buying a laptop right now.

[1] http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel-releas... [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_bro...

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#97

Post by massysett »

crdoconnor wrote: post #58
gum_ina_package wrote: post #30

I think the big story here is that ~4% of Steam users run Vista. The year of the Linux desktop is very, very, very far away.

The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty). It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.

Dell is preinstalling Ubuntu. So is Asus.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#98

Post by Sandman »

Keep in mind that this only shows how many Linux users run native steam clients. A lot of us also run Steam through Wine so that we can play Windows-only games. It's a buggy experience, but what can you do...

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#99

Post by SeppoErviala »

sontek wrote: post #34

This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

I didn't use Steam since switching to Linux in 2008 until now that it is officially available. Some of that 1.85% are new (or returning) customers.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#100

Post by abrahamsen »

munro wrote: post #4

This is great! To me it's surprisingly high. I think this will be a slow process, because spending a day to backup & reinstall your OS is not a fun process. When I have time to game, I just want to turn my computer on and start gaming. I support gaming on Linux, and honestly even I've been too lazy to setup Linux on my gaming machine. I think the shift will happen as people upgrade their computers, or have to reinsta…

Thanks, that was my initial reaction as well. I'd have expected it to be a few enthusiasts, maybe something like 50.000 worldwide. 1.85 % of the Steam user base is more than a million players!
Post reply on HN