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GOL Survey Results: October

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Valve have released the Steam Hardware Survey results for October, so it is also time to release our own survey results. 857 people completed the survey, making our sample size 187 people larger than last time, so thanks everyone!

The changes in the questions seemed to have worked well and the data should hopefully be far more accurate this time. There are still a few minor things to iron out, but the questions will mostly remain the same so we can see trends developing a few months down the line.

I will not compare results with those from the first “experimental” survey since many of the questions have changed now that the survey has taken a more permanent form - mostly the fact that the first survey was not time-specific. For now, you can either check out the previous survey results and try and draw your own conclusions, or wait until next month when comparisons can be done.

There were also two comments sections which yielded mixed results (mostly not being used for what they were intended) however, many comments give interesting insights so I’ll also make a few observations about those, but will get rid of them for the new survey.

Do you currently use Linux as your primary PC gaming platform?
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Did you exclusively buy Linux-supported games last month?
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What proportion of games did you play through Wine last month?
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What proportion of PC games did you play on your Windows partition last month?
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If you stopped using Windows last month completely for gaming, please state your reasons why (ie. a new game release, realised you never use it, etc.)

Unfortunately, this section was filled with "windows is crap" type comments which - although true - makes it very difficult to distinguish whether or not the people commenting stopped using Windows or not last month. This will therefore be replaced with a "did you stop using Windows last month?" and "if so, why?" style question where you have to respond to the first part to be able to respond to the latter.

However, some of the most common reasons cited for stopping Windows usage altogether were the release of Civilization V, XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dota 2. Getting the format of this question right may mean that we see spikes in people leaving Windows altogether that coincide with big releases - like CS:GO and Borderlands 2 last month.

What distribution do your primary Linux gaming PC?
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What Desktop Environment do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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This was a new question for this survey, and it has yielded some very interesting results. Although distributions seem to be mostly Debian-based, Desktop Environments are a completely mixed bag. The most popular was Unity, suggesting many out there are using vanilla Ubuntu.

These results sort of sum up the DE situation at the moment, with many major DEs having changed their design radically over the last few years and many more having appeared as a result - usage is completely fragmented over all of them. The "other" responses are mainly people who don't use a DE and use windowing managers like i3, FluxBox and OpenBox - so I will add none as an option.

Did you change your primary Linux gaming distribution last month?
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What graphics card do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Which drivers do you use for that graphics card?
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This was another new question. Open Source drivers (AMD, Intel and Nvidia combined) made up just 18% of the total. I have heard that the Open Source AMD drivers are quickly catching up to the proprietary ones in terms of performance, so this may quickly change.

There were also comments suggesting that "updated" and "official" drivers can be quite subjective depending on the distribution, so this will now be limited to two choices (Open Source and Proprietary).

Personally the reason I don't use Open Source drivers is that I paid a good amount of money for my graphics card so want to get the most performance out of it possible, however if the nouveau drivers get within a 10% performance margin of the proprietary ones some day, then I will most likely switch. Why do you use the drivers you use? I'm quite curious.

What CPU do you use on your primary Linux gaming distribution?
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Which of these retailers did you use to buy your Linux games last month?
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How many Linux games did you buy last month?
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Unique question - Have you bought Tropico 5?
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Not surprising that it was quite low considering strategy isn't the biggest of markets. If you are still on the fence about this one, I recommend getting it! The campaign was very enjoyable and the game really did a lot to add replay value which previous iterations didn't have. However, if you have either Tropico 3 or 4, I would recommend getting this one on sale since although the changes are plenty, they are quite subtle and gameplay is essentially an improved version of the same thing.

Conclusions

The results were certainly interesting and more refined than last time. I think one issue which this survey has shown is some pretty major differences with Valve's survey. For instance, the AMD CPU market share is 8% higher on our survey and they don't seem to show GPU manufacturers on there. Like Valve's survey, ours isn't perfect either and obviously gaming websites as a whole tend to have a certain demographic as a readership (ie. less "casual" gamers) so such differences could be attributed to people playing a few 2D games on their integrated card simply not reading GOL. Nevertheless, this gives us the best insights into Linux gamers we have at the moment.

The new Survey for November is available here - so please fill that in if you have the time. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
After many years of floating through space on the back of a missile, following a successful career in beating people up for not playing Sega Saturn, the missile returned to earth. Upon returning, I discovered to my dismay that the once great console had been discontinued and Sega had abandoned the fight to dominate the world through 32-bit graphical capabilities.

After spending some years breaking breeze blocks with my head for money and being mocked by strangers, I have found a new purpose: to beat up people for not playing on Linux.
See more from me
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39 comments
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Eike Nov 3, 2014
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Quoting: GuestWhat is xorg-edgers?

Seemingly this is for Ubuntu graphics drivers what "experimental" is for Debian
- the use-at-your-own-risk stuff: https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers
sonic Nov 3, 2014
M@yeulC: Same here, it would be very interesting.
chrisq Nov 3, 2014
Quoting: GuestI won't pay for Tropico because it seems like anticommunist propaganda to me. But at least it isn't worst than Call of Duty.

Wow, that made me want to play it more :D

What part of it is anti communist propaganda though?
Just that it looks like Cuba, or that it is as corrupt as the communist states were?
Purple Library Guy Nov 3, 2014
Quoting: Hamishthere are an increasing amount of people actually playing games on Linux with more than one head, although still probably not enough to truly justify adding it to the survey as of yet.
Not surprising that people with more than one head would use Linux; I expect they're used to thinking differently about things, not going with "the herd" and so forth.
Segata Sanshiro Nov 3, 2014
QuoteI won't pay for Tropico because it seems like anticommunist propaganda to me. But at least it isn't worst than Call of Duty.

I would say that was accurate of the old ones but not so much this one. The old games were mostly inaccurate stereotypical representations of Caribbean countries, with other leaders from Latin America thrown in to make the generalisations even more insensitive (ie. having Juan Peron as the leader of a "banana republic" seems somewhat ludicrous.

I'd say this one is a more accurate portrayal of the historical realities of the Central American region - foreign intervention and a desire for control over its resources by foreign powers having destroyed the region and encouraged corrupt despots which responded directly to them.

I still think Cuba gets a bit too harsh treatment. It's a poor region, but Cuba stands out against its neighbours with one of the highest literacy rates in the world, one of the best healthcare systems in the world, lower corruption than its neighbours and higher GDP per capita than its neighbours...

But the game is supposed to be comedic, so I would hardly call it "propaganda". It's just as much a critique of Capitalism as it is Communism in this sense. If anything I would say it pokes more fun at imperialist attitudes of Western countries than anything else. COD on the other hand, I would have to agree.
milliams Nov 4, 2014
It should be noted that "KDE" is not a "Desktop Environment", it's a team of developers. The desktop environment is called "Plasma" and has been for 6 years.
OZSeaford Nov 4, 2014
Quoting: milliamsIt should be noted that "KDE" is not a "Desktop Environment", it's a team of developers. The desktop environment is called "Plasma" and has been for 6 years.

Interesting, this is the first time I have come across this. Thanks for the clarification.
pd12 Nov 10, 2014
Quoting: OZSeaford
Quoting: milliamsIt should be noted that "KDE" is not a "Desktop Environment", it's a team of developers. The desktop environment is called "Plasma" and has been for 6 years.
Interesting, this is the first time I have come across this. Thanks for the clarification.
Hmm even if it's true though, popular usage has made KDE the more recognised term for the plasma desktop.

Thanks for the results! Did the survey. =)
sub Nov 23, 2014
Shouldn't the monthly GOL survey get a "Reminder article" say one week before end of the current month? If I didn't miss it, the survey for November isn't even covered in a separate article.

Keep up the excellent work!
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