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Linux overall market-share percentage falls on Steam in October

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You know the drill by now, it's up and down all the time and I don't think we should really pay much attention to the Steam Hardware Survey any more, regardless of it going up or down. A better measure is likely to keep talking to developers, and see how their actual sales are doing on Linux.

Anyway, for those who are still interested:
Linux Total: 0.89% - 0.04%
Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS 64 bit 0.33% - 0.01%
Linux 64 bit 0.10% 0.00%
Linux Mint 18 Sarah 64 bit 0.09% + 0.01%
Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS 64 bit 0.05% - 0.01%

Even though Valve aren't currently counting anyone in Big Picture or SteamOS, I doubt it would change anything much. Our own survey suggests SteamOS use is pretty low (26 out of 1645 who answered it).

These results may change tomorrow or the day after, as it seems Valve sometimes adjust them a day or so after they put out the results, like we saw last month, and that's not the only time they have done that.

Make of it what you will. I'm not going to put the blame anywhere, as no one really knows apart from Valve, and apparently I'm always wrong according to a few people who think they know better.

What I will say, is don't get disheartened by figures like this, we can mostly ignore it until the change is much bigger. That goes for when it rises too. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Crystal Dagger Nov 2, 2016
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: Crystal DaggerA bit old, but worth reading: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3045249/linux/linux-gaming-is-much-healthier-than-steams-hardware-survey-implies.html
Just to point out again, they only wrote that because I grilled the author of the original piece on Twitter about how inaccurate his previous piece was ;), see his note at the bottom linking to us :D

Heh, yeah I saw that!
Redface Nov 2, 2016
Quoting: Philadelphus
Quoting: orochikyoa reason that actually any Mac OS doesnt have a terminal since 10 years ago.
I'm pretty sure OS X does have a terminal (it's just not really advertised), given that professional astronomy (my field) uses about 50-50 Mac and Linux and pretty much everything in astronomy requires liberal use of the command line. :) That's what got me into using Linux after growing up with Windows only, actually.
Yeah there is still a commandline in MacOSX, and its usually one of the first programs when I have to use a Mac :-)
AlveKatt Nov 2, 2016
I don't quite get why they need to make a survey for hardware statistics? Steam keeps track of how many hours I play each game, how come it can't keep track of which compile I had to download to play? I mean, keeping track of that small piece of data is a helluva lot less intrusive than collecting the statistics of the amount of time played in specific games, but they have no compunction against collecting that by default...
Cybolic Nov 3, 2016
Wouldn't a more accurate headline be something along the lines of "Percentage of Linux respondents drops on Steam survey in October"? I mean, the Steam Hardware Survey has very little to do with actual market-share percentage and it's certainly not the point of the survey.
Liam Dawe Nov 3, 2016
Quoting: CybolicWouldn't a more accurate headline be something along the lines of "Percentage of Linux respondents drops on Steam survey in October"? I mean, the Steam Hardware Survey has very little to do with actual market-share percentage and it's certainly not the point of the survey.
You did just describe what market share is ;)
Uncleivan Nov 3, 2016
I really dont Care about this market share thing as Linux is a comunity project on a planetary scale not a multi Million company like Microsoft or Apple that needs market share and profit numbers to their shareholders. What matters is that we are happy with our Linux and we have the games we like and the companies that bother to Port games to Linux make a Buck. Other statistical numbers are of no importance.

Frankly i got to the point where it does not matter If the Guy next door uses windows or Apple; its their loss not ours.
Cybolic Nov 3, 2016
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: CybolicWouldn't a more accurate headline be something along the lines of "Percentage of Linux respondents drops on Steam survey in October"? I mean, the Steam Hardware Survey has very little to do with actual market-share percentage and it's certainly not the point of the survey.
You did just describe what market share is ;)
Well, I'll have to disagree. Market share is the percentage of income earned by a company, in this case from Linux users, and that's not what the Steam Hardware Survey gathers information on. If the article was reporting on a report from Valve showing that there was a drop in Linux game sales, or similar, then the headline would be accurate, as it is, the survey just shows a drop in number of Linux users subjected to or answering the survey, which may or may not be related to actual market share.
dragev Nov 3, 2016
Wonder what triggers a survey. I had to reinstall Steam after upgrading to Xubuntu 16.10, and then I got the survey. Maybe hw/sw changes triggers it?
Erikcht Nov 5, 2016
The problem are

1 No support AMD Radeon video to LTS 16:04 LTS system
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/03/ubuntu-drops-amd-catalyst-fglrx-driver-16-04

2 Negligency of the valve in the steam support installer in version 16:10. Thousands of users have had to sue customers steam inaccessible. This in dependency problem
http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/350542683198244989/
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