Steam ended 2021 with a slightly lower Linux user share ending the recent growth

After 7 months of seeing the Linux user share on Steam continue to grow, December saw 2021 end with it dropping slightly. The results can be seen on our Steam Tracker, which shows some trends over time, taken from the official opt-in Steam Hardware Survey.

December 2021 saw the Linux user share at 1.11%.

Something we've seen a few times, is that when the number of Simplified Chinese language users rises on Steam, the Linux numbers drop and it appears to be what has happened once again this time. It's not always the case, as we have seen times where Linux has risen regardless but it is often the cause.

This year we do have the Steam Deck releasing, with the first batch of orders going live next month so we're very keen to see how this will affect the numbers. Hopefully they will be included in the survey, although it's possible Valve will separate them somehow.

According to Steam these are the most popular distributions with gamers on their platform:

• Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS 64 bit 17.90% +1.48%
• "Manjaro Linux" 64 bit 11.96% -0.98%
• "Arch Linux" 64 bit 11.42% -0.69%
• Linux Mint 20.2 64 bit 7.50% +0.46%
• Ubuntu 21.10 64 bit 6.31% +0.89%
• Pop!_OS 21.04 64 bit 5.54% -1.77%
• Other 39.38% +9.31%