Valve released the Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for April 2025, so here's your usual round-up of where things stand right now.
For Linux in April, it's nearly flat with a small dip now those with Simplified Chinese as their language have settled down in the stats, although there's a small overall bump again in the numbers for Simplified Chinese which is usually what causes Linux to drop.
Overall operating system use on Steam for April:
- Windows 96.10%
- Linux 2.27%
- macOS 1.62%
From our dedicated Steam Tracker page here's how it looks over time
The most popular Linux distributions listed by Valve are:
- SteamOS Holo 64 bit (Steam Deck and others) 33.78% -0.70%
- Arch Linux 64 bit 9.45% -0.23%
- Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 6.41% +0.15%
- Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit 6.20% +0.89%
- Ubuntu Core 22 (Steam Snap) 64 bit 4.62% +0.23%
- Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS 64 bit 4.44% +0.26%
- Manjaro Linux 64 bit 2.61% -0.05%
- EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit 2.46% +0.06%
- Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 64 bit 2.27% -0.08%
- Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit 2.23% +0.02%
- Other 25.54% -0.53%
Source: Valve
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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wytrabbit a day ago
So for English only on Steam we're at 5.19%, interesting!
2 Likes
I wonder why the numbers get so much . . . bouncier, starting late in 2022.
2 Likes
R Daneel Olivaw 20 hours ago
Interesting not to see fedora on there ... this is apparently what comes from protondb:
https://boilingsteam.com/linux-distros-in-march-2025-a-new-challenger-emerges/
which is mostly similar, but with the notable difference of fedora?
https://boilingsteam.com/linux-distros-in-march-2025-a-new-challenger-emerges/
which is mostly similar, but with the notable difference of fedora?
0 Likes
CatKiller 20 hours ago
I wonder why the numbers get so much . . . bouncier, starting late in 2022.They stopped going back later in the month to correct for Chinese overcount.
1 Likes
Linas 15 hours ago
I do wonder how are they sampling Steam OS stats? I would imagine most Steam Decks are in Big Picture mode basically all the time, and the survey only pops up in Desktop mode. Wouldn't that skew it heavily against a Steam Deck ever being included in the survey?
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CatKiller 13 hours ago
The survey doesn't only come up in desktop mode.
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As far as China goes or any other country. We need all of the support we can get. If say a larger market like Japan were to take a serious look at Linux and be counted this would help tremendously!
Makes no difference where someone is from in the IT world. The more users the better! Count them all!
Makes no difference where someone is from in the IT world. The more users the better! Count them all!
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Linas 3 hours ago
The survey doesn't only come up in desktop mode.Really? I have been running Steam primarily in Big Picture mode for something like 7 years now, and I have only ever seen the survey pop-up when I switched to desktop mode.
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elmapul 2 hours ago
Interesting not to see fedora on there ... this is apparently what comes from protondb:
https://boilingsteam.com/linux-distros-in-march-2025-a-new-challenger-emerges/
which is mostly similar, but with the notable difference of fedora?
speaking of this site, i was reading the article :
https://boilingsteam.com/the-steam-deck-is-back-in-stock-in-japan/
and the end of the article:
These are machines you are supposed to play with, but the level of incompetence of the staff is abysmal. The ROG Ally X had no games that you could run - it was basically a useless brick in demonstration. The Steam Deck had at least several games playable, but it was turned off (or in sleep mode) and did not react until you pressed the power button. I doubt that most visitors would know how to operate it if it was their first time.
looks like valve and the other companies need to step up their game, puting an product at an store is not enough, sure many people know what windows is and what it does, but they cant know how powerfull an device gonna be to play an game with an good performance just looking at specs and the desktop enviroment that is awful to navigate on this device.
and steam deck being in sleep mode, sigh.
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