Valve have now released the Steam Hardware & Software Survey results for August 2025, showing the overall Linux share has dropped. Sadly, that 3% people were hoping for is another month away, but we'll hit it eventually going by the trends overall (especially if we see a proper SteamOS Steam Machine again). Be sure to check out last month's data for comparison.
The overall operating system share:
- Windows 95.59% +0.36%
- Linux 2.64% -0.25%
- macOS 1.77% -0.11%
The Linux share from our dedicated Steam Tracker page over time:
And the Linux distribution share over time (still working on adding older data here):
Be sure to check the interactive charts on our Steam Tracker.
See below for the breakdown of the popular Linux distributions on Steam for August 2025, with Valve's own SteamOS continuing its slow downwards trend. Which is interesting considering overall the Linux numbers gradually trending upwards showing there's plenty of users flowing into Desktop Linux and systems like Bazzite on other handhelds.
Worth noting that Bazzite this month doesn't have the version number listed, which it did in previous months which is why it says it gained the whole 2.21% for August, but it's actually down from 3.20% last month.
- SteamOS Holo 64 bit 27.65% -0.66%
- Arch Linux 64 bit 10.98% +0.16%
- Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit 8.21% +0.38%
- Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 6.29% -0.25%
- CachyOS 64 bit 4.69% +0.48%
- Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS 64 bit 2.83% -1.61%
- Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit 4.00% -0.17%
- Manjaro Linux 64 bit 2.35% -0.11%
- EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit 2.40% +0.07%
- Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition) 64 bit 2.18% -0.03%
- Bazzite (FROM Fedora Atomic) 64 bit 2.21% +2.21%
- Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) 64 bit 1.93% +0.14%
- Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit 1.97% -0.17%
- Other 22.32% +4.74%
Source: Valve Survey
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
About the author - Liam Dawe
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky [External Link].
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I actually got the prompt yesterday ! I think last time I managed to catch it was last year.
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Bazzite changed names twice over the past month or so, first "Bazzite 42 (FROM Fedora Kionite/Silverblue" then "Bazzite (FROM Fedora Atomic" and now it's just "Bazzite". Which is the reason why their usage share is tanking right now, but it should stabilize over the next months or so
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Sadly, that 3% people were hoping for is another month away, but we'll hit it eventually going by the trends overall.Now that Valve is heavily invested in Linux gaming, there's no way to ever hit those 3% I fear…
Maybe we'll reach Alyx% though?
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Liam Dawe 6 days ago
Well, who knows. Perhaps that console leak will turn into something real and we'll see 5% :P
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If we look the graphic, even with the drop, it look more like a exponential function. We will have to wait, but 5% in one year would not surprise me.
Last edited by Aron on 2 Sep 2025 at 7:26 pm UTC
Last edited by Aron on 2 Sep 2025 at 7:26 pm UTC
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"Windows 95.59% +0.36%"
My brains first impression was that Windows 95 had .59 and was up .36% XD
My brains first impression was that Windows 95 had .59 and was up .36% XD
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I was part of the August survey :)
And I did let them count all... desktop PC, VR notebook, old VR notebook, surface pro tablet, old surface pro tablet, LCD deck, OLED deck, rog ally, legion go... so 0.001% has for sure been me! And no, I don't have a problem... that stuff just accumulated over years
Haven't bought new hardware in the last two years. I guess the Legion Go (2023) was the latest aquisition, and that's already 2 years ago.
Unfortunately my VR headset wasn't detected in the survey each time I had it attached. No idea why.
And I did let them count all... desktop PC, VR notebook, old VR notebook, surface pro tablet, old surface pro tablet, LCD deck, OLED deck, rog ally, legion go... so 0.001% has for sure been me! And no, I don't have a problem... that stuff just accumulated over years
Haven't bought new hardware in the last two years. I guess the Legion Go (2023) was the latest aquisition, and that's already 2 years ago.
Unfortunately my VR headset wasn't detected in the survey each time I had it attached. No idea why.
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The trajectory seems to indicate that the percentage goes up every time new Steam Deck is introduced, and keeps going up with momentum.
There are fluctuations, but could be related to mass increase of Chinese language users (see the language-based graph in the referenced site) using Windows-based Steam around March or December then dropping off (maybe Chinese holiday or school kids out of school or something else happening in China?).
There are fluctuations, but could be related to mass increase of Chinese language users (see the language-based graph in the referenced site) using Windows-based Steam around March or December then dropping off (maybe Chinese holiday or school kids out of school or something else happening in China?).
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The trajectory seems to indicate that the percentage goes up every time new Steam Deck is introduced, and keeps going up with momentum.
You can separate out the signals.
https://i.ibb.co/5gx0PmRR/Combined.png [External Link]
Desktop Linux ticks along at its normal growth rate, but we get an additional few millions of users from the Deck. Then the Deck growth flattens out, but desktop Linux growth picks up from all that "Linux gaming is actually great" coverage from people who hadn't been paying attention before the Deck. Note that Steam itself keeps growing, so a flat proportion still represents growth in users.
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GustyGhost 4 days ago
I'm planning getting back into Steam and games in part because there is finally upward momentum, and I feel I've let down the team by being away from it for so long. I've also stopped masquerading my web browser as "Windows 10" in a paltry effort to contribute usage share stats.
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Something I noticed looking at the graphs... Our 2 biggest dips were both in March. Any theories as to why that could be?
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Something I noticed looking at the graphs... Our 2 biggest dips were both in March. Any theories as to why that could be?China has lots of PC cafes where there are many PCs behind one IP address, and where the local storage on each PC gets regularly nuked by reimaging. Ensuring that each of those PCs gets sampled once and only once each year is a genuinely hard data collection problem.
When Valve gets that data collection wrong Chinese PCs get overcounted. Around six months of that overcounting is why the GOL data starts in September 2018 despite Liam having reported on the data previously, and you can see the obvious spikes on the language graph on the Steam Tracker page where it's happened since. As those Chinese machines strongly lean towards older Windows on older hardware, whenever there's a spike in Chinese machines in the survey data there's a dip in Linux machines.
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