Linux smashes past 5% on the Steam Survey for the first time

Forecasting a drop back to the high 3~% range next month. This kind of sudden change certainly looks anomalous along the greater trend. Glad to be a part of this growth though. 🐧

Does Bazzite and CachyOS not get named labels on Steam's Survey?

Quoting: fenglengshunDoes Bazzite and CachyOS not get named labels on Steam's Survey?

Sometimes. The Steam Survey has always been seemingly quite random on what distributions actually get shown in the expanded list.

I don't think it will drop below 4% next month. The graph actually looks even not so odd with Win10 EOL than I thought through when I read the numbers a hour ago on Steam. Next month it will be interesting if it confirms the numbers or if it corrects them.

About 0 64Bit and 64Bit (together 25.61%) I think it is the new 64bit Steam client that finally arrives on Linux (just few months after Windows). It seems the client cannot read the distros correctly for the moment. But even if it would be broken data, Linux would be around 4%, which would also be a all-time-high.

Whatever is true, the media will talk about 5% for sure, which brings new users to Linux. So at this point I don't really care about the real number and I am happy to see the good kind of advertisement for free.

Maybe one of them is indeed CachyOS?

I was actually surveyed while on a CachyOS machine - did not bother to check the data, though, so I have no idea what value was reported in that field.

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphoneI don't think it will drop below 4% next month. The graph actually looks even not so odd with Win10 EOL than I thought through when I read the numbers a hour ago on Steam. Next month it will be interesting if it confirms the numbers or if it corrects them.

About 0 64Bit and 64Bit (together 25.61%) I think it is the new 64bit Steam client that finally arrives on Linux (just few months after Windows). It seems the client cannot read the distros correctly for the moment. But even if it would be broken data, Linux would be around 4%, which would also be a all-time-high.

Whatever is true, the media will talk about 5% for sure, which brings new users to Linux. So at this point I don't really care about the real number and I am happy to see the good kind of advertisement for free.

I thought it might have been the new container 64bit client, but the system info tool managed to grab my distribution just fine when running it for testing.

Quoting: fenglengshunDoes Bazzite and CachyOS not get named labels on Steam's Survey?

The have previously though it would be quite a jump for both of those as CachyOS was 8% last month and Bazzite was 5%, I think, if those are representing those two distributions.

I also want to point out that I've observed the GamingOnLinux Steam group march past 6100 over the last few days (6130s now). It usually just sits steady around a relatively fixed headcount. When that group grows, it seems to predict a subsequent growth in Steam Linux usage. fwiw

Since flatpak is missing it is probably that.

Or could this be people joining Linus' (LTT Linus) Linux Challenge?

to the moon!

Quoting: Liam DaweI thought it might have been the new container 64bit client, but the system info tool managed to grab my distribution just fine when running it for testing.

The info tool could be handled differently to the hardware survey tools. It even could be distro related. Ubuntu and Arch are listed just fine, other common distros are not visible.

The one that surprises me is Ubuntu Core, unless that's what Snap version is reporting.

Quoting: The_Real_BittermanSince flatpak is missing it is probably that.

This is my guess as well. Flatpak is not displayed as a distro in the survey.

Quoting: RTherenThe one that surprises me is Ubuntu Core, unless that's what Snap version is reporting.

That's the Snap, yeah.

Finally got the survey on my main computer. I've always gotten it on the one time I boot steam on my windows computer to check something which always annoyed me.

It will probably go down a bit again.
But can we talk about the 11% for English only? Holy moly.
All those YouTubers and stuff talking about switching to Linux must have really moved the needle after the W10 EoL.

I know steam surveys like this are also heavily influenced by chinese holidays for example. We had a dip a short while ago because they had a national holiday.

Although I haven't done thorough investigation myself, this user on reddit seems to have his doubt about the correctness of these statistics at the moment. [reddit-user-comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1sa2s6y/comment/odtgmcq/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Happy to say that I am part of the linux-gamerbase!

I genuinely have a hard time believing this is not some kind of mistake.

The numbers were certainly far greater than what even I could expect. Seeing the +3.10% growth is wild, even considering the usual Chinese New Year shake up, as that's +2% net since Jan. Sure, the numbers might get adjusted, but as they stand right now? Absolutely wild. I was freaking out seeing how the tracker would need to add another percent and some change to show the new number. We finally broke the 10% barrier for English as well. March has set records beyond my wildest expectations, and it feels so great.