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

If we're not niche any more, I'm going to need switching to FreeBSD! /s

Two unnamed distributions, both with quite high percentages.

My fault!

You see
I've been to the installfest with a distro with no name
It felt good to rid Windows users of their pain
La, la, la lala la la la, la, la

Simplified Chinese 22.75% -31.85%
English 39.09% +16.82%

No wonder we are %5 now

I am looking at hwsurvey stats again, and considering MacOS also got its share almost doubled, it is not error in counting linux share, but most likely the surveyed set of machines just happend to have lower share of windows.

I don't understand why Valve picks random users for survey, instead of gathering data from every pc connected to Steam automatically. Random sampling is representative only if a set of samples is homogenic, but as we can see, it is not. China has high Windows share, for some reasons. Is there any legal issue with automatic data gathering?

Implausible. But I'm still a happy hip... penguin if it get's corrected to a three dot something.

There is like 130M players by month, so 6,5M linux users. How can publishers afford to ignore such an enormous market share? Few businesses ever get the chance to reach such a vast potential audience.

I'm going to quote a couple of my own old comments on this website from the far far distant year of 2020.

The thing which gives me hope every time I see Linux marketshare go up, is the thought that more marketshare makes further growth even easier.

It's hard to gain marketshare when your platform has no organic third party support. But if you can achieve it, and bring users to your platform, then organic third party support will always follow. Developers and manufacturers of software and hardware always follow users. So if we get more users, we get more support.

At 0.91%, we're not exactly commanding a noticeable portion of the marketshare yet. But every little bit of growth means a bit more organic third party support. Which only makes it easier for more users to make the switch to Linux, as more of the stuff they want is already here.

It's really a feedback loop in both ways. No users means no developers. No developers means no users. The chicken and egg problem that has haunted Linux for years. But it goes the other way too, more users means more developers. More developers means more users.

The analogy I'd use is ... imagine that Linux gaming is like a 100m diameter ball of lead, on a flat plateau of land on top of a hill.

We're been trying to get the ball rolling. Once it does build up speed and start going down the hill, it will become an unstoppable force. We've been trying to get it rolling for years, but it's a 100m diameter ball of lead and we're just a dozen people pushing at the side, having no impact. The stubborn bastard wouldn't shift.

Valve's efforts with Steam, Proton, DXVK, ACO, Pressure Vessel, etc, is like bringing 4 giant trucks up to the top of the hill to help us out, they've strapped them up to the ball and are gunning the engines with the tires screeching. The ball is shifting a little, starting to move, a few inches at least, it's working but it's slow. If they keep at it for the long haul and the tires don't pop, eventually it will build up momentum and it'll work.

If it works, Valve is best positioned to benefit from the success. A new mainstream gaming platform will emerge and Valve will be the centre of it's universe.

I feel like... the ball is definitely off the top of the hill now and is starting to roll. Hang onto your butts!

calm down, valve did some mistakes in their counting in the past, calm down, calm down, calm down...
ok, i cant

Quoting: vic-bayI am looking at hwsurvey stats again, and considering MacOS also got its share almost doubled, it is not error in counting linux share, but most likely the surveyed set of machines just happend to have lower share of windows.

or maybe microsoft pissed off a lot of people... not to mention apple relased cheap macs recently

Quoting: shotm7There is like 130M players by month, so 6,5M linux users. How can publishers afford to ignore such an enormous market share? Few businesses ever get the chance to reach such a vast potential audience.

an console with 6,5M units sold would be called an flop.

lets not ignore one thing: half of the market is mobile, and consoles are 25~30% (in terms of revenue, not ammount of users)

Quoting: vic-bayI am looking at hwsurvey stats again, and considering MacOS also got its share almost doubled, it is not error in counting linux share, but most likely the surveyed set of machines just happend to have lower share of windows.

No, it's that last month's results were broken by the well-known China overcount. Looking at any month's delta is entirely pointless. The useful thing to do is to look at the longer term trends, which Liam has helpfully documented.

Quoting: vic-bayChina has high Windows share, for some reasons.

Decades of intense directed effort at the highest levels from Microsoft.

Quoting: vic-bayIs there any legal issue with automatic data gathering?

Yes. And it's icky. Requesting consent to collect and publish a user's details at the point you do so is the only sane approach.

Quoting: elmapulan console with 6,5M units sold would be called an flop.

That depends where you came from. A console trade-mark that arrives for the first time with 6.5M is a victory. A Playstation that loses "just" 6.5M (PS5 has sold 92M until 2 months ago) is also a flop. Linux comes from the bottom, so 6.5M is a true victory (and I think you agree).

But don't forget, we are only speaking about Steam-data. I am playing most of the time without Steam titles as Horizon Zero Dawn or Path of Exile 1/2 or indie games. So sometimes I am part of the monthly-players, sometimes I am not while playing every month some sort of games. PCs of governments or companies running desktop Linux are not included, too. India has a market-share of 20% Linux computers all together. Europe and North-America reached 5% last year before Win10 EOL. The real desktop Linux user number is far above and trends as "Europe governments moves to Linux" is not included here.

Quoting: elmapulan console with 6,5M units sold would be called an flop.

6.5 M monthly active users is more like 20 millions units sold. Not a sound success but by no mean a failure. The Switch 2 is there for example.

Quoting: _MarsIt 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.

Well they sure have, but I guess English is over represented on Linux because more techy users tend to prefer English as system language over their native language(I know enough people like that myself, even on Windows, Android or Mac). And to be fair, language support for a lot of not-English languages is still poor on many Linux distros, I still remember Firefox on Manjaro resetting the language to english(from the system language) after each update, or lots of not fully translated strings here and there, missing keyboard support for non QWERTY layouts, incomplete glossary etc etc
Thats partially even still the case with big languages like French or German even on bigger distros sometimes(Take german glossary books for instance, still lacking so many words on both Linux and even on Android these days(2026!)) :/

Thank you thank you thank you Microsoft for your miserable obsession with AI, your continued march to make Windows the worst possible OS ever conceived, and your seething loathing hatred for every single human that uses any of your products! All of us in linuxland love you so much for all these wonderful things :) Keep on keeping on MS!

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone

Quoting: elmapulan console with 6,5M units sold would be called an flop.

That depends where you came from. A console trade-mark that arrives for the first time with 6.5M is a victory. A Playstation that loses "just" 6.5M (PS5 has sold 92M until 2 months ago) is also a flop. Linux comes from the bottom, so 6.5M is a true victory (and I think you agree).

But don't forget, we are only speaking about Steam-data. I am playing most of the time without Steam titles as Horizon Zero Dawn or Path of Exile 1/2 or indie games. So sometimes I am part of the monthly-players, sometimes I am not while playing every month some sort of games. PCs of governments or companies running desktop Linux are not included, too. India has a market-share of 20% Linux computers all together. Europe and North-America reached 5% last year before Win10 EOL. The real desktop Linux user number is far above and trends as "Europe governments moves to Linux" is not included here.

non gaming pcs dont matter for the gaming market.
most of the linux users will play on steam anyway, i mean, we have less options when it comes to thirdy party clients officially supporting linux, not everyone knows about stuff like heroic/lutris and thoses dont support all windows stores just the most popular ones.

as for the number being big , yes it is for linux, but again, we arent talking about the linux market here, we are talking about the gaming market.
not to mention if an console took 30 years to reach 6.5 millions of users, it wont be seeing as an success, but its good in an specific meassure: trend

is windows cooked chat?

is the year of linux desktop here?

Quoting: amatai

Quoting: elmapulan console with 6,5M units sold would be called an flop.

6.5 M monthly active users is more like 20 millions units sold. Not a sound success but by no mean a failure. The Switch 2 is there for example.

except it took less than an year to do what we took 30...

Last edited by elmapul on 2 Apr 2026 at 3:00 pm UTC

Quoting: Nickname

Quoting: _MarsIt 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.

Well they sure have, but I guess English is over represented on Linux because more techy users tend to prefer English as system language over their native language(I know enough people like that myself, even on Windows, Android or Mac). And to be fair, language support for a lot of not-English languages is still poor on many Linux distros, I still remember Firefox on Manjaro resetting the language to english(from the system language) after each update, or lots of not fully translated strings here and there, missing keyboard support for non QWERTY layouts, incomplete glossary etc etc
Thats partially even still the case with big languages like French or German even on bigger distros sometimes(Take german glossary books for instance, still lacking so many words on both Linux and even on Android these days(2026!)) :/

not to mention, the tutorials...
and commands are all english based

You can't really compare a console with a set launch date, a marketing campaign and explicit game releases tied to that campaign to linux distros just continuing to exist.