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

Quoting: elmapulnon gaming pcs dont matter for the gaming market.

It matters, because someone working with Linux is more likely to adopt Linux on private PC, too. And someone who already owns a Linux PC is more likely to try out games on Linux instead of dual-booting all the day along. It also matters, because it shows the trend is not just gamers, but an overall success, which leads companies to bring their software to Linux at some point, which leads other gamers to switch, too. I am working with Unreal Engine and can use it on Linux on the same machine I am playing. A friend is creating music on his gaming machine and since his software does not run on Linux he is not switching (but would like). Everything is somehow connected.

not everyone knows about stuff like heroic/lutris and thoses dont support all windows stores just the most popular ones.

Not everyone has to know it. It is enough if some people do it this way. Btw I don't care about "store support", I just want to install and config games easily and never touch these "launcher" to launch a game. I want to launch games as quick as starting a program and launchers as Steam/heroic/slopris/bottles/... are just bloatware that slows down my game-start (if I would use them this way).

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

More like around 600% increase in 5 years - from 0.9% to above 5.3% and it seems to accelerate. Some businesses wasting millions for over 10 years before they start to earn money. And they would also call it huge success.

Quoting: JohnLambrechtsis the year of linux desktop here?

The year of Linux was 2025, because it became a talking point outside the Linux bubble and because it reached over 2.5%-3% for gaming, which is required to bring a political movement to their success. It was also the year of Win10 EOL. 2026 was always just meant to continue the breakthrough success and every further year just builds on top of 2025.

I got asked to submit my specs 3 times this last month lmao

All different devices but all Linux

got my survey yesterday!!

Nice. Graph looks ever more like an exponential growth. At some point it should slow down, but for now it seems in accordance to such a tendency indeed.

Well. This is probably some kind of mistake, but I'll bask in it.

I remember when Linux was 1% on desktop in general, 0.01% for gaming. In those days Mac was generally described as 5%. So, we're (in theory) now at the point Mac was when it was the competitor to Windows. That should be enough for a bit of hardware support, eh?

11% for English speaking . . . that's insane. But, once again says to me that something needs to be done about China not doing Linux.

Not everything is bad in the world. There are good things.

This rise is very suspicious; it's too big to be happening over a single month. I'd wait till next month to see if the gain is sustained.

Quoting: sarmadThis rise is very suspicious; it's too big to be happening over a single month. I'd wait till next month to see if the gain is sustained.

If this data is close to be the truth it is more likely a growth of 3 months. Chinese new year begins in January and ends in February, so both months are weak for Linux. January has not such a big impact as February. Look into past, every January is a weak month for Linux followed by the even weaker February. If you look into the last year from Win10 EOL and follow the trend until December, the March numbers could be true.

However, I fully agree with "wait till next month" to verify any data.

Is it even an accurate way to measure Linux gaming? For the last two years or so, I don't even bother installing steam, I just go straight to heroic.

Quoting: PoliticsOfStarvingIs it even an accurate way to measure Linux gaming? For the last two years or so, I don't even bother installing steam, I just go straight to heroic.

I don't think that matters much. There are Linux gamers outside of Steam, but there are also Windows gamers outside of Steam (e.g. my grandkids who only play Roblox) . . . and actually a disproportionate number of Mac gamers outside of Steam, because they probably use the Mac app store. I don't think we have any evidence that would support the idea that the percentage of Linux gamers on Steam is misleading because there are disproportionate numbers of non-Steam Linux gamers.
Plus, frankly the majority of Linux gamers are on Steam. I think you're an outlier.

Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 3 Apr 2026 at 5:55 am UTC

I recall a time period where people endorsed Stadia out of necessity, and the negative implications of Google and their goals (certainly not improve Linux gaming) were sidelined, and I thought "Linux gaming is growing, Google's involvement will do more harm than good". Fast forward to now, I dont believe Stadia games, that had a somewhat functional Linux basis were released as ports. Developers who signed exclusivity did release their games on Steam though. Key point is that endorsing a gaming platform by a company who would introduce (more of) things like drm, ads and data collection is a unfortunate to put it mildly. And if you need more on why Google is untrustworthy, and their platform closing was for the better, here..
https://keepandroidopen.org/

Quoting: spacemonkeyOr could this be people joining Linus' (LTT Linus) Linux Challenge?

That was last year was it not?

Which failed IIRC.

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone

Quoting: elmapulnon gaming pcs dont matter for the gaming market.

It matters, because someone working with Linux is more likely to adopt Linux on private PC, too. And someone who already owns a Linux PC is more likely to try out games on Linux instead of dual-booting all the day along.

Absolutely agree. My experience mirrors the one you've described.

I moved to Linux (Mint's Mate Edition) on my daily driver after my hard drive failed and I couldn't reinstall Windows. At first, I used it mostly for Web surfing, Office tools and digital music file management. As I grew more comfortable, I learned about this Wine thing and started playing around with running games in Linux. Once I got a laptop with an Nvidia dGPU, it was only natural to try Linux there as well. I still maintain a dual-boot with Windows for the odd game that has issues running in Linux, but most of my games are played in Linux these days.

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphoneIt was also the year of Win10 EOL.

Which, technically, wasn't. With the free year of extended support, Win10 EOL is really a bit of a fiction. Anybody with a Microsoft Account can easily access the program. Even a Hotmail email account counts as a Microsoft Account.

I suspect that the M$ obsession with LLM's, advertising and telemetry harvesting is having more of an impact than the Win10 EOL. Rendering thousands of perfectly good PCs obsolete with Win11's introduction probably didn't help either. Besides, from what I've heard, Win11 just plain sucks.

Last edited by Caldathras on 3 Apr 2026 at 5:59 pm UTC

Quoting: CaldathrasAnybody with a Microsoft Account can easily access the program.

AFAIK, that's EU only? Others need to jump through additional hoops?