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GOL SteamOS & Linux Survey results for March 2016

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Here are the latest results from the monthly GOL survey. These results are from the survey filled out this month in relation to March.

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Sadly a drop in responses this month, I am still bordering on doing this less frequently to prevent people burning out on it.

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Still as healthy as ever, but who really doubted this coming from a Linux gaming website?

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Still quite a large amount of people using Wine and it's not surprising. Wine really is an amazing bit of software and I do enjoy seeing it mature as time goes on.

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I am still personally clinging onto my Windows partitions, mainly for testing performance of games and the odd big title I can't part ways with (don't hurt me!). I personally haven't needed to boot into Windows to play games for months—thanks mainly to XCOM 2.

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People like to argue that Ubuntu isn't the most popular distribution around, but no one can ever back it up. While this lumps together debian based distributions, I imagine the picture wouldn't be too different if Ubuntu was by itself. What I may do in future, is have Debian by itself since offshoots like Ubuntu aren't really the same, not sure on that really. It wouldn't make sense to split up the smaller distributions, but the ones more likely to be used could be fun to split up to see some more accurate statistics.

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Really good to see such a healthy amount of people using 64bit, there's really little reason to continue using 32bit unless your hardware really is that old.

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I am very excited to see what happens to this graph after the release of the new AMD processors. I'm hoping AMD manage to become competitive again at the mid-high end so more people will be likely to buy them, especially if the price is good.

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Considering the price of a semi-decent racing wheel, I'm really not surprised it's as low as it is. Something really for full driving enthusiasts I guess.

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Again, this is something that isn't at all surprising. Screens that are only 1080p are dirt cheap, and 4K screens really haven't hit that sweet spot for price point. Not only that, but 4K gaming on Linux really isn't all that great. Not just gaming, but many applications still don't scale well, or scale at all (like Steam).

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This one is weird, the amount of people using Steam seems to have dropped. I was thinking it was originally a blip, but the trend has continued. A lower drop than before though.

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This isn't surprising at all, given that a lot of people that visit GOL are quite Linux-savvy most of us already have beefy gaming computers, or like me, built their own Steam Machine.

Many thanks once again to Feds for doing the graphs, and thank you to all who participate in the survey. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check 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. Find me on Mastodon.
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Nel Apr 23, 2016
QuoteThis one is weird, the amount of people using Steam seems to have dropped. I was thinking it was originally a blip, but the trend has continued. A lower drop than before though.
Because you added a new option: "Didn't buy any". Drop for Steam occured exactly at this specific month and for a similar amount .
I suppose people ticked Steam thinking if they bought any game, it would have been on steam. Most people buy their games on steam anyway.
Liam Dawe Apr 23, 2016
Quoting: Nel
QuoteThis one is weird, the amount of people using Steam seems to have dropped. I was thinking it was originally a blip, but the trend has continued. A lower drop than before though.
Because you added a new option: "Didn't buy any". Drop for Steam occured exactly at this specific month and for a similar amount .
I suppose people ticked Steam thinking if they bought any game, it would have been on steam. Most people buy their games on steam anyway.
I thought about that, but it just doesn't add up. There would be no need to tick Steam if you didn't buy any, even before that option came in as all questions are optional.

We will see how it goes with time.

You may be right though of course, but you may be wrong, only time will really tell.
OLucasZanella Apr 23, 2016
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: Nel
QuoteThis one is weird, the amount of people using Steam seems to have dropped. I was thinking it was originally a blip, but the trend has continued. A lower drop than before though.
Because you added a new option: "Didn't buy any". Drop for Steam occured exactly at this specific month and for a similar amount .
I suppose people ticked Steam thinking if they bought any game, it would have been on steam. Most people buy their games on steam anyway.
I thought about that, but it just doesn't add up. There would be no need to tick Steam if you didn't buy any, even before that option came in as all questions are optional.

We will see how it goes with time.

You may be right though of course, but you may be wrong, only time will really tell.

An easy solution would be changing it to "Which of these retailers do you usually buy games from?"
lvlark Apr 23, 2016
Not sure if you should split Debian tbh. It would break the continuity of the graph, but that might not be too important. I suppose a dev would want to know which platform to focus on? When the Debian-group is split up, Arch might come out on top and that would be kinda misleading.

At the same time, you've got me curious now. Maybe as a unique question or something?
Nel Apr 23, 2016
@Liam
Yeah, it's only an explanation I see as plausible, and I think better than a sudden drop for an unknown reason.
And like you, I also find it weird to tick something if not needed, but well you know... it's a survey! you must tick something ffs!! :D


Last edited by Nel on 23 April 2016 at 11:00 pm UTC
tuubi Apr 24, 2016
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Quoting: lvlarkNot sure if you should split Debian tbh. It would break the continuity of the graph, but that might not be too important. I suppose a dev would want to know which platform to focus on? When the Debian-group is split up, Arch might come out on top and that would be kinda misleading.
I agree about not splitting them up, but it would be interesting to see an additional graph in the lines of "Which Debian-based distro are you using" with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, SteamOS and "other Debian derivatives" as options. Well, anything that works on an Ubuntu LTS is pretty much guaranteed to work on Mint, but not necessarily on Debian or SteamOS. Maybe there could be another one for Arch and its derivatives, but this might be of more interest to users than developers. It's pretty hard to explicitly target a rolling release distro after all.
Psycic101 Apr 24, 2016
Quoting: lvlarkMaybe as a unique question or something?

Could make it so that an additional question spawns depending on your choice for the previous question, e.g User selected Debian based distro -> Question spawns asking which Debian based distro you use. Or, User selected Arch based distro -> Question spawns asking which Arch based distro you use.

Quoting: liamdaweConsidering the price of a semi-decent racing wheel, I'm really not surprised it's as low as it is. Something really for full driving enthusiasts I guess.

I've been wanting to get a racing wheel for a while now but I've been holding it off until the Formula 1 Linux release (which looks like it will be coming quite soon, as Feral have updated it's position on their release radar). Any suggestions as to which racing wheels work well with Linux. I'm keen for a mid to high range wheel.
tuubi Apr 24, 2016
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Quoting: Psycic101I've been wanting to get a racing wheel for a while now but I've been holding it off until the Formula 1 Linux release (which looks like it will be coming quite soon, as Feral have updated it's position on their release radar). Any suggestions as to which racing wheels work well with Linux. I'm keen for a mid to high range wheel.
I've been lusting after one of the better Logitech wheels for what seems like half my life, but they've always seemed a bit too expensive for an occasional desktop racer like me. It's not like I can't play and enjoy driving games with my joypad. I'd love a good wheel but I don't think It'll fit in my budget any time soon.

To answer your question, I don't know if any of the wheels have full support out of the box, but there are third party tools for Logitech wheels at least (LTWheelConf which enable features like 900 degree rotation. So be prepared to fiddle with your system if you want it all now. Many of them have most of their features working OOTB on modern kernels though.
Psycic101 Apr 24, 2016
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: Psycic101I've been wanting to get a racing wheel for a while now but I've been holding it off until the Formula 1 Linux release (which looks like it will be coming quite soon, as Feral have updated it's position on their release radar). Any suggestions as to which racing wheels work well with Linux. I'm keen for a mid to high range wheel.
I've been lusting after one of the better Logitech wheels for what seems like half my life, but they've always seemed a bit too expensive for an occasional desktop racer like me. It's not like I can't play and enjoy driving games with my joypad. I'd love a good wheel but I don't think It'll fit in my budget any time soon.

To answer your question, I don't know if any of the wheels have full support out of the box, but there are third party tools for Logitech wheels at least (LTWheelConf which enable features like 900 degree rotation. So be prepared to fiddle with your system if you want it all now. Many of them have most of their features working OOTB on modern kernels though.

Thanks, I'll see which Logitech wheels are in my price range when Feral releases F1 for Linux. I use Arch Linux on most of my machines, so I'm very used to fiddling with things to get them working :)
Hamish Apr 25, 2016
I am actually kind of surprised by the amount of people with gamepads, but then I already knew that I was the odd one out for having barely ever used a console in my life, and pretty much never using one as a kid.

For me gaming has always been a keyboard and mouse affair.


Last edited by Hamish on 25 April 2016 at 5:55 am UTC
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