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GOL Survey Results: March

By - | Views: 11,214
The results for the March survey are now available for you to take a look at and compare with results from previous months.

You can find the new survey for April here, so please fill that out if you haven’t already.

As usual, thanks for all the feedback and suggestions! At the moment, our resident graph maker Fedso is rather busy, but he's working on locking colours to answers and there may be something which tries to estimate a total trend in game sales coming soon! So look out for those in the coming months.

Please click on the images to enlarge. Once enlarged, you can also cycle through them using the arrows.

Respondents
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Many thanks to the 1026 people who took the time to complete the survey! That’s exactly 100 more than the February survey and near the 1000 mark which I would like to keep close to. It also seems that separating out the new survey and results articles has done the trick, so thanks to those who suggested that!.

Question 1 - Do you currently use Linux as your primary PC gaming platform?
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Question 2 - Did you use Wine to play games last month?
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This is one question where we may be seeing a very gradual trend towards less Wine users, with around 8% or so less people using it than when we started the survey. This is probably to be expected given the vast quantities of native games available to us now and how cumbersome Wine can be sometimes to play certain games. Only time will tell if this trend will continue or if there will be a cut off point.

Question 3 - Did you use a Windows partition for gaming last month?
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I put out an article about this very topic last month, questioning why the number of dual booters has not decreased since the survey started. Again, there hasn't been a significant change but I'm keeping a close eye on these results as the months roll by and hoping for some kind of "breakthrough". I should thank all those who left comments and opinions on the subject of dual booting, and if you haven't checked them out then you probably should, the comments are far more interesting than the article itself :).

Question 4 - What distribution do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Question 5 - What Desktop Environment do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Question 6 - Did you change your primary Linux gaming distribution last month?
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Question 7 - What graphics card do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Question 8 - Which drivers do you use for that graphics card?
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AMD
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Intel
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It should be noted that all Intel drivers (to my knowledge) are open source. However, due to the nature of the survey, respondents can still answer incorrectly and this anomaly is probably due to people simply not knowing that their drivers are open source.

Nvidia
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In case you missed it, Samsai has been running a little experiment with open source Nvidia drivers for the last month, which you can check out here. This yielded some highly interesting results and it's well worth checking out if you haven't already, especially considering around 1.5% of respondents use the drivers so they may well be unfamiliar to many.

I find these sets of results to be among the most interesting, especially the difference between the number of AMD and Nvidia owners using open source drivers.

Question 9 - What CPU do you use on your primary Linux gaming PC?
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Question 10 - Did you exclusively buy Linux-supported games last month?
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Question 11 - How many Linux games did you buy last month?
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Question 12 - Which of these retailers did you use to buy your Linux games last month?
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The steady decline in Humble sales seems to have levelled out, however after a recent bundle with plenty of Linux games, we may well see an increase next month.

I also added Games Republic to the list of retailers and it's nice to see a few people buying from there. Remember that doing so helps GOL financially, so may be worth checking out the GOL store page if they're selling the game you want before buying it somewhere else.

Unique Question 1 - Have you pre-ordered a Linux game in the last 12 months?
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It certainly seems to be the case that people don't like pre-ordering, presumably for a number of reasons. Only a third of people pre-ordered a game in the last 12 months, and considering the quantity of awesome titles which have come out, it seems (to me) like quite a low number. However, this may not be unique to Linux gamers, even though we might be a bit more cynical about the quality of ports or tend to be people to stick to certain principles, so it may well be the case that these numbers would be different if this was a Windows-only survey.

Unique Question 2 - Will you be getting a Steam Machine any time after release?
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This is the second time I have asked this question and have included it again in the new survey to get some "before and after" GDC figures. The original results way back in September were:

Yes - 11.49% (77)
No - 29.25% (196)
Still undecided - 30.60% (205)
I already built my own (or planning to build my own) - 28.66% (192)

Based on this, it seems that people's views on Steam Machines hadn't changed significantly in these months and the minor 1-2% differences are certainly within the margin or error. We'll compare again next month to see if all those crazy GDC announcements shook things up at all. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
After many years of floating through space on the back of a missile, following a successful career in beating people up for not playing Sega Saturn, the missile returned to earth. Upon returning, I discovered to my dismay that the once great console had been discontinued and Sega had abandoned the fight to dominate the world through 32-bit graphical capabilities.

After spending some years breaking breeze blocks with my head for money and being mocked by strangers, I have found a new purpose: to beat up people for not playing on Linux.
See more from me
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17 comments
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Liam Dawe Apr 3, 2015
Thanks, great as always. Can't wait to see next month since the amount we have for that already dwarfs this one :D

Something I only just noticed, does Intel actually have any proprietary driver for their GPU? I thought all their GPU drivers for Linux were open?
Segata Sanshiro Apr 3, 2015
Quoting: liamdaweThanks, great as always. Can't wait to see next month since the amount we have for that already dwarfs this one :D

Something I only just noticed, does Intel actually have any proprietary driver for their GPU? I thought all their GPU drivers for Linux were open?

Yup, over 2000 already... I think that's almost entirely down to Reddit. Already noticed a few "anomalies" as well, so seems like the Reddit and GOL "crowds" are a bit different. I think Unity is higher than KDE on that one for example.

No, there are no proprietary drivers for Intel (I usually make a joke about that). The survey allows people to answer "incorrectly" for that one since I don't know how to prevent it. I assume that it's basically just Intel users who assume that their drivers are proprietary because they've never looked into it. Just shows that not all Linux users are super clued-up about that stuff, I kinda like it, breaking stereotypes or whatever :).
Liam Dawe Apr 3, 2015
Ahhh I see, was confusing me, maybe add a footnote below Intel for future articles? To prevent idiots like me getting confused :D
Samsai Apr 3, 2015
Nice that you mentioned Games Republic. It's indeed one way to support us and buy games at the same time. Just make sure you make your purchases on our store page (https://linux.gamesrepublic.com/ and we'll get a share of the sales. And you get some games while doing that, so that's pretty cool.
Liam Dawe Apr 3, 2015
Games Republic are great for us, as their payout threshold is sane, so we are actually able to hit it and get funds from it with people buying from it.

We are also one of their top selling shops, so keep up the good work Linux gamers!
Segata Sanshiro Apr 3, 2015
Quoting: liamdaweAhhh I see, was confusing me, maybe add a footnote below Intel for future articles? To prevent idiots like me getting confused :D

Done! :)

Quoting: SamsaiNice that you mentioned Games Republic. It's indeed one way to support us and by games at the same time. Just make sure you make your purchases on our store page (https://linux.gamesrepublic.com/ and we'll get a share of the sales. And you get some games while doing that, so that's pretty cool.

Added the link too so if people do that then they'll do it from the GOL page rather than from the store generally. I agree, it is pretty cool, bought the EU4 expansion from there recently :D
WorMzy Apr 3, 2015
Seems that the DE question causes some confusion. I don't use a DE, so I answer None/Custom. I use a standalone WM (openbox) instead.

In the results though, I see that openbox has two (!!) bars, presumably because some people are confusing it with a DE and entering it under "other" (either with a capital O, or a lowercase), and i3 has a bar too (presumably for the same reason).

Perhaps a new option would help. i.e.
[ ] Standalone WM (e.g. openbox, i3, dwm)
Supay Apr 3, 2015
I've been making sure to check Games Republic and buy from your storefront there if I can, unless the discount on Steam/Humble Bundle makes a vast price difference.

I stupidly went and bought Pillars Of Eternity from Steam without thinking though and only realised later that day I could have had it for the same price from GR. I'll try harder next time!
GNUzel Apr 4, 2015
I change desktop environments all the time. Do I put Other or the one I am into that month?
neffo Apr 4, 2015
[quote=Segata Sanshiro]
Quoting: liamdaweNo, there are no proprietary drivers for Intel (I usually make a joke about that). The survey allows people to answer "incorrectly" for that one since I don't know how to prevent it. I assume that it's basically just Intel users who assume that their drivers are proprietary because they've never looked into it. Just shows that not all Linux users are super clued-up about that stuff, I kinda like it, breaking stereotypes or whatever :).

Hmm, use the term closed source then and don't be ambiguous.

Downloading the official packaged drivers from Intel here would fit some descriptions of proprietary.
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