Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed Above 5% In March (phoronix.com) 49
Valve's March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share -- more than double macOS's 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey numbers show Windows losing 4.28%, down to 92.33%.
Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers. Month over month they report a 31.85% drop to the Simplified Chinese language use and English use increasing by 16.82% to 39.09%. Other languages also showed gains amid the massive decline in Simplified Chinese use.
The latest numbers for March show around a quarter of the Linux gamers are running Steam OS. Due in part to the Steam Deck APU being a custom AMD product and the popularity of AMD hardware on Linux for its open-source nature, AMD CPU use by Steam on Linux gamers remains just under 70%.
Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers. Month over month they report a 31.85% drop to the Simplified Chinese language use and English use increasing by 16.82% to 39.09%. Other languages also showed gains amid the massive decline in Simplified Chinese use.
The latest numbers for March show around a quarter of the Linux gamers are running Steam OS. Due in part to the Steam Deck APU being a custom AMD product and the popularity of AMD hardware on Linux for its open-source nature, AMD CPU use by Steam on Linux gamers remains just under 70%.
Skyrocketed and 5%? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe escalated. I don't think any trajectory that ends under 6% can really be called skyrocketing.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, and it's a positive trend overall, certainly. But I'd hardly call it skyrocketing unless the climb continues to build. Though, to be quite frank, with Microsoft doing everything they can to make Windows less appealing as time goes on, I don't see this trend stopping anytime soon. I just think "skyrocketed" is a little premature here.
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I agree. It's the same as when the news media said the stock market "plunged" when it was down about 2.5%. 2.5% is hardly a plunge just as 5% is hardly a skyrocket. It's just over embellishment to generate clicks. We did click though, so that's our fault I suppose.
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The market plunging 2.5% is a 2.5% drop...
But Linux going from 2.5 to 5% is a doubling of linux market share, even if it is only 2.5% of the overall market.
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Chance of death from drinking Mountain Dew skyrockets to 6% per can.
It's all relative. Linux share going from 1% to 5% might fairly be described as "skyrocketing." Going up a couple of percent, especially when the month-to-month variation seems to be around that same amount, probably not.
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It's all about the hype. It's like during the pandemic when there was an uptick in cases over the prior week, all of the news reports would state that cases were "spiking."
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It's all about the hype. It's like during the pandemic when there was an uptick in cases over the prior week, all of the news reports would state that cases were "spiking."
There were clear spikes in Covid cases, you can see the shadow of the infection rates through the numbers of deaths from all causes. That's what you were hearing in the news was the left side of each of these waves. People kept thinking it was over, it'll be over in the summer, blah blah blah, then everyone would hear the reports in the news of things spiking and they'd stop going out as much, self isolate and then it'd slow down for a bit. Rinse repeat, I remember it vividly. Every damn "re-re-re-reopening
Re:Skyrocketed and 5%? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe escalated. I don't think any trajectory that ends under 6% can really be called skyrocketing.
Perspective. Get some :-)
Steam on Linux gaming usage jumped from 2.23% of the overall share to 5.33% in March.
That means it had a 139% gain in March (2.23 * 1.39 = the 3.1% gain).
IMO, they should have framed the headline that way. Within the Steam on Linux stats, that's a HUGE jump.
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Maybe escalated. I don't think any trajectory that ends under 6% can really be called skyrocketing.
Perspective. Get some :-)
Steam on Linux gaming usage jumped from 2.23% of the overall share to 5.33% in March.
That means it had a 139% gain in March (2.23 * 1.39 = the 3.1% gain).
IMO, they should have framed the headline that way. Within the Steam on Linux stats, that's a HUGE jump.
Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers.
Doesn't that mean correction?
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I don't know what your comment means. Are you attributing the increase shown in usage stats to how they're collecting data? If so, I don't know how that changes the perception of "Skyrocketed"... it's still a 139% gain in that segment.
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I missed this.. how are we supposed to make sense of these numbers from the expanded OS Version table? .05% .05% each? What's in that long tail, there are a lot of distro choices out there, but these aren't crusty old mail servers, they're gaming systems that someone went out of their way to respond to the H
This distribution looks more like what I'd expect real Linux desktop gaming usage to be. So there's what, ~10 other versions of MacOS reporting in with each
And for Linux there's like a hundred or more at
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I missed this.. how are we supposed to make sense of these numbers from the expanded OS Version table?
Oh, I don't know... basic math, maybe?
So there's what, ~10 other versions of MacOS reporting in with each .05% And for Linux there's like a hundred or more at .05% each? ... The top five add up to 1% and I'm having a hard time believing there are actually many desktops below that.
Are you saying they're outright lying? ... that their own numbers don't add up to what they're reporting? While also providing a path to the data that would prove it?
Why are you wasting your time and our time by pasting in partial numbers here rather than pasting them into a spreadsheet and summing the column? Does it add up or not?
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Don't be such a hater, at this rate we'll reach 95% market saturation for desktop gaming by the year 3,562
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So... 5% globally using Linux, 5% of them have installed Steam On Linux... I think you're a bit optimistic there, nomadic.
If you don't like the way New Windows (TM) looks, don't install it and keep using Win10 or whatever... if your computer is secured, you're not gonna get malware/viruses.
If you could just install a game you physically bought in Linux and it worked natively, that percentage would go up lots (and, if Linux had much more support for everything out there... I shouldn't have to try and look up
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Maybe escalated. I don't think any trajectory that ends under 6% can really be called skyrocketing.
Maybe they're using Trump 2024 election logic where winning the popular vote by (literally) 1.47% is a "landslide" and a mandate.
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It's a model rocket, OK?
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I don't think any trajectory that ends under 6% can really be called skyrocketing.
Your personal wealth is less than 0.0009% of the entire worlds wealth. Your wealth suddenly skyrockets to 6% of the entire worlds wealth. Oh wait, it didn't skyrocket... it lazily flopped to 6% of the world's wealth?
Works pretty well. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm part of that 5%+. The thing about gaming on Linux is that I have no time or mood for fussing around with compatibility issues. Steams Proton layer handles quite a few games without trouble. I used to be a GoG only person but since their requirements for Linux versions are very specific and cause trouble on newer versions of Linux I finally installed Steam on Linux a few weeks back. Sure it's quite a performance hog and it keeps you in the dark about wether it's taking so long to launch because it's running some background update thingie and you have to use top to see what's going on, but other than that, the games listed as playable on protondb launch with a simple click. Which is good.
Guess I'm a steam customer now. After, what, 25 years? I remember when Half-Life 2 came out and they tied it to steam to push the first big digital game distribution platform. Guess that was/is a huge success. Provide good value, get my money. I don't mind.
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They seem to have a very loose definition of "Playable" though. To me, an RPG where cut scenes don't play, and you miss huge chunks of the story, isn't "playable." Last time I burn 100 GB of bandwidth and write cycles based on that "Playable" rating.
Re:Works pretty well. (Score:4, Informative)
There are a lot of community fixes for that kind of thing, but for most people who ain't got time for fiddling, gaming oriented distributions like Nobara are shipping with baked in patches for things like SMP scheduling issues, Wine bugs, driver gotchas, etc.
I've been running Nobara on my PC exclusively for the past couple of years. It's been great - like a fixed version of Fedora that just works. I hear great things about Bazzite and CachyOS too.
The most fiddling I really have to do to get my games to run is to check protondb and look for game specific launch options (there's a place to put that in Steam), and select a compatible version of Proton (a simple drop-down in the Steam console). Most stuff just works out of the box though.
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For example, 90% of my gaming is on Elder Scrolls Online, the 'play' button on Steam runs the Zenimax launcher not the game itself and there's also an annoying recent'ish (few months) bug where it seems games launched from a 3rd party launcher don't know they've got the foreground focus. Steam th
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If the game bugs up 10% of the time I am out. I'd rather play it on Windows.
Unless it's a Bethesda game, in which case only bugging up 10% of the time would be an improvement over the Windows version.
Re: Works pretty well. (Score:2)
Dude. 10% of the time on Windows I can't get shit to work right.
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The trouble with protondb is that there are gorillas out there that approach a gold rated game, then proudly display their 15 commandline options, some of which aren't actually real, and then declare the game was stuttering, unplayable, or doesn't even launch.
Yo. It launches. Quit screwing with stuff. Just doubleclick the button.
How is dual-boot counted (Score:2)
I have a single Steam account on a single computer that dual boots Windows and Linux, each OS having its own installation of Steam. How is that counted?
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it depends on which boot you have is running when the hardware survey is pushed to you. They do these hardware surveys by pushing a popup to users every now and then, and users need to actually be bothered to click through the dialog.
If you've never seen that dialog, you were never counted.
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hah.
some people like me buy a game on steam then pirate a gog release and run it either as-is or if that doesnt' work then under lutris because steam client is a bloated piece of shit noone wants running in background and eating a gig of ram for zero purpose.
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I noticed the new option to do an in-review hardware survey and post the results with your game review is currently broken in my Linux client. I wonder if similar bugs with the main hardware survey could be affecting these swings in the Linux usage stats.
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Steam asks you if you'd like to participate via a pop-up window, so it depends on which OS you happen to be using when the survey goes out.
This means only results from active users who agreed to submit their system specs are counted. Installation alone doesn't factor into it. If you haven't seen that popup, you're not counted.
Now if only Wayland PIP worked (Score:2)
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What about using X?
Fall is Coming (Score:3)
Microsoft extended my Windows 10 license for a year - it expires this fall. They did this for a large mess of people. Those Linux numbers are going to go higher in the fall when I, and I'm sure many people, will take the leap to safety and leave Windows behind. For me, it's goodby to 36 years of Windows.
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Microsoft extended my Windows 10 license for a year - it expires this fall. They did this for a large mess of people. Those Linux numbers are going to go higher in the fall when I, and I'm sure many people, will take the leap to safety and leave Windows behind. For me, it's goodby to 36 years of Windows.
I honestly don't think most people give a crap about patches and support, especially home users. Microsoft is only doing it because they've been pretty much forced by the EU.
I'm also looking at a switch to Linux and I've found that the big problem is still Windows. If you're setting up a fresh install on a new machine you'll have a pretty easy time even if you're dual booting however trying to use your existing steam install in Windows is a right PITA. Hence I'm wating until I get a new gaming boxen to t
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Microsoft extended my Windows 10 license for a year - it expires this fall. They did this for a large mess of people. Those Linux numbers are going to go higher in the fall when I, and I'm sure many people, will take the leap to safety and leave Windows behind. For me, it's goodby to 36 years of Windows.
You know what, you may actually be right and we can thank AI for that. There was this (previously considered to be) fantasy that people would install Linux rather than just buying a compatible PC. But with PC prices rising the way they are now the combination of timing with the AI bubble may be enough to push some people to take the plunge. I sure as heck am recommending everyone *not* to upgrade their computers right now.
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That's an hell of a long Stockholm syndrome!
Less Windows users (Score:2)
The fact that there is a massive drop in Chinese users seems to imply that it's not that there are more Linux users on Steam, but that the number of people using Windows has decreased.
Duel-boother might try moving some games (Score:2)
gaming (Score:2)
What would it take to get Wine to the next level? How much investment would be needed?
Obligatory Futurama (Score:2)
"Skyrocketed" above 5%, you say?
"As this shocking graph indicates..." [imgflip.com] (sorry, I couldn't find a larger image)
My God that's nearly half! (Score:1)
Not surprising (Score:1)
Story that didn't print important thing last (Score:2)
Story notes that number changes massively every month and it went 3,5 > 2,5 > 5,3 across January, February and March this year.
This obviously isn't changes in user base, but changes in tracking combined with very low sample size, meaning it's wildly inaccurate.
Props to writer in that he didn't engage in mainstream media clickbait method of "we clickbait headline and then we spin a narrative for the entire story. And then we destroy our narrative by telling what actually happened in last two paragraphs
Cedega should have offered more (Score:1)
Oh yes im pissed off that proton and cedega are in the news but im not and there dead ans burried. Looking at some of the changes made to direct3d it seems steam os requires that apps dont count activex instization and it wouldnt suprise me if it forced software nulling of buffers because thease some things that make strict directx 3d slow and by passing them gives substantial performance increases unfortunally someone put me in a cardboard coffin before i was able to roll this out when i wrote dirextx9 for
Re: Cedega should have offered more (Score:1)
Garbidgecollect surfaces etc...