Linux Percentage of Steam Users Doubled in One Year (phoronix.com) 43
Steam on Linux use in March "had skyrocketed to 5.33%..." reports Phoronix, "easily the highest level we've seen Steam on Linux at since its inception more than a decade ago."
So what happened in April? [April's results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it's roughly double with Steam on Linux in April 2025 being at 2.27%. Or two years ago for April 2024, Steam on Linux was at 1.9%.
So what happened in April? [April's results] point to Linux having a 4.52% marketshare on Steam, a drop of 0.81% compared to March. Year-over-year it's roughly double with Steam on Linux in April 2025 being at 2.27%. Or two years ago for April 2024, Steam on Linux was at 1.9%.
Re: AI killed desktop Linux (Score:2)
There's definitely room for a gaming hardware company to enter the market. Even if you can't hit the lowest price point, if you can convince gamers you actually care about what they want, you'd find a well-funded and receptive market.
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I thought it was Microsoft preventing OEMs from selling non-windows desktops through onerous restractive contracts. They even went after Samsung for an Android license payment.
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Despite what some people claim, desktop Linux on the desktop has never been dead and is slowly getting more ground. 5% of Steam users is a _lot_ of people. Far more than needed to prove viability.
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They aren't, at least not on their PCs. 23% of them are using SteamOS, which means almost all Steam Deck users. (The next most common are Arch (8.78%) and CachyOS (8.37%.) Not that I'm complaining about Valve capitalizing on Proton.
Re: AI killed desktop Linux (Score:2)
That means 4% are using Linux on the desktop to game.
Obviously less than 5%, but I'm shocked it's only 23% on steak deck.
Steak Deck is great and what got me back into PC gaming. The fact that there are so many desktop users of Linux also tamony is surprising to me.
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om nom nom steak deck
If I were poorer and were going to have only one computer, it would be a Steam Deck. I might need to mod it a little, but at many times I've made good out of extremely limited computing resources, and it's really not that shabby.
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It is 10% of gamers in English speaking countries.
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Do you ever stop spouting the most idiotic shite?
Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
With some minor exceptions, gaming was the only thing keeping me on Windows. Steam broke this blockade. I still keep a Windows laptop that I use in the spring to run Turbotax.
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I wanted to say here that you could give Wine a try, until I looked up Turbotax on Wine and got this:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objec... [winehq.org]
It says it's garbage. Ouch.
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Turbotax is shit. if I ever used turbotax I'd use the web version, though usually I got better results with taxact, h&r block, and a few others. I'd literally fill it out on multiple services, see what the return was, and only pay the one with the highest return.
Nowadays my taxes are waaaaay too complicated for that though, much easier + faster to just send all of my forms to an accounting firm and let them do the rest.
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I use https://www.freetaxusa.com/ [freetaxusa.com] it's entirely in the web browser. Free federal direct deposit filling and each state cost $15.99 with direct deposit. You can pay more for extra services but as someone with basic w2 and 1099s stuff, it's great. Been using it for several years.
I'm in no way affiliated with them and get nothing for sharing this recommendation. I just think they are pretty awesome and it works 100% in my Firefox browser.
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They deliberately do this for what they claim is higher security. Hrrrmmph.
Dual boot or the 2nd computer .... (Score:1)
Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:3)
Consider a 90-day Windows "evaluation" in a VM.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]
Get the image
Do your taxes
Save the results
Delete the VM
Same thing next year!
Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:4, Informative)
sudo strings
This key works fine when installing a VM.
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This is handy, thanks!
Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:2)
Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:1)
If proton can runs games, it can absolutely run your tax software. Just add to Steam and launch with proton - this should work for pretty much all windos software, really. You could do it all manually but linking it in Steam is just easier.
Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:2)
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I tried with Proton, and Steam. Turbotax looks for those emulation layers and deliberately crashes. The Windows License/VM approach looks intriguing, however.
Re: Steam enabled me to move to Linux (Score:2)
Because a game optimized version of steam runs games well it can definitely run some janky office software written with weod MS libraries of 20 years ago?
Not sure the one follows the other.
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why not use turbotax online?
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Three words: No forms mode.
China's numbers (Score:2)
There is some Chinese numbers that seem to appear then disappear on alternating months. And those numbers seem to be strongly Wintel sided.
Interesting Details (Score:2, Interesting)
Yay! 4.32% blah blah blah.
But, it's more interesting, to me, to see that Arch is the second most used distro. It's second to a bunch of Ubuntu flavors.
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*pops the cork on the keychain-sized bottle of champagne*
That's really some market penetration there!
(Only took longer than I've been around to get that far... by the time we build the Enterprise and speed off to Alpha Centauri, it might be nearing 90%!)
The reason more people haven't switched is simply software compatibility... sure, there's FOSS complete office suites and video editors, and you can install MS Office or whatever in a VM, and some stuff will work in WINE... running Win10 in a VM just so you
Windows Exodus (Score:2)
Fair comparison? (Score:1)
I'd love to see the percentage of OS adjusted for games that are actually playable on both platforms.
I'm guessing a LARGE portion of that ~95% Windows is the MMOs, Fortnites/PUBGs, CS/CODs, GTA Online, League of Legends/DOTAs, etc. that can't be played on Linux due to kernel anti-cheats and DRM.
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Many MMOs work fine on Linux, as does DOTA. GTA Online also works but requires some extra effort. Anything "competitive" from Epic Games, Respawn Entertainment, or Riot Games will never work, but those game studios and their games all suck giant dick anyway. DRM usually isn't an issue, but obvi they'll never be allowed to get anywhere near the kernel.
Margin of Error (Score:2)
These results have been bouncing around a bit without any apparently explanation, I presume the methodology is variable with time and I don't take the exact numbers too seriously.
That said, this is the best time in history to be a Linux gamer. If you have AMD graphics then your system probably works great. If you have Nvidia, results will probably vary a whole lot, but at least features will work. (Only old school SLI is really missing.) Proton is very stable and recently there have been some nice improveme
Monthly variance (Score:1)
These numbers are hugely unreliable. The only thing useful we can tell from them is that the trend is slowly going up. Any month to month figure is clearly wildly off. Given this is first party data and not some inferred data from a browser user agent string I wonder what the cause of this is. Presumably it's sampling error. E.g. I got a request to participate int he hardware survey this month but not last month. I got it on my PC but not my SteamDeck. Score one for Windows unfairly.
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Not sure who thought this was worthy of modding down, unless someone actually thinks that a million people decided to try Linux for precisely one month. Hey maybe they did, and if that's the case, what the heck is wrong that they gave up on it?
Skyrocketed to 5%! (Score:2)
I guess they just need to fire whoever aimed that rocket.
Re: 4.52%. (Score:2)