Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.
SteamOS Holo 64 bit - 27.18% (-0.47%) Arch Linux 64 bit - 10.32% (-0.66%) Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit - 6.65% (+6.65%) CachyOS 64 bit - 6.01% (+1.32%) Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit - 4.55% (+0.55%) Freedesktop SDK 25.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit - 4.29% (+4.29%) Bazzite 64 bit - 4.24% (+4.24%) Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS 64 bit - 3.70% (+3.70%) Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit - 2.56% (-5.65%) EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit - 2.32% (-0.08%) Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit - 2.31% (-3.98%) Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) 64 bit - 2.12% (+0.19%) Manjaro Linux 64 bit - 2.04% (-0.31%) Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit - 1.93% (-0.04%) Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition) 64 bit - 1.75% (-0.43%) Other - 18.04% (-4.28%)
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.
Most will stay on Windows of course, but some don’t. And those who switch to Linux are likely not returning to Windows (for gaming at least).
damnedfurry@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks, which run on Linux, not from people switching to Linux on their PCs.
If it continues to rise, this is the reason. The general public is less and less into using a desktop at all as time goes on, much less running, and much less changing to, an extremely niche operating system on one.
BigPotato@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Actually, the raw number percentage shows that the increase is due to Mint, Ubuntu, and Bazzite. Maybe people are installing Bazzite on their Deck but likely not the other two.
magic_lobster_party@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
The portion of people playing on SteamOS is steadily decreasing, which means new Linux users are on SteamOS to a lesser extent.
CountVon@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I believe this is incorrect. The Steam survey break down GPUs by description and the Deck’s GPU appears in the results as “AMD Vangogh”, which only accounts for 0.39% of respondents. That implies that the vast majority of survey respondents using Linux are actually on PC, not the Deck.
turdas@suppo.fi 2 weeks ago
That’s not true. You can see on Steam Hardware Survey what OS people are running, and SteamOS only makes up 27% of Linux users on Steam, so the vast majority are on regular PCs.
KeenFlame@feddit.nu 2 weeks ago
Nope, handhelds can be eval in separately from operating systems
BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, for me personally, I’ve got one or two devices that see irregular use that are linux now, but my main rig is still windows and will continue to be so, since I have a number of friends on xbox that I can get more cross play for via gamepass But since I’m currently boycotting microsoft, and don’t know how much longer friends will stick with xbox given their general market decline, and given all the stability issues with win11 lately due to an increase of AI code usage, and all the everything… It might be a matter of time
3x3@lemy.lol 2 weeks ago
Actually I wish that was true but the reality is still that unfortunately a lot of online multiplayer games do in fact not work without issues on Linux