Linux continues its rise in Steam Survey
Linux continues its rise in Steam Survey
www.phoronix.com
Steam On Linux Use Hit A Recent High Of 2.69% During May
Up to 2.7% in May 2025 from 1.5% in May 2023. Almost x2 in 2 years is very impressive.
61 comments
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Two of my friends switched recently.
They had none to very little experience with anything Linux before, their previous win11 installs just over bloated and the copilot bullshit pushed them over. Both (indie/non-pop shooters) gamers btw.This is the year of linux.
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I wish I could get my friends to switch. I even had one tell me they would rather use it if supported the games that don’t work (which of course are games with anti-cheat issues). But they at least recognize that Windows is getting quite bloated
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My first one to switch did so recently. Gave him an open offer to help get going if he ever got interested, then proceeded to just go about using my linux system for our multiplayer gaming and couch gaming hangouts.
It took a little less than three years from when I first switched for him to follow.
My sister is also on linux, has been since she took my gaming laptop as her own, and she never felt a need to switch it back to windows.
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It just goes to show you. The only way to get the Linux desktop market share up is not building. Something better than Windows we have been there for a while. It's make hardware, put Linux on that hardware and sell it in a store. Avg people don't change operating systems. They change computers. Now if we could just get steam decks in retail stores. It would be a huge.
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Exactly. Linux will never become the majority OS as long as it’s not the default OS on retail PCs.
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Avg people don’t change operating systems
This is a huge argument, even Linus Torvalds said that many years ago. The average person just wants to buy a computer and use it normally for work, casual stuff or gaming. They won't make the effort to change the operating system.
Now if we could just get steam decks in retail stores
We can also get the Steam OS on different hardwares, just like the Lenovo Legion Go S
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There is a non-insignificant amount of people who just throw away their computer when something gets messed up because they don't know how to reinstall windows. Not only do average people not know how to install an operating system, they don't even know how to learn. Many people have help, techie friends and family, but many don't, and they can sadly only be helped at scale.
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It was tried a little bit in 2008 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna23565020
Microsoft/Google would shit all over any retailer that dared to do that today.
That said, Bestbuy did have an OS2/Warp on the floor decades ago.
I think SteamOS will have a solid chance.
We need a distro that has a 0% chance to brick on a graphics driver update. That can flawlessly do a major release update without breaking things and can run GOG, Steam, Epic.
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Yep i honestly think that's why the steam deck is not available in retell in the US. MICROSOFT probably has a clause in place that would remove any license discounts from the big OEMs if their machines are stocked with Linux machines.
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Soon Linux will be big enough that stores will offer a selection of operating systems. It might be possible already to ask for a custom built PC deal with a discount for no bringing your own OS or having them install it for you.
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It's a shame more developers don't target Linux! Anyway I have been Steam gaming on Linux for about 10 years now and it's amazing how good games targeted at Windows run through Proton. I have many games that are targeted for Windows and run BETTER on Fedora.
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As far as I can gather, Valve explicitly advises developers to avoid targeting Linux when building or optimizing for the Steam Deck, instead focusing on optimizing around Proton.
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Elden Rings runs better on proton/wine/dxvk then it does on Windows.
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Everything that is highly CPU bound (I am looking at you, Path of Exile 1) or requires a lot of Disk access (I have no such friends) have a good chance to run better on Linux than on Windows.
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I'm quite impressed Arch comes out on top
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I'm not honestly. As far as I know SteamOS is based on arch which should give it a massive boost in comparison to other linux distros just from the number of Steam Decks
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I'm more surprised that Manjaro is so low.
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They got hit by a lot of negative reviews and bad publicity those last years. Myself gave it a try last years and while it isn't a bad distro from first impression... The fact that they add bookmarks into my firefox and Manjaro bootscreen at start gave me a strange feeling... Specially because this happend after the bios bootscreen hack. And I know this is not related but it still gave me strange gut feeling and always follow your guts !
Happy EndeavourOS user !
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Probably because they're incapable of maintaining a distribution: https://manjarno.pages.dev/
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The numbers are 3 weeks old, but they are still good. 😋
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Yeah i was gonna say, this is old news. The +0.42% is the last spike on this graph.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/linux-user-share-hits-a-multi-year-high-on-steam-for-may-2025/
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2.69% +0.42%Nice, the meaning of Life. This would be perfect, if it was 3.69 instead. But we can't have it all, otherwise there would be no improvement possible and it gets stale.
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Some interesting distro choices to be found in there. I didn't realize CachyOS was so popular
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I have used CachyOS and I can confirm that it is decent. I might give Bazzite a try next though.
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Installed Fedora Linux 42 on my gaming PC with Intel Arc B580. Completed Steam Servey. Selling B580 due to miserable driver support and moving PC from a gaming to home server(TrueNAS). Still have my Steam Deck which I won't sell.
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To the moon!
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Google translates that as Intergalactic Bow Community =\
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That's part of the fun
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Those are rookie numbers Debian GNU/Linux!
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I installed it on a partition along side windows 10.
I installed openrazer to control my keyboard and the next time I loaded it up only the number keys worked.
I'm not sure what my next steps will be but I'm enjoying it other than this issue, it reminds me of the good old DOS days back when I was a kid.
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I'm gonna dual-boot Bazzite and OpenSUSE once I get through a few games. I don't trust Bethesda to not accidentally give me a VAC ban for using Linux, and there are three Itch io games I want to play first (Horror Vacui, There are Ghosts in these Stalls, Spookware, Corpse Ocean)
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I wanted to switch but then saw nvidia's drivers are even worse on linux than windows. Maybe once I'm ready for a gpu upgrade I'll go AMD and make the switch because it feels like if theres little hope of nvidia fixing their drivers for PC there is zero hope for linux.
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Using nvidia on endeavouros here with no problems. The drivers rebuild with every kernel update and it's as smooth as gravy. Before external sync was merged, they were problematic on wayland but fine on xorg.
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I used EndevourOS with Nvidia for years but one day an update brought a black screen and decided to use something else (downgrade didn't fix it). I'm currently using Tumbleweed and it works well, but I kinda miss Arch... So I installed CachyOS in my Steam Deck.
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I'm using an Nvidia card on Debian with 0 issues myself and the driver installation was really easy. I'm curious what source you read stating that they are worse, by how much, and in what way. Do you have a link I can read? Thanks.
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Its primarily issues reported on the linux gaming subreddit. You can just do a search on that sub. One of the more recent posts that really illustrated how bad things were (to me) was this post: https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1l4ntj6/i_give_up_on_linux_for_now/
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I've been using Linux with Nvidia for 10 years and it's been a constant dumpster fire. The Nvidia driver constantly caused issues over these 10 years, especially during updates. Currently I'm having the issue that the entirety of Wayland, including all open programs, crash when I run out of VRAM because the Linux Nvidia drivers cannot fall back on RAM when running out of VRAM. It's making my gaming experience very frustrating.
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There are some distros which completely handle this for you, eg popOS. I game on Linux with a 3080ti and it’s ez breezy
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Wish I could explain you in detail how that's not correct but I'm actually going to play Clair Obscur on my 2080ti on Debian, sorry!
PS: been playing for years with NVIDIA drivers, including VR games, and sure it's not 100% perfect but neither Windows drivers are. It sure is enough for me to keep on playing (and working) without major issue though. Anyway, gotta play!
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I'm on Fedora - Nvidia drivers used to be an issue for me some years back, but since then it's all automatic, I haven't even thought about drivers since buying my 3060.
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61 comments