- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
Valve just published their Steam Survey results for October and point to a small uptick in Linux gaming use on a relative basis.
According to today’s published Steam Survey figures, for October 2026 the Steam on Linux use was up 0.05% and taking it to 3.95% overall. This is quite a bit different from the original Steam Survey figures for September that showed Linux diving down to 3.05% as a 0.85% decline over August. But as noted in that article last month, it was closely associated with a strong shift in Simplified Chinese use. When that occurs in the Steam Survey, Microsoft Windows typically sees large upward swings against Linux.
In any case Valve revised their September numbers to 3.9% and now for October are reporting 3.95% for their overall Linux customer base. Apple’s macOS is at 2.35% and Windows at 93.7%. In comparison, this time last year we were celebrating Steam on Linux finally cracking 3% during October 2025.
Among the Linux distributions, Arch Linux based CachyOS remains most popular at 16.3% and even outpacing SteamOS at 13.89% in second place.
AMD CPU use by Linux gamers remains at just under 70%, driven in part by the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using custom AMD SoCs.
All the Steam Survey results in full for October can be found at SteamPowered.com.
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I’m pretty disappointed in my fellow PC users.
We’re supposed to be at least a little tech savvy.
Linux isn’t even hard to use, heck it’s been easier for me than windows the last few months.
93% of gamers aren’t using Adobe, what’s the excuse everyone?
Have some courage, and then laugh about ever worrying about switching.
If it ain’t broke… Most gamers don’t care about being spied on or anything else, as long their games work.
I just think a majority of people do not care about which OS they use, or even know what is an OS. The only way for GNU/Linux to become big is if companies start shipping it in computers instead of windows.
It would be an insane move by a company, and so unlikely it doesn’t bear considering, but… I wonder what would happen if a company released an AAA game which only ran on Linux.
Way back, I bought an XBox just to play Halo and its sequels. I played no oþer games on it; it was literally a “Halo Box” for me. I hated þe XBox, but I loved Halo.
I just wonder if þere were an exclusive Linux game wiþ þe impact Halo or Destiny had, I wonder how it’d affect þe numbers. Some people would go back, for sure, but I wonder how many people haven’t converted simply because of inertia, or fear of þe unknown.
Part of the difference here is that it’s much easier to buy an xbox than a linux computer. Not to suggest they don’t exist, but that the barrier to entry for joe schmoe is much higher than the barriers for console exclusives. and god forbid trying to get a casual audience to install a new operating system, you’d practically need to offer a linux help line.
Part of the difference here is that it’s much easier to buy an xbox than a linux computer.
what? Any computer that can play A AAA title can be used to run linux in a seperate partition.
I gotta pay through the ass to buy an xbox.
yeah maybe keep reading the next line where I specifically call out trying to get casual audiences to install an operating system?
I don’t know when the last time you installed Linux was, or what distros you’ve used, but it’s beyond trivial now usually. Finding an executable online and running that, as Windows users have to do, is often more difficult than installing Linux. There is almost no user who couldn’t install Linux today, but there are many who will never try.
I installed Bazzite very recently, I fully understand it is trivial.
I work in customer service. I talk to people who have jobs and function in society. You are overestimating how many people find it simple to find an executable online and run it. The concept of creating a bootable disk is beyond these people, yes, even though there are programs that do 99.99% of the work for you. For many of these people, everything they download is an app that came from an app store, yes, people use the Microsoft app store.
When we’re taking casual, this is who we’re talking about. It’s why the casual gamer overwhelmingly still favors a console, hell, it’s why consoles still exist at all!
The “casual” gaming audience can follow intricate guides just to install minor mods, tune their devices for a few extra fps and so on, yet they magically can’t put a usb stick in their pc and follow a mostly automated installer.
the casual gaming audience doesn’t do any of that, I think you’re grossly overestimating what casual means.
The casual gaming audience owns a console that handles everything for them, and they buy new installments in franchises like FIFA and CoD. (Edit: even this might be asking too much, thinking about it. It’s probably just Fortnite updates these days) Asking them to do something even as “simple” as installing an operating system is just asking for trouble.
Nope. It’s not even Fortnite. These days it’s all Roblox.
I think it would run in wsl, or is that terminal only? I thought there also was a translation layer for linux system calls to windows at some point, sonething like a reverse wine.
Graphics would be less of a problem, because it is just vulkan on linux, which should be available on windows.
Edit: the original WSL did that, the WSL2 is a VM or a container apparently
I believe last time I used it WSL only handles a terminal, but I feel like I recall seeing something about it being able to handle GUI applications now. I would suspect it can’t run games though. The calls that are needed to make games possible are probably off-limits to WSL.
