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When it comes to PC gaming in general, Windows has always been the main OS for users, for its focused development on said OS, and for its compatibility with the vast majority of gaming software available.

While Windows has historically maintained most of the gaming market for PC, other operating systems have also hold a share in it, even if low, like Linux and macOS, which next to Windows, have also their own gaming market. For decades, Windows held the first place, with a percentage of around 95+%, followed closely by macOS and then Linux following with percentages barely breaking above the 1%.

However, due to the popularity of the recently released Steam Deck just a year ago, alongside Valve's own SteamOS, the percentage share for Linux gamers has seen a historical rise in usage, taking the 2nd place with 1.96%, which was held previously by macOS with 1.84%. That 1.96% isn't specific to a particular distribution of Linux, since Linux also ranges from a wide variety of them, with the following braekdown based on Linux distributions for gaming:

SteamOS: 42.07% Arch Linux: 7.94% Ubuntu 22.04.2: 7.38% Freedesktop.org SDK 22.08: 5.99% “Manjaro Linux”: 4.29% Linux Mint 21.1: 3.84% Pop!_OS 22.04: 2.97% Other Linux operating systems: 25.52%

Without a doubt, a huge number of the chart is taken up by SteamOS users, and while SteamOS is the operating system that comes bundled with the Steam Deck, it can also be installed in PCs, though it's unknown just how much of that 42% is taken up by actual Deck users, and how many by PCs with SteamOS users, but it might be safe to say that the majority of that portion from the chart could very well be Steam Deck players.

Source #1
Source #2

 

[SteffooM]

View attachment 386458
​

When it comes to PC gaming in general, Windows has always been the main OS for users, for its focused development on said OS, and for its compatibility with the vast majority of gaming software available.

While Windows has historically maintained most of the gaming market for PC, other operating systems have also hold a share in it, even if low, like Linux and macOS, which next to Windows, have also their own gaming market. For decades, Windows held the first place, with a percentage of around 95+%, followed closely by macOS and then Linux following with percentages barely breaking above the 1%.

However, due to the popularity of the recently released Steam Deck just a year ago, alongside Valve's own SteamOS, the percentage share for Linux gamers has seen a historical rise in usage, taking the 2nd place with 1.96%, which was held previously by macOS with 1.84%. That 1.96% isn't specific to a particular distribution of Linux, since Linux also ranges from a wide variety of them, with the following braekdown based on Linux distributions for gaming:

View attachment 386459

SteamOS: 42.07% Arch Linux: 7.94% Ubuntu 22.04.2: 7.38% Freedesktop.org SDK 22.08: 5.99% “Manjaro Linux”: 4.29% Linux Mint 21.1: 3.84% Pop!_OS 22.04: 2.97% Other Linux operating systems: 25.52%

Without a doubt, a huge number of the chart is taken up by SteamOS users, and while SteamOS is the operating system that comes bundled with the Steam Deck, it can also be installed in PCs, though it's unknown just how much of that 42% is taken up by actual Deck users, and how many by PCs with SteamOS users, but it might be safe to say that the majority of that portion from the chart could very well be Steam Deck players.

Source #1
Source #2

We're so back

 

[tabzer]

The more people who are using Linux, the better Linux can be. This is for many reasons. I think people are focusing too much on percentages without understanding what these numbers mean.

The Linux kernel and much Linux software is free and open source. These software tend to benefit a lot from having a broader install-base and people to report issues, or sometimes even contribute to fixing them on their own! That's how the open source community thrives. That's how Linux evolves and improves over time, both in regards to its kernel and software installed within it.

This is huge, even if you don't see it that way. Most naysayers here probably don't use or understand Linux, I imagine.

The percentages are the numbers, but the milestone is noteworthy. I'm just hesitant in celebrating because it looks more like marketing than it does as a clear goal. I don't want Gabe Newell and Co. to go all superficial. After all, he wants to discount MacOS's Game Porting Tool as being M$ while his entire SteamOS relies on Proton? Wtf is the line for that disingenuous qualifier?

I think the most notable thing about the situation is that we have two competitors who have expressed a desire to provide more support for gaming. Having two competitors can instigate levels of innovation previously thought unobtainable by both of them. Even though this fake news made it to the front page of GBAtemp, it still encourages the discussion, so it's not all bad.

Further, with a leader in the industry (M$) to demonstrate what is possible, it would quicken their growth even more. Microsoft will inevitably see their acceleration of growth start to decline as these two provide meaningful offramps from a company that demonstrates that wants to own everything.

t's well known that Microsoft is really heavy on its telemetry and data hoarding from its users, with a surplus of information about the user being sent to Microsoft constantly, and while many might not care, there's a lot of people out there that want to keep their system as telemetry-less as possible, and the one thing that Linux users couldn't do that Windows still had the upper hand in, was gaming.

Many people would prefer a Steam-free gaming experience on Linux for the same reason, but we will take what we can?

 

[ShadowOne333]

Many people would prefer a Steam-free gaming experience on Linux for the same reason, but we will take what we can?

You can go Steam-less with just using Proton or Proton-GE on its own, which already does the heavy lifting.

 

[tabzer]

You can go Steam-less with just using Proton or Proton-GE on its own, which already does the heavy lifting.

That's cool, I really didn't know that. Does it require mock-data to fulfill a space in running them, or does it just give an instruction like,"nah this is linux, we're good," to the game's excutable?

In other words, does it work in the same manner that some cracked steam games do in Windows?

 

[Deleted member 194275]

The more people who are using Linux, the better Linux can be. This is for many reasons. I think people are focusing too much on percentages without understanding what these numbers mean.

The Linux kernel and much Linux software is free and open source. These software tend to benefit a lot from having a broader install-base and people to report issues, or sometimes even contribute to fixing them on their own! That's how the open source community thrives. That's how Linux evolves and improves over time, both in regards to its kernel and software installed within it.

This is huge, even if you don't see it that way. Most naysayers here probably don't use or understand Linux, I imagine.

Nothing of that is true for Steam OS. It's open source just until page 2. It's very similar to what phone manufacturers do with Android, they use all the open source goodness available, but stuff they develop beyond that is closed.

 

[ShadowOne333]

That's cool, I really didn't know that. Does it require mock-data to fulfill a space in running them, or does it just give an instruction like,"nah this is linux, we're good," to the game's excutable?

In other words, does it work in the same manner that some cracked steam games do in Windows?

I think so yeah, you basically run them as if you were side loading games/apps in Steam as non-Steam games, just without the launcher.
You could probably do with just Lutris alongside Proton/Proton-GE to launch them.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

The percentages are the numbers, but the milestone is noteworthy.

The percentages serve to compare adoption to other operating systems. That doesn't do much to explain why substantial growth (basically doubling) of the Linux (STEAM) gamer install-base is significant, which is what I gave some reasons for.

Post automatically merged: Aug 4, 2023

Nothing of that is true for Steam OS. It's open source just until page 2. It's very similar to what phone manufacturers do with Android, they use all the open source goodness available, but stuff they develop beyond that is closed.

*Most* of it is true for SteamOS. SteamOS is still using the open source Linux kernel (though compiled by Valve in this case, perhaps with some changes) which still benefits from upstream changes. SteamOS relies heavily upon the open source Proton compatibility tool, which is a driving force behind its adoption in the first place, AND it is still just a modified Arch Linux distro at its core.

 

[chrisrlink]

I use holoiso instead of oem steam os3 works well on the deck too i just don't like "unlocking" the filesystem every os update I'm not a child and I'm smart enough to not do dangerous commands

 

[Xzi]

Gamepass is well-known for Day 1 releases of any new Microsoft-related content, what are you talking about?

And despite that, Steam remains the better value proposition for gamers who actually want some permanence to their library. Game Pass is more like the new GameFly, as a glorified rental service it's not really competition for Steam itself.

The Steamdeck and the associated SteamOS infrastructure, especially Proton, exist to maximise sales on the Steam store. They’re means to an end.

Yet there'd be nobody else to do all that without Valve. Far too many developers/publishers hire calculators in suits for CEOs, and the result is that they become laser-focused on short-term profit to the detriment of both their reputation and long-term viability.

Epic saw Valve's success and decided, "yeah we want all that money, but we don't want to put in any of the work." Now their platform is used exclusively for people to claim free games, because it has zero functionality beyond that.

 

[JeepX87]

Epic saw Valve's success and decided, "yeah we want all that money, but we don't want to put in any of the work." Now their platform is used exclusively for people to claim free games, because it has zero functionality beyond that.

That why I refuse to make new account with Epic and I'm not interested in their free games.

 

[Xzi]

That why I refuse to make new account with Epic and I'm not interested in their free games.

Everybody I know with an EGS account full of freebies literally only logs in to claim new ones. All the games they buy and actually play are on Steam. It's a Fortnite launcher, and everything beyond that was too ambitious for Timmy Tencent.

 

[codezer0]

It's 2023, and I still can't get regular desktop sound, let alone correct game sound (e.g. supporting stuff like wax for games that were made before OpenAL was even a thing), on any Creative Audigy or X-fi sound card I have, from Linux.

It's current year, and I can't troubleshoot a single Linux distribution without having to stare at a command line to do most of the heavy lifting. Or copy pasting commands that look like the programmatic equivalent of asking a sex worker if they accept credit cards for transactions that would be illegal in most of the civilized world.

 

[Xzi]

It's 2023, and I still can't get regular desktop sound, let alone correct game sound (e.g. supporting stuff like wax for games that were made before OpenAL was even a thing), on any Creative Audigy or X-fi sound card I have, from Linux.

Really? Switching audio devices on desktop mode of Deck is even easier than Windows because it's a menu in the taskbar. I haven't used a sound card since the Windows 95 days, though.

 

[codezer0]

Really? Switching audio devices on desktop mode of Deck is even easier than Windows because it's a menu in the taskbar. I haven't used a sound card since the Windows 95 days, though.

When everything is made with the same realtek chip, of course it's easy. The problem is that even though Creative labs did open up licencing to handle eax code on other chips, the only one that bothered signing up was Asus with their Xonar sound cards. Realtek famously refuses to.

While everyone and their dog can understand how directx as an API scales graphics processing up or down based on software compatibility and hardware, too many ignore that it did the same thing with sound, too. So for games that were made with eax in mind, if the hardware won't report compatibility in the drivers, it scales down to thinking you have some trash PC speaker setup. And that, winds me up to no end.

I don't claim to be an audiophile by any stretch. But I've been PC gaming long enough to know what level of fidelity to expect from a game. So for a majority of those games that should be easy to run on a Steam Deck, lack of eax support would actually sound wrong to my ears, and be a buzz kill at best; a nonstarter at worst.

Considering I started the process of making a Windows 98 retro beast machine because I had stumbled across a working Aureal Vortex 2, I can say that A3D was another tech killed off far too soon. But neither here nor there. EAX endured, and while I don't disagree with Microsoft's decision to axe EAX as the defacto standard for audio as of Vista, I do wish it provided some kind of compatibility layer to deal with games that otherwise expected an EAX supported environment.

Because of that decision, I basically have to have an XP beast PC for some of those games, entirely because there's no other way to run them with the *correct* audio environment.

 

[Ryab]

When everything is made with the same realtek chip, of course it's easy. The problem is that even though Creative labs did open up licencing to handle eax code on other chips, the only one that bothered signing up was Asus with their Xonar sound cards. Realtek famously refuses to.

While everyone and their dog can understand how directx as an API scales graphics processing up or down based on software compatibility and hardware, too many ignore that it did the same thing with sound, too. So for games that were made with eax in mind, if the hardware won't report compatibility in the drivers, it scales down to thinking you have some trash PC speaker setup. And that, winds me up to no end.

I don't claim to be an audiophile by any stretch. But I've been PC gaming long enough to know what level of fidelity to expect from a game. So for a majority of those games that should be easy to run on a Steam Deck, lack of eax support would actually sound wrong to my ears, and be a buzz kill at best; a nonstarter at worst.

Considering I started the process of making a Windows 98 retro beast machine because I had stumbled across a working Aureal Vortex 2, I can say that A3D was another tech killed off far too soon. But neither here nor there. EAX endured, and while I don't disagree with Microsoft's decision to axe EAX as the defacto standard for audio as of Vista, I do wish it provided some kind of compatibility layer to deal with games that otherwise expected an EAX supported environment.

Because of that decision, I basically have to have an XP beast PC for some of those games, entirely because there's no other way to run them with the *correct* audio environment.

This is coming off as some odd one and a million issue. I know dozens of people who run Linux and I've never heard of anything like that.

 

[Xzi]

Because of that decision, I basically have to have an XP beast PC for some of those games, entirely because there's no other way to run them with the *correct* audio environment.

Yeah I've considered building one of those simply because XP-era games are so hard to get up and running properly in general on Win10, but various Proton versions handle them surprisingly well. Deck's little stereo speakers also provide a way larger sound stage than they have any right to.

The games I really care about the audio for I'll play on my desktop with a pair of Astro A50 I bought used, but those are usually more on the modern side. And then I do have a relatively-inexpensive hi-fi music player with a pair of studio reference headphones.

 

[codezer0]

This is coming off as some odd one and a million issue. I know dozens of people who run Linux and I've never heard of anything like that.

Maybe because most people are tone deaf and never spend more than $10 on speakers? Idk what to tell you, but for me, running a game that expects EAX, without a sound chip that supports it at some level, is notably degraded. It's the audio equivalent of trying to get Intel integrated graphics to do ray tracing, it is that bad.

And in all these years, no distro of Linux will support any Audigy or X-fi card I have on hand. Sure, they will detect it. They may reference it in the device manager. Some would even give me a control panel that implies it can interface with it. I still get no sound whatsoever in Linux from, or through, it.

It doesn't matter how much Realtek brags about it's audio chips. If the software to support such environments aren't there, it's going to sound like ass.

To date, I've yet to have a single "virtual surround" headset that doesn't sound completely hollow and like entire segments of the environment are missing, and all of them use the same two or three Realtek chips, regardless of asking price. And I can't seem to find a USB dac, at any price, that supports the EAX stuff effectively to even consider it as an option. I'm that picky on my game sound being that correct, that I am grateful the Razer tiamat headset I do have does fit my noggin, since it does accept the surround audio from my sound card and this can be as correct as it should.

 

[Foxi4]

And despite that, Steam remains the better value proposition for gamers who actually want some permanence to their library. Game Pass is more like the new GameFly, as a glorified rental service it's not really competition for Steam itself.

I don’t see it that way at all. Gamepass is effectively Netflix for games, and it does offer a permanence option - all the games that are on Gamepass are available to purchase at a discount, so if you *truly* want to keep the game forever, you can in fact buy it outright at a lower price. It’s effectively the only way I play games on my Series X, and it’s amazing value for money. I get my Gamepass for free, but if I didn’t, I’d be using it regardless. I don’t know what you see in Steam - it’s just a storefront with some API’s built around it. I don’t see the “service” part you do.

Yet there'd be nobody else to do all that without Valve. Far too many developers/publishers hire calculators in suits for CEOs, and the result is that they become laser-focused on short-term profit to the detriment of both their reputation and long-term viability.

Epic saw Valve's success and decided, "yeah we want all that money, but we don't want to put in any of the work." Now their platform is used exclusively for people to claim free games, because it has zero functionality beyond that.

Does Valve pay you for all this advertising you’re dropping here? The only difference between those two is that Valve is more competent, and they’ve built an ecosystem that’s been widely adopted way before Epic even had the thought to compete. It’s in a dominant position in part for the same reason why Windows is in the consumer desktop space - massive legacy. I’m not saying that Steam’s bad, it’s great, and deserves its spot as the market leader, but they’re not the messiah. In fact, I’d argue that Valve is single-handedly responsible for the death of physical media on PC’s - they provided a service so good that there was simply no point in releasing physical games anymore. Those big box releases? Gabe took them away, by trying too hard.

 

[Xzi]

I don’t see it that way at all. Gamepass is effectively Netflix for games, and it does offer a permanence option - all the games that are on Gamepass are available to purchase at a discount, so if you *truly* want to keep the game forever, you can in fact buy it outright at a lower price. It’s effectively the only way I play games on my Series X, and it’s amazing value for money. I get my Gamepass for free, but if I didn’t, I’d be using it regardless. I don’t know what you see in Steam - it’s just a storefront with some API’s built around it. I don’t see the “service” part you do.

Even Game Pass would not exist if there hadn't been a superior alternative to all of Microsoft's efforts to establish a gaming storefront on Windows. If it was profitable, we'd still be stuck with GFWL. Steam forced Microsoft to find a niche they're good at rather than settle for mediocrity.

It’s in a dominant position in part for the same reason why Windows is in the consumer desktop space - massive legacy. I’m not saying that Steam’s bad, it’s great, and deserves its spot as the market leader, but they’re not the messiah. In fact, I’d argue that Valve is single-handedly responsible for the death of physical media on PC’s - they provided a service so good that there was simply no point in releasing physical games anymore. Those big box releases? Gabe took them away, by trying too hard.

Simply existing for a long period of time doesn't win you any fans, take EA for example. Windows did actually have something close to a monopoly as the gaming OS for that span of time, but any number of "viable" alternatives to Steam came and went.

I think the death of physical media was inevitable, and we've almost hit that point for consoles now too. Can't say it bothers me too much even as a collector, since the disc is always the least interesting part of collector's editions. As long as I can get a Steam key for $50 where the same game would cost me $70 on PS5, it's a decent tradeoff.

 

[64bitmodels]

The only difference between those two is that Valve is more competent

...That's a gigantic difference.