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Steam data reveals PC gamers shifting from Windows to Linux
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this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2025
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11% month on month expansion is fucking crazy. You can see from the data it's mostly Windows 10 users deciding to upgrade to Linux...and even OSX.
I’m in those stats when I switched to Mint!
How is your idle VRAM (video RAM) holding? For some reason i have 1GB usage in Mint with Cinnamon without anything running, while on windows i have 400MB (although i have optimised them a lot).
I’m not sure. I’m a photographer and comic. I switched to mint cause it’s easy, I’m not much of a computer person.
Did you find mint easy? I am a bit of a computer person, and I've been struggling a bit with it
Effortless. My only issue with it was installing Plank Reloaded.
I've been struggling quite a bit switching file managers. Nothing is fully satisfactory
Why do you care?
If I had to guess, VRAM is probably holding stuff as a cache.
VRAM doesn’t use a lot of power and as long as you aren’t seeing out of memory issues, it doesn’t really matter.
I'm gaming with an NVIDIA GPU, so my VRAM is kind of limited. I'm at my limits in games because the company cheaped out on VRAM in their GPUs after the 10 series.
400MB??? What do you have running? I never use more than 100 unless I open a game or something.
Well, screen is running at 4k, so i think its normal.
Ah, yeah that changes things a bit.
11% of 2% is nice but not "fucking crazy"
That month on month Linux expansion is ~422,000 computers. That is a shitload of people switching in just a single month.
OSes are sticky as hell. People don't like switching. As Linux attracts these people away from Microsoft, MS is not going to get them back. And importantly, the adoption rate is high enough that many 3rd party companies are taking notice and releasing for both.
Every time they buy a new device they have to switch back to linux, because that device with very few exceptions ships with MS.
Interesting, my devices always come without OS. And on preconfigured Windows for family first thing I do is wipe it to get rid of all the bloatware it comes with.
I see your point, but installing your usual linux distro on a new device is quite easier than switching to linux for the first time, which is what people don't wanna do.
I've seen it first hand recently with a friend who sought advice regarding a low budget laptop purchase for school work and multimedia use. While he was open minded about what hardware to choose, there was no convincing him to ditch Windows. I told him he'd be better off using a lightweight linux distro on such modest hardware, but he insisted on Windows 11 based on questionable arguments ("I need office"), even knowing it'd be slow, bloated, full of ads and AI features no one care for. Old habits do die hard.
People buying Steam decks are likely the majority of those numbers. They probably ALSO have a Windows machine
The Steam Deck shows up as Arch Linux in the steam numbers; Arch is only 10.7% of the Linux user-base on Steam. And this is on top of the fact desktop Arch Linux is a thing as well.
The Steam Deck certainly was the catalyst for the current wave of adoption, but it is barely a notable percentage of Linux installs on Steam.
0.3% of 130 million is still a fuckton of people. If even PewDiePie is going to Linux, that means desktop Linux has hit a point it certainly hasn't ever before
What do you mean OSes are sticky as hell? I’m currently on Arch, but only because of the AUR. I’m thinking of switching to gentoo because people keep putting malicious packages on the AUR so I might as well do gentoo
What are your feelings on switching to a different OS, such as MacOS?
These are both the same OS: Linux. And one of the nice things is Linux lets you switch around so much at-will as you are thinking of doing.
I can’t see OS X becoming a daily driver for me, but I don’t mind using it on occasion (it has bash!). Just have to turn off gestures
Until they want to play a multiplayer game with their friends, that doesn't work because of Anti-Cheat. Or maybe Linux is a bit more involved than they initially realized.
Most of those that switched probably won't go back, but I think with Linux it's going to be more than someone might think (however it'll still grow, especially over the coming months with Windows 10 support ending).
It's my understanding that anti-cheat CAN work in Linux and does with some games. The point is still valid of course. If a specific game someone wants to play doesn't work, that's going to be a frustrating experience. But still I foresee the percentage of Linux gamers will continue to grow. And gaming companies increasingly making sure to use anti-cheat software that does work with Linux, as that market share is becoming too large to ignore.
Almost all multiplayer games work fine. It's 9noy the garbage that companies like EA put out that choose not to. Just think of it like being a console exclusive, and you don't own that console. Ignore it. Their games aren't worth playing anyway. It's the same garbage as the last 10+ years.
At that rate we reach 100% Linux users in 34 months. (50% in 27)
I'd call that quite significant.
... what rate are you talking about?
I am going to assume the other person's numbers were right but it honestly doesn't matter
422k people per month? That is 0.3% per month.
2.89 + (0.3*34) = 13.09. 13% after almost 3 years. Which... that honestly still seems high but I could almost see it if SteamOS gets enough coverage by the various influencers and runs on every handheld form factor gaming PC that isn't MS or Sony branded. And if the next attempt at Steam Machines actually gains traction and they take over a chunk of the console space ahead of the PS6.Or are you talking about compound interest? Which... I think even Activision and EA would call you crazy for assuming. Also I am not sure if the math actually holds for that either but I can never remember the simple math to represent that.
Also it is completely unrelated but I'll just add: I personally don't consider SteamOS gaining a significant market share to be "linux" any more than I do Android or consider Mac to be "BSD". Yes, they have common ancestry (and varying levels of shared kernel and libraries) but it rapidly starts creating walled garden issues as developers prioritize one distro over the other to an obscene degree. And... I think we can all agree after the past few weeks that GabeN can indeed do wrong when it is in his/Valve's financial interest to do so.
It's Linux because for devs it's a Linux platform.
And yeah 11% growth month to month compounds quickly. It won't hold forever but all things like that are sigmoidal Wich does start as an exponential growth.
Sure, but even using that absurd growth rate continuously it would still take an ADDITIONAL 18 months from what you originally said to hit 50%
log_1.11 (50/2.89) = 27.32
log_1.11 (100/2.89) = 33.96
Would love more support for MacOS but I’m also fine turning my windows 10 rig into a Linux machine. Need recommendations on a gaming distro! AMD TR 1950 w/GTX 1080TI
A lot of people will say Bazzite and they're probably right, but I installed PopOS last year and I have had zero problems with any configuration or gaming. Also on an Nvidia GPU / AMD CPU.
I did the same with AMD+ NVidia gpu combo but it is not without problems. Do you play through Steam/proton db or are you using something else like Lutris?
I use steam, I do check protonDB but I've never had to tinker with much.
Historically I've used lutris but more recently I've been observing more broken scripts than not. But Lutris is extremely handy for mapping to a pile of game data that I might grab from Itch for example. I also havent been gaming as much lately so maybe I'm just hitting some weird games and that's all.
I've heard good things about Heroic Launcher which apparently is actually sponsored by GOG, but I've yet to try it on my Linux machine
Gonna check out Heroic. Thanks for the tip
Bazzite is the go-to gaming distro. It's basically Steam OS.
I'm personally a fan of Mint (old, stable) or Fedora Plasma (cutting edge), as both feel very familiar coming from Windows. I went with Mint personally.
Bazzite is Fedora and you can get it in KDE Plasma or Gnome flavors.
I wonder how dual boots show up in these stats
They don’t. The survey pops up on one device only. Statistically speaking though, it’s more likely to show up on the OS you spend most of your time using, so it doesn’t make that much of a difference.
This is usually true, in my experience, but I experienced an anomaly a couple of weeks ago when the survey popped up on my desktop twice (Arch and Win11) and my laptop twice (CachyOS and Win11) in the same day. I was very surprised.
Huh. That’s odd. I guess it balances out though.
This is my use case as well. Not that macOS gaming is terrible, it’s just not as good as a dedicated Linux system because of the easier proton translation on Linux than the tinkering required on macOS.