142
Steam Hardware & Software Survey - Go Linux! :)
(store.steampowered.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
142 points (100.0% liked)
Gaming
30500 readers
286 users here now
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.
See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
@ReverseModule Looks like the growth comes mostly from Windows (-0.56%) users switching to Linux (+0.52%). MacOS (+0.05%) users mostly seem just to upgrade MacOS and are mostly unaffected by the overall numbers. Inside of the Windows numbers, Windows 10 (-1.56%) users switching to either Windows 11 (+0.92%) or choosing an alternative platform (-0.56%). Numbers do not add up perfectly, because these statistics are estimation based on asking randomly a fraction of the user base.
Not to mention that steam is no longer the sole gaming platform on PC which makes statistic anomaly even higher. They just discounted the steam deck for the first time in it's history. This small change could just be people who have windows machines booting up steam decks and getting the survey.
That's a good point. There are a heck of a lot of people primarily on game pass, now, especially.
I also wonder if they account for people who dual-boot Linux and Windows, and who game only on Windows or who use both depending on the game.
Does a steam deck owner with a Windows desktop gaming PC turn up twice in these numbers, in both the Linux and the Windows users count, do you think? Because then the Linux number would go up 1 without the Windows number going down.
Edit: aside from this, SteamOS and desktop Linux distros aren't necessarily comparable enough to be throwing together in the same category. A lot of the things that make SteamOS a smart choice for the deck, where they can control and optimize for the hardware, don't apply to desktops the same way.
From my understanding, which would be made clearer if Valve actually released information on their data collection for the survey, is that the device you submit the survey on is the one that counts. So dual-booting Linux and Windows isn't accounted for. Whatever you do the survey on is the one that it records you as. The survey prompt does tell you all the data it's sending including OS. You can't modify it but you can read it.
Absolutely agree. It's hard to see Steam OS as a helpful metric for Linux desktop usage. The majority of Steam OS users will only use Linux on the deck and likely never even drop into desktop mode. I am curious how many people bought the dock and how many use it.
~~Steam Deck is very underrepresented in the hardware surveys, as the questionnaire can only show up in Desktop mode.~~
Not anymore. It's possible to get the hardware survey in gaming mode on Deck for months now (I got it iirc).
I stand corrected then. Never received it on my Deck so far.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when Windows 12 comes out, since people are unhappy with 11 and thus maybe more willing to jump ship, and Microsoft has a tendency to alternate between releasing good and bad OS's.