
1.85% of Steam users run Linux - ineov
http://www.itsmdaily.com/2014/01/01/1-85-steam-users-run-linux/
======
sandGorgon
Very exciting times for Linux gaming this year. With next quarter's Intel
Broadwell chipset - which incidentally runs off _official_ open source drivers
on Linux [1] [2] - we should have a pretty awesome Steam experience on Linux.
As the Intel dude puts it :

* Intel’s Ben Widawsky, who works on Intel’s Linux graphics driver efforts, says that “Broadwell graphics bring some of the biggest changes we’ve seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU… [the changes] dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes.”*

Pretty the much the only reason I'm putting off buying a laptop right now.

[1] [http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel-
releas...](http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel-
releases-5000-pages-of-open-source-haswell-documentation) [2]
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_bro...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_broadwell_linux&num=1)

------
amscanne
Anecdote.

I actually installed steam yesterday (for the first time, I'm not a gamer) to
see the available games for Linux.

I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few that looked okay. So I bought
a couple. None worked -- mysterious launch errors, etc. No luck after a couple
hours of debugging.

DISAPPOINTED!

I seriously question how many people actually _run_ on Linux vs. login and
browse the store? That said, I'm sure the experience will improve and it's
great to see Linux as a growing platform for games!

~~~
i80and
Most games work, but the problems fall into a few categories:

1) Missing libraries: Almost always 32-bit/64-bit problems.

2) Missing executable: this is usually fixed sooner or later.

3) Graphics problems: This shouldn't be a problem on NVIDIA systems, and the
Intel Mesa drivers are pretty good these days, but it still can occur.

~~~
1qaz2wsx3edc
Ergo StreamOS.

I wouldn't bother running Steam on a non-valve distro, it just doesn't seem
practical given the options available (Win/OSX/SteamOS).

Full disclosure: I use Steam on OSX & inside a Windows VM. My biggest peeve is
that Valve restricts the Steam client to a single runtime (meaning: I can't
run steam on OSX & Windows at the same time "This account is logged in
elsewhere"). So I'm always switching between the two, which causes a bit of
user fatigue. Come on, just allow unlimited instances/logins from the same IP.
I digress.

~~~
yaeger
Steam on Windows isn't all that great either. It's 2014 now and Steam still
ignores the "multi user" aspect of Windows.

Have Steam installed and want to logon automatically so you don't have to
enter your password everytime? Great, just tick the appropriate checkbox.

Works great for me, but when my brother uses the PC with his own Windows
account, you already know what happens when he tries to start Steam and wants
to play using his Steam acount. Correct, he gets auto logged in into _my_
Steam Account. Because as far as Valve is concerned, 1 PC == 1 Steam Install
== 1 Steam User.

Granted, Windows wasn't always "multi user" but I think it has been for quite
some time now ;) Seeing this and looking into their Linux efforts and their
SteamOS for the "Family" and "Living Room" I really see some problems for them
unless they finally change this behavior. In a family and in a living room you
are bound to have multiple users with Multiple Steam Accounts and especially
on a TV, I bet many people would like to log in automatically instead of
having to log in manually using a controller to type out the password.

~~~
maaaats
Last time I tried, I solved this with just copying the Steam folder and each
person starts Steam from their own Steam folder. A lot of wasted space since
we got duplicates of all games, but it worked.

~~~
throwaway2048
windows supports symlinks, you might want to try symlinking the steamapps
folder, each steam user has their own settings bits inside steam anyways.

------
aspensmonster
Out of the table, it seems 0.85 percent run some flavor of Ubuntu. That leaves
the other 1.00 percent running some other flavor. I've got it running on
Debian GNU/Linux (Testing) and play TF2 and CS:S from time to time. I even
picked up CS:GO during one of their mega sales for five bucks or so in the
hope that they eventually port it over to Linux.

~~~
SwellJoe
I'm running it on Fedora 20. Haven't tried any of the really complicated games
yet, but just bought some new ones during the sale, so will know soon what's
up.

As a data point: I wouldn't have bought anything during the sale, had they not
had so many games that work with Linux. I reboot into Windows so rarely that
it seems like an ordeal to do just for a game. Likewise, I'm considering
canceling my Netflix account because I haven't used it in two or three
months...don't want to reboot, and Amazon Prime videos work fine under Linux.

~~~
shrikant
Netflix runs swimmingly well on my Ubuntu setup using the Pipelight plugin in
Firefox. I haven't touched my Windows VM in forever!

~~~
SwellJoe
Cool. That's relatively new. Last time I did research on the subject, you had
to run a browser under Wine, and it was just too much trouble for me to go to
the trouble to do it. Still seems a little complicated, requiring Wine, and a
Silverlight install, but I guess it's an improvement. And, there _are_ a bunch
of things I want to watch eventually that aren't on Amazon for free.

~~~
YokoZar
The magic is that pipelight is actually still powered by Wine, we've just
automated some of the more annoying steps through the use of packages.
Pipelight even embeds its own custom version of Wine so you don't have to mess
with any of that either.

------
sontek
This percentage is _huge_ since its fairly new and not all games are ported
yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a
windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user
base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to
them yet.

~~~
er35826
This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most
gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of
various flavors.

For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start
dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with
programming and hacking.

~~~
jaredmcateer
For me, even then, I didn't dual boot, for a long time I was happy programming
in Windows and Linux was but a curiosity until I started working at iStock and
one of the technical leads convinced me to give Vim a 2 week challenge where I
immersed myself in it. Since then programming with linux as my IDE and Vim as
my editor has ruined Windows for me, only thing I use it for now is XMBC +
Netflix and Gaming.

I bought a dedicated laptop for programming. I have a dedicated box for gaming
and one for media. With steam and pipelight it's the beginning of the end for
my windows machines. I figure it's going to be gaming, as ever, that will keep
the life support on my windows machine going, but it will be relegated to
living in the utility room with my htpc if/when the Steam Machine streaming is
proven.

------
munro
This is great! To me it's surprisingly high. I think this will be a slow
process, because spending a day to backup & reinstall your OS is not a fun
process. When I have time to game, I just want to turn my computer on and
start gaming. I support gaming on Linux, and honestly even I've been too lazy
to setup Linux on my gaming machine.

I think the shift will happen as people upgrade their computers, or have to
reinstall their OS because of malware. I wonder what percentage of these
gamers are using a pirated version of Windows, because my anecdotal experience
is that anyone who's built a computer has pirated a copy of Windows. When
building a computer on a budget, spending an extra $100 on your video card is
more ideal than on the OS. So going legitimate and free would be a very
attractive option for gamers.

~~~
abrahamsen
Thanks, that was my initial reaction as well. I'd have expected it to be a few
enthusiasts, maybe something like 50.000 worldwide. 1.85 % of the Steam user
base is more than a million players!

------
gum_ina_package
I think the big story here is that ~4% of Steam users run Vista. The year of
the Linux desktop is very, very, very far away.

~~~
crdoconnor
The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware
manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers
to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty).

It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity,
however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for
some years. It's all market + legal now.

~~~
Joeri
Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to
sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows.
Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor
because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible
exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome and is
therefore cheaper / lighter is something people see the point of.

Besides, linux as mass market OS has already happened, it's called android.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to
sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

Not exactly how I remember it. They sold like wildfire initially when linux
was first put on it. Then MS started giving away windows licenses because they
freaked out over linux adoption overtaking them.

Somehow them and intel managed to prevent all the hardware manufacturers from
improving their specs (each year they got progressively worse).

Something very fishy went on with that market.

~~~
gcr
(BTW, congrats on having a post ID of exactly 7000000!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7000000)
)

------
velodrome
Gaming on Linux still has a long way to go:

1) The drivers are still crappy. It's getting better but it still needs a lot
of work. To simply manage multiple screens or to change resolution requires a
restart! Nvidia is still better than AMD drivers.

2) Many games just get the Linux ports to a "working" condition and leave it
at that. The games are really buggy. Valve games are top notch and deserve a
lot of credit for creating a good experience. Thank you Valve.

3) Ubuntu needs to create a stable platform people can build on. Getting
people to use LTS is good but it is still buggy (I have a lot of issues with
Unity). Also, LTS software gets stale really quickly - there needs to be a
solution for this (without PPAs).

~~~
forktheif
The open source drivers for my ATI card are pretty good. Performance isn't
spectacular but it's acceptable, and I've not run into any serious bugs for
years, and I have no trouble changing resolution at all.

~~~
Maakuth
Is there any kind of hardware acceleration for 3D graphics? If no, then those
drivers are pretty much useless for gaming.

~~~
codygman
There is hardware acceleration for the open source fglrx (radeon) drivers,
nouveau (oss for nvidia), and closed source nvidia drivers.

~~~
velodrome
For me, the open source radeon drivers do not work at all. I am on an AMD 7790
on Ubuntu 13.10. Is the hardware not supported yet?

Is the AMD open source driver better than the closed source one?

~~~
wtallis
Support for the Radeon 7000 series in the open source driver arrived pretty
slow. You should check to see what version of the driver is included with your
distribution, as it could easily predate the 3d acceleration support.

For older hardware, the open source driver is getting competitive in terms of
performance, and of course has the usual benefits of open source drivers.

------
Crito
For what definition of "users" and "run"?

I signed up for Steam and installed it on linux, downloaded TF2 only to find
that it would not work with Wheezy/my integrated Intel GPU _(I didn 't
investigate beyond some "you don't support GLX_WHATEVER message, it could have
been either)_, then deleted the installation and haven't done anything with it
since.

I presumably am not counted in this statistic since I did not do that within
the past month, but I wonder how many other people like that are.

~~~
jordonwii
I had the same issue. If I recall correctly, there is a relatively simple
solution on the Ubuntu forums somewhere.

~~~
codygman
The solution isn't so simple on wheezy if you want to keep your install sane.
AKA don't install debs from ubuntu/other repos.

When I last checked, what was necessary is backporting a new verison of
libgl1-mesa and possibly other things. Haven't had time to see if that fixes
it yet though.

~~~
recursive
Oh well, maybe 2015 will be the year of linux on the desktop.

~~~
jebblue
For me and my wife and me for work it was 2007.

------
yeukhon
Mac users are still very low. I am a Mac user and I play games on my laptop. I
hope they can release more games for the Mac platform as well. Although BF4 is
not on Steam platform, it'd be nice to have a Mac version.

~~~
codygman
Linux -> Mac ports and vice versa will be much easier than Windows -> Mac
ports so you might be in luck!

~~~
yeukhon
I wonder how much work they have to do to support retina.

~~~
hrkristian
Retina is just Apple's marketing term for high-density display, and is
something that's been common in PC gaming for a decade.

Before the age of LCD my monitor had a whopping 1920x1440 res, many gamers opt
into similarly high (16:9) resolutions now.

The higher pixel density isn't necessarily a plus, though. I find 1080p does
just fine for everything and want my gpu to be able to render with AA,
anisotropic filtering (check out Skyrim with and without AF), and other
details. There is a constant tradeoffs in an industry where software demands
much more than hardware can supply.

~~~
yeukhon
Thanks. I know a couple desktop tools have issues with retina (or high-density
resolution as you said) support that's why I asked. It seems like there might
be addition code have to be added.

------
mbubb
My boys have used the Steam client on Bodhi Linux for the past 6 months or so
- it probably registers as Ubuntu. Half Life, HL2, Portal, Team Fortress all
work very well. They also play a lot of Minecraft on those computers (not on
Steam obviously).

They make very serviceable gaming computers.

------
wldlyinaccurate
I took the survey while I was playing DotA2 on Ubuntu, but since taking the
survey I no longer use Steam on Linux. The main reasons are that only 4/50
games in my library are available on Linux, and because graphics performance
still sucks (Intel HD4400).

I'll try it out again whenever a new game is available or when there's a
graphics driver update, but at the moment I'd much rather reboot into Windows
than pull my hair out over how bad Linux is for gaming.

------
codygman
I use steam on linux without problems on xubuntu. The problem is my main OS is
debian wheezy and mesa is too old. That means I would have to backport libgl1
(iirc) and not fail (like the past 3 times).

I reboot into Xubuntu when I want to game though, and don't have any problems.
Well except when I hook up to an external monitor... but I have a hacky xrandr
script for that. I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game
on linux.

~~~
jebblue
>> I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game on linux.

You mean Debian Linux which is what you're running. Ubuntu runs Steam just
fine even with the Unity interface. I can Alt+Enter to go back to the Desktop
and do stuff then get back into a game.

~~~
codygman
No, I mean it's not there for Xubuntu/Ubuntu either. I have the same external
monitor problem with both. The graphics drivers however have worked fine for
me. However, my girlfriend who is running xubuntu with fglrx (radeon card) has
slight issues with textures staying on screen.

------
Glyptodon
I use steam on Linux extensively with a lot of more 'Indie' type games like
Awesomenauts, Anomaly 1/2 and Guns of Icarus. Mostly no problems.

The thing that's always surprised me about Steam for Linux is how close the
numbers are to those for Mac users.

------
drdaeman
I wonder what percent of Steam games run on GNU/Linux. From my experience this
is currently a very small value, as most of the games I want/wanted to play
are/were not available.

Let's check my library... 82 titles total (not counting the junk/demo/beta
entries), 18 of them have declared GNU/Linux support, that's 21%. Way more
than I expected (before I started counting I thought it would be somewhere
between 5 and 10%), but still almost none of the games I'd play (new ones I
haven't played yet or old ones with personally high replay value).

So, it's still WINE and/or dual-boot for gaming. No changes here.

------
philliphaydon
What's more interesting to me is 20% of the users are on Windows 8/8.1

------
Sandman
Keep in mind that this only shows how many Linux users run native steam
clients. A lot of us also run Steam through Wine so that we can play Windows-
only games. It's a buggy experience, but what can you do...

------
Bjuukia
Part of the reason I use linux is that I want control. I like games too, but
Steam doesn't give me control. I would prefer Steam didn't manage my games, I
want everything separate from each other. Until I can do that, I won't use
Steam (I've tried)

It wouldn't surprise me if there's a fundamental difference in thinking
between linux vs other users. It's great that Steam's been providing Linux
games, but that's just not enough for me.

------
frozenport
Bigger Question: Do linux folk spend money on software?

~~~
jibsen
I seem to remember some statistics showing Linux users generally donating more
for Humble Bundles than Windows and Mac users.

That doesn't mean they are more inclined to buy Steam games of course, but it
does seem to indicate they do not mind spending money on games.

------
ksk
Don't want to rain on the parade but - What is the error margin of this
poll/survey? A margin of error of +/-2% would be very good for most polls.

There is definitely a need for a 'third' choice when it comes to desktop
gaming platforms, hopefully Linux can take off sometime in the future.

~~~
ergo14
Thats data that is automaticly gathered by steam - it's not a "survey" where
you can pick OS.

~~~
ksk
Is it opt-in or opt-out?

Edit: Nvm found my answer

[http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey)

Its optional. Also other people have mentioned that steam randomly chooses
users to take part in the survey and then asks them if they want to
participate.

------
gyosko
I would too if AMD made decent graphic drivers for Linux!

~~~
SwellJoe
I've found they've gotten pretty good. I have a 7970 and a couple of R290
GPUs, as well as whatever ATI GPU is in my laptop (a 6000 series Mobility
GPU), they all seem to work fine under Linux. Admittedly, I don't do a lot of
gaming, though I just bought a few new games in the winter sale, since they've
added so many Linux games (and some of them are freakin' awesome games).

I haven't actually tried any of the really tough games, like Half Life or
whatever yet...but, I'm actually super excited about playing Left 4 Dead 2 on
Linux on one of the new GPUs. So, we'll see soon enough.

~~~
gyosko
I have a ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650(not very powerful and quite old now) and
I can play Dota 2,Left4Dead and other games on windows with no problem at
all,while on Linux(Ubuntu 13.10) I can barely open the games.

------
Nursie
I must actually install native linux steam at some point, think I'm still
running under wine!

