1.85% of Steam users run Linux

http://www.itsmdaily.com/2014/01/01/1-85-steam-users-run-linux/

by ineov • 13 years ago

141 119 13 years ago

Crito2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

codygman11• 13 years ago

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.

jebblue7• 13 years ago

Gamers tend to use dedicated cards.

Crito2• 13 years ago

Aye, I understand that and wasn't expecting much.

FWIW: I just decided to give it another shot and Half-Life seems to work great, surprisingly at 2560x1700.

Danieru• 13 years ago

Every month Steam asks a random subset of Steam users a hardware survey.

OS choice is a new aspect of the survey. The survey's original intention was to find things like 64bit penetration, number of cores, monitor resolution, internet connection type, and power of GPU. Most of it is automated.

We don't know Valve's exact methodology. I would hope they take a random sample of users who logged in the prior month and send them the survey. If you get selected a window will popup and ask you for permission to run the survey. If you say yes then it gathers your system data. They should only count you as a linux user if you were on linux when you took the survey.

This still leaves room for Valve to cheat in the selection process but otherwise the survey should be meaningful.

munro• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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!

amscanne2• 13 years ago

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!

dave809• 13 years ago

what is your video card?

jebblue7• 13 years ago

I've had a 99.9% success rate with all that I've tried. That's over a dozen popular games so far.

recursive2• 13 years ago

In order to get a number like 99.9%, you'd have to have over ~700 games, even with optimistic rounding. "Over dozens" calls this into question.

codygman11• 13 years ago

Using Xubuntu (and xmonad (though they aren't taking full advantage of wm hints)) I haven't had any problems with games. I have a laptop with a radeon driver as well as a laptop with an nvidia driver.

eks• 13 years ago

It runs great here. But I have basically just Ubuntu vanilla and a NVidia card.

I would expect games wouldn't run as easily on a different distro or on a heavily customized Ubuntu.

The Linux ecosystem is HUGE. I suppose that's why they are making SteamOS, so they can focus on one smaller part of this large landscape.

codygman11• 13 years ago

I use xubuntu with xmonad window manager and it works fine with a tweak (same tweak for fullscreen flash videos though).

lwhalen• 13 years ago

I run Steam on my Series 9. I basically installed it just to run Monaco (OT - AWESOME game!) and Team Fortress 2. Both run just fine for me. I do wish X-Com was available under Linux though.

hhm• 13 years ago

Steam on Linux works perfectly to me. I have also used Steam with Wine for games that won't otherwise work on Linux. The experience with Steam + Wine is uneven; some games works perfectly and others don't; but Steam on Linux works fine for me.

kybernetyk• 13 years ago

So I bought a couple. None worked

I had the same experience on Windows and OS X. I feel like playing russian roulette when buying games on steam. Some games run flawlessly and some won't even start.

I guess the problem lies rather with games themselves (short deadlines, product must ship before christmas, a gazillion of possible hardware configs, no time to test) than with steam.

i80and• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

donniezazen• 13 years ago

I really hate it when proprietary software developers list only dependency to be - "your system should be capable of running 32-bit apps." Why no just simply list the actual lib packages needed.

code_duck• 13 years ago

I installed steam for Linux a few days ago. Machine is a Core Duo, nvidia GeForce 610 running Ubuntu 13.10.

So far I've installed and played Half Life, Half Life 2, Amnesia and Don't Starve with zero problems.

greyfade• 13 years ago

Of the two hundred or so games I bought on humble bundles and so forth, I've tried a few dozen of the games I've bought (haven't had time to try them all), and with the exception of two Early Access games, they work just fine.

maaaats3• 13 years ago

The Humble Bundles I've bought are mostly indie games already ported to many platforms. Few of the AAA titles I have bought work on Linux.

amscanne2• 13 years ago

I'm replying to myself to provide a bit more context for those asking questions about the games I was trying.

I'm very capable of debugging library and video driver problems. In this case, it seemed to be actual game-internal issues from a recent update. The specific game was built on the Unity platform, and they seemed to have resolved the issues for Mac and Windows but not yet Linux. I'm not annoyed at Steam or the developer (it's reasonable that Linux issues aren't their priority if it's only a tiny portion of users).

My intent was not to say that Steam on Linux is generally broken, just to share my own mildly-amusing experience. :)

On a positive note -- after the initial frustration, I eventually bought Counterstrike and it worked great. I think it's amazing that Steam supports Linux at all, so I wasn't really upset when things didn't work perfectly. I was happy to risk throwing good money after bad, I'm sure I'll be able to play those other games some day.

Rampoina• 13 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that, I tried ~50 games and they all work. Out of curiosity what were those games?

gyosko2• 13 years ago

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

SwellJoe3• 13 years ago

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.

gyosko2• 13 years ago

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.

codygman11• 13 years ago

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.

jebblue7• 13 years ago

> 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.

codygman11• 13 years ago

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.

aspensmonster• 13 years ago

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.

SwellJoe3• 13 years ago

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.

sontek4• 13 years ago

I'm running it on Fedora 20 as well, I play DOTA2 and Left 4 Dead 2 on it. I don't play either of those very often but they both work well. If they ever port CS:Go to Linux I'll probably have to take a sabbatical from work.

shrikant• 13 years ago

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

droopyEyelids• 13 years ago

Try Metro: Last Light. I haven't been this into a game since the first half-life. Also, it's 1/3 off for the next 15 hrs.

gum_ina_package2• 13 years ago

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.

jebblue7• 13 years ago

For me and my wife and me at work it was 2007.

izolate• 13 years ago

By the time the year of the Linux desktop arrives, desktop computing will be a relic of the past. The year of linux computing however, is already upon us.

sontek4• 13 years ago

For me, year of the Linux desktop was 2003. Year of Linux desktop on my laptop (wifi and battery were an issue for awhile) was 2007.

For my wife, year of the Linux desktop was 2011.

gum_ina_package2• 13 years ago

You're right, and sometimes (when a kernel update is released for example), the Year of Linux desktop retoactively gets changed.

crdoconnor3• 13 years ago

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.

rplnt• 13 years ago

It's all market + legal now.

And investing in re-schooling people to the new system and applications (Office suite would be probably the most notable one).

macco• 13 years ago

It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however).

Disaggree. Unity is by far superior to the Windows Desktop. It's the most productive DE on a notebook I know (OS X included)

massysett• 13 years ago

Dell is preinstalling Ubuntu. So is Asus.

Joeri2• 13 years ago

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.

shangaslammi2• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what you are trying to imply. :)

Vista (at least after the first service pack) is a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (which also dual boots to Ubuntu) and I don't see any reason whatsoever to "upgrade" to W7 or W8.

codygman11• 13 years ago

Security vulnerabilities? Are they still supporting vista?

darklajid• 13 years ago

You didn't quite explain what you want to say here.

Questions that came to my mind when I read your comment:

- Is the number of Vista/Linux users declining or increasing?

- How long is Steam for Vista/Linux available?

- How many games are available for Vista/Linux?

My expectation is that Vista's falling, while Linux rises in that statistic.

I'd say the fact that Steam is 'new' for Linux and relatively restricted/obscure for now (Ubuntu centric) the percentage isn't too bad.

Given that a lot of games (mostly the oh-so-expensive so-called AAA titles in my experience) are still Windows only or Windows/OS X only, I find the number still quite interesting and not really disappointing.

sontek4• 13 years ago

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.

maaaats3• 13 years ago

But at the same time, it may be just a temporarily boost from all the Linux coverage. I myself tested it recently and abandoned it fast, and will not probably try again for a long time as long as almost none of my games are playable in Linux.

SeppoErviala• 13 years ago

I didn't use Steam since switching to Linux in 2008 until now that it is officially available. Some of that 1.85% are new (or returning) customers.

er35826• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

mh-• 13 years ago

1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux

no, 1.85% of the user base tried Steam on Linux. we don't know what portion of those adopted it as their primary platform to use Steam.

mbubb• 13 years ago

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.

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

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.

codygman11• 13 years ago

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

yeukhon3• 13 years ago

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

Glyptodon• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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.

velodrome4• 13 years ago

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).

forktheif2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

velodrome4• 13 years ago

The performance is acceptable. The problem is I have a weird flickering issue when I run Steam on a multi-monitor setup. The fix is to run a command like this:

xrandr --output DFP6 --auto --left-of DFP7 --output DFP6 --scale 1.0001x1.0001

I only had this issue with AMD (not Nvidia).

moomin• 13 years ago

You're lucky. I get the choice of Steam or a laptop that can sleep. (nVidia)

In many ways it's a good thing, I get more code dOne this way.

codygman11• 13 years ago

1. Changing resolutions requires a restart for you? Why in the world would that be? Do you use ubuntu? Do you have to save settings with the GUI and then restart?

For instance I run a shell script which does some xrandr commands to make my external desktop work on Xubuntu (same for debian).

2. Agreed

3. LTS means more stable and packages are more tested. Getting newer packages will mean testing less, meaning less stable packages.

I think I better solution is game developers using the newest stable version of dependencies on popular LTS's instead of using newer ones just because. Basically this requires communication between game devs and linux package maintainers for mesa/xorg/nvidia/fglrx.

velodrome4• 13 years ago

Yes, I use Ubuntu but I am considering moving to Debian or Suse.

To be fair, changing resolution does not always require a restart (but for my multi-monitor setup it often does). I can do most changes without a restart with Nvidia not AMD. Also, why should I change the resolution within the driver software...why not do it in the desktop like Windows or OSX.

I am really curious to know how Intel graphics drivers work on linux. Intel seems to be more linux friendly compared to AMD/Nvidia. Is the support a lot better?

stormbrew• 13 years ago

Intel drivers, lack of horsepower aside, are much better than either nvidia or amd at this point. You do not need to restart X to change resolutions or manage screens, it's just an xrandr command. It works very well.

That said, a lot of games on linux deal extremely poorly with multimon no matter what. They'll usually try to play over all screens with sometimes completely insane geometries.

noinsight2• 13 years ago

Intel drivers, lack of horsepower aside, are much better than either nvidia or amd at this point.

Sadly I have to disagree with you at this point. I used the Intel GPU on my i7 2600k (HD3000) since 2011 on Arch Linux and at some point about six months ago they stopped working properly. On a Displayport connector I didn't get video at all @ boot sometimes, other than by messing with xrandr and unplugging the cable the only solution was to try booting again.

That wasn't too horrible. What was horrible was the fact that OpenGL didn't work at all really. Every time I used anything that utilized OpenGL I would get "GPU hung, stuck in render ring blah blah" in my dmesg every minute or so and indeed the whole GPU and hence the screens would freeze completely for 5 seconds or so. The machine became unusable. No more GPU accelerated mplayer after that (vaapi or any of the opengl options). Google Maps with WebGL was especially hilarious, I only had to drag with the mouse a bit to make the GPU hang.

I tolerated it for a few driver versions but no improvement happened so I bought a passively cooled ATI HD7750 and use that with the open source drivers. KDE compositing doesn't work @ OpenGL 3.1 at all (even though it should based on the driver's specs) and with compositing enabled accelerated video crashes my Xorg so I had to start using Openbox but at least the screen doesn't freeze for 5 seconds at a time all the time.

Really disappointed with Intel, the drivers were extremely solid in the past.

frozenport• 13 years ago

Bigger Question: Do linux folk spend money on software?

jibsen• 13 years ago

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.

Nursie• 13 years ago

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

philliphaydon• 13 years ago

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

sandGorgon• 13 years ago

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... [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_bro...

Sandman• 13 years ago

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...

ksk2• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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

ksk2• 13 years ago

Is it opt-in or opt-out?

Edit: Nvm found my answer

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.

wldlyinaccurate2• 13 years ago

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.

Bjuukia• 13 years ago

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.

1.85% of Steam users run Linux

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