It's finally happening! The year of Linux…the gaming portable PC. (Okay, that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.) According to Latest Steam Hardware ReviewLinux holds just over 3 percent of the market share of users who have Steam installed. It almost certainly benefited from Valve's own Steam Deck, which borrows from the Linux-based SteamOS portable operating system.
It's not as one-sided as you might think. “SteamOS Holo” is the most popular version of Linux among Steam users, accounting for 27.18 percent of Linux share. (At the time of writing this is the latest version of the system on Steam Decks and one other retail device – Lenovo Legion Go S. Downloads are also available for original ROG Ally.) This means that approximately 1 in every 125 Steam users access the service using the Steam Deck. This probably won't surprise you Bazsite, an open source alternative to SteamOS. which uses a lot of the same software as well as more desktop tools, comes in second.
But there's much more to it. Popular distributions such as Arch and Mint take up a significant portion of this Linux share, at 10.24 percent and a combined 9.21 percent, respectively. And nearly one in five Linux users fall into the “other” category, using distributions that have too few users to be charted. In short, only about a third of Linux Steam users use Steam Deck or an alternative that (probably) uses something close to SteamOS and (probably) primarily for gaming.
Overall, Linux gained 0.37 percent of total Steam users from September to October, which doesn't seem too significant… until you notice that the bundled versions of Windows lost 0.56 percent. Add to that the 0.2% gain from macOS, and Windows is providing a small but noticeable portion of its users to alternatives—and, crucially, Linux is getting them. Faster than Mac. It is worth noting here that Most PC games now run on Linuxeither natively or through a compatibility layer such as Valve's Proton.
These data are influenced by many factors. Apparently Windows 10 just lost full support and is now limited to only security updates after Microsoft has spent the last year I implore people to upgrade to Windows 11. And since Steam is still constantly gaining new users around the world, we can't say that. every who abandoned Windows, took a Mac, or a Steam Deck, or installed Linux.
But we can say that Linux is definitely gaining popularity, at least among PC gamers. Someone please sell me a gaming laptop with SteamOS preinstalled. It will make my day better.
