I've probably said this a bunch of times already, but based on my past experience, any analysis built on month-to-month changes in the Steam Hardware Survey should be taken with a very large grain of salt, if not considered outright useless for any serious conclusions.
The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers." If you actually think about what that implies, it raises more questions than answers. A 31.85% monthly drop is obviously not organic, so yes, it makes sense to call it a "correction." But then why was the previous month's data so far off in the first place? Is there something fundamentally flawed in the survey methodology, like sampling bias, non-uniform distribution, regional skew, or something else?
And if this kind of correction happens this month, what's stopping it from happening in previous months? The reality is: it does happen all the time. You can usually spot at least one clearly unrealistic data point in almost every release.
At that point, it's hard to argue there's any real value in trying to analyze these results in a rigorous way.
Even if it wasn't for corrections, one has to look at the longer trends and not just single months.
Loads of people switch to Linux but I do wonder how many are still there a year later? I say this as someone that been a Linux daily runner since about 2010.
This seemingly is a common problem with the Steam Hardware Report, with Chinese users being erroneously represented. It constantly gets fixed, although takes a bit. It could be the hardware surveys are sent out at a different time compared to the rest of the world, then combined in the following month.
This is proven by "Ended 2025 at around a 3.5% marketshare, dipped a bit in January, and fell to 2.23% in February."
Linux was already stable enough 10 years ago as daily driver, i used Arch.
everything worked just fine, i remember only having issue with graphic drivers and glitches
I never really wanted anything more from it but when i moved to Mac, i saw how it prevents me from opening apps i downloaded from trusted site and every now and then i need to set xattr to open the files, and go through bunch of lockdowns.
Now freecad has improved so much, with all AI coding and all opensource will improve DRASTICALLY and very fast.
using AI which stole everyone's code to develop OpenSource is morally right thing to do vs using it at private companies. It will attract more devs.
I mean you make good points and all, but on the other hand I really want this to be the year of the Linux desktop, so I'm gonna go with the other interpretation anyway!
to give you a single data point, I've finally committed to linux on my desktop machine at home (I posted in another comment on this thread regarding my sim setup, thats another issue), but on the desktop machine, I installed steam, proton, downloaded a few games from my library, and they just worked on install, no stuffing around at all, no searching the web for fixes to get it going. It's probably been 6 years since I tried it, and last time I tried pretty much every game needed _something_) to be done to get it working. The level of technical knowledge required to get it going now is minimal, so maybe 2026 is the year of linux
the one caveat was, ubuntu 24.04 LTS still didn't recognise my xbox wireless controller out of the box, and I needed to get xone and compile it and install the driver, a minor inconvenience, but something that would be beyond one of my daughtrs or wife. I've since moved back to debian though but already armed with that knowledge so it wasn't any kind of surprise.
next step will be to migrate my work machine, but that one is more difficult because the primary dev is in Delphi, so it'll probably be a case of linux on the hardware, and virtualbox running a win10 VM to do compilations, the other parts of the job are basically all o/s independent python dev, so no problem there.. although I will miss toad for oracle.
There is value in the gaming specific distros since they already include all the stuff like controller drivers. I installed Bazzite on my desktop which I have plugged in to the TV and it's been every bit as seamless as the steamdeck. It boots up direct in to steam big picture mode and I can do everything with my xbox controller.
Bazzite is an immutible os which is absolutely the future of linux. Your install will never break on updates since rather than a normal update migration process, it simply boots the next version of the OS image, which if it doesn't work will just revert back to the old image where you can wait for the bug to be fixed to update again.
Yeah I think for the not-so-tech-savvy gamer, there are better distros than Ubuntu. Ubuntu(and Debian) tend to lag behind the cutting edge a bit too. For such users I'd probably recommend fedora (or one of it's variants) or just straight up steamOS
As a Fedora user, I would actually recommend Ubuntu for gamers new to Linux, just because companies that offer Linux builds tend to only support Ubuntu. It's a bit more work comparatively to get to smooth sailing on Fedora. I think that work is worth it, of course, but new users might beg to differ.
I tried cachy, but I decided I hate the kde plasma environment, I should have chosen some other window manager but wanted to try the recommended one
there is also something to be said, negatively, for the number of distros now, cambrian explosion since the good old days of slack, deb, redhat, suse lol
I honestly believe one of the main, highly supported Distros like:
Debian, Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Nix, etc are all better choices than Catchy, Manjaro, Bazzite or whatever else niche distro exists.
I commonly find myself running into weird issues that I would of never run into otherwise. Bazzite for example by default, opens Steam on boot. This caused my games drives to not be mapped in Steam. (I assume Steam somehow booted before my drives were properly mapped) I helped my friend for hours troubleshooting his fstab config, rebooting, etc, but then realized it was just a default that he never set.
He quit Linux because of this (and some other minor gripes) and I don't think the gaming distros do much to properly help.
Long time Linux user, but I got lazy into the Windows ecosystem for too many years. My son convinced me to move over and I haven't looked back. I haven't found a game that hasn't run, the worst I have to do is change Proton version. Ubuntu was good, but Nobara is amazing (ndivia 5000 series drivers out of the box).
A few weeks ago, I installed linux (Nobara, if you're curious) on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console. I have absolutely no regret. I did it initially because apparently playing games on a shared screen is better for my kid. But I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly Windows only games run on Linux. The whole experience has been great, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have an nvidia gpu as well, which apparently does not work very well on Linux. For me, on Nobara, it's been working flawlessly.
The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route.
I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.
Keyboard & mouse user here. To lessen the pain, I moved to gyro-based gaming. I think 8bitdo has those. I specifically use the Switch joycons. I recommend you just get yourself a good BT dongle.
When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the tracking and noise (like news articles)
When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use.
Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu.
My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)
They already crossed your line with 11, and you're still using it despite Win10 or Ubuntu also being an option. Are you really going to switch when 12 comes out, or is something holding you back?
On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there.
On all of my machines bar one, windows is completely gone. I have a simrig, currently running win10, but the hardware there, simucube base, simucube pedals, require some drivers I don't believe exist under linux, and/or don't work properly, and then there is iracing with it's easy anti cheat usage, from my understanding I'm screwed there as well. So it'll live on Windows 10 until the day iRacing stops supporting windows 10, or start supporting linux.
after having written that, I wonder if the simucube tools will just work under linux anyways, the UI is all written in QT, maybe simucube has/is developing linux drivers, given they're finland based :) .. I'll need to test it out
Is your name a reference to the Blizzard game? If so, I worked on that :)
You're not wrong, but tbh I'd move upstream to Debian. I use Termux on my phone (Z Fold) with Debian and XFCE, and have been extremely pleased with the performance. Combined with a folding keyboard and some AirNeo's, it's become a fantastic micro-development system that fits in a hand bag.
Not that I don't like Arch, it has a very few (subtle!) things that Ubuntu has solved recently, like eGPU hotplugging
> Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base
When was that? I don't disagree that it appears to be the case (especially with replacing coreutils/sudo/etc and the... varied approach to .deb vs snaps) but I'm not aware of them saying it explicitly in those terms?
I was waiting for the steam machine and grew impatient. I instead built a PC to go behind our family room TV. I gave bazzite a chance before committing to a copy of Windows. I'm glad I did. It runs perfectly. Zero hassle, no chasing down drivers. The only thing to be aware of is that a handful of games are not compatible, generally due to their anti-cheat software (e.g. marathon won't run, but arc raiders does.)
Bazzite is incredible, I've been running it on my gaming PC for about two years now. Games just work these days, and the updates are silent so I never need to think about them.
After installation, I haven't even used a mouse and keyboard with Bazzite. Everything is controller accessible. It just feels like a console like "just works" experience.
I was keeping a Windows install around solely to play Fortnite with my kids but they've finally found other games.
Rocket League performance on Linux used to be the other big reason but about 4 months ago I fired it up and found it ran smoother (the random stutters I have suffered through on Windows are not there on Linux).
Now that those two are no longer relevant I can finally reclaim that wasted SSD storage.
The top distro is Arch - implying that the Steam Deck userbase is moving the needle.
Linus has said on a few occasions that the main thing holding back user adoption for desktop is a single distro with a clear focus. What Android did for mobile.
It's clear that SteamOS could be "that guy" if Valve wants it to be.
Can Linus just bless a particular desktop Linux distro? So when someone says "I'm switching to Linux," it means that one. Doesn't matter a ton how packages etc work, I'm sure he'd pick something reasonable.
Whilst I tend to agree, I also don't recommend just pasting every command from ChatGPT into your machine without having some understanding/validating process.
Linux’s ecosystem has also improved significantly over the past two years, especially in China. Due to the influence of “Xinchuang” (that is, domestically produced Linux rebranded under another shell), many Chinese desktop applications have been reworked in the past couple of years, switching from Windows-specific tech stacks to cross-platform ones—mostly Electron, basically browser wrappers—and now support the Linux platform. The commonly used software is basically all there.
In addition, the development of LLMs has greatly lowered the barrier to using the Linux command line. Problems that used to take a full day to solve can now be handled easily by anyone who can write a prompt—just ask, copy, and paste. This has even made Windows’ command line unfriendly by comparison, despite its own major improvements in recent years, turning it into a significant drawback.
SteamDeck should be excluded from “Linux use” imho. Especially when it comes to click bait headlines.
Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!
I've probably said this a bunch of times already, but based on my past experience, any analysis built on month-to-month changes in the Steam Hardware Survey should be taken with a very large grain of salt, if not considered outright useless for any serious conclusions.
The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers." If you actually think about what that implies, it raises more questions than answers. A 31.85% monthly drop is obviously not organic, so yes, it makes sense to call it a "correction." But then why was the previous month's data so far off in the first place? Is there something fundamentally flawed in the survey methodology, like sampling bias, non-uniform distribution, regional skew, or something else?
And if this kind of correction happens this month, what's stopping it from happening in previous months? The reality is: it does happen all the time. You can usually spot at least one clearly unrealistic data point in almost every release.
At that point, it's hard to argue there's any real value in trying to analyze these results in a rigorous way.
Even if it wasn't for corrections, one has to look at the longer trends and not just single months.
Loads of people switch to Linux but I do wonder how many are still there a year later? I say this as someone that been a Linux daily runner since about 2010.
The key word in the article is "again"
'Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers.'
This seemingly is a common problem with the Steam Hardware Report, with Chinese users being erroneously represented. It constantly gets fixed, although takes a bit. It could be the hardware surveys are sent out at a different time compared to the rest of the world, then combined in the following month.
This is proven by "Ended 2025 at around a 3.5% marketshare, dipped a bit in January, and fell to 2.23% in February."
This time it's different.
Linux was already stable enough 10 years ago as daily driver, i used Arch.
everything worked just fine, i remember only having issue with graphic drivers and glitches
I never really wanted anything more from it but when i moved to Mac, i saw how it prevents me from opening apps i downloaded from trusted site and every now and then i need to set xattr to open the files, and go through bunch of lockdowns.
Now freecad has improved so much, with all AI coding and all opensource will improve DRASTICALLY and very fast.
using AI which stole everyone's code to develop OpenSource is morally right thing to do vs using it at private companies. It will attract more devs.
I mean you make good points and all, but on the other hand I really want this to be the year of the Linux desktop, so I'm gonna go with the other interpretation anyway!
to give you a single data point, I've finally committed to linux on my desktop machine at home (I posted in another comment on this thread regarding my sim setup, thats another issue), but on the desktop machine, I installed steam, proton, downloaded a few games from my library, and they just worked on install, no stuffing around at all, no searching the web for fixes to get it going. It's probably been 6 years since I tried it, and last time I tried pretty much every game needed _something_) to be done to get it working. The level of technical knowledge required to get it going now is minimal, so maybe 2026 is the year of linux
the one caveat was, ubuntu 24.04 LTS still didn't recognise my xbox wireless controller out of the box, and I needed to get xone and compile it and install the driver, a minor inconvenience, but something that would be beyond one of my daughtrs or wife. I've since moved back to debian though but already armed with that knowledge so it wasn't any kind of surprise.
next step will be to migrate my work machine, but that one is more difficult because the primary dev is in Delphi, so it'll probably be a case of linux on the hardware, and virtualbox running a win10 VM to do compilations, the other parts of the job are basically all o/s independent python dev, so no problem there.. although I will miss toad for oracle.
There is value in the gaming specific distros since they already include all the stuff like controller drivers. I installed Bazzite on my desktop which I have plugged in to the TV and it's been every bit as seamless as the steamdeck. It boots up direct in to steam big picture mode and I can do everything with my xbox controller.
Bazzite is an immutible os which is absolutely the future of linux. Your install will never break on updates since rather than a normal update migration process, it simply boots the next version of the OS image, which if it doesn't work will just revert back to the old image where you can wait for the bug to be fixed to update again.
Yeah I think for the not-so-tech-savvy gamer, there are better distros than Ubuntu. Ubuntu(and Debian) tend to lag behind the cutting edge a bit too. For such users I'd probably recommend fedora (or one of it's variants) or just straight up steamOS
As a Fedora user, I would actually recommend Ubuntu for gamers new to Linux, just because companies that offer Linux builds tend to only support Ubuntu. It's a bit more work comparatively to get to smooth sailing on Fedora. I think that work is worth it, of course, but new users might beg to differ.
I tried cachy, but I decided I hate the kde plasma environment, I should have chosen some other window manager but wanted to try the recommended one
there is also something to be said, negatively, for the number of distros now, cambrian explosion since the good old days of slack, deb, redhat, suse lol
I honestly believe one of the main, highly supported Distros like:
Debian, Arch, Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Nix, etc are all better choices than Catchy, Manjaro, Bazzite or whatever else niche distro exists.
I commonly find myself running into weird issues that I would of never run into otherwise. Bazzite for example by default, opens Steam on boot. This caused my games drives to not be mapped in Steam. (I assume Steam somehow booted before my drives were properly mapped) I helped my friend for hours troubleshooting his fstab config, rebooting, etc, but then realized it was just a default that he never set.
He quit Linux because of this (and some other minor gripes) and I don't think the gaming distros do much to properly help.
Long time Linux user, but I got lazy into the Windows ecosystem for too many years. My son convinced me to move over and I haven't looked back. I haven't found a game that hasn't run, the worst I have to do is change Proton version. Ubuntu was good, but Nobara is amazing (ndivia 5000 series drivers out of the box).
A few weeks ago, I installed linux (Nobara, if you're curious) on my PC and hooked it up to the living room TV to use as a gaming console. I have absolutely no regret. I did it initially because apparently playing games on a shared screen is better for my kid. But I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly Windows only games run on Linux. The whole experience has been great, and I don't think I'll ever go back. I have an nvidia gpu as well, which apparently does not work very well on Linux. For me, on Nobara, it's been working flawlessly.
The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route.
I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.
Keyboard & mouse user here. To lessen the pain, I moved to gyro-based gaming. I think 8bitdo has those. I specifically use the Switch joycons. I recommend you just get yourself a good BT dongle.
I use an 8bitdo controller and they work very good in linux, I use the dongle instead of the bluetooh connection
NVIDIA driver progress has been massive over the past year, I wouldn’t consider it much less stable/supported than AMD cards.
The Steam Controller will be such a blessing when it comes out.
That's possibly the first time that "skyrocketed" and "5%" have been used together in one sentence.
When Windows 11 was force-installed on my main game development desktop, I was skeptical, but kept using it. I was annoyed at having to turn off all the tracking and noise (like news articles)
When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use.
Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu.
My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)
They already crossed your line with 11, and you're still using it despite Win10 or Ubuntu also being an option. Are you really going to switch when 12 comes out, or is something holding you back?
On my wife's laptop, I've uninstalled MS AI 3 times. I'm just about to lose my mind. I'd have already wiped the machine and moved it to mint but the data in her one drive, bookmarks, etc, I'm sure migrating her over won't be a totally seamless experience. I also have not tested battlenet under linux wine in a long time, and I expect some level of anti-cheat to give me hell there.
On all of my machines bar one, windows is completely gone. I have a simrig, currently running win10, but the hardware there, simucube base, simucube pedals, require some drivers I don't believe exist under linux, and/or don't work properly, and then there is iracing with it's easy anti cheat usage, from my understanding I'm screwed there as well. So it'll live on Windows 10 until the day iRacing stops supporting windows 10, or start supporting linux.
after having written that, I wonder if the simucube tools will just work under linux anyways, the UI is all written in QT, maybe simucube has/is developing linux drivers, given they're finland based :) .. I'll need to test it out
I will warn you, Ubuntu is basically dead now.
Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base, but the unvetted packages compiled and uploaded by random people on Snap.
Please switch to Linux, but find a distro that actually wants you as a user.
As somebody who has been around linux almost for as long as it exists, i must say that is a very strong statement.
In real life: systemd IS useful, Wayland is becoming (has become?) the default, ubuntu is the most popular desktop distro family.
Is your name a reference to the Blizzard game? If so, I worked on that :)
You're not wrong, but tbh I'd move upstream to Debian. I use Termux on my phone (Z Fold) with Debian and XFCE, and have been extremely pleased with the performance. Combined with a folding keyboard and some AirNeo's, it's become a fantastic micro-development system that fits in a hand bag.
Not that I don't like Arch, it has a very few (subtle!) things that Ubuntu has solved recently, like eGPU hotplugging
> Canonical announced that they are no longer using Debian as a base
When was that? I don't disagree that it appears to be the case (especially with replacing coreutils/sudo/etc and the... varied approach to .deb vs snaps) but I'm not aware of them saying it explicitly in those terms?
I was waiting for the steam machine and grew impatient. I instead built a PC to go behind our family room TV. I gave bazzite a chance before committing to a copy of Windows. I'm glad I did. It runs perfectly. Zero hassle, no chasing down drivers. The only thing to be aware of is that a handful of games are not compatible, generally due to their anti-cheat software (e.g. marathon won't run, but arc raiders does.)
Bazzite is incredible, I've been running it on my gaming PC for about two years now. Games just work these days, and the updates are silent so I never need to think about them.
After installation, I haven't even used a mouse and keyboard with Bazzite. Everything is controller accessible. It just feels like a console like "just works" experience.
It’s great. Moving on from Windows has been like leaving an abusive relationship.
I was keeping a Windows install around solely to play Fortnite with my kids but they've finally found other games.
Rocket League performance on Linux used to be the other big reason but about 4 months ago I fired it up and found it ran smoother (the random stutters I have suffered through on Windows are not there on Linux).
Now that those two are no longer relevant I can finally reclaim that wasted SSD storage.
2026 is the year of Steam Linux.
This means nothing. There is so much up and down based on the active Chinese user base. PHoronox making headlines out of thin air again
The top distro is Arch - implying that the Steam Deck userbase is moving the needle.
Linus has said on a few occasions that the main thing holding back user adoption for desktop is a single distro with a clear focus. What Android did for mobile.
It's clear that SteamOS could be "that guy" if Valve wants it to be.
Can Linus just bless a particular desktop Linux distro? So when someone says "I'm switching to Linux," it means that one. Doesn't matter a ton how packages etc work, I'm sure he'd pick something reasonable.
AI fixes Linux on the desktop. Whatever obscure issues you’re facing, you’re a quick prompt away from the solution.
Was not the case when I wanted to use a GameCube controller without 1000ms lag. Yeah that's a niche, but it works fine in Windows and even Mac.
Whilst I tend to agree, I also don't recommend just pasting every command from ChatGPT into your machine without having some understanding/validating process.
Even if this is largely due to a change in how PCs in China are being counted, it's still amazing to watch Linux usage continue to climb like this.
It's really the only opposing force to Microsoft's enshittification of Windows.
Linux’s ecosystem has also improved significantly over the past two years, especially in China. Due to the influence of “Xinchuang” (that is, domestically produced Linux rebranded under another shell), many Chinese desktop applications have been reworked in the past couple of years, switching from Windows-specific tech stacks to cross-platform ones—mostly Electron, basically browser wrappers—and now support the Linux platform. The commonly used software is basically all there.
In addition, the development of LLMs has greatly lowered the barrier to using the Linux command line. Problems that used to take a full day to solve can now be handled easily by anyone who can write a prompt—just ask, copy, and paste. This has even made Windows’ command line unfriendly by comparison, despite its own major improvements in recent years, turning it into a significant drawback.
SteamDeck should be excluded from “Linux use” imho. Especially when it comes to click bait headlines.
Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!
> Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s.
It's really not; SteamOS is just another GNU/Linux, and pretty close to vanilla Arch Linux for that matter.
> Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!
Proton works fine on other distros.
SteamOS is really a desktop linux. You can switch to "desktop mode" to see the "normal desktop" and you get a KDE where you can run whatever you want.
It's "just" immutable Arch that defaults to Steam's console mode interface.
SteamOS is just an immutable Arch, and all Steam Linux games use the Steam Linux container runtime or Proton.
Bazzite and a few others provide a similar console-style experience.
It will reach 10% in 2050 thereabouts, given current velocity, assuming current computing models are still relevant by then.
Well, in the overall kernel space there is nothing but Linux-based kernels right now.