Monday, June 2nd 2025
Steam Survey: Linux Hits 2.69% Gamer Market Share in May
Valve released its latest May 2025 Steam Survey results, and Linux gaming is on the rise. According to Valve, the usage of Linux kernel-based operating systems among Steam users increased by 0.42% to reach 2.69%, marking one of the highest levels the platform has seen. Windows remains the dominant operating system, at 95.45%, with macOS holding 1.85%. However, Linux's growth is significant for open-source enthusiasts. Given the continued expansion of Steam's user base, the absolute number of Linux gamers is likely at an all-time high now, with hopes of continued growth. The infamous year of Linux on the desktop is actually this year's Linux on handheld. In May 2023, Linux accounted for just 1.47 percent of Steam users, rising to 2.32 percent in May 2024 before this latest increase.
This upward trend has been driven in large part by Valve's SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and powers the popular Steam Deck handheld console. As more people adopt the Steam Deck and install SteamOS on desktop machines, the Linux gaming community on Steam continues to grow steadily. SteamOS is also expanding to more handheld devices, and more companies are launching and experimenting with handhelds using other Linux distributions. Improvements at the kernel level and enhanced driver support from AMD and Intel have also contributed to this surge. Besides more driver optimization, the Wine-based compatibility layer, Proton, has undergone numerous updates to enhance performance and stability, often achieving comparability with and sometimes outperforming Windows.
Sources:
Steam Survey, via Phoronix
This upward trend has been driven in large part by Valve's SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and powers the popular Steam Deck handheld console. As more people adopt the Steam Deck and install SteamOS on desktop machines, the Linux gaming community on Steam continues to grow steadily. SteamOS is also expanding to more handheld devices, and more companies are launching and experimenting with handhelds using other Linux distributions. Improvements at the kernel level and enhanced driver support from AMD and Intel have also contributed to this surge. Besides more driver optimization, the Wine-based compatibility layer, Proton, has undergone numerous updates to enhance performance and stability, often achieving comparability with and sometimes outperforming Windows.
36 Comments on Steam Survey: Linux Hits 2.69% Gamer Market Share in May
I know I'm not exactly a casual user, but I moved all my non gaming systems to Linux years ago when I got fed up with Microsoft's dumb restrictions and requirements for "old" systems that suddenly couldn't use Windows 11 anymore without using bunch of time wasting hacks that keep changing every few months. I just slapped Linux on those laptops and they just work. And I've grown to like GNOME to a point I think it looks better than Windows 11. It's clean and sleek and reminds me of MacOS with its dock and consistent aesthetics without Apple's BS. I'm not quite ready yet to go with that for gaming, but you never know if Microsoft pushes me in that direction with more dumb restrictions and requirements...
Still keeping my Windows in Dual Boot because of content creation, which the VA-API is also much more slower than on Windows.
As for my parents that only use the PC for some online bills and financial stuff and a text here and there, Windows 10 was getting to the end of the road and couldn't upgrade to W11 (Pentium G 3000 series), I have migrated them to Linux Mint and they had no trouble to adapt to it, despite they are VERY VERY bad with PCs, they have been using it for more than 1 year now without any issue far.
It's a
Download latest beta branch of Ubuntu, download steam, download Limbo a Linux verified game, game launches, game won't run right and is stuck at 5 fps...
uninstall Linux, that was my most recent experience, all other games worked fine, but yeah, I dunno it just is frustrating
I have a silly game that I like that its not supposed to run and with some version of Proton-GE it did, but not perfectly.
Recently I got once the Steam survey on my laptop, first time in 43 years. That laptop I had only used to download games for my desktop. I never played on my laptop.
Desktop -> nope. Nope many years with the linux kernel and gnu userspace where i spend hours playing free space fight games - open world games. Nope on my desktop when i played the last of us part 1.I have that experience with windows 11 pro. Games are not optimised or made for the linux kernel and the gnu userspace. Fact.
I highly doubt I will reinstall any windows operating system here after these two windows 11 pro installation. Too much simple things do not work out of the box. updates are broken. too timeconsuming to keep windows installed.
linux need thinking and patience. I had data corruption which caused slowdown and read only file system because i added new file system option for the file system called btrfs. Although wikipedia claims that file system is very old, autodefrag and asynchronous trim feature caused issues. It's not something for the masses. It needs knowledge and how to deal with it.
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I refused those surveys. So data is just nonsense. If you ever get that dialog for the survey
store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
Also, on that page, doing ctrl+f "9070" provides zero results.Sorry, missed that.
But on the same boat, I have experienced exactly that on windows.
One big sample that happened recently (to me) is Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 1
Another one that I can never finish in Windows, due to crashes on several spots, including a showstopper at the last boss: Strider.
The point is, there are buggy games on all platforms.
That doesnt mean its ok though.
Links provided as proof, since everything in here needs to be doubted.
steamcommunity.com/app/2183900/discussions/0/4763207778567526486/
steamcommunity.com/app/235210/discussions/0/366298942097912324/
[URL='https://www.techpowerup.com/337572/steam-survey-linux-hits-2-69-gamer-market-share-in-may']Linux Hits 2.69% Gamer Market Share in May[/URL]
not bad so onlyto go
store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux
Expand the "Video Card Description (Linux)" option and you should be able to search for the 9070.
And its weird that it doesnt show at all when looking at the all platforms or Windows only.
I really doubt that almost everyone that got a RDNA4 gpu went Linux.
As an example, the 1070ti has 0.16% share in Linux, vs 0.29% in Windows. The RX 6800 has a 1.58% share in Linux vs 0.20% in Windows.
So Linux users are way more skewed towards AMD in general.
Also we can infer that a product has to have at least 0.15% share so it can leave the "Others" status. Given that the 5060ti has just appeared on the Windows list this month at 0.21%, and is not on the Linux list, I assume it may take another month or two for the 9070 to appear in the Windows side.
I now wonder why listing all GPUs by all OS doesnt show them at all, unless the survey groups GPUs as "Other" after a very low threshold.
Anyways, the joke is on us, since Valve knows exactly how many people are on Steam and what hardware they have, since its a basic polling that the Steam client does.
They can simply post that number and be done with.
I bought a refurbished notebook with ryzen 4650 up pro a few months ago., Why do i get taht valve data mining dialog i windws 11 pro? Although I only use it to download games. I never played a single minute on that laptop.
I also got the dialog on my desktop platform, but I did not play that month. Invalid DATA.
People are happy to see some data, that's it. In my point of view the data is not valid.
Not all installed instances were taken in my point of view which really played on that platform.
Taking the wrong data, samples, data points, make the hole statistics nonsense
-- i doubt valve knows it. I usually refuse any data mining. Else i would still use or windows 95 version Q = w11 pro for my daily usage and daily work.