this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Steam On Linux Use Skyrocketed In March - More Than Double The macOS Gaming Marketshare (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 1 day ago by commander@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] Poopfeast420@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 day ago (3 children)

That 3% jump seems almost too big for me to believe. With the seemingly annual increase of Chinese users in February, which is then corrected in March (which we can see this time), I'd probably wait another month or two if more stats get adjusted or if Linux stays at over 5%.

[–] BreakerSwitch@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

iirc, the steam survey data isn't always well distributed, and so it isn't the most reliable. Sometimes most of the surveyed are in China and the swings are more relevant to usage there, and then when the next survey comes out the shift is more based on demographic than broad trends. That being said, we will been seeing consistent growth on linux usage across the board for months so I don't think this is a fluke

[–] Poopfeast420@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

Sure, but there are so many Steam users every month, that even if only 1% or 0.1% of people get the survey, that's still a ton of people (over 40M concurrent, estimated 130M+ users every month)

Also, have the Linux users increased by over 50% month-to-month? The jump from ~3% at the start of the year to over 5% is huge.

It's possible there was something wrong with the data before and the 3% wasn't accurate or there's something wrong now and the 5% is not correct. That's all I'm saying.

[–] Folstar@lemmus.org 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would be more suspicious of starting the year at 3.5% and dipping to 2.23% in Feb. If we ignore that oddity it makes for a less exciting headline, but jumping from 3.5% to 5.33% in the months after Microslop canned Win10 and slopped up Win11 tracks.

[–] Poopfeast420@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago

The drop last month was because Chinese users increased by 30% (which were removed or whatever this month).

So even if you're going to be pedantic and ignore the whole of February and just go from the January stats to March directly, 3.5% to 5.3% is a massive jump that doesn't make sense. Why suddenly this month? Why not last year when W10 support ended?

One possible explanation is that maybe the old 3% Linux base was wrong and now something has been accounted for or has been corrected, so in reality it has been around 5% for a while, which is now shown correctly. That's why I'm saying I'm gonna wait a bit to take these stats at face value.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Last month had Chinese New Year in it, and apparently China isn't big on Linux

[–] Poopfeast420@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, but it's not like it was at almost 5% in January.

As I wrote in another comment, if you ignore February completely, ~3% to ~5% in a month or two is gigantic.

I wouldn't be surprised if it drops back down again next month, but maybe it stays at 5% because the old data was faulty.

[–] Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you add a rough trendline since Win10 EoL then 5% is pretty reasonable