PieFedSteam hardware survey for February 2026. What happened? Why did it lose such a big percentage?
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b0718fdf-861f-470f-9e5e-9969e0d0c88c.png
18 Comments
Comments from other communities
Classy HatterGamingOnLinux updated their Steam Tracker with February's data: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
Linux, English Only went from January's 7.59% to 8.27%. There's a huge influx of Chinese users in this month's data.
Die4EverYeah looking at their history graph, Linux drops every February/March due to Chinese New Year. But looking at their English graph, Linux has gained users not lost users. There are more active Steam users right now (mostly in China) which causes the percentages to be lower.
sbirdI see Chinese new year's resolutions are quite opposite of western. Screw workouts, more gaming!
AusterTwo theories I saw are that it's an influx of Chinese machines, and/or it's natural fluctuation and the tendency is still of growth. I theorize it could also be most companies going back to being active by February and people including those without extra machines having to use Windows to do their jobs.
MikinaIt's also possible that the hype simply died down. Windows 11 forced updates have been done and forgotten, internet has moved on to the next thing, and people who tried switching to linux started encountering small issues and inconveniences with new games or the system and moved back to Windows.
I can very well imagine that someone who switched "just for the memes" will give up once a first inconvenience pops up, and it eventually will no matter how you look at it.
SteamDecks have been sold out in multiple countries for a few weeks. Could be slowing adoption?
Edit: But I think I recall SteamOS getting a separate line in the stats, so probably unrelated?
Oh is it this time again? Every several months there is an influx of Chinese devices and this discussion happens. It'll likely be up again next month. Have fun with the wild speculation I guess
mrmaplebarSteam Decks are now sold out, so Linux has probably slowed down a lot. I doubt it represents a decrease in users so much as a decrease in growth of users.
A little bit off-topic, but I don't know if I'm too dumb to understand the survey results' presentation or if there is something wrong.
1) Why is SteamOS Holo excluded in the Linux list when the table is unfiltered, while in the "Linux only" filtered table it seems to be the most popular OS with 23.83%?
2) For the Arch-based distros, e.g. Steam OS Holo (+23.83%) or Arch Linux (+9.07%), the "change" is exactly the value of the current "percentage", so the percentage of the compared value is 0. So I guess they have new entries in the data without the history of the old entries? Is there any explanation for that?
Am I missing something? And does it even say anywhere how many people were asked and participated in the survey?
Anyone know what my hardware would show as if I play on my phone using something like GameNative or Gamehub? Curious what the android/arm numbers would be.
Well, the hypers have pushed technical distros like CachyOS to casual users, requiring them to go to terminal to install apps instead of pushing people toward user-friendly distros with GUIs that would make their computers and apps even easier to manage than on windows.
That's how we lose: by overestimating the tech-savviness of people and calling them stupid when they don't get it, as if everybody had a degree in computer engineering sciences.
We are the stupid ones. We are toxic.
From what I've seen, casual users didn't have problems with the casual tasks in the terminal, but with some hot mess behavior of CachyOS, e.g. how the Python update was handled.
Still, the CachyOS hype killed the Linux hype.
No it didn't. Most new Linux users are still going with distros like Mint or Bazzite.
Yet, the majority of influencer videos about linux during that period praised only CachyOS, and I bet most of them reverted back to windows when they got enough of their Matrix roleplay with the terminal.
the majority of influencer videos about linux during that period praised only CachyOS
Proof? Because the majority of ones I saw recommended Mint consistently.
and I bet most of them reverted back to windows
So no proof, just personal biases then.
I've never understood the Cachy hype tbh. Nothing against it, but if you're going for user friendly Arch, Manjaro seems easier and has been around longer. And why hype Arch in general? Arch is Arch, but hyping it for new users is just a mistake. For moderate to experienced users, if you want to use Arch there's a specific reason, you don't need to be convinced. Does everyone just like feeling badass for picking hard mode?
Unfortunately, yes, people love to despise others on artificial pretenses, missing the big picture which is the necessity to liberate as much people as possible from windows.
Manjaro is a good entry point, yes! Bazzite seems very cool as well!
Yeah, I do have to say that the Linux community has been improving though.
I tested Bazzite for a while, I liked it. I ultimately settled on Fedora KDE. I could see myself going back to Bazzite if I stop dual booting Windows for gaming and random programs. But...maybe by then I will have upgraded my GPU, and I'll be going AMD if so, and there's therefore less reason to go with Bazzite since I'll have proper AMD drivers no matter what. I could also envision openSUSE Tumbleweed if I wanted to live more dangerously but not go with Arch-based.
Oooh I see. I made mine full AMD to go full linux. (And I admit I went for Manjaro 10 years ago and never went back. Also very tempted to go for Bazzite) I hope the nvidia drivers will get better for linux, I've heard they made some great progress lately!
ScooptaComputer engineering is typically hardware and low level software design which doesn't really fit the analogy you're going for.
Case and point right here with that correction.
LMFAO, I do try to be friendly to noobs...but I am naturally a pedant and so when not dealing with noobs I let the pedant out a bit more. But I do agree with the sentiment that the power users are not welcoming.
"ComPUtEr EnGiNeeRiNg Is TyPIcaLLy HardWAre AnD Low LevEL SOFtwAre DesiGN"
Yeah, sure. J'en ai pas grand-chose à faire, puisque l'anglais n'est pas ma langue natale et que je fais de mon mieux avec ce que je sais, mais je désignais ce que tu désignes. Maintenant, démerde-toi avec la traduction.
You've just made my point for me, man/woman.
Google figured out the translation for me lol...and yes I know I made your point... although as I said in another comment I do try to be noob friendly...that just only applies to noobs.
Unless you have specific wants (which casual users mostly doesn't), you don't need terminal to install most apps on CachyOS.
tux0rLinux just isn't that good.
If that was the argument, Windows would by definition below it in the survey anyway,
Let me rephrase: After months of constant nagging by Linux users, Windowsers briefly tried it and found that aren’t well met by either OS.
Who's nagging? I promise you nobody gives a fuck what OS you use on your computer.
I promise you that quite a few people do, and they all use Linux. Source: My actual life.
I think you're the one who keeps thinking about what your friends recommended. They simply gave you an option and moved on. you on the other hand seem to have devolved into a crusade against an alternative choice in running your own OS.
N.E.P.T.RMaybe? But in reality the stat changes are to do with an influx of Chinese players that happens every year around this time. The vast majority of Chinese players use Windows.
Also I had a friend try Linux, and while it isnt all sunshine and rainbows (and he is about the furthest from an IT guy i can think it), he gets a solid 40+ FPS more than Windows 10. I am not forcing him to use, he just defaults to it now because shit is way smoother, and the alternative is using W11 which can legit brick your SSD (not worth it in this economy).
Also, I really don't understand being attached to software or developing a personality around it. If Linux doesnt serve my needs I'll simple use FreeBSD (or HardenedBSD). If that doesn't work, I hope by that point RedoxOS is mature. Etc for any software.
In English language installs, Linux went up from 7% to 8%. The dip is due to an influx of Chinese users. Happens every year during Lunar New Year.
It's due to how Valve conducts these surveys. Rather than pulling from the entire user pool at once, they rotate between different chunks of the userbase every month.
You'll notice this if you look at the system language stats, The Chinese speaking population jumps and falls by a rather large percent every month.
This also could explain why Windows 10 had another jump in users this month, From what I hear internet cafes are still a popular way to game in China. and I doubt many of these places have updated all their machines to Windows 11 yet.
I'm no survey expert, but why doesn't Valve get a mixed distribution from all countries?
No clue, Think it's one of those 'Worked well enough in the past' things they just never bothered to re-work.
I personally wish they would update it to be more globally accurate but it's Valve so.
Data has value and this data is particularly valuable to Valve and its competitors. So Valve share the raw data which has gross numbers but they don't share the useful data. The useful data is the processed data - the corrected and weighted data based on the other information Valve has about its users and install base. That way can weight this months survey responses to expected proportions of the whole user base and see actual user wide figures and trends.
What Valve shares is akin to a polling company sharing the raw data from the people who completed a polling survey. It's relatively meaningless and even misleading until they correct the data to weight it to make it representative of the whole population.
So this month there were 1.15% fewer linux users in the survey pool, not 1.15% fewer linux users overall. They will correct the data to see an actual proportion of Linux users. For example: they have data on every use of Proton and every install of Linux versions of software; and how many times each user installs a game (occasional vs heavy users). They don't share that but they can use that to help correct the data and get much more accurate picture - one they don't share as it gives them a commercial advantage.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
All of the results are very odd. If you look through the other categories, Simplified Chinese gained THIRTY percent, the Hard Drive categories also wildly changed, and 32 GB RAM jumped +18%.
It seems to me like a bunch of Chinese systems just flooded the statistics.
Whenever I point out the language of linux users being almost exclusively English I get a lot of comments about how that's racist or something.
Linux is almost all english, a bit of german, a tiny bit of russian, and an extreme minority of other languages. When you filter by english/linux you see a ton more higher end hardware than global results that include countless not-wealthy nations with household incomes under 10k/year, which is most of the world.
They also had to correct their results last month for some reason. I think they are just having issues with their surveys rn. Also there were multiple 30+ minute steam network outages in Europe in the past few days. Europe is definitely the majority of linux steam users so that might be related.
GamingOnLinux updated their Steam Tracker with February's data: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
Linux, English Only went from January's 7.59% to 8.27%. There's a huge influx of Chinese users in this month's data.
Looking at the huge spike in Simplified Chinese number, it seems like yet another oversampling of Chinese computers. A more reliable metric is Linux share for computers with English as their language, currently at >8% for the first time.
Is it oversampling or just the fact there are a lot of users from China?
No idea, fair point. I remember they definitely oversampled some months ago, and corrected the numbers after publication, but I don't know if that's the case here.
could have something to do with the odd, and massive, influx of new win10 users?
Given the roughly similarly sized drop in Win11 users. I chose to believe that the Win10 jump is from people nopeing out of the Win11 slop.
The stats are a sample, there is inheritantly some level of error. Ignore the month to month changes, focus on the longer term trends.
The Linux Mint upgrade is recent and folks migrated from 22.2 to 22.3 You can see it right in the stats. Don't know about Ubuntu.
I suppose it makes sense for Ubuntu to slowly go down as the bad news about Snaps and the great news about Linux Mint spreads.
Edit: But if we trust the data, I guess the real great news is Arch, btw. Haha!
I'm no statistician but this seems within margin of error to me.
Maybe something to do with work? Afaik by February, most companies are back in action, and so maybe people are forced to switch back to Windows to do their jobs, including in some cases in their gaming rigs due to lack of work-exclusive machines.
Also the possibilities others already mentioned here sound as valid, and I second that months may have big fluctuations, but that may not relate to the growth tendency. And iirc GamingOnLinux has a graph on the growth tendency based on Valve's hardware surveys, though I don't have the link with me.