First Statistics On Steam Linux Usage

[jan1024188]

If they counted every linux user using wine to play steam games, it would have been like 5% or more.

[newwen]

If they counted every linux user using wine to play steam games, it would have been like 5% or more.

I'm one of those. Most games I've purchased so far are not ported to linux, so I have to use wine.

How do wine users get listed? Windows XP?

Anyway, the steam client with wine does pretty well. It does freeze sometimes but I see no difference between the native linux client and the windows one running on wine.

[tehehe]

There's no reason for me to use linux for gaming simply because there are no games that I play available on linux. Unless big AAA titles start coming out on linux and I will not have more problems running them on linux than on windows then it's windows for gaming for me and I guess for most people that care about it. Another problem linux has as compared to windows is driver/userland software availability for expensive gaming controllers - mice, keyboards and others for all available brands (no I will not buy roccat just because they support linux, I like my current gear better).

[moilami]

[Artemis3]

How do wine users get listed? Windows XP?

Anyway, the steam client with wine does pretty well. It does freeze sometimes but I see no difference between the native linux client and the windows one running on wine.

You can choose the windows version in winecfg (ie. Windows XP). Its possible to detect wine, but i doubt they do, you are counted as another windows user. Check help, system info when running steam with wine...

[n3wu53r]

I'm one of those. Most games I've purchased so far are not ported to linux, so I have to use wine.

How do wine users get listed? Windows XP?

Anyway, the steam client with wine does pretty well. It does freeze sometimes but I see no difference between the native linux client and the windows one running on wine.

I am pretty sure wine users are listed as wine users.

[Bomyne]

I don't think it means anything yet. Its still in beta and even Valve's games aren't on it, nor are non-ubuntu OSes listed.

Also, What about those of us that switch between Linux and Windows versions of steam (or even mac) are we counted twice or three times? Or just once under windows?

[efikkan]

Considering the beta were only open to a smaller number of users most of December, and the lack of good games, this is quite good for two weeks of open beta.

I actually expected the number to be way lower, and easily overrun OS X having 3.72 % total share.

Regardless of how people feel about Steam, it does supply valuable statistics about the actual users out there, way more usable information than unique IPs from visiting DistroWatch.

[Rigaldo]

Regardless of how people feel about Steam, it does supply valuable statistics about the actual users out there, way more usable information than unique IPs from visiting DistroWatch.

Actually DistroWatch doesn't even count the OS that you are using, only what OS you check out on their site ...

[Veerappan]

Considering the beta were only open to a smaller number of users most of December, and the lack of good games, this is quite good for two weeks of open beta.

I was going to make the same point. Valve opened the beta in mid-late December, so the numbers are actually surprisingly good.