First Statistics On Steam Linux Usage

[blackout23]

If you want to know how your Wine Client is counter just open the "Help -> System Information" Menu and look what it says as "Operating System". It also counts Mint 64 bit as Mint and not as Ubuntu. It's sooo unlikely that there are no other distros that can't match the market share of Ubuntu 12.10 32-Bit and therefore aren't counted at all. The survey was open for about 48 hours. Yesterday I was simply asked to do the survey and the Statistics Site was offline during that time. So that was simply the timeframe where they counted everyone who was willing to fill out the survey. I think Linux is doing pretty good considering that it's just a Beta with 1 free game and Mac OSX has just a little more than double the amout of users after 2 years and 511 games available to them.

[Danniello]

"at least the 64-bit Ubuntu Linux builds have much greater popularity than their 32-bit counterparts."
hmmm... it depends how Steam is checking system.
In my opinion it is not true. I mean - recommended version of Ubuntu is 32 bit version, so I assume that majority of Ubuntu installations are 32 bit. BUT after installation system is indicating to update kernel to PAE version, so applications could use 64bit...
So in my opinion "Ubuntu 12.10 - 0.12%" and "Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS - 0.13%" are installations without PAE (so they are old hardware or did not update system for some reason).

[deanjo]

In my opinion it is not true. I mean - recommended version of Ubuntu is 32 bit version, so I assume that majority of Ubuntu installations are 32 bit. BUT after installation system is indicating to update kernel to PAE version, so applications could use 64bit...

That makes absolutely no sense. PAE does not allow 64-bit applications to run. PAE allows larger memory address space for 32-bit architectures but it does not allow 64-bit applications to run. Further more what steam uses for libraries in the client and what the games use are two separate independent items.

[Kiori]

Everyone is forgetting that currently Steam has a pretty high hardware requirement if you want good fps(the games listed i mean), and that The games aren't really all that stable atm(mainly referring to TF2 here, since its the official give out, but you can argue about the others too).

The stats reflect just that.
Even if we realize that Linux isn't going to pop up into 10% like magic, as many would wish, the truth is that, it would have been a lot higher given different circumstances. Its just BETA after all.

Cheers

[Bernard Swiss]

Having read the article, trawled through the stats, perused this thread, and performed the most sophisticated analysis (don't ask) I have arrived at one incontrovertible and definitive conclusion:

The Steam Linux client doesn't run on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS
;-)

[Ancurio]

Given how desperate and at the same time organized we as Linux users are,
I am pretty sure around 80% of potential users jumped at Steam the moment the beta was
available, so I don't really expect the numbers to rise much further just by Steam getting
better quality wise / more games. From here on out, only converts from other platforms
will truly be able to raise the percentages. On the other hand, I am very relieved that
Valve is doing the whole Steambox project, meaning they won't just abandon us yet
based purely on user numbers (at least for the foreseeable future).
Should the Steambox turn out to be a huge success,
many publishers will want to get a piece of the share, and the way Valve operates
currently I think this will mean "make yourself compatible with upstream, or GTFO".

These are very exciting times ahead of us; I am happy to have joined the FOSS world 2 years ago.

[Erno]

So most Steam users on Linux use 64-bit.
I hope Valve makes a 64-bit Steam client.

If we were living the year 2009 there would be something like 1:1 rate between Ubuntu and other Linux-distros but now - especially after Ubuntu Unity and the rise of Linux Mint and Mageia and experienced ex-Ubuntu users moving more and more to other distributions there might rate of something like 1:3.

E.g i've so far installed Linux to 12 computers (including my own) during the last two years. 10 were Linux Mint, one Ubuntu and one Open SUSE.

[Erno]

Everyone is forgetting that currently Steam has a pretty high hardware requirement if you want good fps(the games listed i mean), and that The games aren't really all that stable atm(mainly referring to TF2 here, since its the official give out, but you can argue about the others too).

The stats reflect just that.
Even if we realize that Linux isn't going to pop up into 10% like magic, as many would wish, the truth is that, it would have been a lot higher given different circumstances. Its just BETA after all.

Cheers

And don't forget the long culture of Linux with not many game players among community. Most of the people having Linux pc OS installed by me are mostly older or middle age people. Believe me, older people seems to be more open to try Linux than youngsters. Worse are those over 30 y old...

[deanjo]

Worse are those over 30 y old...

I would say the 20-29 year olds are the worse. They were raised on gui's. Us old 30+'s don't run away screaming in fear at the thought of a command line. Hell we started out on it.

[blackout23]

That makes absolutely no sense. PAE does not allow 64-bit applications to run. PAE allows larger memory address space for 32-bit architectures but it does not allow 64-bit applications to run. Further more what steam uses for libraries in the client and what the games use are two separate independent items.

And PAE is pretty retarded if you want to belive Linus Torvalds himself.
http://cl4ssic4l.wordpress.com/2011/...lds-about-pae/

It's funny that there are people who think their doing something clever when they use 32 Bit PAE, because they belive it is somehow magically faster than 64 Bit.

The reason Ubuntu still "recommends" the 32 Bit Version on their download page is because running Flash on 64 Bit was a pain in the ass some years ago. It is also easier to get a 32 Bit Wine enviroment for all the Windows stuff you might need without having to use the terminal. No one simply bothered to change the download page. 32 Bit is more n00b friendly and for a distro that targets linux beginners you want to remove any possible obstacle. Most applications don't benefit that much from being 64 bit if all you do is write emails and surf the web so it was easy for them to just recommend the least common denominator.