It finally happened. Linux gamers on Steam as of the Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2025 have crossed over the elusive 3% mark.

Free Windows 10 support ended for most people this past month, and the trend line of Linux usage has been quite clear leading up to this, as people prepared for the inevitable. An increase in Linux usage is also correlated to a drop in Chinese players, which did happen this month a little bit, but Linux usage is also trending up when filtering for English only. It’s worth noting that for all the official support Macs ever saw in gaming, they never represented anything better than about 5% of the market.

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    27·
    20 days ago

    I wonder if Valve will ever release an official desktop version of SteamOS? I think Linux adoption would really increase fast if there was a gaming focused Linux desktop distribution with the support of an established company. But does Valve want that? A full featured operating system is a lot to maintain and provide support for.

    • PanaX@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      20 days ago

      I can attest that SteamOS does work on my rigs that are AMD gpu/cpu. It actually works great. I haven’t had one single issue. But I don’t do multiplayer games either.

    • LOGIC💣@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      20 days ago

      I’d guess Valve wants whatever makes more games work on Linux so that their Steam Deck works better and is more compatible.

      And that means the most important thing is Linux desktop adoption by game developers so they make more native games. So somewhat ironically, I don’t think SteamOS would be as high a priority as other distributions, since it focuses on players instead of developers.

        • miss phant@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          4·
          20 days ago

          A lot of games received their ports during the Steam Machine era, used outdated technologies like DirectX to OpenGL translation, and never got updated, so it’s not surprising unfortunately.