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.

  • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
    105·
    21 hours ago

    I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.

    Most will stay on Windows of course, but some don’t. And those who switch to Linux are likely not returning to Windows (for gaming at least).

    • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3217·
      8 hours ago

      I think it will continue to rise. People are updating their rigs all the time. Whenever they update their rig they’ll have to ask themselves whether they want to continue with Windows on their new rig, or try with something new.

      The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks, which run on Linux, not from people switching to Linux on their PCs.

      If it continues to rise, this is the reason. The general public is less and less into using a desktop at all as time goes on, much less running, and much less changing to, an extremely niche operating system on one.

      EDIT: The previous sentence is actually more of the reason, upon further reflection. The total number of people playing on desktops period is falling, and the vast majority of desktops are Windows, so non-Windows OSes will comparatively gain ‘market share’ as that happens, even if their numbers don’t change at all.

      • BigPotato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        59·
        20 hours ago

        Actually, the raw number percentage shows that the increase is due to Mint, Ubuntu, and Bazzite. Maybe people are installing Bazzite on their Deck but likely not the other two.

      • turdas@suppo.fiEnglish
        131·
        16 hours ago

        That’s not true. You can see on Steam Hardware Survey what OS people are running, and SteamOS only makes up 27% of Linux users on Steam, so the vast majority are on regular PCs.

        • ObjectivityIncarnate@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          8 hours ago

          The vast majority of the increase, is what I said. In other words, I’m saying it wouldn’t be nearly at the 3% mark without those users, and with over a quarter of all Linux users coming from the Steam Deck userbase, that is, in fact, true.

          • turdas@suppo.fiEnglish
            3·
            8 hours ago

            Without the Steam Deck there’d be 27% fewer Linux users. So while that would indeed mean Linux wouldn’t yet be 3% of the total Steam userbase, I think you will find that 27% is not the majority.

            GamingOnLinux aggregates this data in a nicer way and as you can see there, the total Linux market share has gone from <1% five years ago to the 3% it is now. If that increase was mainly thanks to the Steam Deck, it would have to make up more like 75% of the Linux userbase rather than only 27%.

            Instead, as others have pointed out, SteamOS’s share has actually gone down rather than up, which is a natural consequence of the Steam Deck being relatively old now so fewer are being sold.

        • Katana314@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          14 hours ago

          Certainly interesting to look at the fastest-growing distros: Ubuntu (the well-known, popular option), Bazzite (the gaming-marketed one), Freedesktop (someone else can answer this for me), and CachyOS (the side-gaming one? Not quite a gaming OS but very good at it)

          • turdas@suppo.fiEnglish
            10·
            14 hours ago

            “Freedesktop SDK” means the user is running Steam via Flatpak. They could be on any distro.

          • Leon@pawb.socialEnglish
            4·
            14 hours ago

            They said Steam OS, not Steam Deck.

            If you click on “Linux Version” it expands into a list. Steam OS Holo is the largest portion, but not the majority portion.

      • magic_lobster_party@fedia.io
        34·
        20 hours ago

        The portion of people playing on SteamOS is steadily decreasing, which means new Linux users are on Steam Deck to a lesser extent.

      • CountVon@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        28·
        20 hours ago

        The vast majority of this increase is from people playing on Steam Decks

        I believe this is incorrect. The Steam survey break down GPUs by description and the Deck’s GPU appears in the results as “AMD Vangogh”, which only accounts for 0.39% of respondents. That implies that the vast majority of survey respondents using Linux are actually on PC, not the Deck.

    • BreakerSwitch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      21 hours ago

      Yeah, for me personally, I’ve got one or two devices that see irregular use that are linux now, but my main rig is still windows and will continue to be so, since I have a number of friends on xbox that I can get more cross play for via gamepass But since I’m currently boycotting microsoft, and don’t know how much longer friends will stick with xbox given their general market decline, and given all the stability issues with win11 lately due to an increase of AI code usage, and all the everything… It might be a matter of time