It’s possible it’s just normal sample variance. The hardware survey isn’t exactly a census.
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.
It’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.
Two 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.
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
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.
- 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%?
- 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?
Steam 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.
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.
