this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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From my understanding and experience each device you're logged into gets the hardware survey a few times a year.
Yes and no, right. It would be an important distinction if those platforms were used for different games because then you could say "this increase in Linux is only on these platforms and those platforms only play these kinds of games". Maybe you could say that's true for the steam deck, but the way it and other handhelds are discussed it feels like people use it as a Generalist platform about as much as I would have figured it would be used solely for low intensity indie games.
But even if all new Linux users was steam decks, if they're being used as Generalist platforms then it would have the same impact as people switching to Linux on their PC because now every game is getting a signal that Linux is growing.
As someone who has both a steam deck and has swapped to Linux (and working on my friends to consider it as a fuck you to soul-less corporations) I suspect that although steam deck represents a large portion of the gains since its release, that it is not 90% of the gains.
According to the survey results, SteamOS lost about 3% of Linux market share, while Fedora, Bazzite and CachyOS gained. So, this change is not because of new Deck users.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam?platform=linux
I mean sure, but that's just talking about this month right? Like a month to month change. I was more talking about the general rise of Linux in the past couple of years, which is what the OC I responded to felt like they were discussing.
So ya, this month is not due to new Steam Decks (which is probably easy to assume given its age) but how much is the rise in Linux overall. I was arguing it probably doesn't matter much to game devs as long as Linux itself is growing.