Steam on Linux use has hit an all-time high! With the Steam Survey results for October 2025 coming out this evening, Steam on Linux has finally cracked the 3% threshold! A few months back Steam on Linux was close to 3% before stumbling a bit but now it’s above that elusive threshold. The only time Steam on Linux use was close to the 3% mark was when Steam on Linux initially debuted a decade ago and at that time the overall Steam user-base was much smaller than it is today. Long story short, thanks to the ongoing success of Valve’s Steam Deck and other handhelds plus Steam Play (Proton) working out so well, these October numbers are the best yet.
something something year of the linux destkop
Best we can do is Mac support and blocking Linux
What are you talking about?
Despite Linux growth Mac is constantly better supported by Devs.
according to Google, Steam has 147 million monthly active users
3.05% of 147 million is about 4.48 million Linux Steam monthly users
according to Google
huh? why would Google know more than Valve about this?
Jesus christ, dude. He obviously means “according to the google search I did!”. This isnt reddit, please dont be pedantic.
No need to be so dramatic either, he might have just misunderstood.
Is this your first time on line? I mean, we have how many years of “google” as a verb? But on this one occasion, decades later, no. Google is being given personhood… Do me a favour.
Same here. Installed Kubuntu on my gaming laptop about 3 months ago. Last week switched to Bazzite (was having issues with a few games not running, Sable being one of them, and didnt feel like messing around with the settings any more). Really loving Bazzite and the fact that games are just working now with minimal to zero messing with various settings.
Very nice! Sable was actually the first game I played through on Bazzite myself!
Game’s a bit janky (it was janky on Xbox too, when I played it there years ago, with exploration stuttering so badly I vowed to return on PC later), so it was a little stressful in that I wasn’t sure if the issues were due to the game’s code or something with Proton, etc😆
But overall a wonderful experience, and an impressive indie debut. I stuck with it until I had all masks this time around!
Yeah! I got it free through Epic right when I switched to Kubuntu. It’s a fun game now that I’ve actually gotten to play it (just left the valley lol).
I mention in a few of my other posts, I have an older Asus Tuf gaming laptop with an Nvidia GTX 1050. I knew I had to download the proprietary drivers for the 1050, but I wasn’t sure which ones, so I think I initially downloaded the 535 drivers. Anyway, Sable launched okay (playing through Heroic), I was able to play until I got into the initial camp, then it crashed and never started up again. I was bummed.
But switching to Bazzite and downloading everything again, and it’s just working. I didnt change anything, didnt have to mess with any settings. It’s awesome!
Steam sent me a survey yesterday. Proud to be a part of those 3%.
Happy to have joined that 3% a week or so ago
Same! I’m about a month into properly running Mint Cinnamon ans it’s been a lovely experience. Glad to be part of the team
I’ve been using LMDE with cinnamon. Really loving it!
One of us!
Welcome!
how much to make all the big shooter games allow linux on their anticheats
Been playing ARC Raiders on Linux the past couple of days.
I can’t get the damn thing to load on my machine -_-
Did you try with Proton-GE? Regular Proton would not load for me for some reason.
I did, I tried multiple Proton versions, tried experimental and tried it with the bleeding edge beta option.
None of them acted differently, all if them loaded the black screen with the loading icon bottom right and then crashed and gave no details on why it crashed at all.
Proton-GE is a 3rd party tool I always use when a game doesn’t start with a Valve Proton version
Ah OK. I have refunded it now so can’t try as I spent nearly 2 hours “in game” time trying to get the thing working and didn’t want to go past that 2 hour threshold and then be stuck with an expensive game I couldn’t play.
I would really recommend you take a look at ProtonDB when it comes to troubleshooting like that, it is one of if not the best resources for that kind of stuff
What does the log say? PROTON_LOG=1 launch parameter and then check your home directory.
for some reason mine crashes if i tab out while it’s loading into a map. fwiw.
I had a problem loading it during the playtest (black screen, forever loading icon) and had to install Proton EasyAntiCheat Runtime for it to start up properly. Never had a problem launching the playtest or full game after that!
Thanks for the suggestion, that is one of the things I tried that did not work though :(
Did you report it on the proton github issue thread (if there’s one already open)? Just to get the conversation going
I think it will more likely happen if windows kicks games out of kernel space.
There’s little reason to force them out given games run temporarily. We’re more likely to see security products move out of the kernel first since they run full time and from boot (meaning there’s stronger implications if they fail in kernel space e.g. Crowdstrike). And even then, they’re not forcing them out, just offering APIs in user space to negate the need to be running in the kernel for those use cases.
I’d love to see games denied the ability to run drivers in kernel space on Windows but I don’t think we’ll see that any time soon.
Sorry to say, but game anticheats can also run whenever like the malware they are.
Yes but many don’t. And the risk impact of BSODing gaming computers vs business systems is dramatically different.
We won’t see MS do anything about kernel drivers until the majority of security industry has moved to whatever new userspace APIs MS release.
Even then, do gaming anti cheat developers really care?
IMO simply vote with your wallet and don’t buy games that need kernel drivers and still fail to address cheaters who always find a way around.
Vanguard literally always spies on your PC from a most privileged location
What’s that got to do with MS’s decision to kick them out? What’s the Venn diagram of mission critical systems and systems running Valorant/League?
I’m not disagreeing that these bullshitty kernel drivers running from boot exist, I’m stating that MS aren’t going to do shit about it if even more risky kernel drivers aren’t planned to be removed from the OS and there’s plenty of other popular anti cheat drivers that are only loaded at runtime.
I think the point is that, if Microsoft actually makes an API for the features that kernel-level software needs. They are going to boot everyone out of the kernel, mission critical systems and anti-cheat systems included.
I read somewhere that Mac started to get more support for previously windows only apps once they hit 5% market share.
It’s been like a decade since I’ve read that, so who knows the source.
Cs2 and tf2 is already on here, idk what you’re talking about
