Valve just published their Steam Survey results for October and point to a small uptick in Linux gaming use on a relative basis.

According to today's published Steam Survey figures, for October 2026 the Steam on Linux use was up 0.05% and taking it to 3.95% overall. This is quite a bit different from the original Steam Survey figures for September that showed Linux diving down to 3.05% as a 0.85% decline over August. But as noted in that article last month, it was closely associated with a strong shift in Simplified Chinese use. When that occurs in the Steam Survey, Microsoft Windows typically sees large upward swings against Linux.

In any case Valve revised their September numbers to 3.9% and now for October are reporting 3.95% for their overall Linux customer base. Apple's macOS is at 2.35% and Windows at 93.7%. In comparison, this time last year we were celebrating Steam on Linux finally cracking 3% during October 2025.

Among the Linux distributions, Arch Linux based CachyOS remains most popular at 16.3% and even outpacing SteamOS at 13.89% in second place.

AMD CPU use by Linux gamers remains at just under 70%, driven in part by the Steam Deck and Steam Machine using custom AMD SoCs.

All the Steam Survey results in full for October can be found at SteamPowered.com.

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[–] 17 points 4 days ago (6 children)

I'm pretty disappointed in my fellow PC users.

We're supposed to be at least a little tech savvy.

Linux isn't even hard to use, heck it's been easier for me than windows the last few months.

93% of gamers aren't using Adobe, what's the excuse everyone?

Have some courage, and then laugh about ever worrying about switching.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 days ago* (1 child)

    I just think a majority of people do not care about which OS they use, or even know what is an OS. The only way for GNU/Linux to become big is if companies start shipping it in computers instead of windows.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago

    Aside from other reasons that other replies have mentioned, I'm going to guess that a good part of it may be people who have at least one favorite game that uses some type of kernel anti-cheat that doesn't work on Linux. I think that that would stop many people from switching from Windows to Linux.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    Most gamers don't care enough to change, and a lot that are willing are still driven off by the longstanding perception that Linux is difficult to set up and/or use. It's not, but most Linux users choose to argue that the CLI isn't complex instead of just pointing out that Mint is easier to set up and use through the GUI than Windows.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (9 children)

    It would be an insane move by a company, and so unlikely it doesn't bear considering, but... I wonder what would happen if a company released an AAA game which only ran on Linux.

    Way back, I bought an XBox just to play Halo and its sequels. I played no oþer games on it; it was literally a "Halo Box" for me. I hated þe XBox, but I loved Halo.

    I just wonder if þere were an exclusive Linux game wiþ þe impact Halo or Destiny had, I wonder how it'd affect þe numbers. Some people would go back, for sure, but I wonder how many people haven't converted simply because of inertia, or fear of þe unknown.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 days ago (6 children)

    Part of the difference here is that it's much easier to buy an xbox than a linux computer. Not to suggest they don't exist, but that the barrier to entry for joe schmoe is much higher than the barriers for console exclusives. and god forbid trying to get a casual audience to install a new operating system, you'd practically need to offer a linux help line.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 days ago (5 children)

    Part of the difference here is that it’s much easier to buy an xbox than a linux computer.

    what? Any computer that can play A AAA title can be used to run linux in a seperate partition.

    I gotta pay through the ass to buy an xbox.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    yeah maybe keep reading the next line where I specifically call out trying to get casual audiences to install an operating system?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago (3 children)

    I don't know when the last time you installed Linux was, or what distros you've used, but it's beyond trivial now usually. Finding an executable online and running that, as Windows users have to do, is often more difficult than installing Linux. There is almost no user who couldn't install Linux today, but there are many who will never try.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    I installed Bazzite very recently, I fully understand it is trivial.

    I work in customer service. I talk to people who have jobs and function in society. You are overestimating how many people find it simple to find an executable online and run it. The concept of creating a bootable disk is beyond these people, yes, even though there are programs that do 99.99% of the work for you. For many of these people, everything they download is an app that came from an app store, yes, people use the Microsoft app store.

    When we're taking casual, this is who we're talking about. It's why the casual gamer overwhelmingly still favors a console, hell, it's why consoles still exist at all!

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  • [–] 1 point 3 days ago (1 child)

    You are overestimating how many people find it simple to find an executable online and run it.

    I think you missed the point. Finding an executable and running it is harder than installing Linux, yet every Windows user does it. If they're capable of using Windows then they're also capable of installing Linux.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    I think you're the one who missed the point, I just told you that no, not every Windows user does it. Some of them legitimately use the Microsoft App Store to handle installation of new software.

    The obfuscation of modern software is so overwhelming that users are able to fully use a computer without understanding at all what is happening or how they make it work. They can use the software pre-approved by Windows/Google/Apple, that is either already installed on their machine or easily obtainable through an app store, and that's it. If you ask them to go beyond that, they fully shut down.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago* (1 child)

    I think it would run in wsl, or is that terminal only? I thought there also was a translation layer for linux system calls to windows at some point, sonething like a reverse wine.

    Graphics would be less of a problem, because it is just vulkan on linux, which should be available on windows.

    Edit: the original WSL did that, the WSL2 is a VM or a container apparently

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago*

    I believe last time I used it WSL only handles a terminal, but I feel like I recall seeing something about it being able to handle GUI applications now. I would suspect it can't run games though. The calls that are needed to make games possible are probably off-limits to WSL.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    You're welcome, I played my annual quota of 10 hours of Civ 6 last month on my mint laptop.

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  • 11 comments in c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca view that post
    [–] 29 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    Fellow Debian users, unite!

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

    Lol is Debian not still the "I don't wanna fuck with this too much" distro? On the complicated spectrum, I think Debian fell pretty fairly in the approachable side :D

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  • [–] 8 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    It absolutely is. I don’t think it’s too popular for gaming given you’re not getting the latest and greatest by default. Arch being up top doesn’t surprise me at all. I know people who use Arch, btw.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 days ago

    I find the popularity if Arch frustrating. Not that I have anything against it but because I worry people will go to arch and get scared away from Linux as a whole. I'm on Ubuntu and fedora and both those distros just work with no screwing around. Its so chill.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 days ago (4 children)

    Why Cachy?

    Genuinely asking.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 days ago

    It's snappier than other distros and has fantastic defaults. It also comes with a button that installs all gaming-related packages you need, so it's become the most popular choice for gaming. It's also arch-based which is nice because you get access to basically every application you need.

    I've been on Cachy for a while now, zero issues.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 days ago

    It was a half dozen clicks and 45 minutes from windows shutdown, to playing a modern AAA game in cachy.

    It was easier to get it running on my Nvidia laptop using the attached monitor and an external monitor at two different resolutions, and then play games, than any OS Microsoft ever made. Arch is also the distro steamos is based on.

    I've been running it about two years. It seemed to be the best distro with my above mentioned hardware requirements. I had planned to distro hop quite a lot, as I'm not averse to troubleshooting and cli work, but I have never had any serious issues and I can't bring myself to mess with perfection. At least, perfect for my setup.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago*

    There are dozens of us

    Didnt see the meme at first :p

    Happy Linux gaming is doing well. Fedora user here.

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