At the very least we can call BS on developers who claim they don’t support Linux because it’s niche, while they support MacOS.
Developers don’t have to support Linux natively because Proton does the job very well
They still have to make sure their anticheat works on Linux. That’s the biggest missing support.
The anti cheat does already work on Linux, just needs a checkbox tick to enable.
“I use ‘Arch Linux’” she said sarcastically. Why are Arch and Manjaro in quotes, but Ubuntu LTS and Linux Mint aren’t?
And why is Arch more popular than Ubuntu? Surely SteamOS counts as something different, so it’s probably not that.
I’m not a fan of Ubuntu, but it’s a very popular beginner OS, and I’d assume a lot of Linux gamers are lazy and use the thing that gets them into a game the fastest.
Arch is listed as a whole, while Ubuntu is a specific version (22.04 LTS).
Why are Arch and Manjaro in quotes, but Ubuntu LTS and Linux Mint aren’t?
They’re probably putting the rolling releases in quotation marks – I’m guessing they’re pulling the Description field from “lsb_release -a”, where “Arch Linux” says just that, while each Ubuntu/Debian/Mint/etc distro will show specific version numbers (and that would explain why Arch shows up as a higher share than Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS) – I’m sure there are several more Ubuntu entries in their list that would total more than Arch’s percentage. I’m not sure why they arbitrarily truncated the Linux list at 4 while showing 5 Windows/Mac releases, though.
EDIT: Found another screenshot where they list “SteamOS Holo” in quotes, too. So I guess they just include quotes for every distro that doesn’t show a version number in that field.
Version numbers I’m guessing.
Do they not have actual version numbers maybe?
Which means, Ubuntu may have several separate entries, whereas Arch gets all combined altogether. If that’s the case, then likely not a very accurate Linux distro list without additional data cleaning to combine versions of distros.
Yesterday was the first time I got the survey on my Deck.
I got it on the desktop (as I often am during the day because I do all my work on it), and noticed that while it reported the device as Valve manufactured and the OS correctly, a whole bunch of other data was wrong, like it said the device didn’t support touch, etc.
Should I have taken the survey on Game Mode? Is it even possible to get the survey in Game Mode?
Yup, I got it recently in regular gaming mode. I doubt it matters which one the survey gets taken in, it gathers system info.
I did my part. I rejected the survey on macOS and completed it on my Steam Deck, so I think I’m helping.
I almost never play on macOS since it’s my work computer, but sometimes I’ll look something up on it. Something like 80-90% of my gaming is on my Steam Deck, with the rest on my Linux desktop, though sometimes I’ll play a game on my work computer when on a break (usually just watch videos instead).
I do wonder what percentage of Linux users reject the survey compared to Windows users. Not that it’s changed much, but every little helps right?
I’m not sure, on one hand Linux users are quite privacy oriented but on the other hand “I use arch btw”
@flashgnash @samc As a linux steam player i answered this survey 2 times on the last ~15-20 years.
And i did it then, because i wanted to feed steam’s efforts on linux as gaming platform.
I rejected it on my steam deck, on my aging windows computer and on my Linux laptop.
I’m not going out of my way to give data to a private corporation
(Even if it’s a kawaii “good for consumer” corporation)
Fair enough, each try their own
I don’t mind anonymous data going out that will serve to potentially improve my experience gaming on Linux
The problem in my eyes is the non anonymous data that goes out that is used to design horrible addiction machines
At least a survey is them asking for information, not just quietly gathering it behind our backs.
