All fields expanded, very long screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/steam-hardware-software-survey-linux-september-2025-azOM8GS
Note, the source will change every month. That’s why I made a screenshot, so the discussion in this thread makes sense in the future. Source: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/?platform=linux
Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit got +3.34% from previously 0%, while Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit lost -2.71%. So the rest of the 0.65% are either new users or upgraders from even older Linux Mint versions. Whatever the reason is, these two entries should have been a single one as Linux Mint 22 with 8.84%.
Also what is the category “Other”? It’s almost 20% big, so this is not something to wave over. Bazzite got a good start, hopefully it will grow further. I’m surprised that CachyOS is this popular, much more than Ubuntu and Bazzite.
Initial thoughts:
- Cosmic was released recently, so the Pop!OS bump makes sense. I suspect those Bazzite and Mint rises are Windows users switching over due to 11 being ass.
- I can’t imagine installing Steam on 4GB of RAM or less! Lol what are those people doing?
- Intel share rising is really weird as it doesn’t reflect recent news at all.
- I’m surprised to see 1080p going up. I wonder if this is due to people with older hardware being kicked out of Windows. I’ve noticed 1440p being the new baseline for gaming monitors.
Hmm, there are lot of old laptops that still can play older or indie games, even with 4GB. An optimized Linux system for low hardware might work. Maybe they don’t even play, and its just there to farm. I can imagine laptop farmers to get these Steam cards or to trade something, who knows what. Just speculation off course.
1080p going up maybe because rise of handhelds? Looking closer, its just going up +0.02%, which could be just statistical noise as different people were surveyed. Actually instead 800p and 1200p are going up, even 768p, which are typical handheld and laptop resolutions. And 1440p, which is the swee spot on desktop PC for quite some time now.
About the Intel share, don’t forget that this survey is from last month (September) and the news are relatively new.
No, Pop OS 22.04 bump does not really make sense just looking at COSMIC. If anything I was expecting a shift towards 24.04, since that’s where COSMIC beta is released.
well, cannot say that masses are running from fucking 11 to linux :/
… or from 10 to Linux.
10 days and I’ll change to Garuda Linux. Just want to finish a few Itch io games and play one last session of DayZ first.
Yeah but I can’t be bothered dealing with that so I’m just gonna stop using Itch except for browser games.
The official itch.io launcher also works just fine on Linux:
https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.itch.itch
DayZ runs out of the box on Steam as well.
I just don’t want to manually set up Lutris. I’ll keep Itch around for native Linux games (which I forgot about). Actually, I think I just don’t want to bother reinstalling any of the games I have. Though my 10 day deadline is close.
As for DayZ, I don’t want to risk playing any competitive games on Linux and getting myself a spurious VAC ban, so after DayZ I’m planning on giving up on competitive multiplayer (which I never really like anyway because kernel-level anti-cheat doesn’t work and I can’t trust anyone not to be cheating).
Ive been playing DayZ since it was a mod, you aint gonna get banned for playing on linux haha. Bohemia doesnt care, I bet they want to get steam deck support one day
Well DayZ doesn’t seem to work on my computer anymore anyway. Something to do with having uninstalled it and now reinstalling it. So looks like I may have no choice but to play it on Linux.
You don’t need Lutris, the itch.io launcher takes care of everything.
As for DayZ, I don’t want to risk playing any competitive games on Linux and getting myself a spurious VAC ban
You only get game bans in DayZ. For what it’s worth, I have been playing DayZ on Linux on and off for years and never got banned.
Well DayZ doesn’t seem to work on my computer anymore anyway. Something to do with having uninstalled it and now reinstalling it. So looks like I may have no choice but to play it on Linux.
You can have both operating systems installed and choose which to boot from at start. I personally don’t recommend this, because it complicate things and makes it harder to actually switch. Good luck. Make sure to backup stuff on an external drive, just in case. We all made mistakes. :-)
I use dual boot cause Geforce Now doesnt support 2k in linux :( As soon as that changes windows will be gone
That’s weird, because it’s “just” streaming after all (with input off course). How can Nvidia mess this up? I couldn’t believe this and searched the web, found following: https://github.com/AstralVixen/GeForce-Infinity
This started as an alternative, for the lack of support on Linux. And it supports 1440p & 120 FPS. They explicitly warn not to use native GeForce Now app. I can’t say how trustful this project is. Now I have no experience with this, so leave it there.
Thanks, havent seen that yet will test it
I’ll probably try to transfer my Windows license (not install) to my old horrible laptop, since dual-booting seems like it’d cause more trouble than it’s worth. Just gotta clear the nvram in case there are any BIOS rootkits lying in wait that I imagine I have by now. I’m already on Linux for the laptop I’m writing this on.
EDIT: I’m not gonna flush my NVRAM. Seems that if I’ve seen no signs of malware then I regressing to the factory version of the BIOS would put me in more risk than otherwise.
For me Steam never picks up the discrete GPU and always wants to report the integrated one. Might be relevant for you if you intend to do anything with Steam’s hardware survey data.
I distro-hopped from Bazzite to CachyOS recently, and frankly - I’m not surprised it’s up there in terms of popularity. While Bazzite was much less obtrusive with updates (hell, I had to check whether I was getting amy 😆), CachyOS makes due with a lot less resources (Bazzite’s 6 vs Cachy’s 3.5GBs of RAM on stand-by, don’t remember the installation size, tbh) than Bazzite.
It also has a relatively sensible default when it comes to updates, as it automatically performs BTRFS snapshots through snapper, Tumbleweed-style.
Time will tell if it’s as stable as Bazzite was (though frankly, I distro-hopped because 3 or 4 straight updates were not booting for me 😅).
Tl;dr: Arch base + sensible defaults make for good selling points on gaming rigs.
