A new Steam Hardware Survey has been released, for the month of March, showing a small decline in the Linux user base, although it might be too small to actually count.
Every month Valve publishes a comprehensive hardware and software survey that reflects what is being used to run the Steam client. It’s been pretty accurate until now, but a couple of months ago Valve made a few small modifications and eliminated most of the inconsequential entries for various other distros.
It’s interesting to note that March actually shows a decline in comparison with February, but the change is small enough that it can easily be attributed to statistical error.
Ubuntu 13.10 64 bit – 0.36% Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS 64 bit – 0.15% Linux Mint 16 Petra 64 bit – 0.10% Ubuntu 13.10 – 0.07% Linux 3.10 64 bit – 0.09% Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS – 0.05%
There are very few variations from one month to another, which is actually somewhat of a letdown for the Linux users, who have been hoping that Steam would make a bigger impact.
The percentages might change after the release of the Steam Machines, the PC / console hybrids that are expected to arrive later this year. The new hardware designed by Valve will run SteamOS, which is a Debian-based distribution.