The clue is already in the article itself. The author notes that "part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers." If you actually think about what that implies, it raises more questions than answers. A 31.85% monthly drop is obviously not organic, so yes, it makes sense to call it a "correction." But then why was the previous month's data so far off in the first place? Is there something fundamentally flawed in the survey methodology, like sampling bias, non-uniform distribution, regional skew, or something else?

And if this kind of correction happens this month, what's stopping it from happening in previous months? The reality is: it does happen all the time. You can usually spot at least one clearly unrealistic data point in almost every release.

At that point, it's hard to argue there's any real value in trying to analyze these results in a rigorous way.

The most annoying thing I encountered was the Switch controller support being rather poor. Every button press was somehow interpreted as two different buttons at the same time and I had to figure out which commands to run on Terminal to stop it from happening. Even then, the bluetooth connection on my PC was so bad that I had to stay within 3 feet lest the controller disconnects. I don't really think this is a Linux issue per se, but I recommend people buy a couple of 8bitdo controllers on Amazon which come with USB dongles if they want to go this route.

I will miss games that I can only play with mouse and keyboard, but I think there are enough games out there with controller support that this is not going to be an issue.

When it updated and started shoving AI down my throat, with no easy way to turn it off and suddenly lots of data I don't consent to sharing getting used, 11 became the last Windows OS I'll ever use.

Whenever the next version comes out, Im moving fully to *buntu.

My main laptop already uses it and Steam on Linux has been fantastic. Any bugs or issues Ive experience have been due to my very unusual setup (like an eGPU over Thunderbolt)

Feb 2026:

  31.58% Other
  23.83% SteamOS Holo 64 bit
   9.07% ArchLinux 64 bit
   8.59% CachyOS 64 bit
   6.62% Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit
   5.79% Bazzite 64 bit
   5.26% Freedesktop SDK 25.08
   3.82% Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit
   2.83% Ubuntu 24.04.03 LTS 64 bit
   2.59% Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit

  25.64% Other
  24.48% SteamOS Holo 64 bit
  17.60% 0 64 bit
   8.78% Arch Linux 64 bit
   8.01% 64 bit
   6.90% Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit
   3.58% Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit
   1.90% Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit
   1.67% Ubuntu 25.10 64 bit
   1.45% Manjoro Linux 64 bit

I really wish that Valve would increase the number of distros they report, or stop breaking out individual versions. The purpose of having multiple versions is to see how quickly people are upgrading and when to stop supporting older ones, but the current presentation doesn't actually let you do that since there is so much churn in which releases make the top 10 cut.

It's fully open! It has a KDE desktop that I can access any time! I can shove in any size of SSD I like!

And I'm playing Halo 3... on Linux... on hardware made by Steam. If you spoke that sentence to me in 2009, I'd suggest you ought to be sectioned.

However I'm very thankful for the work Valve has done, as this has made Wine much much better.

I can now just download a game from GOG, set it up with a winetricks one-liner, and expect it to work. Even the latest games that just came out.

Although to be fair I usually wait a couple months to get a good discount. But, before, you had to wait years for support, if any at all.

I'm also seeing some studios releasing support for Vulkan either day one or in updates, which is great.

I'm using CachyOS with a PS2 controller or mouse and keyboard. I had to do virtually zero tinkering.

Rocket League performance on Linux used to be the other big reason but about 4 months ago I fired it up and found it ran smoother (the random stutters I have suffered through on Windows are not there on Linux).

Now that those two are no longer relevant I can finally reclaim that wasted SSD storage.

My setup is basically Arch Linux, ProtonUp-Qt (to easily install specific versions of Proton, the compatibility layer), Steam, and the proprietary Nvidia drivers/Vulkan. I generally have no issues with Easy Anti-Cheat games like Arc Raiders, but obviously anything that requires secure boot attestation like Arena Breakout Infinite won’t play. I’ve not bothered to try setting up full secure boot as the games that require it aren’t typically in my wheelhouse.

I hope Linux adoption continues for my own, very self-serving, interests. I get the sense that those who primarily use their computer for gaming are the frogs slowly being boiled by Microsoft who continues to back their these customers into uncomfortable, unnecessary corners.

I have a suspicion, that somehow Steam has issues when Guix is installed, which I am always using, but then the question is, why Steam is incapable of just shipping with whatever it needs and using the things it shipped with properly, instead of getting confused by Guix, which only puts things in the GNU store, and not in a place that Steam should ever look at. But like I said, it is only a hunch or suspicion, and I need Guix more than Steam on Linux.

Then there are games that just work, like Stardew Valley. And maybe Terraria. I suspect, that it is somehow also about what engine the games use and what those engines rely on. But these games are very few, and most bigger mainstream games like AoE2 simple won't start, like I described.

So for me it still seems, that it is not actually working that reliably on just any GNU/Linux system, and that there are still blind spots, that Valve or whoever is clearly not seeing or considering in their whole Proton development or how Proton is used by Steam. Probably some isolation thing that they are completely missing for several years now.

I have a feeling it's just wine things. Can anybody understand what happens and maybe explain it a little?

I remember that 13 years ago I did everything on Linux and only switched to Windows to play eve online. Now the game works beautifully (graphics and all) on Linux with just one slight modification in the "run command" in Steam.

This is nothing, as anybody who tried to play games on Linux using wine can attest. It used to be a hell of modifications, dependency hunting and obscure hacks to get any windows game to work.

Proton and Vulcan are Awesome.

[1] GameNative, GameHub (and GameHub lite)

Its only a matter of time before majority of playerbase switches to linux ecosystem.

Work on proton and steamos are just the beginning.

It's really the only opposing force to Microsoft's enshittification of Windows.

Using proton, I regularly see crash reports where games want to report that I was running some version of windows, which is a result of how proton implements wine. I never send such reports as they are of little use to developers.

Linus has said on a few occasions that the main thing holding back user adoption for desktop is a single distro with a clear focus. What Android did for mobile.

It's clear that SteamOS could be "that guy" if Valve wants it to be.

They can be bypassed on Windows, but with too much work (custom hypervisor etc.)

To bypass them on Linux, a lot more easier.

Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!

How about grasshopper-ed above 5%?