If you’re into Linux gaming, you’ve heard of Steam, Valve’s platform for distributing, updating, and running games. Steam allows you to buy a game, install it over the internet, and launch it directly from the Steam interface.
Thanks to Proton, the tradition of PC gaming, formerly reserved mainly for Windows users, is now gaining popularity among Linux users.
So it’s no surprise that one of the market’s major players, Valve Software, is paying more attention to Linux. What better example than the Arch Linux-powered Steam Deck gaming console?
Recently, Valve released the results of its Steam hardware survey for May 2022. Many people may be surprised to learn that Arch Linux has surpassed Ubuntu 20.04 to take first place among Linux distributions.
Given the options that Arch Linux provides, this is not surprising. A light and fast operating system, one of the highest levels of personalization, and a diverse software selection. In fact, it isn’t easy to find software for Linux that is not already present in the distribution’s official or AUR repositories.
These factors combine to make it a popular choice among intermediate and advanced Linux users.
However, Arch’s high ranking is mainly due to the recently released Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. According to the information provided by Valve, it is not entirely distro-based but rather dispersed over different distro versions.
In other words, when the percentage of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (0.09%) is added to the rate of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (0.13%), the Canonical distribution outperforms Arch (0.14%).
In any case, this does not diminish the achievements of this well-known rolling release Linux distro. As you can see, Manjaro, another popular Arch-based fork, is in third place with 0.12% usage.
So, to recap what has been mentioned thus far, the Linux gaming scene is unquestionably dominated by Ubuntu, Arch Linux, and their forks. Additionally, it’s a good thing that the overall Linux share of total Steam usage remains well above 1%, despite a 0.02 percent decline in May to 1.12 percent usage.
As we stated initially, it was only a few years ago that the unthinkable combination of the words “Linux” and “games” in the same sentence made people smile. But things have changed significantly. Instead of being wholly disregarded, Linux has become the platform of choice for many gamers.
Furthermore, we believe that NVIDIA’s recent announcement to open source their proprietary GPU driver will contribute significantly to Linux’s reputation as a lighter, faster, and more reliable gaming platform.
