Linux installs jump to over 5% of gamers on the latest Steam Hardware Survey while the RTX 5070 reverts to the norm
Steam Hardware Surveys come with copious caveats, including some courtesy of Valve itself. But the latest results for March are still intriguing, including a big jump in the proportions of gamers running Linux and a regression to the mean for the survey's GPU stats.
First up, that Linux result. According to March survey figures, the proportion of gamers on Steam running Linux increased from 2.13% in February to 5.33% in March.
That's enough to be well ahead of MacOS on 2.35%, though obviously still miles behind all versions of Windows on 92.33%. For the record, Arch Linux tops the Linux charts with 0.34%, with Linux Mint 22.3 next on 0.27%.
The SteamOS 3 as used for the Steam Deck is, of course, based on Arch Linux, likely explaining its top ranking position on the Linux list. Other notable trends include a pretty hefty shift away from Windows 10 in favour of Windows 11, with the latter up by over 10% and the former plummeting by 15%.
Exactly how accurate these figures are is an open question. But the idea that Linux is chipping away at Windows is not novel. There's a growing sense that the Windows quality of experience, for want of a better characterisation, is increasingly on the slide. And the obvious alternative is Linux.
Even Microsoft itself seems to have realised this, what with its recent messaging being all about improving Windows' fundamentals as opposed to loading it up with ever more AI slop. As it happens, several of the PC Gamer massif have also switched to Linux.
As for the GPU results in the survey, after February's suspicious looking win for the Nvidia RTX 5070, the numbers seem to have returned to normality.
The RTX 5070 jumped from 2.87% of Steam gamers in January to 9.42% in February, making it the most popular GPU on Steam. In March, the 5070 has reverted to, yup, exactly 2.87% again, placing it 5th overall.
That means the RTX 3060 returns to its likely rightful place at the top of the table, despite falling off slightly between February and March, from 4.6% of gamers to 4.1%.
AMD's latest RDNA 4 GPUs remain barely visible in the results, meanwhile, with the RX 9070 just making the top 100 in 99th place and the RX 9060 not appearing at all.
Arguably, that could be down to AMD Radeon cards being lumped together under the generic "AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics." But even that amounts to just 2.4% of gamers and number nine in the rankings.