14 DAY TRIAL // The Steam for Linux rate of adoption has dropped somewhat in comparison with the previous month, but it still holds around 1.1%.
Linux users have been hoping to see a much bigger uptake for Steam on their platform, but the percentages refuse to move more than 1.2%. Now, they even dropped a little bit for the month of July. It might not mean anything for Valve and they might work with other numbers, but it's still annoying too see things remain the same.
The Steam Hardware Survey can't really be considered a reliable source of information for a couple of reasons. It doesn't say how many Linux users answered the questions in the survey and what the rapport with the other platforms is. It might be a huge number or it might be very few people, which makes it difficult to rely on the percentages provided.
On the other hand, the 1.11% registered Linux users for Steam is not too far from the estimated 2%, which is the number for the rate of adoption of Linux desktops all round the world. In any case, nothing too spectacular happened, with the exception of the drop in users, but that is only an appearance.
The top distributions used are Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit with 0.39%, Linux 3.10 64-bit with 0.09% (this incorporates all distros that have this kernel), Linux Mint 17 Qiana 64-bit with 0.09%, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32-bit with 0.07%, Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS 64-bit with 0.06%, and Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS 64-bit with 0.06%.
The number of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 64-bit users has dropped because the point release for the same distribution is counted separately, but that was to be expected.
The drop in users might seem weird, especially now that the Steam for Linux platform has just passed the 600 games milestone, but there is actually a good explanation for it. In fact, staying around the 1.1 or 1.2% mark means that the number of Linux gamers has increased.
We have to take into consideration the fact that the total number of Steam users has actually increased in the last few months and it has passed the 6 million mark and it's going to hit 7 million very soon. This means that Linux users staying steady at about 1.1% is actually an increase.
If you don't have Steam for Linux installed, you can get the small installer provided by Valve from Softpedia. It will take just a few clicks to install it and you will have hundreds of games at your fingertips.