Linux has gotten a 3% usage bump in a month, latest Steam hardware survey suggests  - though, it's still miles off Windows

The latest Steam hardware survey cites Linux arsenic accounting for implicit 5% of the instal base. That's not a lot, and comes with the caveat of Valve's info gathering not being bulletproof, but it ia a bully chunk higher than the OS's people for the archetypal 2 months of 2026.

Taking a look astatine the March survey, it puts Linux astatine 5.33% of the instal base, a leap of 3.10% from 2.23%, which it was astatine successful the February survey. Though, Linux's trajectory successful these surveys isn't a enactment that's going consecutive up, with the January survey putting it astatine 3.38%. To hint the enactment backmost adjacent further, December's fig was 3.58% and November's was 3.20%.

So, these past 2 numbers look to beryllium a flimsy interruption from the norm successful some directions. Either way, Linux installs beryllium supra Mac, but good beneath the ever-dominant Windows. The latter's astatine 92.33% successful this latest survey, divided 66.85% to 25.36% betwixt Windows 11 and Windows 10, with the wide fig being down somewhat from February's 96.61% and January's 94.62%. So, this latest fig could crook retired to beryllium a motion of Linux starting to marque much important inroads into that dominance, but I'd accidental it's surely not worthy rushing to conclusions yet.

The antithetic variants of Linux that marque up March's 5% are divided beauteous evenly, with Arch Linux - which the Steam Deck's SteamOS is based connected - starring the mode astatine 0.34%, portion Linux Mint 22.3 and Ubuntu Core 24 capable retired the podium positions.

Time to ringing your mates who tally Mint and Ubuntu to laughter down the telephone and punctual them who the existent 1 taking the combat to Microsoft's hegemony is. Then apologise and inquire them if they'd beryllium up for a fewer rounds of whichever multiplayer thing's eating up your lives astatine present.