Linux has more Steam users than macOS thanks to Steam Deck

Linux has overtaken macOS among Steam users. This is evident from the Steam hardware survey from July. Forty percent of Linux users on Steam are running SteamOS Holo, the operating system of Valve’s Steam Deck handheld.

In the July Steam Hardware Survey Windows is still by far the largest operating system, with a share of 96.21 percent. Linux accounted for 1.96 percent of users, while 1.84 percent of Steam users used macOS. Linux’s share has risen by more than half a percentage point since a month earlier.

According to Phoronix this percentage is approaching a personal record for Linux. Years ago, Linux accounted for about 2 percent of Steam users, although the gaming platform also had fewer users at the time. Steam survey results fluctuate from month to month depending on the users participating. However, the fluctuations are usually not as great as this time, also writes Ars Technica.

The vast majority of the Steam users running Linux, about 42 percent, use SteamOS Holo. That’s the operating system used for the Steam Deck handheld. Valve plans to make this version of SteamOS available for other systems as well, although that hasn’t officially happened yet. Arch Linux is in second place, with a share of 7.94 percent.

Valve released the Steam Deck in February last year and at the end of last year the device became widely available for the first time without a waiting list. The handheld has an AMD APU with four Zen 2 cores and an RDNA 2 GPU. The device runs on Valve’s own Linux distro SteamOS, which is based on Arch, although users can also install other operating systems.

Apple has also been working more and more on gaming on the Mac lately. The company recently announced macOS ports of No Man’s Sky, Resident Evil Village and Death Stranding, among others. The company also introduced a Game Porting Toolkit for macOS, which allows developers to port their games to the Mac.