Intel dominates Steam for Linux with 80%

Feb 2, 2016 06:09 GMT  ·  By

The number of Linux users on Steam continues to hover just below 1%, but we now know that about 40% of these people are using Ubuntu for gaming.

Since nothing of worthy of attention is happening with the Steam for Linux use, we might as well look at other interesting statistics provided by Valve, but before we do that, we need to explain why it is difficult to trust them.

The problem with the Steam Hardware & Software Survey offered each month by Valve is that there are no other numbers presented beside the actual statistics. If you take any market study, you get info on the sample size, and that is not happening with Steam.

We know for a fact that not all users receive the Steam Hardware & Software Survey, and it can take months before you get it, but anything beyond that is unknown. We don't know the sample size, and we don't know if the survey is presented in a proportional manner for all the platforms. So take all that data with a grain of salt.

Ubuntu and Intel dominate

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey has a lot of statistics beyond the regular percentages that show us how much the Linux usage has changed. For example, Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS 64-bit has 21.70%, and Ubuntu 15.10 64-bit has 19.18%. This is a little over 40%. The rest is made up of a couple of Linux Mint distros and Other, which presumably incorporate all the other smaller operating systems.

Another number that's quite interesting is about the processor usage where Intel reigns supreme with 81.16%, and AMD follows with 18.84%.

We can also take a peek at the video cards used, and it's a mess. The main video card in use is Intel HD Graphics 4000 with 5.24%, followed by another three Intel integrated cards. This is not all that surprising since this solution is integrated on most modern motherboards. The first proper video card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, with just 3.50%.