To be honest, I think the whole “problem” here is a tempest in a teapot and is no problem at all. If Ubuntu is declining but Linux overall is increasing, I don’t see a problem since those games will just work on Ubuntu anyhow.
Therefore, in my opinion, considering there’s no problem, no solution is needed either. Linux is up because SteamOS is up. If Linux and SteamOS are up, we’re winning!
It’s about seeing the positive rather than the negaitve. No reason to stir controversy when there is none.
Just to chime in with my first post on the Ubuntu Discourse.
This is largely if not 97% because of the Steam Deck, since the OS is based on Arch.
Also if things are working as expected on Arch, having them work on Ubuntu is a sure thing. No matter what some people say, for better or worse, Ubuntu is still the most used distro/OS in the Linux world.
Author of the chart here. ProtonDB stats do not contain much data related to the Steam Deck, because most users who report their data on ProtonDB actually game on desktop or report compatibility using their desktop OS. So Steam Deck is a non-factor for this data set.
You can see the number of users who report their configuration on every month at the very top of the chart. It’s small, but should be readable. Since these are voluntary reports, it’s a sample of the whole user base, but it’s fairly stable in terms of sample size (it has not grown that much over the past 5 years).
In my experience, I expect that Ubuntu will have a relatively low percentage of people who are going to submit bug reports or game reports on ProtonDB. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t a LOT of people using Ubuntu.
I have moaned at Boiling Steam in the past about their poor interpretation and sensationalisation of these stats. It’s as bad as Distrowatch. But they don’t listen to facts.
Ubuntu (and Manjaro) have a significant number of users. Many of those users play video games. A large chunk of those play games via Steam. A vanishingly small proportion of those users contribute in any way to anything, let alone specifically ProtonDB.
It’s poor journalism from a partisan author who has a history of writing clickbait.
The Steam HW survey is also a difficult one to refer to because Arch/Manjaro include all their users in one entry, whereas Ubuntu is split not only across releases but also major point releases. This means that the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS number that is visible does not represent the gamers on Ubuntu 23.04 or 23.10, Ubuntu 20.04 or the Steam Snap (which by itself is around 90k monthly users). All of these Ubuntu gamers are categorised as ‘other’ which provides a misleading impression of how Ubuntu compares.
I did not know about the “Other” part. I think steam needs to update the way they gather the information for this kind of things. If this is happening to Linux distros, there could also be some other quirks going on with the rest of the stats.
Worse - Distrowatch at least calls it “Page Hit Ranking”, and on their details page says in bold " They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions". Knowingly using flawed statistics to make factually unsupported conclusions and then present them in the most drama-inducing manner possible is worse than doing nothing - it actively distracts time and attention from the overall FOSS mission.
@luisalvarado Correct me if I’m wrong, but I sense a desire for competition among distributions here - why do those stats matter other than general awareness of the largest userbases? Is where “Ubuntu” ranks on that page compared to “Arch” or “SteamOS”, or anything else, going to drive any action that changes how well Ubuntu works for gaming? If not, then that data is ultimately noise and IMO time spent worrying about it is time that could be spent either doing practical things to make the product better, or simply enjoying the product that we have and sharing that enjoyment with others.
Got nothing to correct. Everything that you just said is spot on. I am actually doing a video about this. The initial links that I started this conversation with came from 2 students that I have (Linux users, one arch, one ubuntu).
But today it got to a point about how information is shown, misused, altered or what the term so crazy people say about “alternative truth” that I had to do a video. At least to more or less clarify how to read certain things.
Those sites might not do that on purpose (or they might), and they could put a note saying what the data represents or how it is collected, but even then, other sites will grab the data and use it in a completely different way.
For example seaching for the most popular linux distribution will most of the time use the distrowatch list. Basically MX Linux is the best of all distros and the most popular one.
This also came to be with a conversation I had with my students and how easily they got to MX Linux because distrowatch said so. The same way other sites falsely declare or not even do a minimum of investigated journalism to determine if someone is currently true and holds its ground or not.
So everything you said is to the point and correct. It is the way it is used, or manipulates the linux community or even newcomers to it that is creating a big issue about confusion.
I think there are some big differences though. For example if you look at the graph on your site from protonDB, you will see it does not match the ones in Steam exactly:
Steam also has several issues as mentioned here. Including one I learned today about the “Other” seciton which includes, not only snap users from ubuntu, but also the rest of the versioning of Ubuntu.
For example it added on other the 22.04.2 users, the 22.04.1 users, the 22.04 users, the 23.04, the 23.10 (which I am one), this is because Arch, Majaro and any other rolling release model, simply shows to Steam as a unique name, whereas, Ubuntu supports a 6 month version model, but steam does not group all Ubuntu versions into a single Ubuntu, meaning it lost a big chunk of ubuntu users right there by the way that it shows the data (Really lazy and bad programming at this point from their end of a so called survey).
Same problem applies for Linux Mint, Pop Os and any other that uses a versioning naming convention.
Also, looking at the graph from protonDB, that could be interpreted as multiple things, to give you one, it could mean that the distros that show less, have less issues than the ones that show more, for example.
The type of users that typically go to ProtonDB are users that normally want to post an issue, not a success story with the game. Hence why most reports are bugs. Which promotes the idea above even more, about that less percent means less bugs, not just less users.
While I understand that a lot of gamers want Windows games; however, personally, I don’t have this need… and there are many open source 3D games that work awesomely (especially browser based). However, I remember back in the 90s when so many people were complaining that you couldn’t run Windows apps on a Mac… then there was the PowerPC/PowerMac that allowed the apps to work, but not as good.
So, once again, we’re talking about what we can currently do with the native software – which is pretty darn significant.
Just fyi, i made with the french community Gaming Linux Fr a comparison between each Linux distribution with a focus on gaming, accessibility and video editing.
The objectives is to guide new linux comers on the best choice at this time.
Today, ubuntu & kubuntu, are clearly the best choice.
But ubuntu don’t tick all the boxes of our Spec.
Our objectives is to open requests like this one : Bug #2057792 “Some Games are crashing linked to a vm_max_map_cou...” : Bugs : Ubuntu
for improving ubuntu for a gaming aspects.
In this bugs, we treat about vm_max_map_count which is too low by default (65530) and we need an other value >200k to mainly reduce our bugs in some games like Hogwarts Legacy or StarCitizen.
We have a plan for other improvements, like the compatibility of xbox joypad or about the snap steam compatibility with a google form.
Below you can see the specs sharing with Gaming Linux Fr community (2.5 k subscribes on discord & 5k on youtube)
It would be necessary to fix the snap or at least keep the .deb version as default until the snap is up to par. Because if a beginner arrives on Ubuntu, they have the snap by default, and today it’s not at the level of the native steam package.
I think we should also speed up the Nvidia drivers a bit, we’re still on 535 on Ubuntu while the 550 are in the production branch and already in their second iteration, which means someone with a 4070 super, for example, won’t be detected. You can add the PPA, but for a beginner, there should be zero fuss.
I agree that the snap isn’t ready and shouldn’t have been pushed to stable.
There is work being done to fix that. The Steam Snap Github actually has some interesting discussions on why the snap doens’t work well compared to other formats.
and the most popular one.
