The rampant success of Valve’s Steam Deck handheld has given Linux gaming a new lease on life. After years of being shrugged off, Valve’s PC gaming handheld has propelled the unappreciated operating system above MacOS for gamers.
As reported in the most recent Steam Hardware and Software Survey results, Linux gaming is now more popular than MacOS gaming. This coincides with the popularity of the Steam Deck, Valve’s recent handheld that runs on a Linux fork dubbed SteamOS.
While only a very marginal boost over MacOS, Linux gamers now make up 1.96% of Steam users. In comparison, MacOS gamers make up 1.84%. Of course, this has absolutely nothing on Windows which sits at a very comfortable 96.21%.
Nevertheless, this is still a huge improvement for Linux gaming on Steam. In the past month, Linux Steam usage has increased by half a percent, showing a huge boost in popularity for the OS in a short span of time.
Linux gaming has always suffered due to poor compatibility, something that Valve is actively fixing with the introduction of its Proton compatibility software, allowing Windows games to run almost flawlessly on Linux hardware such as Steam Deck.
However, MacOS may end up trailing Proton’s coattails with its own compatibility layer. Over the past few months, Apple has started shipping its Game Porting Toolkit, a Proton-style compatibility system that will allow Windows games to run on Apple Silicon hardware. In theory, this could even make more games playable on M1 and M2 iOS hardware such as the iPad line of tablets.
Windows’ hold on the PC gaming market has long been normal, but those on other platforms have suffered. With the rise of Proton and Steam Deck, Windows gaming may not be the only future of PC gamers, even if it will likely remain the most popular for the largely foreseeable future.
The Steam Deck is currently available to purchase on the Steam Marketplace in a number of configurations.