Most folks in tech enthusiast circles have heard of - or own - a Steam Deck and have possibly even installed SteamOS-based Linux distributions like Bazzite or Chimera. The small but growing backlash against Windows 11's strict hardware requirements and forced upgrades may have become evident in the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey, which shows an all-time high of 3.20% for Linux.
That figure is a 0.15% rise in just one month, quite an impressive figure once you consider that for years on end, Steam Linux usage was under or barely over 1%. The launch of the Steam Deck in 2022 naturally increased that figure, but the gaming community seems be rallying around SteamOS derivatives, as the OS family had a 1.9% share in 2023, 3.05% in 2025, and now 3.20% as of this writing.
