Linux Installations Rise to 5% in Latest Steam Hardware Survey, RTX 5070 Falls Back
The latest Steam hardware survey has shown a very interesting picture, with strong growth in Linux installations among gamers. The share of users using Linux rose from 2.13% in February to 5.33% in March. This is a significant jump, putting the open-source operating system well ahead of macOS, which stands at 2.35%, although it still remains far behind Windows, which continues to dominate with 92.33%, despite a drop of 4.28%.
Within the Linux ecosystem, Arch Linux leads the ranking with 0.34%, followed by Linux Mint 22.3 at 0.27%. This result is easy to explain, as SteamOS 3, the system used by Steam Deck, is based on Arch Linux, which has helped increase its use.
Linux Sees Major Growth on Steam
On Microsoft’s side, there has been a clear shift. Windows 11 gained more than 10 percentage points, while Windows 10 dropped by around 15%. This change reflects an ongoing trend, likely linked to the end of support for Windows 10.
As for graphics cards, the March data shows a return to more normal figures after the unusual results seen in February. The Nvidia RTX 5070, which had suddenly jumped from 2.87% in January to 9.42% and became the most widely used GPU, has now returned exactly to 2.87%, falling to fifth place. This trend further raises doubts about the accuracy of the spike recorded the previous month.
The RTX 3060 has therefore taken back the top spot, despite a slight drop from 4.6% to 4.1%.
On AMD’s side, the new RDNA 4 GPUs remain almost invisible. The RX 9070 appears only in 99th place, while the RX 9060 does not appear in the ranking at all. Even considering that many AMD cards are grouped under the general label “AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics,” the total still stands at just 2.4%, which is enough only for ninth place.
In other news, Valve has acknowledged that the Steam Hardware & Software Survey inaccurately reported VRAM capacity for certain graphics cards, causing skewed data in recent reports
