I hope the trend continues. We could really benefit from greater adoption and more support from developers.

It seems that the lag period (pre-Steam Deck) is causing the exponential fit to not be that good. Can you try fitting only to data from the past 4 years to see if the fit is better?

Edit: Was easy enough for me to do, and I had the software to do it, so I did it.

Details:

Fitted entire dataset with a non-linear regression (minimizing sum of squares), with the given model:

Y = baseline + Y0 * exp(k*t)

Fitted equation was determined to be Y=0.7717 + 0.04451 * exp(0.04677 * t)

With this fit, doubling time is 14.82 months.

R^2 is 0.8851

95% CI:

baseline = 0.6029-0.9093

Y0 = 0.01744-0.1023

k = 0.03749-0.05734

Doubling time = 12.09-18.49

Edit 2: if we do a bit of the statistical funny, we can plug the equation into Desmos and try to extrapolate:

With this data, we can estimate that Linux usage will hit a solid 5% on Steam after ~97 months (most recent datapoint is month 91 in my dataset), which should correspond to ~November 2026. If we extrapolate farther into the future, we can estimate that Linux will hit 10% at ~114 months, which corresponds to ~March 2028

Yeah this is a good example of how to look at Steam's hardware survey.

Valve has loads more data than they provide in the survey so they can correct the data to give themselves a much more accurate picture. We just get a monthly snapshot and in aggregate which only shows who happens to have completed the survey. So we can't know the actual absolute numbers and we can't match individual users together like Valve can - but we can see trends in each dataset.

The spiking up and down month to month for OS doesn't matter, the overall trend is up for Linux. It can't tell us actual numbers even using trends, but we can be confident Linux use has been trending up. And while Linux use remains low, it does look like it's tripled or quadrupled in the past.

How much of that is Linux desktop vs Steam deck growth is harder to tell. But in some ways it doesn't matter; even if Linux remains small as a proportion, that is still a lot of users which means the whole Linux gaming ecosystem is healthy.

What about the steam softer survey? (Think you might have a typo in that there title friend)

To the.. moon?

I like the chart and agree with the conclusion. But shouldn't the exponential trend line start at the same percentage in the beginning of the chart? Right now, the exponential trend line is far below the original value at start, and with exponential lines that matters.

Finally, year of the Windows desktop.

I wonder if there is any meaningful relationship between rate of Linux adoption and percentage of games people are actively playing being marked as Steam Deck ready?

That red line is pretty misleading tbh. Intentionally or not, but that line doesn't fit in that data.