Windows 10 ousts Windows 7 as most popular with Steam gamers

[HEXUS]

(64-bit OS versions)
Meanwhile Steam on Linux market share continues to dwindle.

Read more.

[Kato-2]

Not surprising, for all the hate often directed at MS, nothing comes close to Windows. No desktop linux OS with it's design cues taken from the 90's is ever going to be popular.

Win10 is basically MS version of OSX, last version of Windows to be made so just updates to that from now on.

Steam OS is a dud (coming from someone who was a big supported for it initially) Valve's laissez faire approach means development meanders along, big name AAA titles are rare and the ones that even are have serious bugs and performance issues even on Nvidia GPU's. No key "console" titles from publishers like sports or lego games, it's mostly just a large pile of indie trash.

Ironically the biggest thing that could help Steam Machines would be if MS ported the Xbox UI to Win10 so the Xbox app could turn into Xbox Media Centre. That would give PC makers a more appealing way to sell HTPC's, instead of bolting on modded UI's to Windows or using SteamOS. Then just use any of the UWP apps which can pin Steam games to Xbox UI or run Steam UI itself.

[valhar2000]

No desktop linux OS with it's design cues taken from the 90's is ever going to be popular.

I think Linux has a much bigger obstacle than that: Linux is made by programmers for programmers. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean that Linux will never have mass market appeal. The Linux cultist who believe that Linux has not achieved mainstream status due to a conspiracy by Microsoft or, indeed, any other reason, are simply ignorant of how regular people interact with their computers.

[aniilv]

Dont underestimate the avarage gamer, if linux would work even remotely as good as windows then people would find ways to migrate... The problem is that linux performance is so far off windows even for games that work natively that its not worth a look. valves own games have much (by as much as 20-30%) lower fps than on windows

[jimbouk]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

Nice completely misleading article headline with a correction below. I'm not sure why it was chosen to be written that way? Windows 10 at 38.28%, Windows 7 at 39.96%, it's getting close but it's simply not true that "Windows 10 ousts Windows 7 as most popular with Steam gamers".

Please please please don't start going the way to Toms Hardware with cringe worthy click-bait headlines. Please remain better than the average internet site. We are not here yet:

[Ogami]

No desktop linux OS with it's design cues taken from the 90's is ever going to be popular.

I think Linux has a much bigger obstacle than that: Linux is made by programmers for programmers. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean that Linux will never have mass market appeal. The Linux cultist who believe that Linux has not achieved mainstream status due to a conspiracy by Microsoft or, indeed, any other reason, are simply ignorant of how regular people interact with their computers.

+1 for that comment.

[Tabbykatze]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics...

Nice completely misleading article headline with a correction below. I'm not sure why it was chosen to be written that way? Windows 10 at 38.28%, Windows 7 at 39.96%, it's getting close but it's simply not true that "Windows 10 ousts Windows 7 as most popular with Steam gamers".

Please please please don't start going the way to Toms Hardware with cringe worthy click-bait headlines. Please remain better than the average internet site.

You wanna take a step back and read the source they took it from?

They compared Windows 10 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit of which from the source is Windows 10 64bit.

You want to link your sauce to prove them wrong on a hard written fact linked from Steam?

[peterb]

You want to link your sauce to prove them wrong on a hard written fact linked from Steam?

[Tabbykatze]

Prefer me a bit of

[Corky34]

They compared Windows 10 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit of which from the source is Windows 10 64bit.

I think he/she was more pointing to the headline being misleading rather than the actual article, although having a headline going into the details of 32bit vs 64bit and the cumulative numbers would've probably been a bit unwieldy and would've made reading the whole article rather pointless.

Back OT, I do find it strange how Steam users have always been quick to adopt a new OS yet seem to drag their feet when it comes to other things like the 1080p resolution, number of cores, clock speed, and 70% with DirectX 8 (or lower) GPUs seems even stranger.

[jimbouk]

You wanna take a step back and read the source they took it from?

They compared Windows 10 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit of which from the source is Windows 10 64bit.

You want to link your sauce to prove them wrong on a hard written fact linked from Steam?

The article compares Windows 10 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit, the headline drops the '64 bit' part. I'm not debating the facts, yes Windows 10 64 bit is the most popular OS, my post is complaining about the headline being misleading

[DanceswithUnix]

You wanna take a step back and read the source they took it from?

They compared Windows 10 64 bit to Windows 7 64 bit of which from the source is Windows 10 64bit.

You want to link your sauce to prove them wrong on a hard written fact linked from Steam?

I think he was using the exact same statistics. If you add in 32 bit versions of those versions, there are more Windows 7 installs than there are Windows 10.

There isn't much in it, but I agree with the sentiment. This will almost certainly be a correct headline *next* month given the almost 3% change this time around, and that as we get towards the end of the 1 year free upgrade period I expect a large increase in uptake (I expect to be one of them if only to stay on the mainline supported version not because I like it).

[mtyson]

Sorry about the headline guys! Many people don't know that HEXUS headlines are limited to exactly 2 (short-ish) lines, so it's tricky to compose a headline without lots of textual massaging and it actually remain a headline. Randomly FB posts our stories without the subheading / strapline making things worse.

As well as the above, companies often launch hardware and games with very long names and we don't have room in the headline to pick out important features, as we would like - that happens a lot. Like the "Cooler Master MasterKeys Pro L and Pro S keyboards" allowed me just one extra word, so I picked 'launched'. I then attempt to pick out key features for the secondary explanatory text.

Headline is approx: 34 characters including spaces [next line], 34 characters including spaces.

[crossy]

Not surprising, for all the hate often directed at MS, nothing comes close to Windows. No desktop linux OS with it's design cues taken from the 90's is ever going to be popular.

Win10 is basically MS version of OSX, last version of Windows to be made so just updates to that from now on.

Steam OS is a dud (coming from someone who was a big supported for it initially) Valve's laissez faire approach means development meanders along, big name AAA titles are rare and the ones that even are have serious bugs and performance issues even on Nvidia GPU's. No key "console" titles from publishers like sports or lego games, it's mostly just a large pile of indie trash.

Ironically the biggest thing that could help Steam Machines would be if MS ported the Xbox UI to Win10 so the Xbox app could turn into Xbox Media Centre. That would give PC makers a more appealing way to sell HTPC's, instead of bolting on modded UI's to Windows or using SteamOS. Then just use any of the UWP apps which can pin Steam games to Xbox UI or run Steam UI itself.

Congratulations, yours is the first Hexus.net post I've seen this year where every single paragraph was just plain silly.

I'd like to do a rebuttal in depth, but to be honest I think I'd be wasting my time doing an anti-troll / anti-fanboy. I would, however, suggest trying a current live Linux distribution before trotting out the 'opinion' trotted out in your first paragraph, which is so wrong as to be amusing.

Dont underestimate the avarage gamer, if linux would work even remotely as good as windows then people would find ways to migrate... The problem is that linux performance is so far off windows even for games that work natively that its not worth a look. valves own games have much (by as much as 20-30%) lower fps than on windows

Not getting at you, but have you got some modern figures to back that up? I'm interested because I'm just about to build a Linux gaming partition on my gaming rig, and the only going concerns I've come across are that (understandably) the Windows drivers are in a more optimised state than the Linux ones. But the figures I was seeing weren't at the 20%+ drop that you quoted.

[scaryjim]

... Not getting at you, but have you got some modern figures to back that up? I'm interested because I'm just about to build a Linux gaming partition on my gaming rig, and the only going concerns I've come across are that (understandably) the Windows drivers are in a more optimised state than the Linux ones. But the figures I was seeing weren't at the 20%+ drop that you quoted.

It's certainly not definitive (as the Hexus review says) but this: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/system...achine/?page=3 doesn't paint a pretty picture. Identical hardware, the only difference being SteamOS v Windows.

[SineWave]

+ -2 to that comment. I've been working with PCs my whole life and I know how regular people interact with computers and it's no different in Linux than in Windows. <-- now *that* is a solid fact. However, myths... and myths... and myths are constantly being propagated about how Linux is soooooo difficult to use, while my grandma could install it and use it. Linux came a long way in the mean time and it's getting stronger with each day, chaps. On the other hand, Microsoft has somewhat lost the plot lately, aside from becoming a bully who doesn't care about their users, only to extort as much money from them as they can. For me, Windows 8 was a disaster, but Windows 10 is then a cataclysmic disaster, and it will stay that way.