Linux Share Surges Past 5%
Steam’s March Hardware Survey shows Linux more than doubling month over month, jumping from 2.13% in February to 5.33%. That’s a sharp swing by any measure, and it puts Linux comfortably ahead of macOS at 2.35%—though Windows still dominates at 92.33% across all versions.
Distribution-wise, Arch Linux leads the Linux pack at 0.34%, edging out Linux Mint 22.3 at 0.27%. That tracks with the Steam Deck’s influence. SteamOS 3—the Deck’s operating system—is based on Arch, and the handheld’s steady momentum likely helped push Linux up the chart.
PC Gamer flags the usual qualifiers around these numbers, describing Steam’s monthly report as coming with "copious caveats," some of them issued by Valve itself. The survey has been prone to odd one-month swings before, and March has a few eyebrow-raisers elsewhere that back up that caution.
Windows Shifts, Deck Effect
Windows isn’t vanishing, but usage is moving. March’s sample shows a notable slide from Windows 10 to Windows 11: the latter is up by over 10% while Windows 10 drops by about 15% compared to February’s mix. It’s the clearest sign yet that gamers are following Microsoft’s nudge toward its newer OS.
Linux’s rise doesn’t mean PC players are abandoning Windows en masse. Instead, it hints at a broader comfort with alternatives—helped by Proton’s maturity and the Deck normalizing Linux-powered gaming. Even Microsoft has been talking up "fundamentals" lately after years of bolt-on features, a tacit admission that user trust is something to earn back.
So, has the long-rumored switch begun? One line from PC Gamer frames the moment neatly: "Has the Linux revolution finally begun?" That’s still a stretch. But a share north of five percent is big enough to command attention from developers, anti-cheat vendors, and middleware providers who weigh platform support against audience size.
GPU Rankings Snap Back
On the graphics side, March looks like a reset after February’s odd result. The Nvidia RTX 5070 briefly rocketed from 2.87% in January to 9.42% in February—suddenly crowned the most popular GPU on Steam—before snapping back to 2.87% in March. Call it a classic "regression to the mean." It lands the 5070 in fifth place overall.
With the blip corrected, the RTX 3060 returns to its usual spot at the top despite a slight dip, sliding from 4.6% in February to 4.1% in March. That’s more in line with what you’d expect from a card that’s been a mainstream staple for years across both desktops and laptops.
AMD’s newest RDNA 4 GPUs barely register. The RX 9070 squeaks into the top 100 at 99th, while the RX 9060 doesn’t appear at all. Some of this may be down to how the survey buckets hardware: a generic "AMD Radeon(TM) Graphics" entry accounts for 2.4% of gamers and ranks ninth, potentially obscuring individual models.
Read the Numbers With Caution
Steam’s survey is a snapshot with soft edges. Participation varies, regional sampling can shift the mix, and hardware IDs sometimes get misread. February’s 5070 spike and March’s snapback underline how a single month can mislead, especially when new products or drivers roll through.
Still, the Linux jump stands out because it crosses a psychological line. At 5.33%, porting decisions look a little different, testing budgets stretch a bit farther, and middleware teams have one more platform they can’t ignore. If that share holds—or grows—expect steadier day-one support, cleaner Proton compatibility, and fewer "Windows only" warnings on store pages.
All eyes now turn to April and beyond. If Linux settles back to the low twos, March will read as a Deck-heavy wobble. If it stays above five, or climbs, PC gaming’s power users may finally be shifting habits in a way that forces the rest of the ecosystem to follow.
