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.