Steam survey shows Linux gains

Valve has released data from the latest Steam Hardware and Software survey showing the breakdown of operating systems in use by PC gamers.

The digital platform just opened its doors to Linux eleven days before the survey, and Ubuntu already accounts for 0.8 per cent of users.

This compares with 3.7 per cent of users claiming some variant of Mac OS X.

Windows 8 is rapidly overtaking Vista in the Steam rankings, despite its controversial reception from consumers and Valve itself.

Windows 7 is still far and away the most popular OS, claiming over seventy per cent of users.

Another 0.7 per cent claimed some other operating system, which could refer to other Linux distributions such as Mint, Fedora, or Gentoo, all of which are popular with gamers but are currently unsupported by Valve.

The full breakdown, including average hardware statistics, can be found here.