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Comment by Zambyte | Hacker News Reader

It's very interesting to me that Arch Linux is reportedly the most popular distro among Steam users. I wonder if that's actually accurate, or if people who use other distros are more likely to decline the survey for privacy reasons, and people who use Arch like sharing because of the "I use Arch BTW" meme

Edit: SteamOS != Arch Linux[0]

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

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It's because they break the other distributions by version.

Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS 64 bit

"Arch Linux" 64 bit

Other Ubuntu versions appear to be in the "Other" category.

IIRC Steam OS is Arch based. So most steam decks will be running arch, and I bet those make up a hefty chunk of Linux “desktops” in the survey!

That's tracked separately. Arch is the biggest desktop linux there.

"SteamOS Holo" 64 bit 40.53% -2.46%

"Arch Linux" 64 bit 7.85% +0.04%

No it's not. It's counted differently.

It's the most convenient to use for gaming, ime. The AUR and being always up to do date really helps.

Same - I use Arch on my desktop and SteamOS (arch) on steam deck, I have had 0 issues with game compatibility in ~ 2 years

I'm not too surprised about gamers aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are.

Arch is in general a quite popular and quite decent distro, and the complexity of using it has decreased quite a lot in my opinion. I still wouldn't recommend it if there's a risk I end up having to handhold the person afterwards though.

> aligning with a somewhat minimal rolling distro that is quick to update packages, especially considering how comparatively slow the other big distros are

Is that an issue besides GPU drivers? I assumed (though I haven't really tried it) that Steam is pretty relatively self-contained on Linux and doesn't really rely on system packages that much (most games are running on Proton/Wine anyway).

The "GPU-driver" also includes all the the Vulkan and GL runtimes and user-space machinery for shader compilation and what-not. Being on latest and greatest can make a significant difference there that I'd expect gamers to chase.

Steam also still relies on e.g. your display server.

Does Arch handle Nvidia's drivers properly? I'm using Open SUSE and it's a horrible experience, they provide multiple ways to install them and none work, so ended up just having to use Nvidia's installer directly.

Same. I would also add that a lot of gamers also seem to be power users and/or tinkerers, and Arch is (IMHO) the best distro for that as well.

It's not really. The most popular distro is actually SteamOS Holo with 40% of the pie. For whatever reason Steam doesn't report SteamOS in the overall Linux stats until you drill down. It's also hard to tell if Arch is really the top non-SteamOS Linux distro because 5% of users are using the Steam Flatpak which could be on virtually on any distro.

Arch being popular among desktop distros is believable. It also aligns well with the existence of ArchWiki and EndeavourOS (easy to install Arch derivative).

I missed the Flatpak line. That definitely throws a wrench in the stats.

Flatpak does not change much the deal, you can see another data source here showing its real size at least for gaming: https://boilingsteam.com/goodbye-manjaro-update-on-the-evolu...

it was a couple years ago, but when i tried to game on Debian i was shocked by some 4+ year old packages that i wanted to try gaming with, nothing worked.

it's probably better today, but i definitely recommend a very up to date distro for gaming, and arch is literally the most up to date there is. happy with arch myself, except the nvidia issues, if you run an nvidia gpu i don't recommend it just yet (getting better really quickly though)

IMO the best approach is to use PCI passthrough to give the Nvidia GPU to a Windows guest, especially if what you're trying to do is game.

Arch wiki has a great write-up on it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF

TL;DR you boot your Linux host kernel with special VFIO params to ensure the entire IOMMU domain of your Nvidia GPU is ignored, and pass that to Windows guest (which sees it as an entirely normal nv GPU).

(My hope is that in the next couple of years the open source Nvidia driver landscape dramatically improves, and modern distros ship with rock solid Vulkan/OGL impl for all Nvidia cards made in the last decade or three)

I have using Debian testing, since half year, as my daily driver and to play games without any issues.

been doing the same with pop_os (regular releases not the LTS)

It's accurate. See more data here: https://boilingsteam.com/goodbye-manjaro-update-on-the-evolu...

Arch is weird. I consider myself a Linux power user, including kernel hacking but no way I'm going to manually set up partitions and type gazillions of commands to set my system up. This is off putting, I have no idea what's wrong with an installer. WTF Arch?

That is the Arch way, Arch is not built for convenience but for customizability. If you want a graphical installer, you can install it yourself ;). Also there are several Arch-based distributions that include (opinionated) graphical installers to get you going faster. ArcoLinux is a good one.

Well, there's some curses wizard called "archinstall", but yeah, I too opted for just the Garuda flavour of Arch when I chose to go non-VoidLinux (ie. when failing to get a new machine with nvidia drivered up swiftly and just-works-ly) rather than any console-driven setup.

Isn't SteamDeck's OS based on Arch? So that probably is large factor.

If you're going to be a Linux gamer, you have to be a fan of the game of Linux. Most games are going to need some tweaking or a weird package in order to work. Arch makes a lot of sense for that crowd.

This was the situation 5+ years ago.

Most games work without extra steps nowadays (as long as steam is involved).

I remember wasteland 2 (from steam/wine) crashing on Linux when you finally entered the rangers headquarters. Luckily a linux kernel developer played the game and figured out what was going on. He told everyone how to fix the game with some arcane commands, increasing max counts, etc. Was pretty wild.

This is honestly one of the things that IMHO gives so much value to SteamOS. The Valve engineers find out about these things and apply them at the base. I've had a pretty good overall experience with gaming on my Fedora machine, but I've had to learn a couple of those things the hard way (mmap settings in the kernel, missing 32-bit libc (even though it's there), etc)

It is still very much true today in my experience. I have tried to be a linux gamer occasionally, and there are almost always things that need to be done for compatibility. Few games live up to Steam's promise, even when Steam is involved, unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.

>unless you are playing on one of Steam's 2-3 anointed distros.

For sure. That is a pretty good state to be in---most games work in a few well known distros. If you use something else, you have to DIY some compatibility steps once in a while.

You should know that Ubuntu is not one of those anointed distros. The distros where steam just works are distros specifically set up for linux gaming.

I use Arch, and everything has just worked.

I’m not surprised that Ubuntu isn’t too well. Interestingly, Debian works well from what I have heard.

Nobody should be using Ubuntu in 2024.

The most hacking I've done to get a Steam game working on openSUSE Tumbleweed is some copypasta sed magic to bypass the Private Division launcher app for Kerbal Space Program 2. Other than that, setting a command line parameter to ensure my eGPU gets used (which should be a relatively uncommon scenario), and forcing a few games to run through Proton, everything just works.

Is this because SteamOS is based on Arch? (maybe I did something wrong but it doesn't seem to appear as SteamOS in their stats)

Maybe the factors in someone selecting arch linux are the same for someone likely to game on Linux?

Or maybe the "I use Arch BTW" meme is there because a lot of people using it makes it so that a lot of the loud people uses it.

Is there any reliable way to compare distros usage?

SteamOS on Steam Deck is based on Arch Linux.

it's not called Arch Linux in the survey. So not counted together.

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