Linux Crosses 5% of Steam Hardware Survey for First Time

For the first time since Valve started publishing the Hardware Survey, Linux now accounts for over 5% of active Steam machines.

April 2026 logged 5.16% Linux share, up from 3.4% twelve months ago. Steam Deck contributes about half — but desktop Linux installs grew faster YoY than the Deck did.

Driver story is partly Proton (95%+ of Steam top 1000 runs without per-game tweaks). The other half is anti-cheat: EAC and BattlEye both rolled out updated Linux passes in Q1, and the supported-titles gap is genuinely shrinking.