this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2025
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About Linux growth in Steam HW surveys: don't forget chinese language is currently the biggest source of "noise" against accuracy (lemmy.ca)
submitted 4 days ago by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

When chinese language drops, Linux "grow"; but that growth seems to fall back whenever Chinese language return on top... sometime over the overall English language (temporarily making English a secondary language).

There's a constant Linux growth on Steam? Yes, but Chinese language introduce some noise (I doubt publishers are willing to make English language a secondary concern, under Chinese, after reading Steam HWs).

PS: nothing against chinese people, this is all about statistical noise: people jumping on their chair before checking the whole thing.

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[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

As someone who hasn’t been following what’s going on, this reads like a really weird post.

What does it mean for a language to… “drop”? Did you mean language usage? Why would Linux “grow” (whatever you mean by “grow” here) whenever this language “drops”?

And assuming I understood your post correctly, why should we consider Chinese users of Linux as “noise”? In what context are you posting this such that they can be considered “noise” instead of “more data points”?

Sorry for blasting questions at ya, but this is really out of left field.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

not op.

basically, there is a hardware survey that valve does, they randomly pick something like 1/10 pc's with steam, save a bunch of info about them (visible at https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey).

Because of the randomly picked pc's different demographics can grow or shrink randomly, creating noise, this is particularly visible for simplified chinese, which shrinks and grows by a couple % every time, and is overwhelmingly windows users. This affects the linux percentage too. So if simplified chinese is on a larger percentage of steam pc's, the percentage of pc's with linux on them shrinks.

If you are more interested in how linux is doing in western countries, this is annoying noise.

That's my best explanation, please ask if you have any other questions.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That makes more sense. Thank you for the explanation.

From what you’re saying though, it sounds like we’re assuming English usage translates to Western usage? But that’s not necessarily accurate though. South East Asia, for example, also has a huge population when combined, has a really big gaming scene, and gamers are frequently English speakers / users, if not just don’t mind using English in their systems, even if they don’t necessarily speak it well. That corner of the world is wholly dominated by Windows as well.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

it sounds like we’re assuming English usage translates to Western usage?

that might be what OP is saying, since English users outnumber every other european language, since most people in western countries/regions that are non-english speaking set their steam to english (I would know, all my (francophone) friends do that).

But realistically most other languages have linux usage not dissimilar to english, and china stands out by being very different and a huge percentage of the total users. So that's what they're saying.

Idk man

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 1 points 4 days ago

So basically both methodologies are wrong, Valve and OPs.

Hope to see folks install 麒麟 more and more.