Steam Linux user share dips below 4% for August 2026

2 Sep 2026 at 8:40 am UTC | Last updated: 2 Sep 2026 at 9:25 am UTC
By Liam Squires-Hand

The Steam Hardware & Software Survey for August 2026 is now live, and with it we can see the latest system details for gamers on Steam. For August 2026, we did see a dip in the overall Linux user share.

Overall operating system share:

• Windows: 93.95% +0.28%.
• Linux: 3.90% -0.11%.
• macOS: 2.14% -0.18%.

We saw a slight rise in Simplified Chinese as a language on Steam (23.97% +1.45%), which often matches up exactly with Linux dropping.

A snapshot of trends over time from our interactive charts on our Steam Tracker page:

Today I've also added a download chart as WebP button to each of them on the Steam Tracker page with upscaling. Giving a higher resolution capture for anyone who wanted that. Also makes our snapshot images for the article a higher quality now.

And the most popular Linux distributions used for August 2026:

• SteamOS Holo 64 bit: 21.07% (-1.17%).
• CachyOS 64 bit: 15.47% (+1.16%).
• Other: 13.11% (-0.80%).
• Arch Linux 64 bit: 8.78% (+0.49%).
• Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit: 8.38% (+0.26%).
• Bazzite 64 bit: 7.76% (+0.03%).
• Freedesktop SDK 25.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit: 5.26% (-0.11%).
• Fedora Linux 44 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) 64 bit: 3.17% (+0.25%).
• Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 64 bit: 2.86% (-0.06%).
• Ubuntu Core 24 64 bit: 2.75% (-0.13%).
• Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS 64 bit: 2.64% (-0.14%).
• Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie) 64 bit: 1.98% (-0.01%).
• Fedora Linux 44 (Workstation Edition) 64 bit: 1.94% (+0.28%).
• Nobara Linux 44 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) 64 bit: 1.66% (+1.66%).
• EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit: 1.65% (-0.04%).
• Pop!_OS 24.04 LTS 64 bit: 1.52% (-0.01%).

🌐 External Sources: store.steampowered.com Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com. Tags: Misc, Steam, Survey, Survey Results, Valve 10 Likes Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:Ubisoft's FOR HONOR will block SteamOS / Linux on September 10Proton Experimental gets fixes for Far Cry 5, Nightingale, Lords of The Fallen, various Command & Conquer gamesDirect3D 8/9/10/11 to Vulkan translation layer DXVK 3.1 brings improvements for game launchers, older Frostbite engine and moreFramework Laptop 12 gets Fedora KDE Linux on pre-builts, along with new Intel Core Series 3 processors All posts need to follow our rules. Please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Readers can also email us for any issues or concerns.