Valve has published the new Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October, and it looks like the Linux platform is continuing its rise, although it's still not above 1.0%.

Up until six months ago, the Steam for Linux usage was around 1.2%, but it dropped to 0.7 in just one month. Something major changed in the way Valve gathered or presented the collected data, or suddenly almost half of the Linux users just stopped using Steam. Since the latter is not really possible, we must conclude that the former option is the correct one. It's also important to know that the Steam Hardware & Software Survey is not a precise tool, and it cannot be used as such.

The only ones who can rely on the Steam Hardware & Software Survey are the guys from Valve because they have all the numbers. In this case, it would have been nice to know how many people were asked and what other criteria were used. There are all sorts of numbers that would be useful, but for now, we have to content ourselves with the 0.98% that is provided.

Steam for Linux is on the rise, again

The number of Steam for Linux users seems to be on the rise once more. We've seen a small increase each month, and if we add to that the fact that the total number of Steam users has been increasing as well, the figures are actually quite good. Well, they are not quite as good as we want them to be, but we can hope that they will improve after the launch of the Steam Machines on November 10.

As it stands right now, the most used operating system for Steam is the 64-bit edition of Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS, followed closely by Ubuntu 15.04 64-bit. It's likely that the recently released Ubuntu 15.10 will be spotted in the second position next month, after people have a chance to upgrade.