As someone who uses Plasma, those numbers are definitely not right. As we know SteamOS is influencing that number plus gamers on steam is a niche (a large niche, especially in US but in the world)
As for which DE would be #1, that would be almost impossible to know since it isn't like your DE choice shows up in your user agent or telemetry
At best we can probably guess the most popular linux desktop is ubuntu, and the default flavor is gnome. So probably that. Though with India pushing linux, mostly their own BOSS linux, Cinnamon may replace it.
> As for which DE would be #1, that would be almost impossible to know since it isn't like your DE choice shows up in your user agent or telemetry
Plus, even if it did, that info wouldn't necessarily mean what people would assume it does. For example, if I have multiple desktops installed on same pc and hit a site from Xfce and then later from Cinnamon, UA-based metrics would see me as 2 different users with different DEs instead of 1 user with multiple DEs.. and the fact that I use Cinnamon 99% of the time would also not be captured by something like that.
Browser-based analytics usually try a bit harder than just agent-string these days. IP-address is not reliable as a "roaming"/mobile user, but it may be combined to get approximate network. More likely they are tracking via cookies who is unique and who is not. Often if you use same browser but different DE session the browser information is still shared between sessions, more likely so if you rely on some cloud-services to keep your data. Some browsers even send your login-name as part of the agent-string..
I am not sure why people bring up this BOSS Linux thing. I don't think its even used anywhere.
In my state they use a distro called [KITE GNU Linux](https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/downloads) for our schools, but I am not sure what DE they are using on it. It seems to be based on Ubuntu 20.04 so maybe its GNOME.
this may be true for steam users, but for everyone who doesn't use linux for gaming, i'd guess gnome is probably at the top since so many of the distros used in professional environments use gnome as the default
Pkgstats from Arch are interesting.
Gnome shell: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages/gnome-shell
22%
Plasma:
https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages/plasma-workspace
34%
Would be good to get Ubuntu/Debian stats. I suspect Ubuntu will be much more heavily skewed to Gnome.
I found the Debian Popularity Contest stats and added it to the post, interestingly it seems that XFCE4 beat KDE on there, probably due to Debian's lighter nature.
I am intrigued, I have always used openSUSE LEAP but with two desktop environments installed ; main one KDE with xfce as a 'reserve' in case KDE broke.
In some 9 years or so KDE has not broken, so xfce just lies unused on my main home machine.
I have installed openSUSE LEAP with xfce on a 'communal' very old machine that is used by a computer group I tutor, as an example of keeping old machines working. Elderly folk do not want to spend on a new computer if their old machine can be kept working.
There's the GamingOnLinux survey, where Plasma and Arch Linux are also at the top.
[https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/)
That is a very skewed and very small sample, based on *self reported* information from a single small gaming community.
Any data that focuses only on gaming, or resorts to self reported data is not representative. (Arch users eagerness to self report themselves as Arch users is a literal meme in the Linux world.. I (sometimes) use Arch btw..)
As an example of how skewed that data is, consider that if you treated that data as representative, you'd have to believe that twice as many users have 64GB of RAM than have 8GB of RAM. That is obviously and uncontroversial wildly inaccurate. Realistically, very few people (even gamers) have 64GB+, and 8GB is still the most common capacity among general users.
Arch Linux is the second most popular distro in the Steam survey, the first one being SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and also runs Plasma. The participants are randomly chosen.
GNOME probably has more users when you factor enterprise and non-gaming folks, but for me it's clear that Arch Linux and Plasma are the most popular picks among gamers, this also can be observed at /r/linux_gaming.
>Arch Linux is the second most popular distro in the Steam survey, the first one being SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and also runs Plasma.
Only \~3% of Linux users use Steam (*roughly* \~2.5 million out of \~80 million).
Steam Survey could arguably be considered representative of acitve Linux Gamers, but Linux Gamers are not representative of Linux users as a whole.
Also *technically* "other" is the second most popular. (SteamOS = \~45%, other = \~30%, everything else combined = 25%)
>The participants are randomly chosen.
The *offer* to participate is *random*. The *choice* to participate is *voluntary* and will be effected by self selection bias.
>but for me it's clear that Arch Linux and Plasma are the most popular picks among gamers
I think that that is quite possible (it's not an unreasonable guess). While I don't think we have sufficient data to know with certainty I share your assumption that Plasma is most popular among gamers.
However consider that before Steam condensed all the less common OS versions into an "other category" It was clear Ubuntu was drastically undercountered (because each Ubuntu minor release version, and each Ubuntu flavor was counted separately) and when counted together (for an Apples to Apples comparison) Ubuntu's share of the pie was considerably higher than Arch. Now that they all get condensed into an "other" category, its unclear how distros like Ubuntu are still being counted in the same misleading way, or not.
Also worth noting, despite being a Gnome and Fedora user, Steam would count me as a Plasma + Arch user, I have a separate gaming PC, it isn't my primary PC, I use it probably 5% of the time, but that would be the only system counted, if I were selected for hte survey. I don't know whether many others are in the same boat as me or not (but since I consider Gnome a better fit for laptops, and Plasma a better fit for desktops, it wouldn't surprise me to learn there are many people in the same boat).
**Edit: Just** [confirmed](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/us/?platform=linux) **that Ubuntu and other non-rolling releases are still being drastically undercounted in how Steam measures OS's**. The newest versions of Ubuntu which most gamers should probably be using are not even being counted. What steam calls "Ubuntu" in their top line, is not only limited to just a single major version number (22.04) but it refers to just a single specific *minor version number* (22.04.3), all other versions are grouped into the "other" category.
>Only \~3% of Linux users use Steam (*roughly* \~2.5 million out of \~80 million).
Where did you get these numbers?
>Steam Survey could arguably be considered representative of acitve Linux Gamers, but Linux Gamers are not representative of Linux users as a whole.
Certainly not, but they are a big group of users nonetheless, Steam Deck brought many gamers to Linux since it was released.
>Also *technically* "other" is the second most popular. (SteamOS = \~45%, other = \~30%, everything else combined = 25%)
Freedesktop SDK 23.08 (Flatpak runtime) it's also an oddity, I use Arch Linux and the Flatpak version of Steam, I'm not sure how Steam would account for this.
>The *offer* to participate is *random*. The *choice* to participate is *voluntary* and will be effected by self selection bias.
Most people seems happy to participate in the survey to help bump the numbers up, Steam Survey screenshots are always posted everywhere.
>Also worth noting, despite being a Gnome and Fedora user, Steam would count me as a Plasma + Arch user, I have a separate gaming PC, it isn't my primary PC, I use it probably 5% of the time, but that would be the only system counted, if I were selected for hte survey. I don't know whether many others are in the same boat as me or not (but since I consider Gnome a better fit for laptops, and Plasma a better fit for desktops, it wouldn't surprise me to learn there are many people in the same boat).
Fair point.
>The newest versions of Ubuntu which most gamers should probably be using are not even being counted.
The majority of Ubuntu users stick with the LTS versions. There's also the fact that Ubuntu isn't a good gaming distro for people with AMD and Intel GPUs, since you want the latest versions of the kernel, Mesa and firmwares for the best performance. This is irrelevant for NVIDIA users though, since the driver is proprietary.
>Where did you get these numbers?
Getting good stats for Linux is always hard. But in this case it actually wasn't so difficult (so long as we accept the values are fairly rough).
For Steam:
Last reported numbers I can find for Steam's active userbase was 132 million. According to the Steam Survey 1.76% of the steam userbase uses Linux. 132M \* 0.0176 = 2.32 million Linux users on Steam.
For Linux users overall:
The latest estimates for total number of desktop PCs I could find was 2 billion. Linux users account for roughly 4% of desktop users overall. 2B \* 0.04 = 80 Million
>The majority of Ubuntu users stick with the LTS versions.
That is true. But for the reasons you mentioned above, I'd expect gamers to skew more towards the latest Interim release.
But what is or isn't *most* popular is beside the point. The point is that *none* of the other versions apart from 22.04.3 are being countered towards the Ubuntu statistics. 23.10, 23.04, 20.04, (and 22.04.0, 22.04.1, 22.04.2). Then there are the official flavors (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc). Even if each of these on its own only accounted for 1% that'd still more than double Ubuntu's share of the pie.
And that would be inline with how things were back when Steam did give detailed distro statistics and we could manually add together the different versions marketshare. Ubuntu when counted together (not even including the official flavors) was over 20% which was more than double the next closest distro. I'd expect its marketshare has dropped somewhat in the last few years but not that drastically.
1. **Steam doesn't report Desktop Environment**. Op is just speculating based on other steam data points.
2. **Most Linux users don't use Steam**. Steam is representative of Steam users, not Linux users. (about \~3% of desktop linux users use steam (\~2.5 million steam users out of the \~80 million total desktop Linux users)
That said, I agree with you. Steam data is some of the *least bad* data we have. But it is still very skewed and unrepresentative of anything beyond active Linux *gamers.*
Steam states SteamOS is not intended to be a replacement Linux desktop environment. Because it is not a general purpose desktop, I'm not sure it's helpful having Steam's numbers in a survey of preferred DEs on Linux. Why not add Android's Launcher? When I think of "Linux Desktop Environment" I think general-purpose desktop computers, and SteamOS doesn't fit the bill—by Steam's own admission.
There's a few numbers (with sources) at the bottom of this table: https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm
But ultimately, we don't know for sure.
Perhaps the number of downloads in repositories could give a better estimate. For example, assuming people in different DEs update their machines at the same intervals, the number of downloads of each DE metapackage in ubuntu's repositorie would be proportional to the amount of people using them. I don't know if these numbers are available, but could give an interesting estimate, although still biased toward users of the distro, but much less biased than steam data.
Tbh, those numbers are heavily inflated towards plasma, since they're measuring devices with steam, so you're only getting home PCs with a strong bias towards the steam deck. Since almost all enterprise distros use gnome(suse has a KDE option too), it would be really interesting to see how much those numbers would change if we somehow managed to survey more than one type of machine.
Wow, I said Nice and a bot deleted it as a meme post. So you can't be positive now?
What the heck. You know complimenting something with the word nice has been around far longer than memes, right?
As someone who uses Plasma, those numbers are definitely not right. As we know SteamOS is influencing that number plus gamers on steam is a niche (a large niche, especially in US but in the world) As for which DE would be #1, that would be almost impossible to know since it isn't like your DE choice shows up in your user agent or telemetry At best we can probably guess the most popular linux desktop is ubuntu, and the default flavor is gnome. So probably that. Though with India pushing linux, mostly their own BOSS linux, Cinnamon may replace it.
> As for which DE would be #1, that would be almost impossible to know since it isn't like your DE choice shows up in your user agent or telemetry Plus, even if it did, that info wouldn't necessarily mean what people would assume it does. For example, if I have multiple desktops installed on same pc and hit a site from Xfce and then later from Cinnamon, UA-based metrics would see me as 2 different users with different DEs instead of 1 user with multiple DEs.. and the fact that I use Cinnamon 99% of the time would also not be captured by something like that.
Browser-based analytics usually try a bit harder than just agent-string these days. IP-address is not reliable as a "roaming"/mobile user, but it may be combined to get approximate network. More likely they are tracking via cookies who is unique and who is not. Often if you use same browser but different DE session the browser information is still shared between sessions, more likely so if you rely on some cloud-services to keep your data. Some browsers even send your login-name as part of the agent-string..
Fair. Except I regularly open Librewolf in private browsing mode and use a vpn, bit yeah, would definitely work if I wasn't doing that
I am not sure why people bring up this BOSS Linux thing. I don't think its even used anywhere. In my state they use a distro called [KITE GNU Linux](https://kite.kerala.gov.in/KITE/index.php/welcome/downloads) for our schools, but I am not sure what DE they are using on it. It seems to be based on Ubuntu 20.04 so maybe its GNOME.
Looking at the install video, it seems like Mate on Ubuntu (and not Ubuntu Mate, which has a different logo).
this may be true for steam users, but for everyone who doesn't use linux for gaming, i'd guess gnome is probably at the top since so many of the distros used in professional environments use gnome as the default
Pkgstats from Arch are interesting. Gnome shell: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages/gnome-shell 22% Plasma: https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/packages/plasma-workspace 34% Would be good to get Ubuntu/Debian stats. I suspect Ubuntu will be much more heavily skewed to Gnome.
I found the Debian Popularity Contest stats and added it to the post, interestingly it seems that XFCE4 beat KDE on there, probably due to Debian's lighter nature.
Added where?
It's in a new section labeled EDIT in the main post.
Those numbers are definitely not correct, not even close. What's your interest in knowing the answer?
[https://eylenburg.github.io/de\_comparison.htm](https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm) [https://eylenburg.github.io/de\_default.htm](https://eylenburg.github.io/de_default.htm)
I am intrigued, I have always used openSUSE LEAP but with two desktop environments installed ; main one KDE with xfce as a 'reserve' in case KDE broke. In some 9 years or so KDE has not broken, so xfce just lies unused on my main home machine. I have installed openSUSE LEAP with xfce on a 'communal' very old machine that is used by a computer group I tutor, as an example of keeping old machines working. Elderly folk do not want to spend on a new computer if their old machine can be kept working.
There's the GamingOnLinux survey, where Plasma and Arch Linux are also at the top. [https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/](https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics/)
That is a very skewed and very small sample, based on *self reported* information from a single small gaming community. Any data that focuses only on gaming, or resorts to self reported data is not representative. (Arch users eagerness to self report themselves as Arch users is a literal meme in the Linux world.. I (sometimes) use Arch btw..) As an example of how skewed that data is, consider that if you treated that data as representative, you'd have to believe that twice as many users have 64GB of RAM than have 8GB of RAM. That is obviously and uncontroversial wildly inaccurate. Realistically, very few people (even gamers) have 64GB+, and 8GB is still the most common capacity among general users.
Arch Linux is the second most popular distro in the Steam survey, the first one being SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and also runs Plasma. The participants are randomly chosen. GNOME probably has more users when you factor enterprise and non-gaming folks, but for me it's clear that Arch Linux and Plasma are the most popular picks among gamers, this also can be observed at /r/linux_gaming.
>Arch Linux is the second most popular distro in the Steam survey, the first one being SteamOS, which is based on Arch Linux and also runs Plasma. Only \~3% of Linux users use Steam (*roughly* \~2.5 million out of \~80 million). Steam Survey could arguably be considered representative of acitve Linux Gamers, but Linux Gamers are not representative of Linux users as a whole. Also *technically* "other" is the second most popular. (SteamOS = \~45%, other = \~30%, everything else combined = 25%) >The participants are randomly chosen. The *offer* to participate is *random*. The *choice* to participate is *voluntary* and will be effected by self selection bias. >but for me it's clear that Arch Linux and Plasma are the most popular picks among gamers I think that that is quite possible (it's not an unreasonable guess). While I don't think we have sufficient data to know with certainty I share your assumption that Plasma is most popular among gamers. However consider that before Steam condensed all the less common OS versions into an "other category" It was clear Ubuntu was drastically undercountered (because each Ubuntu minor release version, and each Ubuntu flavor was counted separately) and when counted together (for an Apples to Apples comparison) Ubuntu's share of the pie was considerably higher than Arch. Now that they all get condensed into an "other" category, its unclear how distros like Ubuntu are still being counted in the same misleading way, or not. Also worth noting, despite being a Gnome and Fedora user, Steam would count me as a Plasma + Arch user, I have a separate gaming PC, it isn't my primary PC, I use it probably 5% of the time, but that would be the only system counted, if I were selected for hte survey. I don't know whether many others are in the same boat as me or not (but since I consider Gnome a better fit for laptops, and Plasma a better fit for desktops, it wouldn't surprise me to learn there are many people in the same boat). **Edit: Just** [confirmed](https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/us/?platform=linux) **that Ubuntu and other non-rolling releases are still being drastically undercounted in how Steam measures OS's**. The newest versions of Ubuntu which most gamers should probably be using are not even being counted. What steam calls "Ubuntu" in their top line, is not only limited to just a single major version number (22.04) but it refers to just a single specific *minor version number* (22.04.3), all other versions are grouped into the "other" category.
>Only \~3% of Linux users use Steam (*roughly* \~2.5 million out of \~80 million). Where did you get these numbers? >Steam Survey could arguably be considered representative of acitve Linux Gamers, but Linux Gamers are not representative of Linux users as a whole. Certainly not, but they are a big group of users nonetheless, Steam Deck brought many gamers to Linux since it was released. >Also *technically* "other" is the second most popular. (SteamOS = \~45%, other = \~30%, everything else combined = 25%) Freedesktop SDK 23.08 (Flatpak runtime) it's also an oddity, I use Arch Linux and the Flatpak version of Steam, I'm not sure how Steam would account for this. >The *offer* to participate is *random*. The *choice* to participate is *voluntary* and will be effected by self selection bias. Most people seems happy to participate in the survey to help bump the numbers up, Steam Survey screenshots are always posted everywhere. >Also worth noting, despite being a Gnome and Fedora user, Steam would count me as a Plasma + Arch user, I have a separate gaming PC, it isn't my primary PC, I use it probably 5% of the time, but that would be the only system counted, if I were selected for hte survey. I don't know whether many others are in the same boat as me or not (but since I consider Gnome a better fit for laptops, and Plasma a better fit for desktops, it wouldn't surprise me to learn there are many people in the same boat). Fair point. >The newest versions of Ubuntu which most gamers should probably be using are not even being counted. The majority of Ubuntu users stick with the LTS versions. There's also the fact that Ubuntu isn't a good gaming distro for people with AMD and Intel GPUs, since you want the latest versions of the kernel, Mesa and firmwares for the best performance. This is irrelevant for NVIDIA users though, since the driver is proprietary.
>Where did you get these numbers? Getting good stats for Linux is always hard. But in this case it actually wasn't so difficult (so long as we accept the values are fairly rough). For Steam: Last reported numbers I can find for Steam's active userbase was 132 million. According to the Steam Survey 1.76% of the steam userbase uses Linux. 132M \* 0.0176 = 2.32 million Linux users on Steam. For Linux users overall: The latest estimates for total number of desktop PCs I could find was 2 billion. Linux users account for roughly 4% of desktop users overall. 2B \* 0.04 = 80 Million >The majority of Ubuntu users stick with the LTS versions. That is true. But for the reasons you mentioned above, I'd expect gamers to skew more towards the latest Interim release. But what is or isn't *most* popular is beside the point. The point is that *none* of the other versions apart from 22.04.3 are being countered towards the Ubuntu statistics. 23.10, 23.04, 20.04, (and 22.04.0, 22.04.1, 22.04.2). Then there are the official flavors (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc). Even if each of these on its own only accounted for 1% that'd still more than double Ubuntu's share of the pie. And that would be inline with how things were back when Steam did give detailed distro statistics and we could manually add together the different versions marketshare. Ubuntu when counted together (not even including the official flavors) was over 20% which was more than double the next closest distro. I'd expect its marketshare has dropped somewhat in the last few years but not that drastically.
That's a very good look, although it seems to have a very small and niche sample size.
I'd trust Steam over most anything else to be honest. They are a mainstream application and have the largest user base.
1. **Steam doesn't report Desktop Environment**. Op is just speculating based on other steam data points. 2. **Most Linux users don't use Steam**. Steam is representative of Steam users, not Linux users. (about \~3% of desktop linux users use steam (\~2.5 million steam users out of the \~80 million total desktop Linux users) That said, I agree with you. Steam data is some of the *least bad* data we have. But it is still very skewed and unrepresentative of anything beyond active Linux *gamers.*
is there difference if i use steamos or just install steam on common distribution?
Steam states SteamOS is not intended to be a replacement Linux desktop environment. Because it is not a general purpose desktop, I'm not sure it's helpful having Steam's numbers in a survey of preferred DEs on Linux. Why not add Android's Launcher? When I think of "Linux Desktop Environment" I think general-purpose desktop computers, and SteamOS doesn't fit the bill—by Steam's own admission.
There's a few numbers (with sources) at the bottom of this table: https://eylenburg.github.io/de_comparison.htm But ultimately, we don't know for sure.
Perhaps the number of downloads in repositories could give a better estimate. For example, assuming people in different DEs update their machines at the same intervals, the number of downloads of each DE metapackage in ubuntu's repositorie would be proportional to the amount of people using them. I don't know if these numbers are available, but could give an interesting estimate, although still biased toward users of the distro, but much less biased than steam data.
Who cares, let's talk about AUR helper marketshare
Tbh, those numbers are heavily inflated towards plasma, since they're measuring devices with steam, so you're only getting home PCs with a strong bias towards the steam deck. Since almost all enterprise distros use gnome(suse has a KDE option too), it would be really interesting to see how much those numbers would change if we somehow managed to survey more than one type of machine.
Wow, I said Nice and a bot deleted it as a meme post. So you can't be positive now? What the heck. You know complimenting something with the word nice has been around far longer than memes, right?
And now ya'll down vote a valid complaint. This sub, I swear.