These are web browsing statistics. Basically nobody does significant amounts of browsing from a Steam Deck.
But even if they did, the install base of the Steam Deck is far too small to move the needle here. The install base of desktop and laptop computers is billions of devices vs. millions for the Steam Deck.
I think you're missing the connecting lines here: with the Steam Deck, Valve made significant investments into WINE emulation and Proton development and all of those dependencies needed for its product that are also applicable to desktop. That convinced a lot of people who were using Windows just for gaming to make the switch, and they all browse the web. I'd argue those types are most of the new users we've seen coming to Linux in the last few years even - and I'd attribute all of it to Valve.
For instance this year I gutted my windows install down to a 20GB partition after moving one game I play over to Linux at a time and testing it works for a while.
Guess what... I did this after I purchased a steam deck and saw how much better proton and wine are.
It depends how far you stretch "because of the Steam Deck". Sure, people aren't doing much web browsing because of the Steam Deck. How many people gave it a try because Valve decided to go with it for the Deck? How many people have been enabled to stick with it because of the technologies Valve developed for the Deck (proton and gamescope come to mind)?
Looking at the Statcounter report, it explicitly excludes mobile devices and separates out ChromeOS. I'm guessing that Statcounter uses UA strings and it is conceivable that HTTP requests are happening outside of explicit web browsing.
Their data source is the analytics JavaScript that webmasters install on their sites. Non-browsing HTTP requests are unlikely to target pages with those scripts installed, and even less likely to download and run them.
Hmm, I am not a Steam Deck user, but I have Valve to thank for being able to switch to Linux.
What kept me from it was the fact that I couldn't reliable play my gaming library on it. Thanks to the efforts they put to improve things with WINE/Proton, I could happily switch to Mint around a year ago, and couldn't be happier with it.
When Valve announced the Steam Deck, I decided to bite the bullet and move from Windows 10 for gaming and MacOS for personal use and development to a unified Arch KDE Plasma desktop. I now also have a steam deck, which makes for a nice, consistent experience when traveling with it and docking in desktop mode. It certainly made me realize that gaming on Linux was viable, which allowed me to discover that the entire OS was not only usable but provided a better experience than I had on Windows or Mac. So you can attribute at least one conversion, and that was before I ever picked up a steam deck. I have been happily using Arch with KDE since the second half of 2021 now.
None of it.
These are web browsing statistics. Basically nobody does significant amounts of browsing from a Steam Deck.
But even if they did, the install base of the Steam Deck is far too small to move the needle here. The install base of desktop and laptop computers is billions of devices vs. millions for the Steam Deck.
I think you're missing the connecting lines here: with the Steam Deck, Valve made significant investments into WINE emulation and Proton development and all of those dependencies needed for its product that are also applicable to desktop. That convinced a lot of people who were using Windows just for gaming to make the switch, and they all browse the web. I'd argue those types are most of the new users we've seen coming to Linux in the last few years even - and I'd attribute all of it to Valve.
For instance this year I gutted my windows install down to a 20GB partition after moving one game I play over to Linux at a time and testing it works for a while.
Guess what... I did this after I purchased a steam deck and saw how much better proton and wine are.
It depends how far you stretch "because of the Steam Deck". Sure, people aren't doing much web browsing because of the Steam Deck. How many people gave it a try because Valve decided to go with it for the Deck? How many people have been enabled to stick with it because of the technologies Valve developed for the Deck (proton and gamescope come to mind)?
Looking at the Statcounter report, it explicitly excludes mobile devices and separates out ChromeOS. I'm guessing that Statcounter uses UA strings and it is conceivable that HTTP requests are happening outside of explicit web browsing.
Their data source is the analytics JavaScript that webmasters install on their sites. Non-browsing HTTP requests are unlikely to target pages with those scripts installed, and even less likely to download and run them.
Hmm, I am not a Steam Deck user, but I have Valve to thank for being able to switch to Linux.
What kept me from it was the fact that I couldn't reliable play my gaming library on it. Thanks to the efforts they put to improve things with WINE/Proton, I could happily switch to Mint around a year ago, and couldn't be happier with it.
When Valve announced the Steam Deck, I decided to bite the bullet and move from Windows 10 for gaming and MacOS for personal use and development to a unified Arch KDE Plasma desktop. I now also have a steam deck, which makes for a nice, consistent experience when traveling with it and docking in desktop mode. It certainly made me realize that gaming on Linux was viable, which allowed me to discover that the entire OS was not only usable but provided a better experience than I had on Windows or Mac. So you can attribute at least one conversion, and that was before I ever picked up a steam deck. I have been happily using Arch with KDE since the second half of 2021 now.
all of it is my guess