Steam Survey October 2026: CachyOS Is the Most-Used Linux Distro on Steam

Valve has published its Steam Hardware & Software Survey for October 2026, and the standout Linux number isn’t the overall share. It’s which distro is on top.

Linux at 3.95%

Linux accounts for 3.95% of Steam survey respondents in October. Windows is at 93.70% and macOS at 2.35%. Windows 11 64-bit alone is 72.51%, up 1.17 points, and Windows 10 64-bit is 21.11%.

A note on the month-over-month change: Valve’s page lists Linux as up 0.90 points, measured against September’s originally published figure. Phoronix reports that Valve revised September’s Linux share to 3.90%, which would make October’s real gain 0.05 points. September’s original drop came alongside a large swing toward Simplified Chinese-language users, which Phoronix says usually pushes Windows up relative to Linux.

CachyOS leads the distros

Among all Steam users, the top Linux entries are:

• CachyOS 64 bit: 0.65% (+0.10)
• SteamOS Holo 64 bit: 0.55% (+0.02)
• Arch Linux 64 bit: 0.35%
• Linux Mint 22.3 64 bit: 0.33%
• SteamOS 64 bit: 0.32%, a new entry this month
• Bazzite 64 bit: 0.27% (+0.06)

On Valve’s Linux-only breakdown, CachyOS is 16.39% of Linux users and SteamOS Holo, the Steam Deck’s OS, is 13.89%. The new “SteamOS 64 bit” row is 8.09% of Linux users. Valve doesn’t say which hardware it represents, so we aren’t guessing.

Steam Frame climbs in VR

Valve’s VR headset table shows the Steam Frame at 4.13% of headsets on Steam in October, up 3.72 points from its first reading of 0.41% in September, which covered only the first 13 days of sales. The Meta Quest 3 leads at 27.27%, followed by the Quest 2 (22.23%), Quest 3S (11.04%) and Valve Index (9.90%). Overall, 1.75% of Steam users have a VR headset.

The survey is optional and samples Steam users, so treat month-to-month shifts as estimates.