While mainstream PC owners may be taking their time upgrading to Windows 8, that"s not the case for the tens of millions of Steam users worldwide. Valve"s PC gaming download service has updated its hardware survey results for the month of March and it continues to show a much faster adoption rate for Microsoft"s latest operating system.
The survey numbers show that Windows 8 is now being used by 10.67 percent of Steam owners, when combining 32-bit and 64-bit SKUs. That"s compared to 9.63 percent in February and 8.76 percent in January. Windows 7 is still on top of the March 2013 survey with 68.51 percent of Steam owners using the OS, down from 69.31 percent in February and 69.73 percent in January.
Windows XP was used by 8.72 percent of all Steam owners in March, down from 9.33 percent in February and 10.05 percent in January. Windows Vista clocks in at 6.59 percent in March, but that"s actually up from 5.84 percent in February. This month"s hardware survey results have a number of other Windows-based operating system showing up in the results, mostly on the server side such as Windows Server 2012 64-bit, which is used by 0.01 percent of Steam owners.
The combined number of Mac Steam owners is currently at 3.67 percent, up from 3.07 percent in February. There are now a ton of different versions of Linux that show up in the Steam hardware survey, but add them all up and the total Linux user base is just 1.69 percent of all Steam users in March, down from 2.02 percent in February.
Source: Steam | Image via Valve