this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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There are two new entries for most popular operating systems listed for Linux Only. This coinsides with the 5% breakthrough of total Steam population (finally). But I wonder if this is an error (or April Fool's Day joke?). The two entries are just named 64 bit and 0 64 bit and its puzzling, as they have a huge percentage.

Does anyone have a clue what this is or could be?

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[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Flatpak and CachOS is my guess yep

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

If we consider it to be a bug and that those are false reports, then the actual number of Linux users would be 5.33 * (1-0.23) = 4.1%.

IMO that seems like a more reasonable number than 5.33. 5.33 is a crazy jump month-over-month, even factoring in Chinese New Years (February results)

[–] Glucuron@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Best guess is they are labeling 32 bit as 0 64 bit since 32 bit pads 0s for the 64 bit bus on 64 bit systems. Literally a guess though. To me it doesn’t make sense either.

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But what is it referring to? I mean even if you were right about 32-bit, what is it?

[–] sys110x@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

Windows NT 3.1 was one of the first 32bit OS's.

It's the memory address space for the hardware - 32bit can work with 2^32 memory addresses (bytes) while 64bit can work with 2^64 memory addresses. In terms of what that means for your gaming PC, it basically means a 32bit app can work with up to ~4GB of RAM (2^32 = 4,294,967,296) and 64bit can work with up to 18EB (2^64 = 18,446,744,073,709,551,616).

What it means for the survey? No idea, but if I had to guess - it's either emulation of a 32bit OS or app (like a VM or something).. or a large group of people desperately need to upgrade from Win NT lol

[–] FirmDistribution@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

hey. I asked this same question on the linux gaming community. See if any answer there helps you: https://lemmy.world/post/45067876

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Thanks. I'll look and read through. Edit: Oh I saw that post before and have a reply there. :-)

[–] FirmDistribution@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Oh I saw that post before and have a reply there. :-)

Oh, lol. I didn't notice.