The increase is partly due to the Steam Deck being powered by an AMD SoC. Still, it’s been a trend building for some time of AMD's increasing Ryzen CPU popularity among Linux users to their open-source driver work and continuing to build more goodwill with the community.

Last June the AMD CPU Linux gaming market share came in at 45 per cent, while Intel was at 54 per cent. Or at the start of 2023, AMD CPUs were at a 55 per cent market share among Linux gamers. Or if going back six years, AMD CPU use among Linux gamers was a mere 18 per cent during the early Ryzen days. It's also the direct opposite on the Windows side. When looking at the Steam Survey results for June limited to Windows, Intel has a 68 per cent  market share to AMD at 32 per cent.

AMD's efforts around open-source drivers has been paying off. AMD expanding their Linux client (Ryzen) development efforts over the past two years, promises around OpenSIL.