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Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

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Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#111

Post by read_if_gay_ »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #90
josefx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots. I have seen similar on Windows. For example when Bioshock Remastered Freezes there is no way to exit it, windows still responds, but there is no way to close the game because everything you open is hidden by it. Also the amount of Graphical glitches I encountered in Skyrim is just hilarious. DotA 2 seems to sometimes glitch out when you hit alt ta…

> I have seen similar on Windows. Sure, but Windows is supported , so instead of going to a forum and being unhelpfully told to try a different distro, you can take up your issue with the developer and they're much more likely to pay attention. Granted, some of them still have shitty support, but you're a lot less likely to be dismissed out of hand.

> you can take up your issue with the developer and they're much more likely to pay attention.

Outside of indie, is this something people actually (and successfully) do?

For everyone I know the default assumption when a game doesn’t work is you’re SOL and either refund or hope for patches.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#112

Post by rashil2000 »

toastal wrote: post #98
mhitza wrote: post #13

Definitely the number is gonna increase dramatically next year with the Steam deck. Unless it's going to fail in some major way.

The odd thing to me is how immediately people jumped to "you can install Windows on it", like one would need to. The other thing that was funny is people saying "with Windows, you can run emulators", as if Linux couldn't already do that and with better framerates.

I have used the popular open source NDS emulator - Citra, and it runs like 15 times faster on Windows compared to Ubuntu (NVidia GPU).

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#113

Post by judge2020 »

Zhyl wrote: post #74

A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with Battleye and EAC to get anti-cheat working on Proton for the release of the steam deck. If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming. I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean tha…

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/steamdeck/faq

> We’re working with BattlEye and EAC to get support for Proton ahead of launch.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#114

Post by skohan »

sen wrote: post #16
Taek wrote: post #2

I've been gaming on linux for almost a year now and I've had no issues at all. I've mainly been playing popular titles but Proton makes every game feel like it's a linux native game.

Regretfully most racing sims (and any other sims that use peripherals) are still a huge pain to get going, even with Proton. At most you can get the actual game "running" (with performance sacrifices over Windows), but you still won't get things like Force Feedback, and half your peripherals features probably won't work (or will work intermittently for no reason). I'd love nothing more than to never use Windows again…

"running" (with performance sacrifices over Windows)

Has this been an issue for you? Since switching to primarily Linux/Proton for gaming, I've been amazed at how little performance penalty I have seen.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#116

Post by acomjean »

bantunes wrote: post #62

I hope Linux with this Proton compatibility layer doesn't go the way of OS/2 of being so easy to run Windows games that nobody writes Linux ports anymore and as a consequence the performance and overall experience is never as good.

For me it had the effect of me being able to run Linux at home almost exclusively. and to be able to game occasionally with friends.

Tabletop simulator/ teriforming mars/ lords of water deep and a bunch of other games just work.

Getting that Linux percentage up should help the platform. I don’t want to go use my older machine and it’s non Linux. So I seek out desktop applications to drive Linux use up.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#117

Post by judge2020 »

foxhill wrote: post #14

i’ve been using linux as my daily driver for just over a year. steam on linux has been great, and proton (wine) has been indispensable. big title games i’ve played with _no_ issues at all: * Cyberpunk 2077 (ok that has issues, but it has the same issues for windows users..) * Dying Light * Titanfall * The Division along with _many_ other indie/small games. honestly the only thing left is titles that include invasive…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28035581

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#118

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #111
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have seen similar on Windows. Sure, but Windows is supported , so instead of going to a forum and being unhelpfully told to try a different distro, you can take up your issue with the developer and they're much more likely to pay attention. Granted, some of them still have shitty support, but you're a lot less likely to be dismissed out of hand.

> you can take up your issue with the developer and they're much more likely to pay attention. Outside of indie, is this something people actually (and successfully) do? For everyone I know the default assumption when a game doesn’t work is you’re SOL and either refund or hope for patches.

And where do you think the patches come from?

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#119

Post by Macha »

OJFord wrote: post #91
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if you have laptops with Nvidia Optimus, distros like pop_os make your life much easier since nvidia doesn't give two shits about Optimus on linux, hence the famous "nvidia, f*ck you!" quote from Linus Torvalds. Or if you have a brand new laptop with the latest Ryzen CPUs and the latest Radeon 6800M GPU with switchable graphics then you absolutely need a distro with the latest kernel to have a good experience…

Maybe I underestimate how difficult some distros make it to have some semblance of control, but my model of Linux is that distros are nothing more than bundles of packages as a starting point from which you can add or remove whatever you want. So I asked why it matters if its 'pop_OS' or not since if that happens to bundle some driver, or Steam, or whatever, I assume I can continue not using 'pop_OS' and still instal…

If you're using Ubuntu LTS, for example, you're going to have the kernel version it shipped with and the Nvidia driver version is shipped with. When Nvidia releases a new driver with fixes for specific games, as they do every couple of months, there's no guarantee that this driver version is going to be compatible with the relatively fixed version of the kernel that Ubuntu LTS is using so you'd have to wait for the next release to play those newer games.

Of course you could forgo the packaged kernel and build your own then grab the Nvidia driver from nvidia's website, but then what is Ubuntu buying you?

Ubuntu LTS with its 2 year minimums lifecycle is kind of a worst case here among desktop distros, but different distros among the 6 month crowd can run into this depending on how conservative they are about putting the newest core packages into each release.

There's also the question of the method of obtaining third party software. There's basically a divide here between the ports method (see the AUR for the most well known example) where users distribute a build script to other users that in most cases should be pretty simply cloning the upstream source and running their build script, or the third party package repository approach where you download a binary package and install that. The port has the advantage of being very easy to audit the packager's code (if not helping for the developer's) and generally not needing it to be rebuilt every time the dependencies do, but the third party package repositories have convenience and you could argue that relying on launchpad's moderation is not any more or less safe than relying on Nexus Mods moderation which Window gamers happily do.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#120

Post by welterde »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #99
bantunes wrote: post #62

I hope Linux with this Proton compatibility layer doesn't go the way of OS/2 of being so easy to run Windows games that nobody writes Linux ports anymore and as a consequence the performance and overall experience is never as good.

Honestly I'd argue the opposite: that because Linux Desktop is such a fragmented mess of a non-platform, "native" ports are likely to work at least as badly if not worse than those running on a compatibility layer. There's even some anecdotal evidence that this is the case with games that do have native ports and running the Windows version in proton being a better experience.

The compatibility layer for the linux native games is the steam-runtime though. So fragmentation of the distributions matters to a much lesser degree already.
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