Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0% • Hacker News Board

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#211

Post by fsloth » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

jokethrowaway wrote: post #158

fsloth wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people insist on this shoehorning either. It's like some obscene tribal topos that refuses to die. KDE 1.0 came out in 1998 - 23 years ago (O god I'm old). The discussion of "Linux to replace windows desktop" is over two decades old. In computer age this is something geological. It's like... well, Macintosh came out in 1984. Xerox Alto came 1973. If we go back 5 years we reach Englebart's Mothe…

We don't collectively own engineers time, we are not under full blown socialism, yet and people are free to do what they want. If individuals enjoy reverse engineering windows and making it work on Linux, that's great, actually I really need that. I wouldn't spend my time on it, but I'm sure I have equally suboptimal hobbies (from a "civilisation" point of view). You don't get to spend someone else engineering effort…

"We don't collectively own engineers time"

Fully agreed. My intention was not to signal any entitled presumption of ownership of said resources - just that they are not maybe applied with maximum impact, which does not imply I presume to benefit from them anyway.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#212

Post by andylynch » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

sevanteri wrote: post #59

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…

For this kind of situations xkill is marvelous. I've used Windows xKill [1] for years, but I can't find a download link for which you don't have to sign in... Alternatively, SuperF4 [2] looks decent, also with a separate CLI only xkill found in the github issues [3]. [1] https://www.deviantart.com/suprvillain/art/Windows-xKill-100... [2] https://stefansundin.github.io/superf4/ [3] https://github.com/stefansundin/supe…

Sysinternals’ process explorer gives you a crosshairs to select a window’s process — that crossbones pointer has more style though.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#213

Post by teh_klev » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #154

terlisimo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion I see your point but consider this: 20 years ago you could make the same argument for all aspects of linux, not just gaming. Why use some hobby level OS for serious work when you have Solaris, HP-UX, AIX? Today we have a very usable Linux desktop and pretty much total dominance in the server arena, only because people were at one point "delusionally…

Less than 20 years ago, Windows was the hobby level OS compared to Solaris and AIX. Windows Server 2005 was a complete and utter joke compared to Solaris. The company I worked for in 2006 was moving their Solaris servers to Linux. Windows wasn't an option because it wouldn't even meet the specs in real life.

I think you may thinking of Windows Server 2003. I also suspect you've never run Windows Server 2003 at enterprise scale either. No operating system is perfect, but Windows 2003 was a reasonably capable workhorse, even in 2003.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#214

Post by squarefoot » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

junon wrote: post #145

83457 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that those are anti-cheat clients that are required by many games to be able to play online. Not being able to run on Linux means the game will never see Linux adoption.

The trade-off is that you have literal malware on the machine that is controlled by a third party company that most likely doesn't have their security practices up to snuff.

IT all depends on how, where and when does this malware run. If they can be installed along with the games under a gaming only account on the Linux machine, that is, with zero permissions on system and other users files around, that's fine with me. However if they require to pollute system directories or, much worse, be installed as kernel modules or system level daemons, then it's way different. Security conscious gamers would probably put their gaming machine behind a firewall that screens their entire LAN (other hardware, NAS etc), and forget doing anything but gaming with it.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#215

Post by colejohnson66 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

tl wrote: post #144

colejohnson66 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is requiring publishers to remove their DRM, and use Valve’s, and they (the publishers) most certainly would not do that. I’d bet that if Valve tried that, there’d be an antitrust lawsuit against them real quick. It sucks, but the alternative is getting the DRM to work on Linux, so that’s what they chose.

The arms race between game publishers and the small minority of gamers who actually cheat is harmful to everyone else. Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing quickly rather than enabling voyeurs who think scanning and logging the contents of people's hard drives on their servers is acceptable.

> Stub the DRM APIs to usefully return nothing

If breaking DRM was that simple, DRM companies wouldn’t exist; Games would be cracked on day 1 (or earlier). It’s way more complicated than that, and each DRM system is different.

That’s why Wine doesn’t do well with DRM. For example, some systems rely on undocumented behavior in Windows’ APIs that Wine doesn’t implement.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#216

Post by fud7r7rgtf » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

ruined wrote: post #207

fooqux wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a client need to know of such things? If the player can't / shouldn't know of something, then the client shouldn't either. There are some interesting repercussions of this train of thought though. Take an enemy hiding in brush in an FPS game. The player would have line of sight to their hiding spot, and current games (I think) just leave it to the player's eyeballs' ability to see them through the brush. Th…

because the alternative is server-side rendering of every frame, which would introduce unacceptable latency to input and also likely significantly reduce graphical detail, given the existing huge investments in consumer rendering hardware that have not yet been duplicated serverside google stadia exists. nobody playing competitively uses it, and that's exactly the demographic that cares the most about anti-cheat and,…

Speaking as an avid Stadia user, I think this has a lot more to do with Stadia's library being garbage compared to the non-Stadia options. I can't imagine a reason an e-sport pro would want to go from the entire competitive ecosystem as a choice to just what's on Stadia. Even for casually competitive players, there's a massive lack of mainstream competitive titles on Stadia. Maybe the latency input is the problem but it seems like a big assumption with how miniscule the library is.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#217

Post by helharpr » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

It would be great if Linux will start to cater games natively on their OS. The number shows that it is slowly increasing; I hope that the steam deck will not flop and will surely deliver its results.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#218

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

weare138 wrote: post #193

dtx1 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sadly not true, since buisness apps use a much wider variety of windows APIs while games are mostly using a few (DirectX, OpenGL, Vulcan) APIs for most of what they do. You can see this with custom game launchers like League of Legends uses. The Game runs with basically native performance and without issues but the launcher is barely usable.

Plenty of key business apps use DirectX, OpenGL, Vulcan like CAD applications and games still use other Windows APIs. It's open-source, people can build off Proton to add the rest. These games for generally designed for Win10 now which support for is somewhat lacking in Wine. Concentrating on the latest version of Windows and APIs is a huge step in the right direction.

You're inverting the problem. The problem isn't that those things are used; the problem is they use lots of other things that aren't DirectX, OpenGL or Vulcan.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#219

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

fooqux wrote: post #198

moultano wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aimbots need no trust from the server. As long as the client knows things the player doesn't, and there isn't a chain of custody from the physical mouse to the server, you can cheat.

Why would a client need to know of such things? If the player can't / shouldn't know of something, then the client shouldn't either. There are some interesting repercussions of this train of thought though. Take an enemy hiding in brush in an FPS game. The player would have line of sight to their hiding spot, and current games (I think) just leave it to the player's eyeballs' ability to see them through the brush. Th…

> Why would a client need to know of such things? If the player can't / shouldn't know of something, then the client shouldn't either.

Think about the case of seeing an enemy onscreen and headshotting them instantly.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#220

Post by gentleman11 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #214

junon wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trade-off is that you have literal malware on the machine that is controlled by a third party company that most likely doesn't have their security practices up to snuff.

IT all depends on how, where and when does this malware run. If they can be installed along with the games under a gaming only account on the Linux machine, that is, with zero permissions on system and other users files around, that's fine with me. However if they require to pollute system directories or, much worse, be installed as kernel modules or system level daemons, then it's way different. Security conscious g…

The malware you’re describing would never be used. The designers of this stuff run it at ring zero on Windows with unlimited permissions and zero transparency