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

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#251

Post by rglullis » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #206

tl wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've heard of some online-only games - such as Fall Guys - being basically killed sales-wise by insufficient anti-cheat protection. After all, if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game. This isn't helped by the current fashion for automatic match-making and 100-player battle royale games - which make one cheater impact a lot more players.

> if another player can run faster or fly or has perfect aim, everyone else is basically playing an unwinnable game.

Not a gamer, so forgive me if the proposal is stupid, why not just treat cheaters like they do on (li)chess? If I am playing with someone that I believe to be cheating, I flag/blacklist that user and simply don't play with that user afterwards. That by itself is enough for me to play against only honest players, but if you want to be more strict you could even submit the game session for review, and in case it is ruled there was cheating, the cheater is banned and every game you lost to the cheater is awarded to you.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#252

Post by michaelt » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

edgyquant wrote: post #160

nottorp wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hardware have you had that experience on? Probably going to build a new Linux box this year, and I'd like to pick hardware that's as hassle free for wine/proton as possible.

So far I’ve had no problem with my Ryzen+Nvidia 1660x. I’d maybe try to find an AMD GPU but I bought one of those first but need tensorflow and AMDs GPU support for ML was almost non-existent.

Personally I've had no end of problems using an nvidia GPU on Linux.

For example, some driver packages support Steam but not CUDA, while others support CUDA but not Steam [1, 2].

And I found some instructions online that let me "fix" it to work with both - but thereafter, any time I used CUDA I would lose audio when I next resumed from suspend.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/ocuqtm/can_i_...

[2] https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/5778

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#253

Post by gizmondo » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

tl wrote: post #122

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…

I'm a huge fan of the work Valve is doing, both in gaming hardware and Linux support, but I'm unconvinced helping game-oriented malware run on Linux is good period, let alone the "greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming".

People here are obsessed about it, while I don't understand what the problem is. Just run a separate Linux (with kernel-level anti-cheat and trusted computing validation, whatever) for gaming only, that's all?

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#254

Post by foxyv » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:34 PM UTC

I've started playing a lot on Linux because it is the only place I can play some of my games. A lot of old 32-bit games are starting to become unplayable on Windows 10 but are perfectly fine on Proton or Wine. Proton has been the best thing ever for me. I no longer have to keep two versions of Steam on my laptop (Windows and Linux)

On the other hand. There is rarely a moment I play any non-linux native game on Proton that I don't have to fiddle with something. Also a lot just end up not working. It's gotten a lot better recently, but stuff like controllers sometimes end up not working at all and needing a hack to work.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#255

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

Zhyl wrote: post #250

matheusmoreira wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, give me my money back then. Let me count how many thousands of dollars my Steam account is worth.

I think I'd just recommend you not play games with anti-cheat. I'm not sure why you'd buy games with anti-cheat if you don't like anti-cheat though.

I bought those games decades ago. Anti-cheating software used to be a lot more tolerable back then. They were still obnoxious malware but at least they were not literal drivers with vulnerability-as-a-service ioctls that give the games and everything else free access to ring 0 from user space. They were also optional, I could find game servers that didn't require the software.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#256

Post by wyldfire » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

aitchnyu wrote: post #136

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…

Umm, is there anti-cheat that doesnt need a locked down OS and hardware? Dont understand what you are cheering for.

Steam deck could conceivably use a signed bootloader to provide some of the guarantees that an Anti-cheat is looking for. But regardless, Valve sounds committed to describing the steam deck as "still a PC [that you could put windows on]".

For non-steamdeck Linux users, at least running on Linux shouldn't be a disqualifier for the Anti-cheat software.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#257

Post by mhitza » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

Cycl0ps wrote: post #48

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.

It's Valve hardware, so more likely than not it'll flop and you can pick one up for $50 on the 2022 winter sale. Even then it might be relevant for enough weeks to make devs consider designing for native Linux and be in too deep to back out. Speaking as someone with a steam link and controller floating around their house.

I wouldn't mind it flopping an having the option to get it for 50 buckaroos :). But that's highly unlikely.

Even if it fails as a portable gaming platform the hardware sounds very decent and I wouldn't expect them to have Apple level margins on those.

I've skipped the link/steam machine because "livingroom entertainment" isn't my thing, but I was pleased with the quality of the Steam controller. Although I would have liked them to be bold with the design and keep just the original prototype (without thumb stick/face buttons) (wouldn't have minded a novelty controller that works well with just a few games).

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#258

Post by daveungerer » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

I switched from Mac to Linux more than 3 years ago, and I've been gaming on Linux for 2 years. I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but I got back into gaming just because I wanted to see how far Linux gaming had come. I was pleasantly surprised. I've played quite a few native games, but also some running on Proton. I was amazed when Doom (2016) ran with excellent performance. The Witcher 3 is another one with great support. I only cracked and started dual booting Windows when I couldn't get Doom Eternal running properly. It felt like such a betrayal! But since then I've decided to be more pragmatic about things.

I still prefer running things on Linux where possible, and I sometimes buy native Linux games even if I don't know when I'll get around to playing them. There are definitely some rough edges, but I think there's a future for Linux gaming. I think it's mostly due to Valve, which is why I get all my games from Steam.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#259

Post by feanaro » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #245

zaarn wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the needs of other players to have a fair game are also irrelevant then? After all, you're the top rank in CS:GO not because of your skill but because you simply exercise your freedom to have everyone else play against your computer.

Correct, they're completely irrelevant. Of all the affronts to computing freedom, anti-cheating is the worst. The truth is the online gaming model where we play with untrustworthy strangers is completely broken. We should all be playing with friends we can trust instead.

Completely agreed. Where is this "right not to be cheated in an online game" coming from anyway? Sounds absurd when you put it in proper terms, that is someone else taking control over your computer.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#260

Post by lillecarl » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #84

peakaboo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> restarts their machine on a whim for updates That's the thing, it's not their machine if they are running Windows on it. It's Microsofts. They can even wake up your machine to apply updates whenever they want.

For hardcore gamers, the added stability of Linux and choosing when to update, could be a big plus. Provided, hardware compatibility (there's always a caveat!).

I'd say Windows 10 VS NixOS unstable, Windows is more stable, has better functioning drivers. I still use NixOS to host a Windows VM because I like the userspace more, but the "WiNdOwS iS L3Ss StAbLe" meme doesn't hold very true for consumer hardware. Servers will be more stable on Linux because the manufacturers incentives aligns with yours, you buy our hardware to run Linux, we make sure it runs well on our hardware.