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

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#271

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

tracedddd wrote: post #269

matheusmoreira wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t install anti-cheat malware personally, but I think many of the people who want to play these games care more about not having cheaters in their games than having ring 0 control. They’re extremely passionate about their skills and want nothing more than a fair playing field. Playing only with friends is not a real solution. Computing freedom means you have the freedom to give up control, too. It’s your choi…

> Computing freedom means you have the freedom to give up control, too. It’s your choice.

Absolutely. As long as they don't force this malware on the rest of us who do care, it will be fine.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#272

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:09 PM UTC

Zhyl wrote: post #270

matheusmoreira wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which games did you buy decades ago that now use Battleye and EAC?

No idea honestly. Been a Steam customer since 2006 and I have almost 300 games. That's why I said I want them to keep this kind of software as far away from Linux as possible. Who knows what their next update will bring into my machine?

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#273

Post by teh_klev » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:10 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #227

teh_klev wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My old company made a DIS box (UK gov-specified integration server that would talk to the central Government Gateway) as Java on Solaris in the early noughties, and doing a performance test that one Solaris machine took down the entire Windows-based Government Gateway test environment. Draw your own conclusions :)

It's difficult to draw any conclusions without knowing the environments, what's running on them, were they configured properly, etc etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ideologically bound to any platform, but stuff like this just sounds like another tired old-man Windows vs Linux/Unix pissing contest.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#274

Post by the_why_of_y » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:12 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #106

bpfrh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that the new flat and snap format alleviates some of these issues?

Personally I'd say no, not really. They're hacky and a lot of overhead for what is actually a very straightforward and natural thing on other OSs. AppImage is a bit better, but it still has to pull some namespacing tricks to work.

I don't understand how you say AppImage is better when it doesn't even provide runtimes and SDKs. The hardest problem is to know which APIs to use, and AppImage provides zero support for the developer there.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#275

Post by michaelt » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #251

michaelt wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hones…

User reports are indeed a common tranche of anti-cheat systems.

But in chess terms "Middling player occasionally made suspiciously good moves" is a pretty weak cheat report. But if you can tell they had stockfish running and changed windows to it several times in the course of the game? Well, now you've got a very clear cheat report.

More broadly, many gamers are chasing the dopamine rush of winning, complete with slot-machine-style flashing lights, music and dancing character animations. Being awarded a win by e-mail a day or two later doesn't really compare.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#276

Post by gigel82 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

We depend on Steam too much for this information, we need better (more verifiable) metrics given that Steam has a direct commercial incentive to promote Linux gaming.

I'm not saying they're biased or futzing the data (have no reason not to trust Valve yet), but it would be really nice to have an independent source for this (especially moving forward).

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#277

Post by Zhyl » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #272

Zhyl wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which games did you buy decades ago that now use Battleye and EAC?

No idea honestly. Been a Steam customer since 2006 and I have almost 300 games. That's why I said I want them to keep this kind of software as far away from Linux as possible. Who knows what their next update will bring into my machine?

I mean I guess that's the peril of using an automated update service.

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#278

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #241

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, you could provide the geometry without providing the semantic information. I'm not sure how viable that is, but it'd make aim-bots a bit harder. > First, there's the aim bots and other cheating it allows for. You can make an aim bot by connecting the output of your monitor to a hardware-emulated mouse. Unless the server can detect this, kernel-level anticheat is building a really tall wall with the doo…

> Alternatively, you could provide the geometry without providing the semantic information. Yes - cloud rendering. It's _a_ solution but comes with tradeoffs. Namely, it introduces large amounts of latency, and costs a dumpster truck of money. > You can make an aim bot by connecting the output of your monitor to a hardware-emulated mouse. Anticheat is a cat and mouse game, and raising the barrier to entry improves th…

> Yes - cloud rendering.

Only a very small part of the rendering needs to be done on the server; notably, the camera could still move, and the client could still make the usual heuristic predictions about where things are, so it wouldn't feel laggy.

> and buying specialist hardware

If you have a streaming rig, you already have nearly all the hardware. Just add a Raspberry Pi Zero or something, and you're good to go. (But yes, the barrier-to-cheat is still higher… at the cost of also increasing the barrier-to-play-at-all.)

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#279

Post by horlux » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

GeckoEidechse wrote: post #121

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…

Ay, fellow Titanfall player o/ Noticed any difference between Windows and Linux for that particular game? It's on the list of my most played games so making sure it runs properly is really important for me to make the switch ^^

speee is life!

Re: Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

#280

Post by TomasBaneUK » Mon, Aug 02, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

the_why_of_y wrote: post #274

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd say no, not really. They're hacky and a lot of overhead for what is actually a very straightforward and natural thing on other OSs. AppImage is a bit better, but it still has to pull some namespacing tricks to work.

I don't understand how you say AppImage is better when it doesn't even provide runtimes and SDKs. The hardest problem is to know which APIs to use, and AppImage provides zero support for the developer there.

My personal opinion below.

- SteamRuntime: A runtime environment for Steam applications. The next generation is/will use Flatpak related technologies like Bubblewrap. It's what you target.

- Flatpak: there's close to no overhead, you can try the Steam Flatpak and see for yourself. It's aimed at desktop applications and the sandbox gets better and better. There's a FUD website called flatkill that has already been torn to pieces so don't even bother linking that. You can't instantly make all closed source or old software work in a sandbox without compromises. Flatpak-override and Flatseal exists.

- Snap: nobody cares about Snap not even Canonical. Recently a former employer said he gave up after trying for years to solve issues with Snaps in the desktop. https://s1.desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/g/image/1600/72/160...

- AppImage: nobody cares about AppImages they had almost two decades to try and prove it can work. It doesn't. The main developer is now trying to integrate Flatpak runtimes with AppImages and that's all you need to know to ignore this project. One of the most popular video players tried to use it and it kept crashing or having issues, and they know what they are doing.

tl;dr only Flatpak matters, SteamRuntime uses Flatpak concepts and tools, "huge overhead" is FUD