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Steam to Chrome OS

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Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#21

Post by fragmede »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #4
jokowueu wrote: post #2

Since they didn't mention it I'm guessing x86 only chrome books ?

AFIACT, it's a "no but yes" sort of answer. Linux games are free to build binaries for any architecture they wish, but any game relying on Proton because it's a Windows binary will require x86. Good news is, any of us in here are going to buy whatever we want and aren't limited to Chromebooks. Its everyone else that is screwed by the virtual duopoly of Windows and !Windows.

That's not entirely clear to me. Windows on Arm has some weird sort of compatibility layer that could also exist here. It's a different environment but I'm able to run (some) x86 windows programs on an Arm Windows virtual machine, unmodified, under Parallels on an M1 MacBook. Boggles my mind how it all works together, but it does.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#23

Post by coconut08 »

fragmede wrote: post #21
DiabloD3 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFIACT, it's a "no but yes" sort of answer. Linux games are free to build binaries for any architecture they wish, but any game relying on Proton because it's a Windows binary will require x86. Good news is, any of us in here are going to buy whatever we want and aren't limited to Chromebooks. Its everyone else that is screwed by the virtual duopoly of Windows and !Windows.

That's not entirely clear to me. Windows on Arm has some weird sort of compatibility layer that could also exist here. It's a different environment but I'm able to run (some) x86 windows programs on an Arm Windows virtual machine, unmodified, under Parallels on an M1 MacBook. Boggles my mind how it all works together, but it does.

there are projects like fex and box86/box64 that are trying to do for linux what windows is doing and what rosetta 2 is doing.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#24

Post by someperson »

jordanmoconnor wrote: post #10

Neat - but who’s gaming on a Chromebook?

When travelling, I have used GeForce Now to play Fortnite on an a pretty weak ARM Chromebook from a web browser.

I was able to turn up the graphical settings up much higher than what my regular desktop's ageing GTX 970 graphics card can get, while still maintaining a high frame rate.

Latency is low enough to have fun and contribute to the team. Wasn't a good experience over cellular, but it was very good on a wired connection.

I was very happy to have had a streaming option available at the time.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#26

Post by sph »

modeless wrote: post #15
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this stage, native Linux releases are becoming less and less likely because of Value's efforts to improve gaming on Linux, as paradoxical as that seems. Proton is getting better and better with each release, and in many cases, is providing better performance than running native code on Windows. Why bother with official Linux support when you can just check that your game runs via Proton and push the burden of supp…

If Proton just becomes the "game runtime" for Linux, that's OK! It's still open source. There may come a time when Proton compatibility becomes as important or even more important than Windows compatibility for game developers. Not only might game developers start explicitly supporting Proton, they could even contribute fixes upstream, unlike with Windows. Ultimately if it becomes popular enough, Proton could execute…

I'd argue that Proton is better than native Linux support in the long term, hear me out.

Linux userspace API has no promise of long term compatibility, and in fact there's a lot of churn, especially nowadays as we approach the Year of the Linux Desktop and technologies come and go as they're improved.

The Windows API instead is known for its long term compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure applications keep running a decade later, and using that as a base for gaming is a win-win, as developers can target two operating systems with one API, and gamers have more guarantees their game will still be playable on Ubuntu 2030 edition.

The last few times I played native Linux games I had to fish for old and unsupported libssl and libjpeg libraries that my distribution doesn't ship anymore. I can blame the port, but nowadays I just try the Proton version first.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#27

Post by jhasse »

shmerl wrote: post #9
JamesMcMinn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this stage, native Linux releases are becoming less and less likely because of Value's efforts to improve gaming on Linux, as paradoxical as that seems. Proton is getting better and better with each release, and in many cases, is providing better performance than running native code on Windows. Why bother with official Linux support when you can just check that your game runs via Proton and push the burden of supp…

I don't see why it has to become less likely for those who care about performance (which major games usually do). Translating DX12 or DX11 into Vulkan has performance overhead, even if you manage to run the game better than on Windows itself (for example Cyberpunk 2077 performs on Linux better than on Windows now). But native releases can perform even better. And it's probably not always the case that Windows games p…

> for example Cyberpunk 2077 performs on Linux better than on Windows now

Do you have a link? Everything I found suggest that it's the other way around, but Linux comes close.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#28

Post by mdoms »

You'd think they would want to double- and triple-down on their cloud gaming platform, Stadia, for Chromebooks. But there's also good reason to believe that platform won't be going the distance so perhaps this is another signal in that direction.

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#29

Post by torginus »

Wait - does this mean that if Steam ships on Chromebook, and Steam can be made to run arbitrary software via proton, that Chromebooks have become regular laptops?

Re: Steam to Chrome OS

#30

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

torginus wrote: post #29

Wait - does this mean that if Steam ships on Chromebook, and Steam can be made to run arbitrary software via proton, that Chromebooks have become regular laptops?

To be clear, chromebooks have for a few years been able to be regular labtops since crouton [1] allowed installing linux distros on them. (And could even use wine to run windows games on the x86 chromebooks.)

[1] https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

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