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Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

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Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#11

Post by maccard »

dininski wrote: post #2

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing th…

> The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers.

I don't think that assumption has been validated, and I don't see that from this article. The premise of this article isn't that the steam deck is taking market share, it's that it's increasing compatibility of games on linux. More to the point, the steamdeck hasn't made a dent in the desktop market, see [0] it's a fraction of a percentage of _gamers_ never mind any other use cases.

Don't read this as me saying this isn't progress, but we're still a far cry (pun intended) from a dent.

[0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#12

Post by zem »

close04 wrote: post #9
mcv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that Valve is willing to pay them for it. It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. As someone who has just switched to Linux gaming, I've got to say it's working great. Maybe it's slightly less stable, but not by much, and performance is excellent.

> It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary I think it's great that someone invests. That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work. It's just a normal part of work/life where the alternative would be to do it for free, out of passion. But you also have to make a living.

fully agree! I'm biased because I also work for pay on open source products but I think it's a great "rising tide lifts all boats" model of software development.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#13

Post by tru1ock »

I bought a modest gaming rig in 2016 and used systemd/loginctl to convert it into a multiseat setup. One seat for myself and one for the rest of the family.

The amount of value I got so far from this setup is unbelievable. Part of that is proton taking off and giving me and my kids access to most games on steam.

Very grateful to all involved that made it possible.

Still running ubuntu that have just been upgraded over the years on it.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#14

Post by arp242 »

dininski wrote: post #2

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing th…

> Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking.

Proton is basically just Wine, right? Aside from that CodeWeavers has been doing commercial Wine development for a long time.

Almost all of Wine already existed before Valve got involved. Yes, they help out too, and that's great, but people are hugely over-crediting Valve (and here, hugely under-crediting all those open source contributors, who did the overwhelming majority of the work).

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#15

Post by Adverblessly »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #10
dininski wrote: post #2

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing th…

It's interesting to see Apple basically imitating this with their porting toolkit. The net result is game developers being presented with two growing ecosystems for the same game simply by ensuring they stay compatible with both. With their VR stuff coming out soon, there could be a big push to get some games going there. Either way, if you are a game developer, ensuring the games work fine via proton and Apple's por…

> My guess is that Valve is starting to see a lot of Linux users with steam accounts that don't own a Steam Deck.

You don't have to guess, just look at the steam hardware survey - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=linux - 44.18% of Linux is SteamOS Holo (a.k.a. Steam Deck), while overall Linux is 1.82%.

Since historically Linux usage hovered around 1%, I'm guessing that the Steam Deck by itself didn't drive any additional users to Desktop Linux (or at least not in huge amounts), though the 1% by itself is probably driven by Valve's efforts to improve Linux support.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#16

Post by ajvs »

maccard wrote: post #11
dininski wrote: post #2

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing th…

> The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. I don't think that assumption has been validated, and I don't see that from this article. The premise of this article isn't that the steam deck is taking market share, it's that it's increasing compatibility of games on linux. More to the point, the steamdeck hasn't made a de…

Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics. That's a decent milestone, and it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#17

Post by 4death4 »

arp242 wrote: post #14
dininski wrote: post #2

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing th…

> Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. Proton is basically just Wine, right? Aside from that CodeWeavers has been doing commercial Wine development for a long time. Almost all of Wine already existed before Valve got involved. Yes, they help out too, and that's great, but people are hugely over-crediting Valve (and here,…

According to the article, Steam OS also uses two Direct 3D to Vulkan translation libraries. That’s obviously a big part of running a game.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#18

Post by mcv »

close04 wrote: post #9
mcv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that Valve is willing to pay them for it. It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. As someone who has just switched to Linux gaming, I've got to say it's working great. Maybe it's slightly less stable, but not by much, and performance is excellent.

> It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary I think it's great that someone invests. That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work. It's just a normal part of work/life where the alternative would be to do it for free, out of passion. But you also have to make a living.

> That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work.

Well, that's also sad.

I just wanted to say it would have been nice if the community would have been able to get this working more easily. But clearly it's too much work to do it without some dedicated fulltimers.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#19

Post by robertlagrant »

mcv wrote: post #4
zem wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just to be pedantic, the valve devs are absolutely open source contributors, they just happen to be paid to do it.

It's great that Valve is willing to pay them for it. It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. As someone who has just switched to Linux gaming, I've got to say it's working great. Maybe it's slightly less stable, but not by much, and performance is excellent.

> It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that.

People getting paid is a good thing.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#20

Post by noirscape »

arp242 wrote: post #14
dininski wrote: post #2

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing th…

> Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. Proton is basically just Wine, right? Aside from that CodeWeavers has been doing commercial Wine development for a long time. Almost all of Wine already existed before Valve got involved. Yes, they help out too, and that's great, but people are hugely over-crediting Valve (and here,…

Proton is Wine with some extra patches; the main project has some pretty hefty requirements in terms of coding standards to reduce possible regressions, which means that on the whole it can be pretty slow to get compatibility.

Gaming is just one subsection of the Win32 API that doesn't touch on all parts of said API. Proton basically has a bunch of extra patches that might introduce a regression in upstream Wine but won't in the context of videogames.

Proton patches also usually get upstreamed when they reach "proper" maturity/are fully tested if I'm not mistaken so long-term, Proton benefits the rest of the wine ecosystem too. As for the open source contributors - Valve iirc just hired some of the previously self-employed wine developers and the guy who got I think it was a Vulkan compat layer working on Linux.

I'm pretty sure Codeweavers has the same model although I don't think they upstream patches nearly as much? They're also very much more targeting business customers on Apple devices who need to run some obscure (usually old) Windows program rather than the entire scope of Win32 software.

Basically it's best to look at proton the way you sometimes get a "next generation" fork of a popular piece of FOSS - higher dev speed and more features, however more focused into keeping a single area working than on the overall health of the upstream (which does get contributed back to for the features that help the upstream).

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