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Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

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Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#421
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You clearly didn't use Linux any time recently.

Nope, it still sucks. It's no good as an OS for general users. The average user has no idea what it even means to have an NVIDIA GPU, let alone be able to diagnose why their screen scaling is all fucked up or understand why they see stuff about 'killing child processes' when they press the power button.

It is good, but if you didn't use it in forever, you won't actually know if it is.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#422

Everything valve doing for linux is making such a huge impact. The HL3 memes don't even seem fair to use anymore. I don't even want to un-seriously make joke fun of them at this point. They are just genuinely doing so much for the community.

Valve is one of the few companies regularly seen on HN where the headline is something like "[company] is secretly doing something really great" as opposed to "[company] is secretly doing something evil"

Its scary that nowdays a company is simply doing "good business" and it is so unusual that its worth praise.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#423
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No, thanks. That's the worst Android did, creating their own incompatible thing. We don't need another NIH like that.

Android is a much more successful platform than the Linux desktop.

More?

Linux desktop is non-existant, compared to Android

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#424

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Apple leadership cares more about "games on the Mac App Store built for Metal on a Mac" than it cares about "games on the Mac". This won't change until leadership changes.

Honest question, did Apple ever care about games on the Mac as a real priority?

Steve Jobs certainly didn't. I hope it changes because so many coders (Who are also gamers) now use Macbooks or Mac Minis as their development platform.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#426
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Yep. I know Apple has little motivation to support such a project but it would be great to see them work with Valve on this. Having the majority of Steam games "just work" on modern Macs, like they do on the Steam Deck, would be fantastic.

I think it's more than "little motivation" if we're being honest. Right now Valve is quietly targeting MS' attempt to create a walled garden for gaming on Windows and (probably) cut them out. Their very clever approach has been a full end-run around the OS by using Proton, which I'm sure genuinely thrilled Apple... as long as Valve is only doing that to MS. Why would Apple ever invite Valve to potentially do the same…

It may work out all the same because Apple's attempts such as with Game Porting Toolkit and Metal, boost Valve's attempts with Proton and we may see a convergence where Valve is able to make a majority of Steam games work on Mac without Apple explicitly wanting it.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#428

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They're doing things that are simultaneously good for business and good for consumers. That contrasts against the companies doing things that are good for business (at least short term) and bad for consumers.

yes. it aligns, for now. But only for now. all those FAANG's had the same status too, once upon a time.

Valve predates Google by two years (at least per the wiki), and was started by Microsoft employees who didn't particularly like Microsoft's operation. Hoping Valve has a long future ahead of them :)

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#429
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> And if that's really the case where are the power efficient x86 chips? Where are the power inefficient x86 chips? If you normalize for production process and put the chips under synthetic load, ARM and x86 usually end up in a similar ballpark of efficiency. ARM is typically less efficient for wide SIMD/vector workloads, but more efficient at idle. AMD and Intel aren't smartphone manufacturers. Their cash cows aren'…

Intel spent years trying to get manufacturers to use their x86 chips in phones, but manufacturers turned them down, because the power efficiency was never good enough.

You're basically reiterating exactly what I just said. Intel had no interest in licensing ARM's IP, they'd have made more money selling their fab space for Cortex designs at that point.

Yes, it cost Intel their smartphone contracts, but those weren't high-margin sales in the first place. Conversely, ARM's capricious licensing meant that we wouldn't see truly high-performance ARM cores until M1 and Neoverse hit the market.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#430

Would love to see it on MacOS X -- Steam works great on my Mac Mini for the games it supports, would be great to see everything run on it.

Are you looking for Crossover? It's a bit annoying to not run Steam natively (no cmd+H to hide, etc) but it's got a lot of support. Performance is decent on my M2 mini, and even cross-platform stuff like Baldurs Gate 3 is comparable performance to native. Especially anything that Mac Steam natively calls out lack of 32bit support has good support.

Some crossover games perform better than the native ports. I play Path of Exile on Mac using the Windows client with a translation layer, and it plays better than the native release.
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