1.85% of Steam users run Linux • Hacker News Board

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#111

Post by noinsight » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:04 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #104

crdoconnor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty). It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.

Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome…

> Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

Those were gimp versions (distributions) of Linux though. We haven't seen what happens with a properly supported straight-up Ubuntu or such full-featured desktop.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#112

Post by Joeri » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:26 PM UTC

noinsight wrote: post #111

Joeri wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome…

> Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. Those were gimp versions (distributions) of Linux though. We haven't seen what happens with a properly supported straight-up Ubuntu or such full-featured desktop.

They weren't gimped from the perspective of the desktop, just from the perspective of a programmer. They ran all the same apps, in a UI optimized for netbooks, with a simple easy store app to download additional software. A straight-up Ubuntu wouldn't be that much nicer for a "typical" user in my opinion.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#113

Post by noinsight » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:29 PM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #77

velodrome wrote: post #57

Gaming on Linux still has a long way to go: 1) The drivers are still crappy. It's getting better but it still needs a lot of work. To simply manage multiple screens or to change resolution requires a restart! Nvidia is still better than AMD drivers. 2) Many games just get the Linux ports to a "working" condition and leave it at that. The games are really buggy. Valve games are top notch and deserve a lot of credit fo…

Intel drivers, lack of horsepower aside, are much better than either nvidia or amd at this point. You do not need to restart X to change resolutions or manage screens, it's just an xrandr command. It works very well. That said, a lot of games on linux deal extremely poorly with multimon no matter what. They'll usually try to play over all screens with sometimes completely insane geometries.

> Intel drivers, lack of horsepower aside, are much better than either nvidia or amd at this point.

Sadly I have to disagree with you at this point. I used the Intel GPU on my i7 2600k (HD3000) since 2011 on Arch Linux and at some point about six months ago they stopped working properly. On a Displayport connector I didn't get video at all @ boot sometimes, other than by messing with xrandr and unplugging the cable the only solution was to try booting again.

That wasn't too horrible. What was horrible was the fact that OpenGL didn't work at all really. Every time I used anything that utilized OpenGL I would get "GPU hung, stuck in render ring blah blah" in my dmesg every minute or so and indeed the whole GPU and hence the screens would freeze completely for 5 seconds or so. The machine became unusable. No more GPU accelerated mplayer after that (vaapi or any of the opengl options). Google Maps with WebGL was especially hilarious, I only had to drag with the mouse a bit to make the GPU hang.

I tolerated it for a few driver versions but no improvement happened so I bought a passively cooled ATI HD7750 and use that with the open source drivers. KDE compositing doesn't work @ OpenGL 3.1 at all (even though it should based on the driver's specs) and with compositing enabled accelerated video crashes my Xorg so I had to start using Openbox but at least the screen doesn't freeze for 5 seconds at a time all the time.

Really disappointed with Intel, the drivers were extremely solid in the past.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#114

Post by er35826 » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:32 PM UTC

sontek wrote: post #34

This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of various flavors.

For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#115

Post by crdoconnor » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 3:31 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #104

crdoconnor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty). It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.

Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome…

>Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows.

Not exactly how I remember it. They sold like wildfire initially when linux was first put on it. Then MS started giving away windows licenses because they freaked out over linux adoption overtaking them.

Somehow them and intel managed to prevent all the hardware manufacturers from improving their specs (each year they got progressively worse).

Something very fishy went on with that market.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#116

Post by jaredmcateer » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 5:17 PM UTC

er35826 wrote: post #114

sontek wrote: post #34

This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of various flavors. For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.

For me, even then, I didn't dual boot, for a long time I was happy programming in Windows and Linux was but a curiosity until I started working at iStock and one of the technical leads convinced me to give Vim a 2 week challenge where I immersed myself in it. Since then programming with linux as my IDE and Vim as my editor has ruined Windows for me, only thing I use it for now is XMBC + Netflix and Gaming.

I bought a dedicated laptop for programming. I have a dedicated box for gaming and one for media. With steam and pipelight it's the beginning of the end for my windows machines. I figure it's going to be gaming, as ever, that will keep the life support on my windows machine going, but it will be relegated to living in the utility room with my htpc if/when the Steam Machine streaming is proven.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#117

Post by drzaiusapelord » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #104

crdoconnor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty). It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.

Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome…

This is a great point. I remember people losing their shit when netbooks shipped with windows instead of "this linux thing that doesn't work with my work stuff." That's literally a quote from someone in my wife's office when she showed up with a little Windows netbook I bought her.

I think the linux desktop is farther away than ever. For the modern home user, some level of iOS or Android device will take the place of the "family" computer. Gamers and edge cases will exist, but in much smaller numbers. For a gamer, a Win8 OEM license is a trivial cost.

This is also why linux distros are stupid for chasing MS, instead of implementing their own vision and their own added value. Yet another WIMP, Open Office, Chromium box that serves no one but FOSS enthusiasts isn't going to win anyone over, especially when they can't use the Outlook/Exchange/IE/Office/Sharepoint stack they've become accustomed to. They've invented a poorer version of Windows when the demand for a Windows-like OS is at its lowest and people are shifting largely to mobile devices and keeping the big clunky desktop for work stuff that is deeply tied to proprietary MS or Adobe or Intuit software. For pros, Gnucash doesn't replace quickbooks. The gimp doesn't replace photoshop.

I'd love to see the business world standardize on some FOSS desktop solution, but that has so much politics and proprietary stuff attached to it, that its the same story we have today as we did when slashdot was telling us that Mandrake would take over windows in 2002 or 2003.

I guess you could call android a linux desktop, but that's quite a stretch. Its a linux kernel and a lot of mobile stuff Google came up with. That's a face-saving win, but in reality the linux desktop has been a massive fail in terms of adoptability and business penetration.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#118

Post by mh- » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 5:38 PM UTC

sontek wrote: post #34

This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.

1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux

no, 1.85% of the user base tried Steam on Linux. we don't know what portion of those adopted it as their primary platform to use Steam.

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#119

Post by stephann » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 7:53 PM UTC

When Linux reaches 2.85% I will replace my MACOSX with linux on macbook pro

Re: 1.85% of Steam users run Linux

#120

Post by ZenoArrow » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 8:29 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #115

Joeri wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. When people buy something in a PC form factor they expect it to run windows. Linux on the desktop will not happen in a traditional desktop form factor because people don't want it and/or don't see the point. The one possible exception are chromebooks, because a laptop that only runs chrome…

>Remember the netbook craze? They put linux on there, but they didn't start to sell in volume until they replaced it with windows. Not exactly how I remember it. They sold like wildfire initially when linux was first put on it. Then MS started giving away windows licenses because they freaked out over linux adoption overtaking them. Somehow them and intel managed to prevent all the hardware manufacturers from improvi…

Yes, if I remember correctly Microsoft or Intel made some sort of requirement that netbooks couldn't be sold with over 1GB RAM. There may have been some other restrictions.