running supertuxkart windows build with proton.
Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
311–320 of 560 posts
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#312It's crazy to me that Arch Linux is the second biggest Steam distro. That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists. You'd think the more 'user-friendly' distros would be higher.
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Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#313I zeroed my (last ever) Windows gaming rig just yesterday. I’ve been eyeing Bazzite but ended up going with Pop, since I’ve previously had good experience on it with Nvidia.
What finally let me do it was moving all my social gaming to PS5. Ime it’s really only games with anti-cheat requirements that can be a crapshoot on Linux. I can’t really recall ever running into other issues with anything on my (Linux-based) Steam Deck over the past couple of years. I’ve emigrated from my home country so gaming is important to me as a way of staying in touch with friends and family - something I wasn’t willing to risk by switching away from a working setup. A PS5 is a convenient and reasonably economical way to address that.
Feels pretty great to know that after 40+ years of relying on it - some good but a lot bad - I’ll never have to touch Windows again.
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only thing windows has focused on has been dark patterns to force users towards cloud and figuring out more and more ways to collect data to sell ads. And backwards compatibility. They're really good at it. And I'd say that's the reason Windows is still dominant. There's this unfathomably long tail of niche software that people need or want to run.
>backwards compatibility They are getting worse at this. I bought a Surface Laptop Studio 2 two years ago. Windows Mail and Windows Calendar, two nice minimalist programs from Microsoft, were actively killed in this time. If you open them, it will redirect you to a new ad-laden Outlook app. If you somehow get a workaround going through the registry, they still fuck with it because the (incredibly simple) UI somehow h…
That's not a lack of backwards compatibility, that's an app purposefully self-destructing itself!
What I'm talking about is, if your widget factory uses some app to calibrate all the widgets which was written by a contractor in 2005, it probably still works fine on Windows 11.
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
Games on Mac are a multifaceted problem, but IMO the main issue stems from Apple treating games like they do apps. They expect developers to continue to support them, to update them as APIs get depreciated. Apple can spend all the resources they want, but they'll never be able to convince enough developers to foster a gaming ecosystem that could ever be taken seriously when there's other platforms that have 20+ years…
Two more points to that: First, due to substantial differences in graphics hardware, that is tiled-based deferred rendering for Apple Silicon and immediate mode rendering for NVIDIA and AMD the software simulation or translation layer will never be as good as DXVK/VKD3D, which essentially do rendering on exactly same GPUs. In case of using TBDR the pipeline must be rewritten to get the benefits. Simply put, for Apple…
> First, due to substantial differences in graphics hardware, that is tiled-based deferred rendering for Apple Silicon and immediate mode rendering for NVIDIA and AMD the software simulation or translation layer will never be as good as DXVK/VKD3D, which essentially do rendering on exactly same GPUs. In case of using TBDR the pipeline must be rewritten to get the benefits. Simply put, for Apple hardware every Windows game wrapped in a translation layer will be significantly worse off than a native port. That’s why it’s important for Apple to push for that.
Doesn't matter for the back catalogue, which is the thing that is missing that makes the platform a running joke re: gaming. It's also an issue that affects Adreno on Snapdragon, but it isn't stopping Valve from planning to ship a version of Proton for that platform. Having personally talked to a DXVK developer about this specifically, the overhead, while existent, I understand isn't necessarily as severe as you make it out to be either.
> Second, Apple is the owner of the biggest game storefront in terms of revenue. They don’t have to ask for game developers to come, they are already here. The market we are talking about is AAA games market. And this market is characterised by dedicated hardware: consoles and gaming PC. So I think this is where lies the actual problem: Apple doesn’t make dedicated hardware for games.
Not just AAA, but most everything outside of the F2P/casual sphere. Speaking as someone who actually likes games as a form of art, the App Store's library is the video games equivalent of reality TV and home shopping. It's mostly exploitative trash. Maybe Apple is happy with cornering the market on exploitative trash though, good for them.
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
>backwards compatibility They are getting worse at this. I bought a Surface Laptop Studio 2 two years ago. Windows Mail and Windows Calendar, two nice minimalist programs from Microsoft, were actively killed in this time. If you open them, it will redirect you to a new ad-laden Outlook app. If you somehow get a workaround going through the registry, they still fuck with it because the (incredibly simple) UI somehow h…
That's not a lack of backwards compatibility, that's an app purposefully self-destructing itself! What I'm talking about is, if your widget factory uses some app to calibrate all the widgets which was written by a contractor in 2005, it probably still works fine on Windows 11.
That detail is definitely true, I just think that in practice the frustration with behavior like this from MS will trickle down(/up/whatever direction). Like the benefit of Windows as a regular user or power user was also that after the pain of dealing with whatever shit MS decided, you could configure it more-or-less however you wanted and it would not change. It will be delayed in the corporate world but it will happen.
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#317Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was younger I also was like that. As I got older, my interests in games decreased. That and also because I am too dumb to make wine work with games nowadays; it was easier in the 32bit era. :\ But the real problem is lack of time. There are so many things to do and so little time. Today's games are also not as interesting IMO. Most of them are just "who has the better 3D engine".
For 90+ percent of Windows-only games I wanna play, the process for getting them to work on Linux is the following: 1. Hit the download button in Steam 2. Wait for it to download 3. Hit the play button Granted, my taste in games doesn't include things like generic AAA first person military shooters, which are the ones which tend to be the most difficult to get to work due to stuff like anti cheat. But it sounds like…
and for me, the one (rather niche, I might add) game that didn't "just work" was working just fine after trying a different Proton version - which is literally as simple as opening the "Properties" page and using a drop-down menu.
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only thing windows has focused on has been dark patterns to force users towards cloud and figuring out more and more ways to collect data to sell ads. And backwards compatibility. They're really good at it. And I'd say that's the reason Windows is still dominant. There's this unfathomably long tail of niche software that people need or want to run.
Yep! I can compile a program on Windows and expect it to work on any Windows OS from the past ~15 years that has the same CPU architecture. Linux? Each binary is more provincial. I want to try some of the tricks like MUSL though; haven't explored the space beyond default compiler options.
Ironically, you can run almost any vintage Windows or DOS software on any modern GNU/Linux OS too, using compatibility layers.
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Goodness the file save dialog(s) on Windows - it makes it so hard to save a file into my personal space. It's unintuitive and you need to click through, I think a couple of dialog boxes before you get to 'Your Documents'.
And people complained that GTK file picker didn't have thumbnails.
Two things can be bad! But the GTK file picker has improved and now has thumbnails, while you can't really trust MS not to continue to damage its file picker
Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark
#320It's crazy to me that Arch Linux is the second biggest Steam distro. That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists. You'd think the more 'user-friendly' distros would be higher.
> That's always been positioned to me as the one for hackers and experimentalists
I thought so too, that's why I mostly used Ubuntu up until 22.04 sometime, used Ubuntu since I moved before that. Then I moved to Arch, and everything just got so much easier. Upgrading Ubuntu versions was a bit hit-or-miss, especially if you'd changed configs for one reason or another. And after 22.04>22.10 failed for whatever reason, I restarted with Arch then never looked back.
Probably it helped that I already knew Arch by the time I started using it, compared to starting to use Ubuntu coming from Windows and not knowing squat.
But now with an installer, good defaults, and a helpful community (maybe slightly controversial) I think Arch can be a pretty good beginner OS, as long as you want to understand how your system is put together.