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Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

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Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#321

Post by mycall »

asveikau wrote: post #38
MarleTangible wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over time they're going to touch things that people were waiting for Microsoft to do for years. I don't have an example in mind at the moment, but it's a lot better to make the changes yourself than wait for OS or console manufacturer to take action.

I was at Microsoft during the Windows 8 cycle. I remember hearing about a kernel feature I found interesting. Then I found linux had it for a few years at the time. I think the reality is that Linux is ahead on a lot of kernel stuff. More experimentation is happening.

Linux is behind Windows wrt (Hybrid) Microkernel vs Monolith, which helps with having drivers and subsystems in user mode and support multiple personalities (Win32, POSIX, OS/2 and WSL subsystems). Linux can hot‑patch the kernel, but replacing core components is risky and drivers and filesystems cannot be restarted independently.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#322

Post by pityJuke »

trinsic2 wrote: post #317
crtasm wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of the video did you watch? I'm not aware of other game companies that enable 3rd party integrations into their item systems. This isn't just "lootboxes bad" - it's Valve profiting from actual gambling happening on external sites.

If you want to see how bad this really is, take a look at AAA games like call of duty where they dynamically alter in game loot mechanics to get people to purchase in game items. Value is chump change in this department. They allow the practice of purchasing loot boxes and items but don't analyze and manipulate behaviors. Valve is the least bad actor in this department. I watched half the video and found it pretty bi…

> call of duty where they dynamically alter in game loot mechanics to get people to purchase in game items.

[Citation needed]

> I certainly dont think that Valve designed there systems to encourage gambling

Cases are literally slot machines.

> [section about third-party websites] I don't think Valve deliberately encouraged it.

OK, but they continue to allow it (through poor enforcement of their own ToS), and it continues to generate them obscene amounts of money?

> you guys are choosing to focus on the one company thats fighting against it.

Yes, we should let the billion dollar company get away with shovelling gambling to children.

Also, frankly speaking, other AAAs are less predatory with gambling. Fortnite, CoD, and VALORANT to pick some examples, are all just simple purchases from a store. Yes, they have issues with FOMO, and bullying for not buying skins [0], but oh my god, it isn't allowing children to literally do sports gambling (and I should know, I've actively gambled on esports while underage via CS, and I know people that have lost $600+ while underage on CS gambling).

[0]: https://www.polygon.com/2019/5/7/18534431/fortnite-rare-defa...

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#323

Post by abustamam »

kshri24 wrote: post #276
Fiveplus wrote: post #17

Valve is practically singlehandedly dragging the Linux ecosystem forward in areas that nobody else wanted to touch. They needed Windows games to run on Linux so we got massive Proton/Wine advancements. They needed better display output for the deck and we got HDR and VRR support in wayland. They also needed smoother frame pacing and we got a scheduler that Zuck is now using to run data centers. Its funny to think tha…

Game development is STILL a highly underrated field. Plenty of advancements/optimizations (both in software/hardware) can be directly traced back to game development. Hopefully, with RAM prices shooting up the way it is, we go back to keeping optimizations front and center and reduce all the bloat that has accumulated industry wide.

Yes please! Stop making me download 100+gb patches!

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#324

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

LeFantome wrote: post #313
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would've expected one of the many desktop-oriented distros (some with considerable funding, even) to have tackled these things already, but somehow desktop Linux has been stuck in the awkward midway of "it technically works, just learn to live with the rough edges" until finally Valve took initiative. Go figure.

What desktop Linux distro has “considerable funding”?

Red Hat, SuSE, and Ubuntu.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#325

Post by ffsm8 »

abustamam wrote: post #323
kshri24 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game development is STILL a highly underrated field. Plenty of advancements/optimizations (both in software/hardware) can be directly traced back to game development. Hopefully, with RAM prices shooting up the way it is, we go back to keeping optimizations front and center and reduce all the bloat that has accumulated industry wide.

Yes please! Stop making me download 100+gb patches!

The large file sizes are not because of bloat per-se...

It's a technique which supposedly helped at one point in time to reduce loading times, helldiver's being the most note-able example of removing this "optimization".

However, this is by design - specifically as an optimization. Can't really be calling that boat in the parents context of inefficient resource usage

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#326

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #170
baq wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I low key hope the current DDR5 prices push them to drag the Linux memory and swap management into the 21st century, too, because hard locking on low memory got old a while ago

It takes a solid 45 seconds for me to enable zram (compressed RAM as swap) on a fresh Arch install. I know that doesn't solve the issue for 99% of people who don't even know what zram is / have no idea how to do it / are trying to do it for the first time, but it would be pretty easy for someone to enable that in a distro. I wouldn't be shocked if it is already enabled by default in Ubuntu or Fedora.

Zswap is arguably better. It confers most of the benefits of zram swap, plus being able to evict to non-RAM if cache becomes more important or if the situation is dire. The only times I use zram are when all I have to work with for storage is MMC, which is too slow and fragile to be written to unless absolutely necessary.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#327

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

loeg wrote: post #40

[flagged]

Blogspam is very disingenuous. Phoronix covers a lot of content in the open source world that isn't well tracked elsewhere, and does some of the best and most comprehensive benchmarking of hardware and software you'll find anywhere on the internet.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#328

Post by sneak »

PlanksVariable wrote: post #264
sneak wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

300 people isn’t “extremely small” for a company. I don’t work with/for companies over 100 people, for example, and those are already quite big.

Of course smaller companies exist — there are 1 person companies! But in a world where many tech companies have 50,000+ employees, 300 is much closer to 100 or 10 and they can all be considered small. And then you consider it in context: a company with huge impact, brand recognition, and revenue (about $50M/employee in 2025). They’ve remained extremely small compared to how big they could grow.

> many tech companies have 50,000+ employees

There are not many tech companies with 50k+ employees, as a point of fact.

I’m not arguing just to argue - 300 people isn’t small by any measure. It’s absolutely not “extremely small” as was claimed. It’s not relatively small, it’s not “small for what they are doing”, it’s just not small at all.

300 people is a large company. The fact that a very small number of ultrahuge companies exist doesn’t change that.

For context, 300 people is substantially larger than the median company headcount in Germany, which is the largest economy in the EU.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#329

Post by bigstrat2003 »

LeSaucy wrote: post #114
dabockster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yeah for sure. Linux is amazing in a computer science sense, but it still can't beat Windows' vertically integrated registry/GPO based permissions system. Group/Local Policy especially, since it's effectively a zero coding required system. Ubuntu just recently got a way to automate its installer (recently being during covid). I think you can do the same on RHEL too. But that's largely it on Linux right now. If you…

Still the king but developing/testing/debugging group policy issues is a miserable experience.

I disagree. Group policies are extremely straightforward to administer in my experience.

Re: Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers

#330

Post by bigstrat2003 »

nextaccountic wrote: post #229
dymk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have to abide by the Wine license, which is basically GPL, so unless they’re going to make their own from scratch, they can’t make the bread and butter of their compat layer proprietary

That's why the anti-GPL push is so harmful. Specially in the Rust ecosystem

There is absolutely nothing harmful about permissive licenses. Let's say that Wine was under the MIT license, and Valve started publishing a proprietary fork. The original is still there! Nobody is harmed by some proprietary fork existing, because nothing was taken away from them.
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