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Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

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Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#401

Post by antod »

lunar_rover wrote: post #300
jjcm wrote: post #231

As strange as it sounds, I think Valve is extremely well-positioned to ship what becomes one of the first true Linux desktop experiences. There's a huge demand for gaming x ai development, both of which have similar hardware requirements, and Valve is already polishing their linux experience with Steam Deck. If they launch their own desktop with a properly managed OS and hardware, I think it would legitimately become…

The problem is still the desktop itself. Basically none of the existing Linux desktop components are mature, either design or technical wise and more often than not, both. Deck works because most games are self contained, allowing them to have a default game mode that bypasses the desktop entirely.

Linux had mature stable desktop stacks in the past, but they kinda sucked.

Churn (and consequent ongoing immaturity) seems to be the price we've paid in the last 10-15yrs of "progress" making them suck less. I hope it settles down a bit soon and we get to enjoy more longer term polish on these improvements though.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#402

Post by matoro »

shaggie76 wrote: post #253

Evidently it's not all Steam Deck either; I checked our internal stats and on PC yesterday 1.24% of Warframe players were using WINE and another 0.76% were playing on Deck!

Just want to say that a decade ago Warframe was the first game I ever played on WINE when I was first learning Linux in school. If it hadn't been so friendly and easy to keep playing I wouldn't have the skills and job I do today. Thank you!

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#403

Post by ssl-3 »

chrneu wrote: post #251
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No real bugs beyond incorrect monitor positioning Windows really needs to catch up with this. Multiple monitors have been a thing in Linux pretty much since the beginning of X. Why can't I plug a Windows laptop into a docking station, and expect the screens to come up in the same order they were in last time? Why is it so hard?

Multimonitor support and bluetooth are the two biggest reasons I ditched windows a couple years ago. I have no idea how multimon got so, so bad on windows. Then bluetooth ...wtf? Again, how did they get so bad?

I don't do a ton of multi-monitor stuff with Windows these days, but I certainly have done a good bit of it. It worked OK on my desktop at home with three screens, and when I sometimes plug an extra monitor into my laptop at work it seems to put things back how they were last time.

But I don't recall a time when Bluetooth was "good" on Windows -- like, at all. I've spent somewhere in the realm of 20 years now dinking around with it. As far as I can tell, it has always been a miserable experience.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#404

Post by srjek »

lwansbrough wrote: post #185

Biggest hurdle for me to do this is just multiplayer games. I wish Linux would offer a solution to that. No idea what it would look like though. Contrary to most Linux advocates I’m a big believer in giving studios the tools they need to defeat cheaters and I don’t care much about system integrity if it means fairer games.

> I wish Linux would offer a solution to that. No idea what it would look like though.

It probably would have to be an isolated environment to run in. Something like the Secure VM efforts adopted for desktops, perhaps with a small trusted hypervisor instead of CPU vendor extensions. Anything else I can think of starts to restrain what software you can run on your machine, or becomes highly invasive in ways similar to Anti-Cheats on Windows, both of which would be rejected by the general Linux community. (Through, it's not like anyone was asking Microsoft either before implementing anti-cheat and trampling on system integrity, at least until Microsoft started requiring signed drivers)

However, given that a generic blackbox implementation enables DRM and binary encryption there will probably still be opposition. It gets particularly nasty if it's given access to something like a full TPM to unlock application data in the same way a TPM can unlock an encrypted drive for your OS. That would make it the penultimate closed source application, which is really anti-ethical to a number of communities. (open source, modding, game/app preservation...)

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#405

Post by samplatt »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #195
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No real bugs beyond incorrect monitor positioning Windows really needs to catch up with this. Multiple monitors have been a thing in Linux pretty much since the beginning of X. Why can't I plug a Windows laptop into a docking station, and expect the screens to come up in the same order they were in last time? Why is it so hard?

> Why can't I plug a Windows laptop into a docking station, and expect the screens to come up in the same order they were in last time? Why is it so hard? I regularly move my work Win 11 Pro laptop between three different multi-monitor (hdmi) setups, and it works flawlessly. I don't recall any problems with Win10 over many years either. What am I missing out on?

My non-corporate desktop has 3 screens, screen#2 is shared with a corporate laptop (via a KVM, but the issues happen without it as well).

If I switch that monitor to the other machine, Windows re-arranges ALL windows to appear on the new "primary" portrait-oriented screen#1, some maximised to fill the screen, some not. They stay there after the other screen is reconnected.

Possibly because the screen being switched is the "primary" screen? At least it's consistent behaviour between both Win10 AND Win11, which is nice.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#406

Post by antod »

mikkupikku wrote: post #223
viktorcode wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems this kind of comments will keep coming no matter what. Nevertheless, here's some points on the matter: Apple was the company that boosted OpenGL popularity by using it as the graphics API for OS X. In Apple platforms world there's only one graphics API that is guaranteed to work across their hardware, so it was a big deal. However, they could not keep up with OpenGL updates, as they overlapped poorly with their…

> Apple was the company that boosted OpenGL popularity by using it as the graphics API for OS X Certainly they were a company that boosted OpenGL, but the company? During the early years OSX had less market share than Linux does today, and OpenGL was already well established by gaming and professional software before OSX ever came out. Quake supported it (not on release), Quake II and Half Life supported it on releas…

Yeah, I would say id (in the quake era) did far more to keep opengl alive than Apple.

Without quake and a few other popular games, it is likely direct3d would've been the only thing supported by non professional graphics cards.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#407

Post by handbanana_ »

ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #238
SteveNuts wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My tech friends always joke that pretty soon we’re going to see “the year of the Linux Windows”, where windows will just be an OS on top of the Linux kernel. I think we’re only half joking though, I could see it happening.

> " My tech friends always joke that pretty soon we’re going to see “the year of the Linux Windows”, where windows will just be an OS on top of the Linux kernel. " There's no need because the Year Of Linux On The Desktop™ already happened and it's called WSL2. Meanwhile, the opposite has also already actually happened: SteamOS + Proton is a distro whose main purpose is to be a launcher for Windows apps on a Linux ker…

This 100%. These threads are the same shit I was reading on Slashdot in 1999

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#408

Post by handbanana_ »

cyberax wrote: post #342
ThrowawayB7 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " My tech friends always joke that pretty soon we’re going to see “the year of the Linux Windows”, where windows will just be an OS on top of the Linux kernel. " There's no need because the Year Of Linux On The Desktop™ already happened and it's called WSL2. Meanwhile, the opposite has also already actually happened: SteamOS + Proton is a distro whose main purpose is to be a launcher for Windows apps on a Linux ker…

Linux has won on phones (Android) and on the server side. I don't think Windows Server is seriously used for anything but Exchange/AD these days, outside of hosting specialized or legacy apps. Windows also comprehensively lost the "exclusivity" moat. Most of popular apps are now cross-platform, because they need to run on Android/iOS/macOS. So desktop Linux is often an easy addition: Slack, Discord, all the messenger…

Windows is still very present in the Enterprise, for many more reasons than AD/Exchange.

Re: Linux gamers on Steam cross over the 3% mark

#410

Post by vee-kay »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #308
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #288

Earlier 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…

Just use Thunderbird Portable as email client.

Since M$ is doing away with simple free apps (such as Mail) and forcing users to move to cloud-based expensive apps, you can use FOSS (Free and Open Source) alternatives -- especially the Portable ones (e.g., apps from PortableApps.com) that don't need an install, they can run off a USB drive, and app+userdata can be easily backed up without fuss.

https://alternativeto.net/software/mail-calendar-people-and-...

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