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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

#431

Post by 0xedd »

cannonpalms wrote: post #252
p1necone wrote: post #32

I made the switch more than a year ago and it's been basically problem free. Almost all modern games work flawlessly through proton and I get better compatibility for really old stuff through lutris than I ever did on windows (I used to have to run a win 3.1/95/98 vm to play certain older games, now I just use lutris/wine). The only stuff that doesn't work is multiplayer games with unsupported anticheat - it's always…

The unfortunate reality is that, depending on your personal preferences, "most modern games" require such a ring 0 anti-cheat. Any game that has a matchmaking mode with a competitive option requires a rootkit. As an aside, I recently found Riot Games' Vanguard installed on my Linux ESP partition... after having installed the game on my windows partition. It rooted every OS it could find mounted. Incredible.

[dead]

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

#432

Post by wtcactus »

Jach wrote: post #245
wtcactus wrote: post #143

About every 3 months or so, I install some gaming Linux distro (or, if I'm in the mood, install Linux Mint from scratch and try to configure it for gaming) and get solely disappointed and return to windows. Most of the Linux hurdles in day to day work can be overcome (mostly is the lack of the apps I normally use that cause some attrition, but with some compromises and some work I can get around it). But for gaming (…

What games do you play? I really wonder about experiences like these since they differ so much to my own. The only time I mess with linux-specific things like proton versions is if a newly purchased game doesn't launch with the default proton for some reason. It's annoying, sure, but pretty rare nowadays and I usually anticipate it by checking protondb before buying a game rather than after, and it's not like it's mu…

Right now, Clair Obscur and Crusader Kings mostly.

I also try other games when I install the system to check the current status of things.

For instance, the Monster Hunter World Demo (I don't like that game, I only use it for testing) is terrible. Very high lag, takes about 15min every time it starts because it needs to redo the graphics shaders, it's much slower than on windows.

Clair Obscur doesn't start. I get into the main menu, and then I can't start it.

Crusader Kings works fine IIRC.

Also, Steam game mode still doesn't work correctly with NVIDIA cards in Wayland... after all these years.

And yes, I did try Bazzite (that's what I mean when I say sometimes I just install a gaming distro instead of bothering to config).

And like I said in another comment, this is not some super specific setup I have here. Now I have a 5060 Ti, before I had a 1080 Ti. This is the basic setup many people have. So, sorry, but I just don't believe when people say "It works perfectly fine for me". It's like when I hear "Firefox doesn't have any different energy consumption on my MacBook"... although people have been reporting the very same issues for more than a decade now and I, personally, experienced it in 3 different Apple laptops.

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

#433

Post by wtcactus »

ewuhic wrote: post #198
wtcactus wrote: post #143

About every 3 months or so, I install some gaming Linux distro (or, if I'm in the mood, install Linux Mint from scratch and try to configure it for gaming) and get solely disappointed and return to windows. Most of the Linux hurdles in day to day work can be overcome (mostly is the lack of the apps I normally use that cause some attrition, but with some compromises and some work I can get around it). But for gaming (…

Dare I suggest you use NixOS, or even better, https://github.com/Jovian-Experiments/Jovian-NixOS , so you 1) get a working setup in minutes by following just https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Jovian_NixOS ; 2) if something does not work, you don't start from scratch next time you have an urge to try again; 3) have best-in-class community support; 4) overcome lack of apps by plugging into nixpkgs - the biggest repo of packages…

I just don't have time for that. I use Ubuntu (headless for work), I don't have the time to spend configuring yet another system.

I'm willing to try stuff like Bazzite since it - supposedly - comes all pre-configured. But I'm not going down yet another rabbit hole with a totally new OS just for gaming... I just don't have time for that. It's just much easier to install Windows 11.

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

#434

Post by tpxl »

bee_rider wrote: post #176
PeaceTed wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would assume but I do wonder how much long term damage they are doing for short term gains with this drive? I'm not a believer in "the year of linux desktop!?!!?" and all that, but it achieved a level of robustness about 5-10ish years ago that I openly encourage non technical users to give it a try. For the few people that actually did try, they did stick with it. At this point it is Microsoft's position to lose…

I don’t much like MS, but in their defense they are trying to sell operating systems in a market where the going out-of-pocket price is $0. The development of their competition is ad supported, community supported, or built into the price of hardware. Turn the boat around? To where? Nobody would be willing to pay for their product even if they were to start trying to make it appealing.

> I don’t much like MS, but in their defense they are trying to sell operating systems in a market where the going out-of-pocket price is $0.

The price of the windows license has been included in the price of PCs for literally decades now. Every computer you buy with windows preinstalled nets Microsoft a couple dozen dollars.

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

#435

Post by jeroenhd »

drnick1 wrote: post #420
jeroenhd wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of accessible devices with first party support make mainstream Linux gaming rather annoying. For many games, people prefer Nvidias's graphical tricks over AMD's, making AMD cards a worse deal, while at the same time Nvidia's Linux support remains abysmal for most cards. It's not impossible to use their hardware anymore, but you need to know of their bullshit beforehand and even then you run the risk of messi…

> Nvidia's Linux support remains abysmal for most cards. I can't relate. My 3090 works flawlessly on Arch, and I can play any game that does not intentionally ban Linux users through anticheat.

If you can figure out how to install Arch, you're not exactly a mainstream gamer.

My 1080 also runs ~fine in Ubuntu (driver updates require a full reboot or GPU accelerated applications fail to launch). Guessing the right kernel parameters to make sleep work was a fun game that lasted a while, though. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Troubleshooting is that long for a reason.

Laptop GPUs are hit the worst, of course. No distro I've found can figure out how to keep the iGPU and Nvidia dGPU 1) running at the same time (so screens and HDMI work) and 2) run at more than 40fps. Nvidia forum posts go unanswered, laptop vendor forum posts are basically useless, and reported bugs/issues go stale and eventually get autoclosed.

Nvidia hardware either works fine out of the box, or you're going to lose many hours beating it into functioning form.

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

#436

Post by zigzag312 »

dijit wrote: post #332
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.

Windows has changed the kernel interface more often than Linux. This fact alone throws this commonly held belief to the wind. Glibc provides binary compatibility to newer versions too. Shims exist in both, “windows compatibility layer” for example, but pulseaudio can emulate ALSA- and pipewire can emulate pulseaudio and ALSA. It’s actually a quagmire, but I would contend that either has solid story for backwards comp…

What win32 apps were killed by UWP migration? When UWP was added win32 wasn't removed. Win32 applications still work.

> Microsoft sort of only wins in the closed-source, “run this arbitrary binary” race

That is actually a big win as some manufacturers only provide binary blob drivers and a lot of commercial software is distributed as binaries only.

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

#437

Post by ThatPlayer »

zamalek wrote: post #345
coppsilgold wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even on Windows they are losing despite the invasive anticheats. I suspect the answer to cheating will ultimately be big brother and hiding information from the client. The server should stop sending positions of undetected enemies - this requires rethinking game engines due to the predictions they perform. The server should log every single action by every single player (full replays) in perpetuity, train models on…

> I suspect the answer to cheating will ultimately be big brother and hiding information from the client. The speed of light makes this _marginally_ problematic to do. It is possible that a unit might move out of the fog of war, or out of cover, during the latency to the client (or between server ticks). You'd effectively have pop-in during some scenarios - but it would be minor and the net benefit would probably mak…

Riot has a pretty good article about why it is hard: https://technology.riotgames.com/news/demolishing-wallhacks-... . Anything more than simple geometry makes server side calculations costly, especially when you're targeting 128 tick/s.

Their settled solution is still not perfect, hence still the need for client-side anti-cheat. The final video clip is definitely done to look effective than it actually is. Those positions are transmitted based on space, not time, and in a real game you'd be moving slower.

Mobas generally have a lower tickrate and simpler vision setups

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

#438

Post by dustypotato »

makeitdouble wrote: post #337
embedding-shape wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can ship the same destop/window manager combo they ship on the Steam Deck, where you can switch between the "full screen mode" (don't remember what it's called) and a proper desktop. I'm sure most people stay in the full-screen mode, it has all the settings and everything, even works with an cursor if I'm not mistaken, but can fallback when you need a terminal or whatever.

As I understood GP's comment, the crux is "a very wide range of users." Right now Steam Deck works because of a focus on a very specific use and users. A general purpose desktop requires a lot more, and right now even the most mature linux desktop (GNOME, Plasma etc) have their rough edges and learning curve.

Steam deck is currently my primary computer. You just try to not use sudo at all. So I use nix to install all my software. From firefox to htop. It can get annoying because one of my scripts was trying to detect Mesa the other day and didn't work with nix installed mesa, otherwise it's perfect.

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

#439

Post by efreak »

IshKebab wrote: post #25
WhereIsTheTruth wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.protondb.com/explore?sort=playerCount only 6 out of the 50 most played right now aren't working 10 millions players ingame, 90% of players are not playing these titles

6 out of 50 is a huge number in terms of annoyance. It's the same reason alternative web browser engines like Ladybird are probably never going to take off. It might support 99.99% of web features - which sounds amazing! - but that probably means it's going to fail in some way on like 0.1% of sites which in practice is extremely frustrating.

Chrome no longer has the ability to run a number of extensions I like, and Firefox has abysmal performance at some bulk indexeddb operations. Safari isn't available outside Apple, and Opera and Microsoft are stuck following Google (along with all the other engines built on Chrome). There's no options left.

I hope ladybird makes it far enough that smart people start optimizing small features that rarely get used. Do that and I think it'll be successful enough to be used as a daily browser.

As much as the browser wars sucked, I can't wait for them to happen again. I'm already using 5 different browsers on mobile, since nobody wants to support containers, profiles, or organizing tabs with multiple windows.

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

#440

Post by dijit »

zigzag312 wrote: post #436
dijit wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has changed the kernel interface more often than Linux. This fact alone throws this commonly held belief to the wind. Glibc provides binary compatibility to newer versions too. Shims exist in both, “windows compatibility layer” for example, but pulseaudio can emulate ALSA- and pipewire can emulate pulseaudio and ALSA. It’s actually a quagmire, but I would contend that either has solid story for backwards comp…

What win32 apps were killed by UWP migration? When UWP was added win32 wasn't removed. Win32 applications still work. > Microsoft sort of only wins in the closed-source, “run this arbitrary binary” race That is actually a big win as some manufacturers only provide binary blob drivers and a lot of commercial software is distributed as binaries only.

Binary applications do not include drivers. I only mean applications, drivers do not transfer cleanly between versions of Windows.

To answer your other question though; Any GDI that is not accessible through DirectX- The Contacts API, Timers API, BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service), The inbound HTTP server API, NDF (Network Diagnostic Framework), SNMP.

AllocConsole and ReadConsole are gone, NamedPipes (something I used to use extensively) are gone. Toolbar and Statusbar APIs are gone and direct manipulation APIs for the Desktop.

I mean, I can keep going.

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