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Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

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Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#61

Post by mcv »

em-bee wrote: post #54
mcv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that Valve is willing to pay them for it. It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. As someone who has just switched to Linux gaming, I've got to say it's working great. Maybe it's slightly less stable, but not by much, and performance is excellent.

It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary by now the linux ecosystem has received to much commercial investment to separate out what is community effort and what is not, but i believe that most of the polish that went into linux desktop applications and interfaces have some commercial investment in them. the problem is that for most volunteers 90% of usability is good enough. if…

That's absolutely true. Valve has added significant value and I love them for it. And the community is still doing great work tuning configurations for each game.

One particularly great thing about Valve's support is that it benefits all games, and not just those on Steam. It's absolutely a great example of how open source helps everybody.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#62

Post by bikelang »

phowat wrote: post #52
kibwen wrote: post #30

Windows is enshittifying so rapidly that I firmly believe that, if Valve really wanted to, they could eat Microsoft's lunch when it comes to the non-enterprise desktop market, which is almost exclusively gamers these days. Fortunately for Microsoft, Valve seems content to officially position and market SteamOS as just for its handheld, even though it's entirely possible to run it on other hardware.

I don't know. Developing on Windows 11 + wsl has been a suprisingly good dx for me. Much better than my previous MacOS experience. I understand developers who stay in the Apple ecosystem due to the unbeatable laptop hardware in the macbooks, but software wise most of them would be surprised with the current state on the windows side.

WSL2 isn’t bad and is getting better but it basically falls apart when you need to run k8s workloads on it. I wish MacOS had native container support - but even without it I’ve not had any issues running a local dev cluster like I did with WSL

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#63

Post by robertlagrant »

mcv wrote: post #56
robertlagrant wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what that means. It would be better if everything were free?

Well, yes. But what I mean is that it would have been nice if hobbyists were able to accomplish this without needing the help from a commercial entity. I'm a bit at a loss why some people here prefer commercialised open source over community-driven open source. I mean, I'll take it, and Valve did an amazing job, but there have been plenty of attempts to make this work before Valve stepped in, and it just didn't work…

This sounds the same as you wanting other people to do things for free. I don't know about nice, but I certainly wouldn't lament people being paid to do something.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#64

Post by jamesgeck0 »

colordrops wrote: post #45
arp242 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wine has worked surprisingly well for a long time, well before Valve got involved, although compatibility was never perfect of course (and still isn't!) I don't think they had to "fix 1000s of tiny little bugs that break games". Codeweavers has been selling commercial Wine-based solutions for a long time. It's easy to offer a better experience if you also own the actual storefront; that was kind of my point. And as I…

Codeweavers selling a commercial product is a major sign that the "community edition" of wine is not up to snuff.

Have you actually used the commercial version? It's relatively stable and QAed and you can get support from the Wine developers, but it lags the open source version by months. You're not getting the latest compatibility fixes or performance improvements with it.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#65

Post by mcv »

robertlagrant wrote: post #63
mcv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. But what I mean is that it would have been nice if hobbyists were able to accomplish this without needing the help from a commercial entity. I'm a bit at a loss why some people here prefer commercialised open source over community-driven open source. I mean, I'll take it, and Valve did an amazing job, but there have been plenty of attempts to make this work before Valve stepped in, and it just didn't work…

This sounds the same as you wanting other people to do things for free. I don't know about nice, but I certainly wouldn't lament people being paid to do something.

You're missing my point. The issue isn't money, it's dependency.

Using Steam and the whole Valve-supported infrastructure still doesn't cost me anything. But what if Valve decides the Steam Deck isn't commercially viable for them?

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#66

Post by gpderetta »

arp242 wrote: post #34
em-bee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i didn't check but i believe the major part of the extra mile is fixing 1000s of tiny little bugs that break games. it should be possible to verify that by looking at the wine changelog. the rest is creating a smooth experience downloading and running games. smoother than any alternative (like playonlinux or lutris)

Wine has worked surprisingly well for a long time, well before Valve got involved, although compatibility was never perfect of course (and still isn't!) I don't think they had to "fix 1000s of tiny little bugs that break games". Codeweavers has been selling commercial Wine-based solutions for a long time. It's easy to offer a better experience if you also own the actual storefront; that was kind of my point. And as I…

The issue were specifically games. Before proton, Wine DX9 compatibility was workable at best, DX10&11 was terrible and DX12 hadn't even started.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#67

Post by jamesgeck0 »

em-bee wrote: post #41
a1o wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CodeWeaver is the major force behind wine, wine devs that aren't volunteers are employees of CodeWeaver, aren't they?

most likely, although by now they also may be employees of valve. but valve is also working with codeweaver. btw: i consider codeweaver somewhat the unsung hero of the linux desktop. there is no other company in this world that stakes their success entirely on the success of the linux desktop, or maybe on the demise on the windows desktop, because wine is the only software tool that will never ever be useful running…

> wine is the only software tool that will never ever be useful running on windows

Intel was actually including Wine code in their Arc graphics drivers to translate DirectX 9 calls to Vulkan, because they didn't have performant native DirectX 9 drivers. It's a pretty common trick for Arc users to drop the latest DXVK DLL into the directory of a game that is having issues with the graphics card.

Using Wine DLLs is also a good way to resurrect games built on the obsolete DirectDraw API on modern versions of Windows.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#68

Post by robertlagrant »

mcv wrote: post #65
robertlagrant wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds the same as you wanting other people to do things for free. I don't know about nice, but I certainly wouldn't lament people being paid to do something.

You're missing my point. The issue isn't money, it's dependency. Using Steam and the whole Valve-supported infrastructure still doesn't cost me anything. But what if Valve decides the Steam Deck isn't commercially viable for them?

Then we'll be a lot further ahead than if Valve had never paid for this work to be done. I don't know what better alternative you're after. Isn't this open source work? There's no ongoing dependency. If Valve shut up shop tomorrow we're in a better state than if they'd never funded development, aren't we?

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#69

Post by tru1ock »

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #42
tru1ock wrote: post #13

I bought a modest gaming rig in 2016 and used systemd/loginctl to convert it into a multiseat setup. One seat for myself and one for the rest of the family. The amount of value I got so far from this setup is unbelievable. Part of that is proton taking off and giving me and my kids access to most games on steam. Very grateful to all involved that made it possible. Still running ubuntu that have just been upgraded ove…

Would you recommend any particular guide for setting up multiseat?

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/

I did not follow a specific guide but the setup is relatively simple. The commands I list below is all you need to set it up.

To view existing seats:

  ~ loginctl list-seats
To show assigned hardware for a specific seat:

  ~ loginctl seat-status seat0
Initially there will one seat. To create a new seat just attach some hardware to it.

Lets reassign a usb port to a new seat:

  ~ sudo loginctl attach seat-1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:05:00.0/usb3
Lets reassign a sound card to seat 1 instead:

  ~ sudo loginctl attach seat-1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:02:00.1/sound/card2
You will typically do this for a screen card, sound card and some USB ports and then you will have another seat available.

If you want to reset run:

  ~ sudo loginctl flush-devices
Some gotchas:

Seats and users are two different concepts. You can log in on any seat with any user but then you should not log into the other seats with the same user. That generally causes issues for me but is fixed with a reboot.

Use GPU's that run on the same driver.

Re: Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

#70

Post by mcv »

robertlagrant wrote: post #68
mcv wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing my point. The issue isn't money, it's dependency. Using Steam and the whole Valve-supported infrastructure still doesn't cost me anything. But what if Valve decides the Steam Deck isn't commercially viable for them?

Then we'll be a lot further ahead than if Valve had never paid for this work to be done. I don't know what better alternative you're after. Isn't this open source work? There's no ongoing dependency. If Valve shut up shop tomorrow we're in a better state than if they'd never funded development, aren't we?

Absolutely. That's why I'm glad Valve did this, and also why I wish it wasn't necessary.
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