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A company that is wholly reliant on Linux to sell quite a few of their products? Gaming enthusiasts aren't running Linux. The HPC/GPU compute market don't care

A company that is wholly reliant on Linux to sell quite a few of their products? Gaming enthusiasts aren't running Linux. The HPC/GPU compute market don't care about Wayland. Android devices aren't using Wayland. What part of their target market runs Linux? What portion of the desktop market runs Linux? If it wasn't for Linux, I'd be in a very different profession, so I'm a huge fan. But I don't understand where you guys that act like the Linux desktop is a big enough market that this will make a material affect on nvidia's bottom line is so weird to me.

shmerl 9y ago
> Gaming enthusiasts aren't running Linux. More and more do today.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  In total number yes, but in percentage of the total market, there's hardly any change, Windows and Mac gamers are also growing segments too. And the GP comment was right anyway, 90% of the Market is for sure not running Linux for gaming on PC. 1~2% is nice but it's hardly enough to convince large publishers to support Linux.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    That's about hardware makers, not about publishers.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      Hardware makers also care about what gamers use to game. 90%+ gamers on PC use Windows. That's it.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        Hardware makers unlike publishers compete more directly. So everything counts.
        coldtea 9y ago
        Like publishers, hardware makers understand Opportunity Cost, and know where they should concentrate their efforts for maximum payback.
        shmerl 9y ago
        That's why AMD actually have a team of developers who are working on FOSS drivers. And Intel as well for the reference.
        coldtea 9y ago
        No, because they still make money off the Linux enterprise/HPC/etc. If you noticed, the main article speaks about how those "teams of developers" DON'T plan to support XWayland.
        shmerl 9y ago
        They don't need Mesa for that, their "worsktation" customers are using their closed driver. But if you missed it, unlike Nvidia, AMD have a team which contributes to Mesa directly.
      - karrotwaltz 9y ago
        To give some numbers, Steam has 96% Windows users. Source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  Looking at the most recent Steam Hardware & Software Survey, Linux share is at 0.72% and shrinking (a year ago it was 0.81% two years ago it was 0.89%).
  - shmerl 9y ago
    I already pointed out multiple times, that Steam survey is useless for evaluating Linux gaming market. Why would Steam even need a survey? They have full stats available, but they aren't public. And what's important is sales potential, which you can evaluate by sales percentages per OS for cross platform games. Steam doesn't publish such numbers. Humble Bundle does though.
    - maratc 9y ago
      When you purchase from Humble Bundle, they don't know what platform you would use to play. All they know is what platform you're buying from. People who use their Android phones to purchase and pay Humble Bundle, get classified under "Linux". You can see big Linux platform numbers even for bundles that don't have a single Linux game.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        But they give you an option to indicate it. Which isn't any worse than a survey, but focuses on actual sales in contrast to what Steam publishes.
        Armisael16 9y ago
        Steam's survey reads the platform - the user has almost no role in actually filling it out beyond saying 'yes, you can collect this data'. This makes it significantly better than requiring each and every user to act to specify their platform.
        shmerl 9y ago
        Steam survey isn't comprehensive. HB sales are counted for all users. So I'd say the later is actually useful, the former is just some oddity.
- tsomctl 9y ago
  I've been hearing this for over 10 years.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    No need to hear it. You can observe the growth.
  - flukus 9y ago
    So have I, but it's actually gotten there for me, my main/gaming PC has been linux for 6 months now and I've been pretty happy. Most of my gaming is strategy games from paradox, and they've all supported linux for a while now. Apart from that there are more linux games than I have time to play, the only change is that I no longer buy a bunch of games during a sale that I will never play.
- amagumori 9y ago
  if games ran on linux, i wouldn't use windows for anything. i love everything else about linux for the most part. it's a chicken and egg problem. if (AAA) games were actually released for linux, linux market share among gamers would grow hugely. i don't use linux for games because no games i want to play run on linux.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    > if games ran on linux, i wouldn't use windows for anything. I don't. I run all my games on Linux. Unlike you, I simply don't play games that don't work on Linux ;) I.e. either natively or in Wine.
    - aerique 9y ago
      It's a chicken and egg problem. I want to play some AAA games as they are released and not have issues with Wine, which is why I'm still on partly Windows at home. It's mainly Blizzard and Bethesda for me but EA still neglects Linux as well. You can't deny that if the big AAA players supported Linux it would bring a (large?) influx of gamers. If they'd all just target the latest Ubuntu LTS or whatever SteamOS run on, the community would make it run on their own distros.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        Legacy publishers aren't innovators. They are too lazy to think out of the box. For me it's forget Bethesda and Blizzard. There are more than enough developers who are worth supporting on Linux, and who are making good games. But if you are really so desperate to spend money on those who ignore us, Wine is improving all the time, and now already approaches decent DX11 support, so even games like Overwatch are now playable in it.
- nextlevelwizard 9y ago
  Not to pile on, but every few years I decide to see if Linux is ready for gaming. I use it every day to get my work done, so why not double dip and not have to deal with Windows? However it's never been good enough. At first there just were no drivers, so I couldn't get acceptable performance from any game. Then came drivers, but I had to fight for days to get them to work on handful of games and even then performance was sub par compared to Windows. Last time drivers installed without any problems, but still from the games I tend to play only couple had native Linux support (in this case, they could be downloaded straight from Steam), but still most required Wine and that sucked the performance right out. Then there were bunch of games that didn't even work with Wine. I'm first to admit that I do not have high end gaming PC, but 16GB of middle of the road RAM, i5 2500K, and nVidia GTX 970 serve me well on Windows side. Frankly, I see no reason to spend more money to get the same performance on Linux. If you can get acceptable performance from your Linux PC while gaming then more power to you, but from my point of view we are still long way and I mean really long way from gaming being "viable" on Linux.
  - vacri 9y ago
    Steam has plenty of games for linux... but few of them are the kind of AAA titles that benefit from chunky GPUs. I use steam both on windows and linux, so see the store listing for each; linux 'is there' for gaming, but just doesn't have the offerings to drive desktop GPU demand.
    - Freak_NL 9y ago
      Most of the games I play on Linux very much benefit from a beefy GPU. I'm currently playing Hitman (2016), which may not be the most graphically intense game ever, but it certainly looks great with the right hardware. I could run it on my laptop with on-board Intel GPU, but it would look like crap and lag. We do get our share of AAA titles, just not as many as on Windows. As it is, there are more appealing titles than I can ever play without cutting into work, chores, or (non-gaming) leisure time. Most indie games benefit as well though; even though these do tend to work on less well-endowed GPU's, they simply look better with a heftier graphics card. I've got a desktop computer with beefy GPU exactly because I enjoy gaming; and it runs Linux, exclusively.
- coldtea 9y ago
  Still very few. And the "this year is the year of the Linux desktop" (or gaming desktop) line has been going on since 1998. I was there, got the t-shirt.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Define very. More game studios release games for Linux today, than several years ago. So not very few for them anymore. There is no "this year". There is clear growth. It's a process, and it's going in the right direction.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mtarnovan 9y ago
  0.72% Steam users are on Linux. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- PopsiclePete 9y ago
  There's literally dozens of us. Nvidia are surely shaking in their boots.
plafl 9y ago
But the majority of HPC/GPU users do run Linux desktops
- danieldk 9y ago
  Source? We have a multiple GPU compute nodes with Teslas for research. The vast majority of us uses Macs.
- coldtea 9y ago
  You'd be surprised. Try a HPC conference and check their laptops.
  - lottin 9y ago
    They do HPC on a laptop?
    - kelnage 9y ago
      Obviously not. But neither would most want to do HPC on a computer they are also running a graphical desktop on either. In my experience, most serious academic computation happens on headless servers that are certainly not running Weyland or anything similar.
    - coldtea 9y ago
      The argument I responded to was that "most HPC researchers/devs" use Linux on their laptops. Not that they do HPC on their Laptop.
jeena 9y ago
I'm in the automobile industry and most of the In Vehicle Infotainment systems started using Linux some time ago, and for security reasons you want to use Wayland. Those quite big numbers, not as big as mobile but sure bigger than Desktop Linux.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  I would imagine they would rather use some kind of framebuffer like the old SVGAlib, or EGL directly.
  - jeena 9y ago
    Not really because then you would need to implement composition from different processes yourself, instead many are using Qt Wayland https://wiki.qt.io/QtWayland https://wiki.qt.io/QtWayland to implement it. One of those implementations is https://doc.qt.io/QtApplicationManager/ https://doc.qt.io/QtApplicationManager/ which uses wayland to compose the UI from 3rd party applications, which run in a sandbox, inside of the System UI.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I see, on my naivety regarding your domain, I thought there would be just some kind of UI process/thread doing all the GUI stuff on the Infotainment UI. Since I am only familiar with BMW attempts at JavaFX (described at JavaONE) and from what I am aware most embedded GUIs aren't X compatible, although there used to exist TinyX. So is Qt kind of winning all the new GUI projects in that domain?
      - jeena 9y ago
        It's a bit weird, many try HTML5, some try Android, many do Qt but some run something with help of Weston. It's difficult to say for me who is winning because I'm not involved in enough different projects I feel.
- eptcyka 9y ago
  Yes, but the automotive industry is under no pressure to run legacy Xorg apps on their Wayland compositors, thus there is no need to support XWayland.
AsyncAwait 9y ago
The point was more about that they are directly profiting from Linux in various forms, yet refuse to be part of the community and provide proper support for their hardware, unlike say Intel.
ravenstine 9y ago
The pipelines of many animation and entertainment studios use Linux. If Nvidia just wants to sell to gamers, that's fine, but it seems like the work to have Linux drivers would be worth it just to keep selling hardware to studios.
- Shish2k 9y ago
  > The pipelines of many animation and entertainment studios use Linux. But do they use XWayland? Seems nvidia is still supporting X, Wayland, and Headless Compute modes of operation...

shmerl 9y ago

> Gaming enthusiasts aren't running Linux. More and more do today.

ekianjo 9y ago
In total number yes, but in percentage of the total market, there's hardly any change, Windows and Mac gamers are also growing segments too. And the GP comment was right anyway, 90% of the Market is for sure not running Linux for gaming on PC. 1~2% is nice but it's hardly enough to convince large publishers to support Linux.
- shmerl 9y ago
  That's about hardware makers, not about publishers.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    Hardware makers also care about what gamers use to game. 90%+ gamers on PC use Windows. That's it.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Hardware makers unlike publishers compete more directly. So everything counts.
      - coldtea 9y ago
        Like publishers, hardware makers understand Opportunity Cost, and know where they should concentrate their efforts for maximum payback.
        shmerl 9y ago
        That's why AMD actually have a team of developers who are working on FOSS drivers. And Intel as well for the reference.
        coldtea 9y ago
        No, because they still make money off the Linux enterprise/HPC/etc. If you noticed, the main article speaks about how those "teams of developers" DON'T plan to support XWayland.
        shmerl 9y ago
        They don't need Mesa for that, their "worsktation" customers are using their closed driver. But if you missed it, unlike Nvidia, AMD have a team which contributes to Mesa directly.
    - karrotwaltz 9y ago
      To give some numbers, Steam has 96% Windows users. Source: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
WillPostForFood 9y ago
Looking at the most recent Steam Hardware & Software Survey, Linux share is at 0.72% and shrinking (a year ago it was 0.81% two years ago it was 0.89%).
- shmerl 9y ago
  I already pointed out multiple times, that Steam survey is useless for evaluating Linux gaming market. Why would Steam even need a survey? They have full stats available, but they aren't public. And what's important is sales potential, which you can evaluate by sales percentages per OS for cross platform games. Steam doesn't publish such numbers. Humble Bundle does though.
  - maratc 9y ago
    When you purchase from Humble Bundle, they don't know what platform you would use to play. All they know is what platform you're buying from. People who use their Android phones to purchase and pay Humble Bundle, get classified under "Linux". You can see big Linux platform numbers even for bundles that don't have a single Linux game.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      But they give you an option to indicate it. Which isn't any worse than a survey, but focuses on actual sales in contrast to what Steam publishes.
      - Armisael16 9y ago
        Steam's survey reads the platform - the user has almost no role in actually filling it out beyond saying 'yes, you can collect this data'. This makes it significantly better than requiring each and every user to act to specify their platform.
        shmerl 9y ago
        Steam survey isn't comprehensive. HB sales are counted for all users. So I'd say the later is actually useful, the former is just some oddity.
tsomctl 9y ago
I've been hearing this for over 10 years.
- shmerl 9y ago
  No need to hear it. You can observe the growth.
- flukus 9y ago
  So have I, but it's actually gotten there for me, my main/gaming PC has been linux for 6 months now and I've been pretty happy. Most of my gaming is strategy games from paradox, and they've all supported linux for a while now. Apart from that there are more linux games than I have time to play, the only change is that I no longer buy a bunch of games during a sale that I will never play.
amagumori 9y ago
if games ran on linux, i wouldn't use windows for anything. i love everything else about linux for the most part. it's a chicken and egg problem. if (AAA) games were actually released for linux, linux market share among gamers would grow hugely. i don't use linux for games because no games i want to play run on linux.
- shmerl 9y ago
  > if games ran on linux, i wouldn't use windows for anything. I don't. I run all my games on Linux. Unlike you, I simply don't play games that don't work on Linux ;) I.e. either natively or in Wine.
  - aerique 9y ago
    It's a chicken and egg problem. I want to play some AAA games as they are released and not have issues with Wine, which is why I'm still on partly Windows at home. It's mainly Blizzard and Bethesda for me but EA still neglects Linux as well. You can't deny that if the big AAA players supported Linux it would bring a (large?) influx of gamers. If they'd all just target the latest Ubuntu LTS or whatever SteamOS run on, the community would make it run on their own distros.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Legacy publishers aren't innovators. They are too lazy to think out of the box. For me it's forget Bethesda and Blizzard. There are more than enough developers who are worth supporting on Linux, and who are making good games. But if you are really so desperate to spend money on those who ignore us, Wine is improving all the time, and now already approaches decent DX11 support, so even games like Overwatch are now playable in it.
nextlevelwizard 9y ago
Not to pile on, but every few years I decide to see if Linux is ready for gaming. I use it every day to get my work done, so why not double dip and not have to deal with Windows? However it's never been good enough. At first there just were no drivers, so I couldn't get acceptable performance from any game. Then came drivers, but I had to fight for days to get them to work on handful of games and even then performance was sub par compared to Windows. Last time drivers installed without any problems, but still from the games I tend to play only couple had native Linux support (in this case, they could be downloaded straight from Steam), but still most required Wine and that sucked the performance right out. Then there were bunch of games that didn't even work with Wine. I'm first to admit that I do not have high end gaming PC, but 16GB of middle of the road RAM, i5 2500K, and nVidia GTX 970 serve me well on Windows side. Frankly, I see no reason to spend more money to get the same performance on Linux. If you can get acceptable performance from your Linux PC while gaming then more power to you, but from my point of view we are still long way and I mean really long way from gaming being "viable" on Linux.
- vacri 9y ago
  Steam has plenty of games for linux... but few of them are the kind of AAA titles that benefit from chunky GPUs. I use steam both on windows and linux, so see the store listing for each; linux 'is there' for gaming, but just doesn't have the offerings to drive desktop GPU demand.
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Most of the games I play on Linux very much benefit from a beefy GPU. I'm currently playing Hitman (2016), which may not be the most graphically intense game ever, but it certainly looks great with the right hardware. I could run it on my laptop with on-board Intel GPU, but it would look like crap and lag. We do get our share of AAA titles, just not as many as on Windows. As it is, there are more appealing titles than I can ever play without cutting into work, chores, or (non-gaming) leisure time. Most indie games benefit as well though; even though these do tend to work on less well-endowed GPU's, they simply look better with a heftier graphics card. I've got a desktop computer with beefy GPU exactly because I enjoy gaming; and it runs Linux, exclusively.
coldtea 9y ago
Still very few. And the "this year is the year of the Linux desktop" (or gaming desktop) line has been going on since 1998. I was there, got the t-shirt.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Define very. More game studios release games for Linux today, than several years ago. So not very few for them anymore. There is no "this year". There is clear growth. It's a process, and it's going in the right direction.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mtarnovan 9y ago
0.72% Steam users are on Linux. http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
PopsiclePete 9y ago
There's literally dozens of us. Nvidia are surely shaking in their boots.

plafl 9y ago

But the majority of HPC/GPU users do run Linux desktops

danieldk 9y ago
Source? We have a multiple GPU compute nodes with Teslas for research. The vast majority of us uses Macs.
coldtea 9y ago
You'd be surprised. Try a HPC conference and check their laptops.
- lottin 9y ago
  They do HPC on a laptop?
  - kelnage 9y ago
    Obviously not. But neither would most want to do HPC on a computer they are also running a graphical desktop on either. In my experience, most serious academic computation happens on headless servers that are certainly not running Weyland or anything similar.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    The argument I responded to was that "most HPC researchers/devs" use Linux on their laptops. Not that they do HPC on their Laptop.

jeena 9y ago

I'm in the automobile industry and most of the In Vehicle Infotainment systems started using Linux some time ago, and for security reasons you want to use Wayland. Those quite big numbers, not as big as mobile but sure bigger than Desktop Linux.

pjmlp 9y ago
I would imagine they would rather use some kind of framebuffer like the old SVGAlib, or EGL directly.
- jeena 9y ago
  Not really because then you would need to implement composition from different processes yourself, instead many are using Qt Wayland https://wiki.qt.io/QtWayland https://wiki.qt.io/QtWayland to implement it. One of those implementations is https://doc.qt.io/QtApplicationManager/ https://doc.qt.io/QtApplicationManager/ which uses wayland to compose the UI from 3rd party applications, which run in a sandbox, inside of the System UI.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    I see, on my naivety regarding your domain, I thought there would be just some kind of UI process/thread doing all the GUI stuff on the Infotainment UI. Since I am only familiar with BMW attempts at JavaFX (described at JavaONE) and from what I am aware most embedded GUIs aren't X compatible, although there used to exist TinyX. So is Qt kind of winning all the new GUI projects in that domain?
    - jeena 9y ago
      It's a bit weird, many try HTML5, some try Android, many do Qt but some run something with help of Weston. It's difficult to say for me who is winning because I'm not involved in enough different projects I feel.
eptcyka 9y ago
Yes, but the automotive industry is under no pressure to run legacy Xorg apps on their Wayland compositors, thus there is no need to support XWayland.

AsyncAwait 9y ago

The point was more about that they are directly profiting from Linux in various forms, yet refuse to be part of the community and provide proper support for their hardware, unlike say Intel.

ravenstine 9y ago

The pipelines of many animation and entertainment studios use Linux. If Nvidia just wants to sell to gamers, that's fine, but it seems like the work to have Linux drivers would be worth it just to keep selling hardware to studios.

Shish2k 9y ago
> The pipelines of many animation and entertainment studios use Linux. But do they use XWayland? Seems nvidia is still supporting X, Wayland, and Headless Compute modes of operation...