5 ms·

Funny, I do all three of these on Linux.

• Havoc 9y ago
  No you don't. If I could Steam effectively on *nix I'd have dropped windows years ago.
  • fyi1183 9y ago
    Not sure what "you" you're talking about. I'm telling you the truth about my Steam use, so your comment feels pretty weird. It's true though that the availability of games is much less on Linux.
    • Havoc 9y ago
      >"I do all three of these on Linux" Well yes you can launch Steam on Linux and yes perhaps play a small selection of games. My "No you don't" comment was aimed at highlighting the vast majority of Steam usage cases is still Windows only. In the classic consumer sense it's still essentially unusable on linux: If >10% of my steam library works on Linux I'd be surprised.
      • PascLeRasc 9y ago
        When's the last time you've tried? I think you'd be pleasantly surprised, especially if you like to play any Valve games or smaller indie games.
        • Havoc 9y ago
          You're right - almost a third. Better than the 10% I floated. I'm suitably impressed. Unfortunately that does little to help the cause though - 33% is enough to get me to say "not bad", but when you pitch the average consumer with a "you can totally use 33% of this cars features" well realistically that salesperson is getting laughed at.
          • gonvaled 9y ago
            > you can totally use 33% of this cars features Bad analogy. A better one: out of all these cars, you can pick 33% of them. The games you can use are functional.
            • Havoc 9y ago
              Not really - worse. The bulk of gamers already have Steam profiles with games. And since the majority of those will be Windows users they wouldn't have selected only linux compatible ones. i.e. They're in the same position as me - switching to linux would kill the majority of their games (2/3rds in my case) AND limit any future selections. It's a complete non-starter.
            • PascLeRasc 9y ago
              You can pick 33% of these games - oh, and here's $75 that you would have spent on Windows.
      • flukus 9y ago
        Your mileage may differ but ~50% of my library is playable on linux, purchased over many years with no thought towards linux compatibility. 99% of the time I spent playing could be done on linux, so I switched over my main gaming PC. The downside was losing access to a lot of games I don't play anyway, which is ok.
        • Havoc 9y ago
          Just checked - officially just under a third of my library has *nix compatibility. Impressive compared to my 10% estimate, broken compared to the 100% windows working. I'm hoping things have changed, but based on my last linux gaming adventure I'm very wary - seemed like a complete crapshoot as to whether your distro's audio and gfx setup aligns with the game and even then the FPS rate is a complete luck of the draw. And god help you if you're not on a standard ubuntu gnome setup...
          • acct1771 9y ago
            The OS isn't broken, the software you're deciding to buy is. Take it up with the developer who decided to not write cross platform, it's %currentyear%.
            • Havoc 9y ago
              That's a fine attitude to have in the FOSS world and arguably correct from a philosophical point of view. Practically it's a complete non-starter though. The reality is the majority of my games don't work on Linux and frankly I have better things to do than mail campaigns about cross platform. So gamers will stay with windows via pure inertia & it'll continue to be a self-reinforcing cycle.
              • acct1771 9y ago
                That is not the direction the trends indicate. Steam's Linux library and client usage continues to grow, and Vulkan (Vulcan?) speaks for itself.
      • jasonkostempski 9y ago
        If you don't like Windows, why do you keep supporting games that require you to have it?