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I've fascinated with what Steam is doing for gaming on Linux. We'd been moving at a slow pace for years, and suddenly, we're jumping in strides. I'm likewise f

I've fascinated with what Steam is doing for gaming on Linux. We'd been moving at a slow pace for years, and suddenly, we're jumping in strides. I'm likewise fascinated about how terrible Steam's CLIENT works on Linux. Like, no hidpi support, (it's just blurry), notifications don't work, and lots of other stuff is broken. Sometimes closing a popup closes the main window, but only for _some_ kinds of popups. It also only works via X11 / XWayland. Fortunately, they keep getting all the really hard stuff done.

tempest_ 6y ago
Honestly I can tolerate those things if it means I can game on Linux and have no need to keep a copy of Windows installed. It's been 5 years or so since I moved all my computers over to Linux (was not a cortana fan) and proton definitely made the transition easier.
- WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  Yeah, true. As much as I complain, I still use Steam. It never occurred to me to boot into windows for gaming though -- once I moved I quickly wiped windows and never looked back (like ten years ago now).
larzang 6y ago
It also still requires 32-bit drivers, which were initially missing from the last nvidia update, forcing a rollback. I'm incredibly grateful for the work they've done on Proton, but it's definitely odd they don't seem to have anyone prioritizing updating the Steam platform itself.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  A lot of old games are 32 bit only and won't be ported to bit.
rasz 6y ago
Is it perhaps because Steam Client is being "worked on" by Valve employees (do whatever you want, no bosses, but if you work on something we wont like you will be fired immediately, ask Jeri Ellsworth) while DirecX compatibility is all volunteers with maybe some funding? I googled Hans-Kristian Arntzen (VKD3D-Proton maintainer?) and he doesnt appear to be employed by Valve.
- Jasper_ 6y ago
  Correct. SteamOS is a passion project by Gabe because of a grudge with Microsoft, and it's basically all contractors. Nobody at Valve internal gives a shit, in fact they're more worried about Epic Games than MS.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    It could also be because it makes economic sense for Valve to make their software portable. Being tied to Direct3D, which only runs on Windows, is not in any way futureproof. I'm not following Valve closely, but they used to be working on the Steam Machine, and they have VR aspirations. I don't think they'd want to have to buy Windows licenses for their custom gaming hardware. I'm not sure how active those projects are right now, but regardless, if your game engines are tied to Windows, it locks down your future options, Microsoft has you by the balls. To maximize profits and future opportunities, you'd want to be able to write once and port easily to Mac, Linux, cellphones, consoles, VR headsets, etc.
  - asddubs 6y ago
    contractors who are already experienced/motivated to work on linux probably make more sense for that kind of thing anyway
  - Qwertious 6y ago
    More likely, it was an attempt for Steam to compete with consoles - Steam can run on HTPCs with Big Picture, but consoles are (or at least were) all about the OOTB experience. It makes a lot of sense to simply ship a pre-configured OS when pushing HTPCs. You could say that making it Linux-based shows that SteamOS is all about Windows, but if anything that logic suggests it's all about the Xbox. If it were competing with Windows it'd be a KB+M-based distro. If you say "but they didn't need a separate Linux distro, they were already focusing on Ubuntu", that just proves that SteamOS wasn't about Windows.
Kaze404 6y ago
I hate to be that person but I've had no issues with the Steam client on Linux, and I've used it full time for years. Including more "advanced" features like in home streaming.
- whatshisface 6y ago
  The nature of Linux platform problems is that they crop up for specific combinations of hardware and software. The biggest thing that Microsoft has over the open source community is the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility. That, and the platform clout to get vendors to make their stuff work.
  - Const-me 6y ago
    > the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility For hardware support, the biggest thing is stable kernel ABI for drivers. > the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility Windows doesn't have combinatoric jungle. With their amount of supported hardware, combinatoric jungle would be prohibitively expensive even for Microsoft. Instead, Windows has well-specified ABIs the drivers must conform to. And a set of development tools to verify that's the case, both static like code analysis, and runtime like driver verifier.
    - foepys 6y ago
      Plus reasonably good documentation.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    I'm not sure that applies here. Steam specifically ships it's own version of libraries for compatibility between different distributions.
    - 867-5309 6y ago
      of course it applies, they have less resources to support more systems than Microsoft do to support one system, this will be reflected in compatibility
oseityphelysiol 6y ago
That's because they're working on Linux support, they don't care about Linux desktop. Steam os is based on Linux, but it would be naive to think they put much work in supporting Linux desktop, since the market share is neglibe.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  What's interesting is that games are one of the main reasons the market share is negligible. It used to be games and Office, but home users can increasingly get by with the web version or Google Docs or LibreOffice. But people still keep Windows on their PCs for games. If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows?
  - airstrike 6y ago
    Google Docs is no replacement for actual serious work in Office. That's like asking someone who uses NetBeans to switch over to repl.it
    - dkersten 6y ago
      Sure, but a lot of companies have switched. My previous job was a banking company with thousands of employees and they were using Google's suite for everything. So while Office is still ahead for serious work, there are more and more large companies out there who have migrated away.
    - WhyNotHugo 6y ago
      This "actual serious work" you mention is not what most people use Office for anyway. Most people write simple letters, and do very basic spreadsheets. This is probably one of those "80% of the people use 20% of the features" scenario.
      - Qwertious 6y ago
        'This "actual serious work" you mention is not what most people use Office for anyway. Most people write simple letters, and do very basic spreadsheets.' Most "actual serious work" involves receiving and modifying other peoples' drafts. As such, if anyone uses an advanced feature, everyone uses the advanced feature.
phone8675309 6y ago
Working in strides because they don't want to get shut out of the Windows market. Having a credible alternative stay's Microsoft's hand about going Apple and requiring apps only come from the store except for Enterprise editions.
- giobox 6y ago
  Not trying to play devils advocate here, but who genuinely believes a Linux Steam client is a "credible alternative" to Steam on Windows? It's an alternative, I agree, but I can't imagine a world in which it makes a dent on their Windows revenues any time soon. If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get hundreds of millions of users to install Linux.
  - sli 6y ago
    It's usually better to have established alternatives before they're needed than to try and establish one after significant hurdles have been put in place. I'd say Steam on Linux is plenty credible without currently being a threat to Microsoft.
  - rasz 6y ago
    Its an alternative in a same way Tizen is Samsungs alternative to Android, or Munich Linux deployment. Its there to get favorable treatment, nothing more.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    It's interesting you say that, because my response to Epic when they sued Apple was that their time would be better spent contributing to an open platform for phones.
    - giobox 6y ago
      It's beyond scope of a hacker news comment for me, but Epic case against Apple/Google store distribution terms is sufficiently different IMO. How exactly would Epic ship this open platform when Google and Apple expressly control what apps run and do not? From where I stand, without intervention their only option is inferior browser based streaming solutions like this: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551152/fortnite-nvidia-geforce-now-game-streaming-to-iphone-ipad https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551152/fortnite-nvidia-... Courts are worth a gamble, worst case scenario Epic is back where it began (minus the legal fees of course), paying Apple/Google 30 percent and still selling plenty of software on the app stores. The Epic case also works to serve Epic's wider public agenda against app stores as litigation theatre too if nothing else.
dkersten 6y ago
The client works fine on XWayland, but the games do not, I need to switch to X11 for that. I really only use the client to launch the games though, so I haven't noticed any of the other issues. As far as the games go, I've been very impressed with how well Proton works so far! I was thinking about running Windows in a VM and doing GPU passthrough when I get a desktop next year, but with how well Proton has been working on my laptop (with only integrated gpu), I may not need to -- Proton may work perfectly well. In X11 (sadly, since I use Sway for my non-gaming use).
- ubercow13 6y ago
  Isn't Xwayland supposed to have proper support for GPU acceleration now? Does it just not work well? There's also this port [0] of wine to Wayland but it only supports simple fully GPU-drawn windows AFAIK (not desktop apps). So, sufficient for playing many games. I haven't tried it yet. [0] https://github.com/varmd/wine-wayland https://github.com/varmd/wine-wayland
  - dkersten 6y ago
    I'm not sure what the issue is tbh. The games launch, but in my testing, have all kinds of glitches or issues that go away when running on X11. For example, one game doesn't receive any input, another one has graphical artifacts but otherwise runs fine, another runs at a suuper low frame rate. All of these issues go away when running on X. For all I know its a driver issue or something else in my setup. But things are improving, so maybe in a few months (by the time I get a desktop with some luck) it will all be resolved. I may give wine-wayland a try too if it's not. Or its my setup and it may just work on new hardware. Either way, I'm quite impressed by Proton, but haven't been able to run it on Wayland properly yet.
- WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  > The client works fine on XWayland XWayland does not support scaling, so I don't see how it can "work fine".
  - dkersten 6y ago
hvis 6y ago
> no hidpi support It's been added quite late, and who knows why it's off by default, but there is a checkbox now in Settings -> Interface called "Enlarge text and icons based on monitor size". Works well here.
- wetpaws 6y ago
  Does not work for me neither on gnome not on kde and I have to explicitly add gtk_gdi_scalibg to run arguments. Also no fractional scaling, lol.
  - hvis 6y ago
    I'm using it with GNOME 3.36 (Ubuntu 20.04). With 200% scaling set in the Display settings GUI.
    - wetpaws 6y ago
      Yes, I understand, it might work for you. Not sure if you expect that sharing this would magically make it work for me, the fact is that my personal experience shows it does not work in two entirely different linux distributives.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - hvis 6y ago
        I'm saying it can and should work. And that it's possible for you to discover a configuration on your machine that would make it work. And if it's still a no go, you can file a bug report (which you wouldn't be able to do, as such, if there were no such feature at all).
- WhyNotHugo 6y ago
  That only works if you're running on HiDPI with no screen scaling -- which will just make everything else look tiny (though Steam would look fine).
kevingadd 6y ago
fwiw, Steam's HiDPI support was rubbish on Windows until relatively recently, so it's not weird that it's bad on Linux as well.
glaberficken 6y ago
Don't worry I'm still on Windows 7 and it is also a crashy mess for me.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
The main window is also very laggy and unresponsive. One day, I found myself on Windows again and opened Steam there, and I was surprised and a little delighted that Steam was just as laggy and unresponsive there too. c:
29athrowaway 6y ago
Steam, Lutris, PlayOnLinux have done a great job sanding the edgy surfaces of great projects like Wine, DXVK, etc. ProtonDB and WineHQ are good resources for users as well.

tempest_ 6y ago

Honestly I can tolerate those things if it means I can game on Linux and have no need to keep a copy of Windows installed. It's been 5 years or so since I moved all my computers over to Linux (was not a cortana fan) and proton definitely made the transition easier.

WhyNotHugo 6y ago
Yeah, true. As much as I complain, I still use Steam. It never occurred to me to boot into windows for gaming though -- once I moved I quickly wiped windows and never looked back (like ten years ago now).

larzang 6y ago

It also still requires 32-bit drivers, which were initially missing from the last nvidia update, forcing a rollback. I'm incredibly grateful for the work they've done on Proton, but it's definitely odd they don't seem to have anyone prioritizing updating the Steam platform itself.

pantalaimon 6y ago
A lot of old games are 32 bit only and won't be ported to bit.

rasz 6y ago

Is it perhaps because Steam Client is being "worked on" by Valve employees (do whatever you want, no bosses, but if you work on something we wont like you will be fired immediately, ask Jeri Ellsworth) while DirecX compatibility is all volunteers with maybe some funding? I googled Hans-Kristian Arntzen (VKD3D-Proton maintainer?) and he doesnt appear to be employed by Valve.

Jasper_ 6y ago
Correct. SteamOS is a passion project by Gabe because of a grudge with Microsoft, and it's basically all contractors. Nobody at Valve internal gives a shit, in fact they're more worried about Epic Games than MS.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  It could also be because it makes economic sense for Valve to make their software portable. Being tied to Direct3D, which only runs on Windows, is not in any way futureproof. I'm not following Valve closely, but they used to be working on the Steam Machine, and they have VR aspirations. I don't think they'd want to have to buy Windows licenses for their custom gaming hardware. I'm not sure how active those projects are right now, but regardless, if your game engines are tied to Windows, it locks down your future options, Microsoft has you by the balls. To maximize profits and future opportunities, you'd want to be able to write once and port easily to Mac, Linux, cellphones, consoles, VR headsets, etc.
- asddubs 6y ago
  contractors who are already experienced/motivated to work on linux probably make more sense for that kind of thing anyway
- Qwertious 6y ago
  More likely, it was an attempt for Steam to compete with consoles - Steam can run on HTPCs with Big Picture, but consoles are (or at least were) all about the OOTB experience. It makes a lot of sense to simply ship a pre-configured OS when pushing HTPCs. You could say that making it Linux-based shows that SteamOS is all about Windows, but if anything that logic suggests it's all about the Xbox. If it were competing with Windows it'd be a KB+M-based distro. If you say "but they didn't need a separate Linux distro, they were already focusing on Ubuntu", that just proves that SteamOS wasn't about Windows.

Kaze404 6y ago

I hate to be that person but I've had no issues with the Steam client on Linux, and I've used it full time for years. Including more "advanced" features like in home streaming.

whatshisface 6y ago
The nature of Linux platform problems is that they crop up for specific combinations of hardware and software. The biggest thing that Microsoft has over the open source community is the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility. That, and the platform clout to get vendors to make their stuff work.
- Const-me 6y ago
  > the money to pay developers to bulldoze the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility For hardware support, the biggest thing is stable kernel ABI for drivers. > the combinatoric jungle that is compatibility Windows doesn't have combinatoric jungle. With their amount of supported hardware, combinatoric jungle would be prohibitively expensive even for Microsoft. Instead, Windows has well-specified ABIs the drivers must conform to. And a set of development tools to verify that's the case, both static like code analysis, and runtime like driver verifier.
  - foepys 6y ago
    Plus reasonably good documentation.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  I'm not sure that applies here. Steam specifically ships it's own version of libraries for compatibility between different distributions.
  - 867-5309 6y ago
    of course it applies, they have less resources to support more systems than Microsoft do to support one system, this will be reflected in compatibility

oseityphelysiol 6y ago

That's because they're working on Linux support, they don't care about Linux desktop. Steam os is based on Linux, but it would be naive to think they put much work in supporting Linux desktop, since the market share is neglibe.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
What's interesting is that games are one of the main reasons the market share is negligible. It used to be games and Office, but home users can increasingly get by with the web version or Google Docs or LibreOffice. But people still keep Windows on their PCs for games. If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows?
- airstrike 6y ago
  Google Docs is no replacement for actual serious work in Office. That's like asking someone who uses NetBeans to switch over to repl.it
  - dkersten 6y ago
    Sure, but a lot of companies have switched. My previous job was a banking company with thousands of employees and they were using Google's suite for everything. So while Office is still ahead for serious work, there are more and more large companies out there who have migrated away.
  - WhyNotHugo 6y ago
    This "actual serious work" you mention is not what most people use Office for anyway. Most people write simple letters, and do very basic spreadsheets. This is probably one of those "80% of the people use 20% of the features" scenario.
    - Qwertious 6y ago
      'This "actual serious work" you mention is not what most people use Office for anyway. Most people write simple letters, and do very basic spreadsheets.' Most "actual serious work" involves receiving and modifying other peoples' drafts. As such, if anyone uses an advanced feature, everyone uses the advanced feature.

phone8675309 6y ago

Working in strides because they don't want to get shut out of the Windows market. Having a credible alternative stay's Microsoft's hand about going Apple and requiring apps only come from the store except for Enterprise editions.

giobox 6y ago
Not trying to play devils advocate here, but who genuinely believes a Linux Steam client is a "credible alternative" to Steam on Windows? It's an alternative, I agree, but I can't imagine a world in which it makes a dent on their Windows revenues any time soon. If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get hundreds of millions of users to install Linux.
- sli 6y ago
  It's usually better to have established alternatives before they're needed than to try and establish one after significant hurdles have been put in place. I'd say Steam on Linux is plenty credible without currently being a threat to Microsoft.
- rasz 6y ago
  Its an alternative in a same way Tizen is Samsungs alternative to Android, or Munich Linux deployment. Its there to get favorable treatment, nothing more.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  It's interesting you say that, because my response to Epic when they sued Apple was that their time would be better spent contributing to an open platform for phones.
  - giobox 6y ago
    It's beyond scope of a hacker news comment for me, but Epic case against Apple/Google store distribution terms is sufficiently different IMO. How exactly would Epic ship this open platform when Google and Apple expressly control what apps run and do not? From where I stand, without intervention their only option is inferior browser based streaming solutions like this: https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551152/fortnite-nvidia-geforce-now-game-streaming-to-iphone-ipad https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551152/fortnite-nvidia-... Courts are worth a gamble, worst case scenario Epic is back where it began (minus the legal fees of course), paying Apple/Google 30 percent and still selling plenty of software on the app stores. The Epic case also works to serve Epic's wider public agenda against app stores as litigation theatre too if nothing else.

dkersten 6y ago

The client works fine on XWayland, but the games do not, I need to switch to X11 for that. I really only use the client to launch the games though, so I haven't noticed any of the other issues. As far as the games go, I've been very impressed with how well Proton works so far! I was thinking about running Windows in a VM and doing GPU passthrough when I get a desktop next year, but with how well Proton has been working on my laptop (with only integrated gpu), I may not need to -- Proton may work perfectly well. In X11 (sadly, since I use Sway for my non-gaming use).

ubercow13 6y ago
Isn't Xwayland supposed to have proper support for GPU acceleration now? Does it just not work well? There's also this port [0] of wine to Wayland but it only supports simple fully GPU-drawn windows AFAIK (not desktop apps). So, sufficient for playing many games. I haven't tried it yet. [0] https://github.com/varmd/wine-wayland https://github.com/varmd/wine-wayland
- dkersten 6y ago
  I'm not sure what the issue is tbh. The games launch, but in my testing, have all kinds of glitches or issues that go away when running on X11. For example, one game doesn't receive any input, another one has graphical artifacts but otherwise runs fine, another runs at a suuper low frame rate. All of these issues go away when running on X. For all I know its a driver issue or something else in my setup. But things are improving, so maybe in a few months (by the time I get a desktop with some luck) it will all be resolved. I may give wine-wayland a try too if it's not. Or its my setup and it may just work on new hardware. Either way, I'm quite impressed by Proton, but haven't been able to run it on Wayland properly yet.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
> The client works fine on XWayland XWayland does not support scaling, so I don't see how it can "work fine".
- dkersten 6y ago

hvis 6y ago

> no hidpi support It's been added quite late, and who knows why it's off by default, but there is a checkbox now in Settings -> Interface called "Enlarge text and icons based on monitor size". Works well here.

wetpaws 6y ago
Does not work for me neither on gnome not on kde and I have to explicitly add gtk_gdi_scalibg to run arguments. Also no fractional scaling, lol.
- hvis 6y ago
  I'm using it with GNOME 3.36 (Ubuntu 20.04). With 200% scaling set in the Display settings GUI.
  - wetpaws 6y ago
    Yes, I understand, it might work for you. Not sure if you expect that sharing this would magically make it work for me, the fact is that my personal experience shows it does not work in two entirely different linux distributives.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - hvis 6y ago
      I'm saying it can and should work. And that it's possible for you to discover a configuration on your machine that would make it work. And if it's still a no go, you can file a bug report (which you wouldn't be able to do, as such, if there were no such feature at all).
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
That only works if you're running on HiDPI with no screen scaling -- which will just make everything else look tiny (though Steam would look fine).

kevingadd 6y ago

fwiw, Steam's HiDPI support was rubbish on Windows until relatively recently, so it's not weird that it's bad on Linux as well.

glaberficken 6y ago

Don't worry I'm still on Windows 7 and it is also a crashy mess for me.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

The main window is also very laggy and unresponsive. One day, I found myself on Windows again and opened Steam there, and I was surprised and a little delighted that Steam was just as laggy and unresponsive there too. c:

29athrowaway 6y ago

Steam, Lutris, PlayOnLinux have done a great job sanding the edgy surfaces of great projects like Wine, DXVK, etc. ProtonDB and WineHQ are good resources for users as well.