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But it's a homogenous platform instead of the mad set of different driver versions/-implementations, desktop environments, windowing protocols, audio protocols,

by est31 6y ago

But it's a homogenous platform instead of the mad set of different driver versions/-implementations, desktop environments, windowing protocols, audio protocols, etc. that is colloquially referred to as the GNU/Linux desktop. If Google brought out a stadia console with one consistent OS image, hardware, and driver, it might become easier for devs to support it.

arcturus17 6y ago
I hear the PC version is also OK and it’s only the consoles that are atrocious. And they are rather homogeneous targets...
- est31 6y ago
  Indeed, good point. I too heard that the consoles are buggy. I think it's mainly a problem of the team not having spent time on fixing them. Note that consoles also are a much larger share of the market than GNU/Linux, so they are more likely to put focus on fixing the bugs in the future. For GNU/Linux though, such a task is insurmountable.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    Nothing insurmountable, they can make one Linux version and make it work on all distros.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  Last generation consoles are really far behind today’s PCs. Like not comparably. Sure you can optimize them a ton since they are all mostly the same, but at some point you hit the limits.
mhh__ 6y ago
Valve maintain a steam runtime which aims to smooth over a lot of the bumps.
- est31 6y ago
  That steam runtime still runs on top of gazillions of driver/hardware combinations. Especially Linux GPU drivers are highly buggy though.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    Valve contribute directly to Mesa. It's pretty high quality. Less buggy than Windows graphics drivers I'd say.
    - est31 6y ago
      This year alone I had two different bugs with my GPU drivers. First in the Laptop with AMD graphics where the screen would be black on resuming after suspend. After updating I'm not getting the bug any more. Then I got another bug on the desktop with a builtin Intel GPU. Those are usually regarded as the ones with the best driver support on Linux, but that didn't save me. After waking up after it has went to sleep, sometimes, that means often, parts of the screen would flicker. It happened directly after the update from Ubuntu 20.04 to 20.10, or kernel 5.4 to 5.8. Now I've manually installed 5.10 and the bug is gone, but without my manual intervention the bug would have continued for months.
      - shmerl 6y ago
        Nothing is bug free. But overall experience with AMD is very good for me. And you should always use the latest kernel if you want to avoid stuff like that.
  - implr 6y ago
    On AMD the GPU driver stack is unlikely to be materially different from Stadia, I doubt Google is using anything else than (possibly customized/patched) amdgpu+mesa.
    - shmerl 6y ago
      Stadia is using amdvlk as far as I know, since they referenced AMD GPU profiler which didn't work with Mesa in the past. https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2019-03-19-amd-radeon-gpus-and-developer-tools-tapped-for-google-stadia-game https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2019-03-19-amd-radeon-...
account42 6y ago
> mad set of different driver versions/-implementations Just support the lates driver version that Nvidia/AMD/Intel recommend. Same as on Windows. > desktop environments, windowing protocols, audio protocols All abstracted by available open source libraries, notably libSDL. Besides, Windowing is a laughably trivial part of a game and audio isn't that much more complex when it comes to the OS interface. The decision to port/not port to desktop Linux is not a technical one when the renderer has already been ported to Vulkan and the rest of the game already compiles on a POSIX-like platform.

by est31 6y ago

arcturus17 6y ago

I hear the PC version is also OK and it’s only the consoles that are atrocious. And they are rather homogeneous targets...

est31 6y ago
Indeed, good point. I too heard that the consoles are buggy. I think it's mainly a problem of the team not having spent time on fixing them. Note that consoles also are a much larger share of the market than GNU/Linux, so they are more likely to put focus on fixing the bugs in the future. For GNU/Linux though, such a task is insurmountable.
- shmerl 6y ago
  Nothing insurmountable, they can make one Linux version and make it work on all distros.
kmonsen 6y ago
Last generation consoles are really far behind today’s PCs. Like not comparably. Sure you can optimize them a ton since they are all mostly the same, but at some point you hit the limits.

mhh__ 6y ago

Valve maintain a steam runtime which aims to smooth over a lot of the bumps.

est31 6y ago
That steam runtime still runs on top of gazillions of driver/hardware combinations. Especially Linux GPU drivers are highly buggy though.
- shmerl 6y ago
  Valve contribute directly to Mesa. It's pretty high quality. Less buggy than Windows graphics drivers I'd say.
  - est31 6y ago
    This year alone I had two different bugs with my GPU drivers. First in the Laptop with AMD graphics where the screen would be black on resuming after suspend. After updating I'm not getting the bug any more. Then I got another bug on the desktop with a builtin Intel GPU. Those are usually regarded as the ones with the best driver support on Linux, but that didn't save me. After waking up after it has went to sleep, sometimes, that means often, parts of the screen would flicker. It happened directly after the update from Ubuntu 20.04 to 20.10, or kernel 5.4 to 5.8. Now I've manually installed 5.10 and the bug is gone, but without my manual intervention the bug would have continued for months.
    - shmerl 6y ago
      Nothing is bug free. But overall experience with AMD is very good for me. And you should always use the latest kernel if you want to avoid stuff like that.
- implr 6y ago
  On AMD the GPU driver stack is unlikely to be materially different from Stadia, I doubt Google is using anything else than (possibly customized/patched) amdgpu+mesa.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    Stadia is using amdvlk as far as I know, since they referenced AMD GPU profiler which didn't work with Mesa in the past. https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2019-03-19-amd-radeon-gpus-and-developer-tools-tapped-for-google-stadia-game https://www.amd.com/en/press-releases/2019-03-19-amd-radeon-...

account42 6y ago

> mad set of different driver versions/-implementations Just support the lates driver version that Nvidia/AMD/Intel recommend. Same as on Windows. > desktop environments, windowing protocols, audio protocols All abstracted by available open source libraries, notably libSDL. Besides, Windowing is a laughably trivial part of a game and audio isn't that much more complex when it comes to the OS interface. The decision to port/not port to desktop Linux is not a technical one when the renderer has already been ported to Vulkan and the rest of the game already compiles on a POSIX-like platform.