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I dropped the "native Linux or nothing" mindset sometime in 2013 when I saw the harm it did to developers. As a disproportionately vocal minority comprising <1%

I dropped the "native Linux or nothing" mindset sometime in 2013 when I saw the harm it did to developers. As a disproportionately vocal minority comprising <1% customers but >50% of bug requests, making Linux users happy was pretty literally taking food out of some dev's mouths. The two goals that actually needed to be achieved were preventing market monopolies and enabling smaller devs, which platform agnosticism has been a welcome and necessary side effect of. i) Reducing the resource overhead required to publish and support games is make or break for indie/small devs. Just by being Steamplay/Proton aware, compatible games don't require exclusive support, allowing devs to focus on content and expansion instead of learning quirks of all different distro just to be able to support that one user on Hannah Montana Linux. Helping individual customers feels great, but it can become a deadly rabbit hole. ii) The market aligned against publishing monopolies, which Valve isn't singlehandedly responsible for but has been a major contributor to. Linux native was just a way to get devs and publishers to realize that they couldn't and shouldn't fall prey to the exclusive marketplaces on the rise at the time like GWFL that would only reduce choice and availability for customers and non-AAA devs in the long-term. Breaking OS dependence was key in this. I think we ultimately want Linux to be able to do whatever we want, be that running video games, powering Mars rovers, or running our HPC clusters. Once software can be run with the same ease on Linux as on Windows, it might as well be Linux native, and non-FOSS Linux purist arguments are confusing and dilute that.

sandworm101 6y ago
>> fall prey to the exclusive marketplaces on the rise Valves initial support for linux was for precisely these reasons. Microsoft was talking about restricting which games could run on windows in much the same way an Apple does with iPhone software. The prospect of Microsoft having veto/censorship powers over violent video games struck fear across the industry. Valve then pushed towards "steam machines" running not-windows. Those issues have reduced as of late but were the trigger for what would eventually become the proton project.
charcircuit 6y ago
>a disproportionately vocal minority comprising <1% customers but >50% of bug requests I doubt that this is generally true based off the discussions I've seen in the Steam forums for various games.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  It could also be true in a good way. Would it be so hard to claim that Linux users are more likely to report bugs, so the difference is not "Linux users are whiny" but "Windows users saw the same bugs and just suffered or stopped buying your program silently, while Linux users saw bugs and actually told you about it"?
- washadjeffmad 6y ago
  This was circa 2013. Unity3D had barely included build options for Linux publishing, and it was a much less mature time for gaming on Linux. So you're right, it isn't generally true today. I personally don't use the Linux builds if the Windows version works with Proton, but I do download them for archival. I also don't submit bug reports to devs for Steamplay issues, so that's another factor.

sandworm101 6y ago

>> fall prey to the exclusive marketplaces on the rise Valves initial support for linux was for precisely these reasons. Microsoft was talking about restricting which games could run on windows in much the same way an Apple does with iPhone software. The prospect of Microsoft having veto/censorship powers over violent video games struck fear across the industry. Valve then pushed towards "steam machines" running not-windows. Those issues have reduced as of late but were the trigger for what would eventually become the proton project.

charcircuit 6y ago

>a disproportionately vocal minority comprising <1% customers but >50% of bug requests I doubt that this is generally true based off the discussions I've seen in the Steam forums for various games.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
It could also be true in a good way. Would it be so hard to claim that Linux users are more likely to report bugs, so the difference is not "Linux users are whiny" but "Windows users saw the same bugs and just suffered or stopped buying your program silently, while Linux users saw bugs and actually told you about it"?
washadjeffmad 6y ago
This was circa 2013. Unity3D had barely included build options for Linux publishing, and it was a much less mature time for gaming on Linux. So you're right, it isn't generally true today. I personally don't use the Linux builds if the Windows version works with Proton, but I do download them for archival. I also don't submit bug reports to devs for Steamplay issues, so that's another factor.