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We need better Linux software support before that happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way

We need better Linux software support before that happens. As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. I'd love for windows to go the way horse, but for now Valve is hedging bets on a Frankenstein that is Linux. I'm being critical only cause I'm aware of the difficulties of working with Linux. It's great if your a CS person who likes tinkering. It's god awful when you just want your computer to work. Meaning not having to deal with drivers, deal with scaling issues, weird software bugs that require you to install something obscure and run 4 different commands to get that one thing to run. Linux has gotten better immensely over the past decade, but it's still not even in Windows 7 reliability category of use yet. Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. But I guess that's the allure of it.

smoldesu 5y ago
> As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. It's not though. Windows is a pain in the ass to develop for, and the only thing keeping most developers from writing cross-platform titles is DirectX. Luckily, there's a DirectX-to-Vulkan translation layer that will run 80% of Steam's "legacy" Windows games, as well as any new exclusives. As the industry starts to shift to Vulkan, developers will have much less incentive to ship Windows exclusives. The final nail in the coffin is probably sandboxing. Linux support for sandboxed applications is next-level, and projects like Flatpak and AppImage have made it possible to ship software that's more stable on Linux than it is on Windows. Valve's probably wants to combine this with their Proton project to create truly "immortal" Linux applications: imagine being able to download a file containing a compressed VM image with Diablo 2 perfectly configured like a Docker container. > Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. The only difference between distros is package management, and 99% of them will install Steam, Discord, Spotify, and any of your other "normal" apps the exact same way.
COGlory 5y ago
I think this is a fair comment and I wish people wouldn't downvote it. That said, I disagree with some of what you're saying, and I also think there might be some stuff that you aren't aware of. For starters, and perhaps my comment didn't illustrate this, but from my perspective, Valve's strategy is not to popularize Linux desktop. They did have SteamOS which they obviously abandoned/consolidated into Big Picture Mode. There are rumors of a handheld console that will likely be running Linux underneath, but I'd be shocked if the user ever sees anything but a Steam interface. So I don't think from that perspective that Steam particularly cares about a Linux desktop experience. They don't (to my knowledge) fund KDE or Gnome. They seem to want everyone to interact with Linux through the Steam software itself. Additionally, to address the fragmentation points you are bringing up (which are clearly valid), Steam has developed a unified Linux runtime that ships with Steam on Linux, and developers can target that runtime for their games. So again, this is a distribution agnostic, desktop agnostic solution for developers. They only have to support one thing: Steam runtime for Linux. And I think that nicely solves the Frankenstein issues. Now obviously if Steam never turns into a full OS, people aren't going to switch to it just to play games, when Windows can also play all those games, and supports office and Adobe software. So what the plan is exactly, I'm not sure. Valve doesn't seem interested in solving those problems, at least not yet. Perhaps they are just keeping the scope narrow to what they're good at (games) and hoping that others will solve those problems.

smoldesu 5y ago

> As long as it's easier to develop on windows, it'll never happen. It's not though. Windows is a pain in the ass to develop for, and the only thing keeping most developers from writing cross-platform titles is DirectX. Luckily, there's a DirectX-to-Vulkan translation layer that will run 80% of Steam's "legacy" Windows games, as well as any new exclusives. As the industry starts to shift to Vulkan, developers will have much less incentive to ship Windows exclusives. The final nail in the coffin is probably sandboxing. Linux support for sandboxed applications is next-level, and projects like Flatpak and AppImage have made it possible to ship software that's more stable on Linux than it is on Windows. Valve's probably wants to combine this with their Proton project to create truly "immortal" Linux applications: imagine being able to download a file containing a compressed VM image with Diablo 2 perfectly configured like a Docker container. > Maybe if there wasn't 100+ distros or whatever and people just focused on getting a couple at the level of XP, we could see a lot wider of adoption. The only difference between distros is package management, and 99% of them will install Steam, Discord, Spotify, and any of your other "normal" apps the exact same way.

COGlory 5y ago

I think this is a fair comment and I wish people wouldn't downvote it. That said, I disagree with some of what you're saying, and I also think there might be some stuff that you aren't aware of. For starters, and perhaps my comment didn't illustrate this, but from my perspective, Valve's strategy is not to popularize Linux desktop. They did have SteamOS which they obviously abandoned/consolidated into Big Picture Mode. There are rumors of a handheld console that will likely be running Linux underneath, but I'd be shocked if the user ever sees anything but a Steam interface. So I don't think from that perspective that Steam particularly cares about a Linux desktop experience. They don't (to my knowledge) fund KDE or Gnome. They seem to want everyone to interact with Linux through the Steam software itself. Additionally, to address the fragmentation points you are bringing up (which are clearly valid), Steam has developed a unified Linux runtime that ships with Steam on Linux, and developers can target that runtime for their games. So again, this is a distribution agnostic, desktop agnostic solution for developers. They only have to support one thing: Steam runtime for Linux. And I think that nicely solves the Frankenstein issues. Now obviously if Steam never turns into a full OS, people aren't going to switch to it just to play games, when Windows can also play all those games, and supports office and Adobe software. So what the plan is exactly, I'm not sure. Valve doesn't seem interested in solving those problems, at least not yet. Perhaps they are just keeping the scope narrow to what they're good at (games) and hoping that others will solve those problems.