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Steam survey shows Linux marketshare hitting 1.0%

401 points by bemmu 5y ago

Taek 5y ago
I've been gaming on linux for almost a year now and I've had no issues at all. I've mainly been playing popular titles but Proton makes every game feel like it's a linux native game.
- tapland 5y ago
  And sometimes better (like Classic Wow). I only ran into issues with Rust(which is getting support) and pubg because of anti-cheat and the fivem mods for gta5 (something about lack of support for shared resources). But it's working so well and so much less weird stuff going on compared to windows and osx.
- sen 5y ago
  Regretfully most racing sims (and any other sims that use peripherals) are still a huge pain to get going, even with Proton. At most you can get the actual game "running" (with performance sacrifices over Windows), but you still won't get things like Force Feedback, and half your peripherals features probably won't work (or will work intermittently for no reason). I'd love nothing more than to never use Windows again, and I use Linux for 90% of my daily use, but if I have to have Windows still installed for any major games at all then it's just easier to keep using Windows for all gaming, where gaming really does "just work", every time.
  - lnxg33k1 5y ago
    i use g29 with force feedback on dirt2.0 and f1 2020 without issues, the module is built in the maintree kernel
  - hexa22 5y ago
    Force feedback worked fine on project cars for me
  - skohan 5y ago
    "running" (with performance sacrifices over Windows) Has this been an issue for you? Since switching to primarily Linux/Proton for gaming, I've been amazed at how little performance penalty I have seen.
  - ubercow13 5y ago
    I wonder how those force feedback wheels from different manufacturers all work on Windows, is there any kind of standardised API for that stuff? I had a brief look at sim racing peripherals on Windows and even there it seemed like each game you wanted to play had to support your specific model of wheel.
yosito 5y ago
I'm not a gamer, but annecdotally, the pandemic has given me enough screentime that I've finally been able to switch to Linux as my primary OS. I wonder how many others are in the same boat.
vardump 5y ago
Nowadays OS matters pretty little. Personally, on some level, I don't even notice difference working macOS, Linux and Windows. Other than platform specific development work, it doesn't really matter in the big picture. Other than that, only Linux allows me true visibility to its innards. Fast to fix almost any issues, should they happen. And I say this as someone who has for example no problem debugging Windows kernel remotely. Or reverse engineering using Ghidra etc.
- quijoteuniv 5y ago
  I think it matters a lot, specially on machines that are not that new, with modest resources
  - The_rationalist 5y ago
    Or especially in machines that are new, my new aero 4k laptop is awfully supported, even on arch linux/manjaro
  - phendrenad2 5y ago
    Maybe in developing countries this matters more, but RAM and SSD upgrades for older hardware are surprisingly affordable these days.
- xxs 5y ago
  Windows has no epoll(), but of course that doesn't matter for games.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    Windows has completion ports (IOCP), which are much better. At least finally Linux is also getting completion based IO with io_uring.
    - yxhuvud 5y ago
      Seems windows is getting ring buffers based io too, eventually: https://windows-internals.com/i-o-rings-when-one-i-o-operation-is-not-enough/ https://windows-internals.com/i-o-rings-when-one-i-o-operati... Not identical to io_uring, but close enough that porting between them will probably be quite simple.
dtx1 5y ago
I'm so thankful that Valve is embracing Linux. They obviously have commercial interests behind it and fear the Windows Store [1] and vendor lock-in by Microsoft, but they have made gaming on linux better, even for non-steam games and embraced the open source ideals of linux, at least for their work on steam os and proton. I'm happy I don't have to have any windows systems for gaming anymore and I pretty much have valve to thank for that (and all the other great people working on wine, lutris and co of course) [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377
mhitza 5y ago
Definitely the number is gonna increase dramatically next year with the Steam deck. Unless it's going to fail in some major way.
- Cycl0ps 5y ago
  It's Valve hardware, so more likely than not it'll flop and you can pick one up for $50 on the 2022 winter sale. Even then it might be relevant for enough weeks to make devs consider designing for native Linux and be in too deep to back out. Speaking as someone with a steam link and controller floating around their house.
  - mhitza 5y ago
    I wouldn't mind it flopping an having the option to get it for 50 buckaroos :). But that's highly unlikely. Even if it fails as a portable gaming platform the hardware sounds very decent and I wouldn't expect them to have Apple level margins on those. I've skipped the link/steam machine because "livingroom entertainment" isn't my thing, but I was pleased with the quality of the Steam controller. Although I would have liked them to be bold with the design and keep just the original prototype (without thumb stick/face buttons) (wouldn't have minded a novelty controller that works well with just a few games).
- toastal 5y ago
  The odd thing to me is how immediately people jumped to "you can install Windows on it", like one would need to. The other thing that was funny is people saying "with Windows, you can run emulators", as if Linux couldn't already do that and with better framerates.
  - rashil2000 5y ago
    I have used the popular open source NDS emulator - Citra, and it runs like 15 times faster on Windows compared to Ubuntu (NVidia GPU).
    - 5y ago
foxhill 5y ago
i’ve been using linux as my daily driver for just over a year. steam on linux has been great, and proton (wine) has been indispensable. big title games i’ve played with _no_ issues at all: * Cyberpunk 2077 (ok that has issues, but it has the same issues for windows users..) * Dying Light * Titanfall * The Division along with _many_ other indie/small games. honestly the only thing left is titles that include invasive anti-cheat. when that day comes, i don’t know if most of my friends will have any reason to remain on windows. and who could blame them? finally, they won’t need to deal with a company that collects data from them without their knowledge, runs ads in their taskbar, demands they have a useless microsoft account, restarts their machine on a whim for updates, etc. i hate that i’m going to say this out loud, but could 2022 really be the year of linux on the des- why does it feel so wrong to say that? :)
- aquir 5y ago
  what distro? pop_OS?
  - OJFord 5y ago
    Why would it matter?
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      Because if you have laptops with Nvidia Optimus, distros like pop_os make your life much easier since nvidia doesn't give two shits about Optimus on linux, hence the famous "nvidia, f*ck you!" quote from Linus Torvalds. Or if you have a brand new laptop with the latest Ryzen CPUs and the latest Radeon 6800M GPU with switchable graphics then you absolutely need a distro with the latest kernel to have a good experience on this new hardware.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        Maybe I underestimate how difficult some distros make it to have some semblance of control, but my model of Linux is that distros are nothing more than bundles of packages as a starting point from which you can add or remove whatever you want. So I asked why it matters if its 'pop_OS' or not since if that happens to bundle some driver, or Steam, or whatever, I assume I can continue not using 'pop_OS' and still install whatever it is if I want? It just seems like an irrelevant detail, (and potentially not even a valid one? the more you do subsequently the less it 'is' that distro) outside of saying 'everything worked out of the box, didn't have to install a thing', which may or may not have been true, but wasn't what was claimed.
qart 5y ago
What is the point of these surveys when we know how many "level farming" operations[1] are going on in China, etc.? Casual CSGO has become unusable these days. Of course, apart from farming operations, cheaters come from across the world. And AFAIK, most cheats software is available only for Windows. Valve's esports-grade games like CSGO, and DOTA2 are free. There is no penalty for getting banned in such a context. It is easy for the "farmer" or cheater to create a new account, and start playing again. I would be more interested in knowing what percent of paying customers run whatever OS. This info would be useful to new game developers too. [1] I won't post links because my comment might get auto-flagged as spam, but interested readers can find them easily by searching for something like "Buy CSGO High Tier Accounts".
- thegeomaster 5y ago
  CSGO is free but has recently cut off drops for free users and grinding-based path to Prime accounts, leaving little incentive for farming as you mentioned.
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  The survey has always been opt-in continuous collection. I see no reason why bots would opt-in. > Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. First paragraph on https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
  - qart 5y ago
    Level farmers and cheaters are not bots. While level farmers may be likely to ignore surveys, because it would waste their time, cheaters don't have that factor.
- Flow 5y ago
  The bots that plague TF2 runs on Linux. No VAC on Linux either so I suppose when they get VACd it’s a manual thing from Valve’s side.
deltasixeight 5y ago
Just to be fair and balanced I'm a hardcore linux user and gamer and I've tried gaming on linux and I've hit many issues. 365 games on steam and while some windows games work I've hit probably just about every possible issue you can hit with other games. Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots. Sometimes I read this thread and scratch my head. I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion? Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.
- chevill 5y ago
  I've had a similar experience. I would love to stop using Windows but I have found that ProtonDB wildly exagerrates the compatibility of games. I had game breaking issues with 50% or more of "gold" rated titles and even some with a "platinum" rating.
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    ProtonDB is driven by reports/feedback from individual users, right? Did you submit your experience so that the ratings are more accurate?
    - boopmaster 5y ago
      To draw a parallel: message boards are 99% observation and 1% participation. There’s no need to goad your fellow HN readers.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      ProtonDB tells you that someone, somewhere at some point managed to get it working. It doesn't directly help you, but knowing it can be done can be an incentive to experiment instead of giving up.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
    That's unfortunately not unexpected. "Linux Desktop" is a ludicrously diverse not-platform for which Valve already has to bring its own runtime of basic libraries along just to ensure some minimum level of compatibility even for native Linux games.
msravi 5y ago
I made Linux Mint the primary OS on my son's first laptop some 3-years ago when he was around 12, and he's taken to it like a fish to water. He's even taken to using regolith as his (tiling) window manager now, and prefers to use vim for programming (python/julia/c) rather than any IDE. Also have Mint installed on my mom's laptop - she only uses the browser and is ok with it - she has no idea of what an OS even is. IMO, the only thing preventing Linux's more widespread adoption is the reputation that it's only meant for developers, and OEMs not providing an option to have it pre-installed.
- evolve2k 5y ago
  I did the same for my kids and now my son is 19 and is now quite the Linux pro and advocate. He corrects me “I use Arch btw”.
- Loughla 5y ago
  Any time I have a family member who asks me to 'fix a problem' with their machine, my first step is to copy all important files, and then evaluate their use of the machine. 99.9% of the time, they use it for e-mail, internet browsing, and maybe home banking. I put mint on everyone's machines and don't look back. It's just so stupid easy, and has drastically reduced the 'tech calls' I receive. At this point, I have no idea what's holding linux back. Seriously, mint is so user friendly that it's sort of confusing why people don't use it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - iFreilicht 5y ago
    Marketing and pre-installation on devices. Seriously ChromeOS and chromebooks have been gaining huge marketshare, Linux could've been that if there was any player interested and wealthy enough to put on a similar campaign to what google did.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  That's a great idea. It may be too late for me but my sons will be ninja developers who use vim like pros, instead of that Microsoft electron behemoth.
deleted 5y ago
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sascha_sl 5y ago
I wonder how Epic feels about this recent surge and the massive interest in the Steam Deck, a device shipping Arch Linux of all things stock. They have dropped support for Linux pretty hard for anything but Unreal as a build target itself, even with things they acquired. Might have been the wrong gamble.
- grumbel 5y ago
  Sweeney seems to be pretty happy with it: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1415755678849900546 https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/141575567884990054...
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unixhero 5y ago
I buy games and purely use Linux and Steam for this purpose. It works perfectly, including AAA titles! Love from here to the Proton team at Steam. Even Penguins want to have fun.
roody15 5y ago
I am in the 1 percent !
bantunes 5y ago
I hope Linux with this Proton compatibility layer doesn't go the way of OS/2 of being so easy to run Windows games that nobody writes Linux ports anymore and as a consequence the performance and overall experience is never as good.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Honestly I'd argue the opposite: that because Linux Desktop is such a fragmented mess of a non-platform, "native" ports are likely to work at least as badly if not worse than those running on a compatibility layer. There's even some anecdotal evidence that this is the case with games that do have native ports and running the Windows version in proton being a better experience.
  - welterde 5y ago
    The compatibility layer for the linux native games is the steam-runtime though. So fragmentation of the distributions matters to a much lesser degree already.
- acomjean 5y ago
  For me it had the effect of me being able to run Linux at home almost exclusively. and to be able to game occasionally with friends. Tabletop simulator/ teriforming mars/ lords of water deep and a bunch of other games just work. Getting that Linux percentage up should help the platform. I don’t want to go use my older machine and it’s non Linux. So I seek out desktop applications to drive Linux use up.
- the_biot 5y ago
  I don't see why it wouldn't have that effect. The obvious path to follow for gaming companies is write for windows and make sure it runs fine under proton.
- q3k 5y ago
  It doesn't help that the Linux ecosystem makes it really difficult to build truly portable truly native binaries. Static builds? Well, that will work... But wait, you want OpenGL or Vulkan? You'll need a dynamic linker to load system .so's, as that's the standard API available to interact with these APIs on Linux. Want to load dynamic libraries? Well, you'll need to ship a dynamic ELF [1]. Shipping a dynamic ELF with glibc now? Hope you don't intend to run on NixOS or Alpine or any distribution that has an old glibc. Maybe also ship ld-linux.so, all of /lib you depend on and a wrapper shellscript that sequences startup accordingly via that ld-linux.so. That will work, but you still need to load the system OpenGL or Vulkan .so's. Have fun implementing that to work well on every distribution! Remember to respect terms of GPL/LGPL software you now ship. Oh, and I hope you don't use Qt. Maybe you want to use flatpak? Well, better explain to your users that they need to install and configure it, and make sure whatever proprietary Nvidia drivers they have are also properly flatpak'd. What about the alternatives, something like AppImage/Snap? Those just don't work on Alpine and other non-glibc distributions. Whoops. Pick an audio API. Pulseaudio? Some people don't run it. ALSA? Good luck, some people run Pulseaudio with ALSA emulation disabled. OSS? Dead, unless someone runs padsp. Pray your users don't run JACK. You'll probably end up on OpenAL, which is now proprietary and/or has an LGPL fork (remember you now have to let users re-link against any other version of OpenAL!). I sometimes make games and other small interactive demos. I run Linux, and want to send builds to friends also running Linux. The easiest way to distribute these is to build and ship a .exe on a Windows build host and get my friends to run it on Wine, that just works everywhere out of the box. And the .exe's end up smaller and launch faster, too! [1] - Or go for hacks like https://github.com/pfalcon/foreign-dlopen https://github.com/pfalcon/foreign-dlopen
pjmlp 5y ago
Now lets join as we prepare for the 2% celebration, about 2041.
unilynx 5y ago
What are the odds of Proton helping to improve Mac gaming? Will those improvements to Wine trickle through to the Mac eventually or they too linux-specific ? (I'm not that up-to-date with all the graphics APIs they all have nowadays, and I assume that's a factor)
- re-actor 5y ago
  Proton's big tech under the hood is DXVK which translates DirectX calls to Vulkan. If MacOS were to add Vulkan support it probably could benefit from Proton. But Apple doesn't seem to care about Vulkan or modern graphics APIs in general.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  > Proton does not work natively on macOS, end of story. macOS is missing several APIs to make this support viable: > eventfd syscall is Linux-specific, without good alternative on macOS > Apple does not support Vulkan, which is needed for DXVK > Apple deprecated OpenGL support, which is needed for WineD3D > macOS is missing support for Python 3 OOTB https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/gt3fat/proton_for_mac/fs9526e https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/gt3fat/proton...
danieldevries 5y ago
My exp with linux gaming is that for sim racing its not possible. To my surprise the logitech wheel did not work, and thus forced me to play Assetto Corsa on Windows.
Zhyl 5y ago
A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with Battleye and EAC to get anti-cheat working on Proton for the release of the steam deck. If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming. I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean that the marketshare will increase more likely than it will decrease.
- gpderetta 5y ago
  My brother wanted to play CoD Warzone with me and of course it doesn't work with Proton. After attempting and failing to dual boot into Windows (how hard could it be to create a bootable Windows installation usb key?), yesterday I decided to try vfio. It actually was quite straightforward and way simpler than one would expect from the very intimidating archlinux wiki page. I spent more time getting a nice grub vfio menu entry than actually setting up the VM. Of course now I expect I'll be eventually banned for running under a VM. Proton support for anti-cheats can't come soon enough.
  - trulyrandom 5y ago
    I don't think Activision bans VM players. I've been playing Warzone in a VM since it was released without issues.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      That's what I have been reading online. Good to have another data point, thanks.
    - carlhjerpe 5y ago
      I've played overwatch for years in a VM now, no ban here
  - thejosh 5y ago
    vfio works great for games (and general "Oh cr*, I need this random Windows only thingy), and the added bonus is if you install to another nvme drive, you can actually dualboot if you ever wanted to do that :-).
jl6 5y ago
Anecdata: I finally bought GTA V on Steam Linux now that protondb reports flawless single player operation (which I’m happy to report is accurate). It allegedly runs 20% slower than on Windows, but because I’m living 8 years in the future, relative to its release date, I now have a PC powerful enough that it can run at 60fps and max settings regardless of that 20% hit. Fortunately I have no interest in multiplayer.
bumbada 5y ago
I only use Mac and Linux computers. I don't play games but became interested in VR, specially for programming 3D worlds . Valve basically forced me to install Windows in order to use vive headsets because the linux versions were problematic. BTW, android uses the Linux kernel, so I consider this 1% highly suspicious.
yyyk 5y ago
My experience is that many times the (emulated) Windows version runs better than the 'native' Linux version, which can have not-so-subtle bugs or not run at all. This especially happens for older games which haven't been receiving regular updates. Apparently Windows userland bitrots much less.
rbanffy 5y ago
Interestingly, Linux is the dominant gaming platform. It's just that it's called Android.
- Siira 5y ago
  Android is not exactly open, and Google Play Services is not FOSS. Its games are also mostly addictive micro-transaction-ridden trash.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    The parts that aren't open source are the google-specific pieces. Amazon has a thriving ecosystem (of mostly addictive micro-transaction-ridden trash) on top of their FireOS, which is mostly Android with the Google parts replaced with Amazon parts. Still, Blackberry managed to make it easy to repackage Android (2.x) software to run on their QNX-based OS and there have been multiple demonstrations of Android software running on Linux with a relatively thin API layer. There's at least one commercial, IIRC, tool that does that for Windows.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    > Its games are also mostly addictive micro-transaction-ridden trash. Yeah, I'm not sure we should call the mobile crap "games".
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Any system with a low barrier to entry will be flooded by games that are cheap to develop and quickly recover the investment. There are good games, but the platform is generally much less capable than either a desktop PC with a beefy GPU or a console.
      - nottorp 5y ago
        Eh, don't blame the platform's power for IAPs.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
ecocentrik 5y ago
Steam has defiantly been putting in the work promoting Linux based developers and developing Proton (their wine package). Over the last year I've played a half dozen AAA games on Linux through steam, all of them working near perfectly. I'm surprised the Linux market share isn't higher than 1%, giving the resources they seem to be dedicating to Linux.
- sudhirj 5y ago
  They're now introducing Linux based hardware, which looks set to be super-popular, called the Steam Deck. So they're definitely using the Linux work in their own products. That should give the numbers a boost.
  - ecocentrik 5y ago
    Steam Deck looks like a Wii form-factor device but they had already been collaborating with Alienware and others on the release of console style devices for a few years running SteamOS (based on debian).
jokethrowaway 5y ago
I just switched from dual booting Mac / Windows to Linux and thanks to proton I can play anything I want to play without dual booting. On Wayland none the less! The year of the Linux desktop! \s
nottorp 5y ago
Anyone knows if you can get absolute values for that 1%? Couldn't find them on the steam survey page and I'm curious how many millions of PCs is 1%.
- mminer237 5y ago
  Steam has about 120 million monthly active players, with about half playing on a given day: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/2961646623386540827 https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/d... Assuming Linux players are representative, that puts the number of Linux users at 1.2 million per month and 600,000 per day.
  - nottorp 5y ago
    Maybe but I think the hardware survey is opt in? I get asked occasionally if i want to be counted. So less than that.
arepublicadoceu 5y ago
I was always dismissive of people complaining about Linux as I’ve been using it for the last 15 years without issue. But then I got an nvidia optimus laptop as a gift recently and I just gave up using Linux on this machine. 1. Suspend on lid close simply didn’t work. I’ve tried all kernels I could get my hands on. I resorted to remapping the bogus key that the lid close was sending to suspend. 2. My laptop have the hdmi output wired on the dGPU. So I have to live with a world of pain that is mixed DPIs on Linux where only wayland have proper support. 3. Wayland got some nvidia love on 477 drivers but, in my test, it was a big mess. So yes, I stopped dismissing people complaining about Linux and went back to windows on this laptop. I assume that nvidia and high DPIs are a common enough usecase in 2021 that I would not recommend anyone to go through this experience.
seltzered_ 5y ago
> "While many believe the Steam Survey is inaccurate or biased (or just buggy towards prompting Linux users to participate in the survey)" Are there other, possibly better, metrics used to track desktop linux adoption?
helharpr 5y ago
It would be great if Linux will start to cater games natively on their OS. The number shows that it is slowly increasing; I hope that the steam deck will not flop and will surely deliver its results.
mastrsushi 5y ago
……………yay…………….
gigel82 5y ago
We depend on Steam too much for this information, we need better (more verifiable) metrics given that Steam has a direct commercial incentive to promote Linux gaming. I'm not saying they're biased or futzing the data (have no reason not to trust Valve yet), but it would be really nice to have an independent source for this (especially moving forward).
foxyv 5y ago
I've started playing a lot on Linux because it is the only place I can play some of my games. A lot of old 32-bit games are starting to become unplayable on Windows 10 but are perfectly fine on Proton or Wine. Proton has been the best thing ever for me. I no longer have to keep two versions of Steam on my laptop (Windows and Linux) On the other hand. There is rarely a moment I play any non-linux native game on Proton that I don't have to fiddle with something. Also a lot just end up not working. It's gotten a lot better recently, but stuff like controllers sometimes end up not working at all and needing a hack to work.
daveungerer 5y ago
I switched from Mac to Linux more than 3 years ago, and I've been gaming on Linux for 2 years. I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but I got back into gaming just because I wanted to see how far Linux gaming had come. I was pleasantly surprised. I've played quite a few native games, but also some running on Proton. I was amazed when Doom (2016) ran with excellent performance. The Witcher 3 is another one with great support. I only cracked and started dual booting Windows when I couldn't get Doom Eternal running properly. It felt like such a betrayal! But since then I've decided to be more pragmatic about things. I still prefer running things on Linux where possible, and I sometimes buy native Linux games even if I don't know when I'll get around to playing them. There are definitely some rough edges, but I think there's a future for Linux gaming. I think it's mostly due to Valve, which is why I get all my games from Steam.
Flott 5y ago
The Windows 11 announcement is what made me transition to Ubuntu in the last few weeks. So far, I made the transition on 4 out of 5 of my windows PC. It's far from smooth enough to become mainstream (with ubuntu at least.) A few example: Steam wouldn't launch on my PC with an Nvidia card. (At to install some x86 package to make it work). File sharing just didn't work at all without manually edit the smb.conf file. Ubuntu randomly ignore my router DNS settings. All my self-hosted stuff requiring local DNS randomly stops working unless I force ubuntu to use my own DNS server. Some games just don't work on any of my PCs (even if they are gold/platinum in protondb). And many more stuff that works out of the box with windows. Overall, despite the issues, the experience is still positive and i'm not going back.
MR4D 5y ago
How long before we see “Steam Linux”?
- detaro 5y ago
  -7 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS
  - MR4D 5y ago
    Okay - I should have been more specific. Can I run regular KDE or gnome apps (a such as gimp), or perhaps something like VSCode on it? I thought that it only ran the steam app as opposed to a real desktop? (pardon my ignorance here - I’m vaguely aware of SteamOS, but never tried it)
    - detaro 5y ago
      from Wikipedia: > for example, there is no file manager or image viewer installed by default. Users can, however, access the GNOME desktop environment and perform tasks such as installing other software It's "just" Debian with some default configuration and extras (and version 3 will replace Debian with Arch)
- MR4D 5y ago
  I’m thinking Ubuntu could do it as “Ubuntu for Gamers”. It would probably go a long way to getting a common set of infrastructure for developers to build on.
zzo38computer 5y ago
Some problems mentioned on the comments on here, although I can think of other problems too than only the ones mentioned. So, I can think of another possible solution to these and many other problems (although it has limitations, but there always will be): Don't design your game for Windows or Linux; write it for Famicom or Game Boy Advance or whatever (or design your own open source VM if you must, and use that). Emulators are available for many computer systems (including the less common ones), and will do many things for you automatically too that you will not have to deal with by yourself, such as rebinding controls, zoom levels, etc. They will then also the user will not have to worry about malware as much, either.

401 points by bemmu 5y ago

Taek 5y ago

I've been gaming on linux for almost a year now and I've had no issues at all. I've mainly been playing popular titles but Proton makes every game feel like it's a linux native game.

tapland 5y ago
And sometimes better (like Classic Wow). I only ran into issues with Rust(which is getting support) and pubg because of anti-cheat and the fivem mods for gta5 (something about lack of support for shared resources). But it's working so well and so much less weird stuff going on compared to windows and osx.
sen 5y ago
Regretfully most racing sims (and any other sims that use peripherals) are still a huge pain to get going, even with Proton. At most you can get the actual game "running" (with performance sacrifices over Windows), but you still won't get things like Force Feedback, and half your peripherals features probably won't work (or will work intermittently for no reason). I'd love nothing more than to never use Windows again, and I use Linux for 90% of my daily use, but if I have to have Windows still installed for any major games at all then it's just easier to keep using Windows for all gaming, where gaming really does "just work", every time.
- lnxg33k1 5y ago
  i use g29 with force feedback on dirt2.0 and f1 2020 without issues, the module is built in the maintree kernel
- hexa22 5y ago
  Force feedback worked fine on project cars for me
- skohan 5y ago
  "running" (with performance sacrifices over Windows) Has this been an issue for you? Since switching to primarily Linux/Proton for gaming, I've been amazed at how little performance penalty I have seen.
- ubercow13 5y ago
  I wonder how those force feedback wheels from different manufacturers all work on Windows, is there any kind of standardised API for that stuff? I had a brief look at sim racing peripherals on Windows and even there it seemed like each game you wanted to play had to support your specific model of wheel.

yosito 5y ago

I'm not a gamer, but annecdotally, the pandemic has given me enough screentime that I've finally been able to switch to Linux as my primary OS. I wonder how many others are in the same boat.

vardump 5y ago

Nowadays OS matters pretty little. Personally, on some level, I don't even notice difference working macOS, Linux and Windows. Other than platform specific development work, it doesn't really matter in the big picture. Other than that, only Linux allows me true visibility to its innards. Fast to fix almost any issues, should they happen. And I say this as someone who has for example no problem debugging Windows kernel remotely. Or reverse engineering using Ghidra etc.

quijoteuniv 5y ago
I think it matters a lot, specially on machines that are not that new, with modest resources
- The_rationalist 5y ago
  Or especially in machines that are new, my new aero 4k laptop is awfully supported, even on arch linux/manjaro
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  Maybe in developing countries this matters more, but RAM and SSD upgrades for older hardware are surprisingly affordable these days.
xxs 5y ago
Windows has no epoll(), but of course that doesn't matter for games.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  Windows has completion ports (IOCP), which are much better. At least finally Linux is also getting completion based IO with io_uring.
  - yxhuvud 5y ago
    Seems windows is getting ring buffers based io too, eventually: https://windows-internals.com/i-o-rings-when-one-i-o-operation-is-not-enough/ https://windows-internals.com/i-o-rings-when-one-i-o-operati... Not identical to io_uring, but close enough that porting between them will probably be quite simple.

dtx1 5y ago

I'm so thankful that Valve is embracing Linux. They obviously have commercial interests behind it and fear the Windows Store [1] and vendor lock-in by Microsoft, but they have made gaming on linux better, even for non-steam games and embraced the open source ideals of linux, at least for their work on steam os and proton. I'm happy I don't have to have any windows systems for gaming anymore and I pretty much have valve to thank for that (and all the other great people working on wine, lutris and co of course) [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18996377

mhitza 5y ago

Definitely the number is gonna increase dramatically next year with the Steam deck. Unless it's going to fail in some major way.

Cycl0ps 5y ago
It's Valve hardware, so more likely than not it'll flop and you can pick one up for $50 on the 2022 winter sale. Even then it might be relevant for enough weeks to make devs consider designing for native Linux and be in too deep to back out. Speaking as someone with a steam link and controller floating around their house.
- mhitza 5y ago
  I wouldn't mind it flopping an having the option to get it for 50 buckaroos :). But that's highly unlikely. Even if it fails as a portable gaming platform the hardware sounds very decent and I wouldn't expect them to have Apple level margins on those. I've skipped the link/steam machine because "livingroom entertainment" isn't my thing, but I was pleased with the quality of the Steam controller. Although I would have liked them to be bold with the design and keep just the original prototype (without thumb stick/face buttons) (wouldn't have minded a novelty controller that works well with just a few games).
toastal 5y ago
The odd thing to me is how immediately people jumped to "you can install Windows on it", like one would need to. The other thing that was funny is people saying "with Windows, you can run emulators", as if Linux couldn't already do that and with better framerates.
- rashil2000 5y ago
  I have used the popular open source NDS emulator - Citra, and it runs like 15 times faster on Windows compared to Ubuntu (NVidia GPU).
  - 5y ago

foxhill 5y ago

i’ve been using linux as my daily driver for just over a year. steam on linux has been great, and proton (wine) has been indispensable. big title games i’ve played with _no_ issues at all: * Cyberpunk 2077 (ok that has issues, but it has the same issues for windows users..) * Dying Light * Titanfall * The Division along with _many_ other indie/small games. honestly the only thing left is titles that include invasive anti-cheat. when that day comes, i don’t know if most of my friends will have any reason to remain on windows. and who could blame them? finally, they won’t need to deal with a company that collects data from them without their knowledge, runs ads in their taskbar, demands they have a useless microsoft account, restarts their machine on a whim for updates, etc. i hate that i’m going to say this out loud, but could 2022 really be the year of linux on the des- why does it feel so wrong to say that? :)

aquir 5y ago
what distro? pop_OS?
- OJFord 5y ago
  Why would it matter?
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    Because if you have laptops with Nvidia Optimus, distros like pop_os make your life much easier since nvidia doesn't give two shits about Optimus on linux, hence the famous "nvidia, f*ck you!" quote from Linus Torvalds. Or if you have a brand new laptop with the latest Ryzen CPUs and the latest Radeon 6800M GPU with switchable graphics then you absolutely need a distro with the latest kernel to have a good experience on this new hardware.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      Maybe I underestimate how difficult some distros make it to have some semblance of control, but my model of Linux is that distros are nothing more than bundles of packages as a starting point from which you can add or remove whatever you want. So I asked why it matters if its 'pop_OS' or not since if that happens to bundle some driver, or Steam, or whatever, I assume I can continue not using 'pop_OS' and still install whatever it is if I want? It just seems like an irrelevant detail, (and potentially not even a valid one? the more you do subsequently the less it 'is' that distro) outside of saying 'everything worked out of the box, didn't have to install a thing', which may or may not have been true, but wasn't what was claimed.

qart 5y ago

What is the point of these surveys when we know how many "level farming" operations[1] are going on in China, etc.? Casual CSGO has become unusable these days. Of course, apart from farming operations, cheaters come from across the world. And AFAIK, most cheats software is available only for Windows. Valve's esports-grade games like CSGO, and DOTA2 are free. There is no penalty for getting banned in such a context. It is easy for the "farmer" or cheater to create a new account, and start playing again. I would be more interested in knowing what percent of paying customers run whatever OS. This info would be useful to new game developers too. [1] I won't post links because my comment might get auto-flagged as spam, but interested readers can find them easily by searching for something like "Buy CSGO High Tier Accounts".

thegeomaster 5y ago
CSGO is free but has recently cut off drops for free users and grinding-based path to Prime accounts, leaving little incentive for farming as you mentioned.
sascha_sl 5y ago
The survey has always been opt-in continuous collection. I see no reason why bots would opt-in. > Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. First paragraph on https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- qart 5y ago
  Level farmers and cheaters are not bots. While level farmers may be likely to ignore surveys, because it would waste their time, cheaters don't have that factor.
Flow 5y ago
The bots that plague TF2 runs on Linux. No VAC on Linux either so I suppose when they get VACd it’s a manual thing from Valve’s side.

deltasixeight 5y ago

Just to be fair and balanced I'm a hardcore linux user and gamer and I've tried gaming on linux and I've hit many issues. 365 games on steam and while some windows games work I've hit probably just about every possible issue you can hit with other games. Graphical artifacts, freezing, stuttering, and even full OS reboots. Sometimes I read this thread and scratch my head. I get enthusiasm for FOSS, but enthusiasm to the point of delusion? Honestly, Linux is not up to par with windows in terms of running games that are basically designed for windows. Thus the experience compared to windows for these things is definitively inferior.

chevill 5y ago
I've had a similar experience. I would love to stop using Windows but I have found that ProtonDB wildly exagerrates the compatibility of games. I had game breaking issues with 50% or more of "gold" rated titles and even some with a "platinum" rating.
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  ProtonDB is driven by reports/feedback from individual users, right? Did you submit your experience so that the ratings are more accurate?
  - boopmaster 5y ago
    To draw a parallel: message boards are 99% observation and 1% participation. There’s no need to goad your fellow HN readers.
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    ProtonDB tells you that someone, somewhere at some point managed to get it working. It doesn't directly help you, but knowing it can be done can be an incentive to experiment instead of giving up.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  That's unfortunately not unexpected. "Linux Desktop" is a ludicrously diverse not-platform for which Valve already has to bring its own runtime of basic libraries along just to ensure some minimum level of compatibility even for native Linux games.

msravi 5y ago

I made Linux Mint the primary OS on my son's first laptop some 3-years ago when he was around 12, and he's taken to it like a fish to water. He's even taken to using regolith as his (tiling) window manager now, and prefers to use vim for programming (python/julia/c) rather than any IDE. Also have Mint installed on my mom's laptop - she only uses the browser and is ok with it - she has no idea of what an OS even is. IMO, the only thing preventing Linux's more widespread adoption is the reputation that it's only meant for developers, and OEMs not providing an option to have it pre-installed.

evolve2k 5y ago
I did the same for my kids and now my son is 19 and is now quite the Linux pro and advocate. He corrects me “I use Arch btw”.
Loughla 5y ago
Any time I have a family member who asks me to 'fix a problem' with their machine, my first step is to copy all important files, and then evaluate their use of the machine. 99.9% of the time, they use it for e-mail, internet browsing, and maybe home banking. I put mint on everyone's machines and don't look back. It's just so stupid easy, and has drastically reduced the 'tech calls' I receive. At this point, I have no idea what's holding linux back. Seriously, mint is so user friendly that it's sort of confusing why people don't use it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- iFreilicht 5y ago
  Marketing and pre-installation on devices. Seriously ChromeOS and chromebooks have been gaining huge marketshare, Linux could've been that if there was any player interested and wealthy enough to put on a similar campaign to what google did.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
That's a great idea. It may be too late for me but my sons will be ninja developers who use vim like pros, instead of that Microsoft electron behemoth.

deleted 5y ago

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sascha_sl 5y ago

I wonder how Epic feels about this recent surge and the massive interest in the Steam Deck, a device shipping Arch Linux of all things stock. They have dropped support for Linux pretty hard for anything but Unreal as a build target itself, even with things they acquired. Might have been the wrong gamble.

grumbel 5y ago
Sweeney seems to be pretty happy with it: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1415755678849900546 https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/141575567884990054...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

unixhero 5y ago

I buy games and purely use Linux and Steam for this purpose. It works perfectly, including AAA titles! Love from here to the Proton team at Steam. Even Penguins want to have fun.

roody15 5y ago

I am in the 1 percent !

bantunes 5y ago

I hope Linux with this Proton compatibility layer doesn't go the way of OS/2 of being so easy to run Windows games that nobody writes Linux ports anymore and as a consequence the performance and overall experience is never as good.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Honestly I'd argue the opposite: that because Linux Desktop is such a fragmented mess of a non-platform, "native" ports are likely to work at least as badly if not worse than those running on a compatibility layer. There's even some anecdotal evidence that this is the case with games that do have native ports and running the Windows version in proton being a better experience.
- welterde 5y ago
  The compatibility layer for the linux native games is the steam-runtime though. So fragmentation of the distributions matters to a much lesser degree already.
acomjean 5y ago
For me it had the effect of me being able to run Linux at home almost exclusively. and to be able to game occasionally with friends. Tabletop simulator/ teriforming mars/ lords of water deep and a bunch of other games just work. Getting that Linux percentage up should help the platform. I don’t want to go use my older machine and it’s non Linux. So I seek out desktop applications to drive Linux use up.
the_biot 5y ago
I don't see why it wouldn't have that effect. The obvious path to follow for gaming companies is write for windows and make sure it runs fine under proton.
q3k 5y ago
It doesn't help that the Linux ecosystem makes it really difficult to build truly portable truly native binaries. Static builds? Well, that will work... But wait, you want OpenGL or Vulkan? You'll need a dynamic linker to load system .so's, as that's the standard API available to interact with these APIs on Linux. Want to load dynamic libraries? Well, you'll need to ship a dynamic ELF [1]. Shipping a dynamic ELF with glibc now? Hope you don't intend to run on NixOS or Alpine or any distribution that has an old glibc. Maybe also ship ld-linux.so, all of /lib you depend on and a wrapper shellscript that sequences startup accordingly via that ld-linux.so. That will work, but you still need to load the system OpenGL or Vulkan .so's. Have fun implementing that to work well on every distribution! Remember to respect terms of GPL/LGPL software you now ship. Oh, and I hope you don't use Qt. Maybe you want to use flatpak? Well, better explain to your users that they need to install and configure it, and make sure whatever proprietary Nvidia drivers they have are also properly flatpak'd. What about the alternatives, something like AppImage/Snap? Those just don't work on Alpine and other non-glibc distributions. Whoops. Pick an audio API. Pulseaudio? Some people don't run it. ALSA? Good luck, some people run Pulseaudio with ALSA emulation disabled. OSS? Dead, unless someone runs padsp. Pray your users don't run JACK. You'll probably end up on OpenAL, which is now proprietary and/or has an LGPL fork (remember you now have to let users re-link against any other version of OpenAL!). I sometimes make games and other small interactive demos. I run Linux, and want to send builds to friends also running Linux. The easiest way to distribute these is to build and ship a .exe on a Windows build host and get my friends to run it on Wine, that just works everywhere out of the box. And the .exe's end up smaller and launch faster, too! [1] - Or go for hacks like https://github.com/pfalcon/foreign-dlopen https://github.com/pfalcon/foreign-dlopen

pjmlp 5y ago

Now lets join as we prepare for the 2% celebration, about 2041.

unilynx 5y ago

What are the odds of Proton helping to improve Mac gaming? Will those improvements to Wine trickle through to the Mac eventually or they too linux-specific ? (I'm not that up-to-date with all the graphics APIs they all have nowadays, and I assume that's a factor)

re-actor 5y ago
Proton's big tech under the hood is DXVK which translates DirectX calls to Vulkan. If MacOS were to add Vulkan support it probably could benefit from Proton. But Apple doesn't seem to care about Vulkan or modern graphics APIs in general.
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
> Proton does not work natively on macOS, end of story. macOS is missing several APIs to make this support viable: > eventfd syscall is Linux-specific, without good alternative on macOS > Apple does not support Vulkan, which is needed for DXVK > Apple deprecated OpenGL support, which is needed for WineD3D > macOS is missing support for Python 3 OOTB https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/gt3fat/proton_for_mac/fs9526e https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/gt3fat/proton...

danieldevries 5y ago

My exp with linux gaming is that for sim racing its not possible. To my surprise the logitech wheel did not work, and thus forced me to play Assetto Corsa on Windows.

Zhyl 5y ago

A headline in Linux gaming circles that hasn't hit the wider circuit yet (probably because it hasn't actually been delivered yet) is that Valve are working with Battleye and EAC to get anti-cheat working on Proton for the release of the steam deck. If this happens it will be, without exaggeration, the greatest thing to ever happen to Linux gaming. I'm not expecting a massive increase overnight, but it should mean that the marketshare will increase more likely than it will decrease.

gpderetta 5y ago
My brother wanted to play CoD Warzone with me and of course it doesn't work with Proton. After attempting and failing to dual boot into Windows (how hard could it be to create a bootable Windows installation usb key?), yesterday I decided to try vfio. It actually was quite straightforward and way simpler than one would expect from the very intimidating archlinux wiki page. I spent more time getting a nice grub vfio menu entry than actually setting up the VM. Of course now I expect I'll be eventually banned for running under a VM. Proton support for anti-cheats can't come soon enough.
- trulyrandom 5y ago
  I don't think Activision bans VM players. I've been playing Warzone in a VM since it was released without issues.
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    That's what I have been reading online. Good to have another data point, thanks.
  - carlhjerpe 5y ago
    I've played overwatch for years in a VM now, no ban here
- thejosh 5y ago
  vfio works great for games (and general "Oh cr*, I need this random Windows only thingy), and the added bonus is if you install to another nvme drive, you can actually dualboot if you ever wanted to do that :-).

jl6 5y ago

Anecdata: I finally bought GTA V on Steam Linux now that protondb reports flawless single player operation (which I’m happy to report is accurate). It allegedly runs 20% slower than on Windows, but because I’m living 8 years in the future, relative to its release date, I now have a PC powerful enough that it can run at 60fps and max settings regardless of that 20% hit. Fortunately I have no interest in multiplayer.

bumbada 5y ago

I only use Mac and Linux computers. I don't play games but became interested in VR, specially for programming 3D worlds . Valve basically forced me to install Windows in order to use vive headsets because the linux versions were problematic. BTW, android uses the Linux kernel, so I consider this 1% highly suspicious.

yyyk 5y ago

My experience is that many times the (emulated) Windows version runs better than the 'native' Linux version, which can have not-so-subtle bugs or not run at all. This especially happens for older games which haven't been receiving regular updates. Apparently Windows userland bitrots much less.

rbanffy 5y ago

Interestingly, Linux is the dominant gaming platform. It's just that it's called Android.

Siira 5y ago
Android is not exactly open, and Google Play Services is not FOSS. Its games are also mostly addictive micro-transaction-ridden trash.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  The parts that aren't open source are the google-specific pieces. Amazon has a thriving ecosystem (of mostly addictive micro-transaction-ridden trash) on top of their FireOS, which is mostly Android with the Google parts replaced with Amazon parts. Still, Blackberry managed to make it easy to repackage Android (2.x) software to run on their QNX-based OS and there have been multiple demonstrations of Android software running on Linux with a relatively thin API layer. There's at least one commercial, IIRC, tool that does that for Windows.
- nottorp 5y ago
  > Its games are also mostly addictive micro-transaction-ridden trash. Yeah, I'm not sure we should call the mobile crap "games".
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Any system with a low barrier to entry will be flooded by games that are cheap to develop and quickly recover the investment. There are good games, but the platform is generally much less capable than either a desktop PC with a beefy GPU or a console.
    - nottorp 5y ago
      Eh, don't blame the platform's power for IAPs.
dkdbejwi383 5y ago

ecocentrik 5y ago

Steam has defiantly been putting in the work promoting Linux based developers and developing Proton (their wine package). Over the last year I've played a half dozen AAA games on Linux through steam, all of them working near perfectly. I'm surprised the Linux market share isn't higher than 1%, giving the resources they seem to be dedicating to Linux.

sudhirj 5y ago
They're now introducing Linux based hardware, which looks set to be super-popular, called the Steam Deck. So they're definitely using the Linux work in their own products. That should give the numbers a boost.
- ecocentrik 5y ago
  Steam Deck looks like a Wii form-factor device but they had already been collaborating with Alienware and others on the release of console style devices for a few years running SteamOS (based on debian).

jokethrowaway 5y ago

I just switched from dual booting Mac / Windows to Linux and thanks to proton I can play anything I want to play without dual booting. On Wayland none the less! The year of the Linux desktop! \s

nottorp 5y ago

Anyone knows if you can get absolute values for that 1%? Couldn't find them on the steam survey page and I'm curious how many millions of PCs is 1%.

mminer237 5y ago
Steam has about 120 million monthly active players, with about half playing on a given day: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/2961646623386540827 https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/d... Assuming Linux players are representative, that puts the number of Linux users at 1.2 million per month and 600,000 per day.
- nottorp 5y ago
  Maybe but I think the hardware survey is opt in? I get asked occasionally if i want to be counted. So less than that.

arepublicadoceu 5y ago

I was always dismissive of people complaining about Linux as I’ve been using it for the last 15 years without issue. But then I got an nvidia optimus laptop as a gift recently and I just gave up using Linux on this machine. 1. Suspend on lid close simply didn’t work. I’ve tried all kernels I could get my hands on. I resorted to remapping the bogus key that the lid close was sending to suspend. 2. My laptop have the hdmi output wired on the dGPU. So I have to live with a world of pain that is mixed DPIs on Linux where only wayland have proper support. 3. Wayland got some nvidia love on 477 drivers but, in my test, it was a big mess. So yes, I stopped dismissing people complaining about Linux and went back to windows on this laptop. I assume that nvidia and high DPIs are a common enough usecase in 2021 that I would not recommend anyone to go through this experience.

seltzered_ 5y ago

> "While many believe the Steam Survey is inaccurate or biased (or just buggy towards prompting Linux users to participate in the survey)" Are there other, possibly better, metrics used to track desktop linux adoption?

helharpr 5y ago

It would be great if Linux will start to cater games natively on their OS. The number shows that it is slowly increasing; I hope that the steam deck will not flop and will surely deliver its results.

mastrsushi 5y ago

……………yay…………….

gigel82 5y ago

We depend on Steam too much for this information, we need better (more verifiable) metrics given that Steam has a direct commercial incentive to promote Linux gaming. I'm not saying they're biased or futzing the data (have no reason not to trust Valve yet), but it would be really nice to have an independent source for this (especially moving forward).

foxyv 5y ago

I've started playing a lot on Linux because it is the only place I can play some of my games. A lot of old 32-bit games are starting to become unplayable on Windows 10 but are perfectly fine on Proton or Wine. Proton has been the best thing ever for me. I no longer have to keep two versions of Steam on my laptop (Windows and Linux) On the other hand. There is rarely a moment I play any non-linux native game on Proton that I don't have to fiddle with something. Also a lot just end up not working. It's gotten a lot better recently, but stuff like controllers sometimes end up not working at all and needing a hack to work.

daveungerer 5y ago

I switched from Mac to Linux more than 3 years ago, and I've been gaming on Linux for 2 years. I'm far from a hardcore gamer, but I got back into gaming just because I wanted to see how far Linux gaming had come. I was pleasantly surprised. I've played quite a few native games, but also some running on Proton. I was amazed when Doom (2016) ran with excellent performance. The Witcher 3 is another one with great support. I only cracked and started dual booting Windows when I couldn't get Doom Eternal running properly. It felt like such a betrayal! But since then I've decided to be more pragmatic about things. I still prefer running things on Linux where possible, and I sometimes buy native Linux games even if I don't know when I'll get around to playing them. There are definitely some rough edges, but I think there's a future for Linux gaming. I think it's mostly due to Valve, which is why I get all my games from Steam.

Flott 5y ago

The Windows 11 announcement is what made me transition to Ubuntu in the last few weeks. So far, I made the transition on 4 out of 5 of my windows PC. It's far from smooth enough to become mainstream (with ubuntu at least.) A few example: Steam wouldn't launch on my PC with an Nvidia card. (At to install some x86 package to make it work). File sharing just didn't work at all without manually edit the smb.conf file. Ubuntu randomly ignore my router DNS settings. All my self-hosted stuff requiring local DNS randomly stops working unless I force ubuntu to use my own DNS server. Some games just don't work on any of my PCs (even if they are gold/platinum in protondb). And many more stuff that works out of the box with windows. Overall, despite the issues, the experience is still positive and i'm not going back.

MR4D 5y ago

How long before we see “Steam Linux”?

detaro 5y ago
-7 years? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS
- MR4D 5y ago
  Okay - I should have been more specific. Can I run regular KDE or gnome apps (a such as gimp), or perhaps something like VSCode on it? I thought that it only ran the steam app as opposed to a real desktop? (pardon my ignorance here - I’m vaguely aware of SteamOS, but never tried it)
  - detaro 5y ago
    from Wikipedia: > for example, there is no file manager or image viewer installed by default. Users can, however, access the GNOME desktop environment and perform tasks such as installing other software It's "just" Debian with some default configuration and extras (and version 3 will replace Debian with Arch)
MR4D 5y ago
I’m thinking Ubuntu could do it as “Ubuntu for Gamers”. It would probably go a long way to getting a common set of infrastructure for developers to build on.

zzo38computer 5y ago

Some problems mentioned on the comments on here, although I can think of other problems too than only the ones mentioned. So, I can think of another possible solution to these and many other problems (although it has limitations, but there always will be): Don't design your game for Windows or Linux; write it for Famicom or Game Boy Advance or whatever (or design your own open source VM if you must, and use that). Emulators are available for many computer systems (including the less common ones), and will do many things for you automatically too that you will not have to deal with by yourself, such as rebinding controls, zoom levels, etc. They will then also the user will not have to worry about malware as much, either.