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Linux interop is maturing fast thanks to a games console

141 points by zem 3y ago

dininski 3y ago
It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing their gpu kernel modules, I'd say exciting times are up ahead :)
- zem 3y ago
  just to be pedantic, the valve devs are absolutely open source contributors, they just happen to be paid to do it.
  - mcv 3y ago
    It's great that Valve is willing to pay them for it. It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. As someone who has just switched to Linux gaming, I've got to say it's working great. Maybe it's slightly less stable, but not by much, and performance is excellent.
    - zem 3y ago
      it was the opposite for me, I was tempted into getting the steam deck because it seemed like a fun device and an exciting new frontier for linux, and it's gotten me into gaming in a way I haven't been since college.
      - reuben364 3y ago
        When I got my SteamDeck, I thought I was going to do a lot more tinkering than I did gaming. I planned on getting NixOS working on it. I ended up just playing games and having fun just using the stock install.
      - stavros 3y ago
        I'm tempted to get one, but it's going to be sitting on a shelf, along with my Oculus Quest. Gaming is a thing that sounds nice in principle, but I rarely can get into it in practice.
        zem 3y ago
        i was in the same boat - i wanted to enjoy games again, especially indie games, but i was mostly just buying them during steam sales and then never playing them. i bought the steam deck in order to see if it would be a more fun gaming experience than my laptop, and if not at least i'd have a fun linux device to tinker with. but it absolutely did get me back into playing (maybe an hour or so a day) and i've been enjoying it a lot.
        stavros 3y ago
        Hmm, that's very interesting. I'm exactly the same as you, I really like indie games but it's always "meh, I'd rather do something else". Maybe I'll borrow a friend's Deck for a weekend to try it, thanks!
    - close04 3y ago
      > It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary I think it's great that someone invests. That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work. It's just a normal part of work/life where the alternative would be to do it for free, out of passion. But you also have to make a living.
      - zem 3y ago
        fully agree! I'm biased because I also work for pay on open source products but I think it's a great "rising tide lifts all boats" model of software development.
      - mcv 3y ago
        > That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work. Well, that's also sad. I just wanted to say it would have been nice if the community would have been able to get this working more easily. But clearly it's too much work to do it without some dedicated fulltimers.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. People getting paid is a good thing.
      - mcv 3y ago
        But only because it is necessary. It would be better if we could be independent from commercial considerations.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        I don't know what that means. It would be better if everything were free?
        mcv 3y ago
        Well, yes. But what I mean is that it would have been nice if hobbyists were able to accomplish this without needing the help from a commercial entity. I'm a bit at a loss why some people here prefer commercialised open source over community-driven open source. I mean, I'll take it, and Valve did an amazing job, but there have been plenty of attempts to make this work before Valve stepped in, and it just didn't work that well back then, and it would have been nice if we didn't have to rely on Valve for this.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        This sounds the same as you wanting other people to do things for free. I don't know about nice, but I certainly wouldn't lament people being paid to do something.
        mcv 3y ago
        You're missing my point. The issue isn't money, it's dependency. Using Steam and the whole Valve-supported infrastructure still doesn't cost me anything. But what if Valve decides the Steam Deck isn't commercially viable for them?
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      That's how reality works. In order to do something, resources must be invested. In order for resources to be invested, people must perceive value in the thing they are investing in. In order to do something big, many people must invest many resources, and they would only do so if they all see great value in the thing. In order to have resources to invest, all of the people must have excess resources that they have generated from previous endeavors. Remember, capitalism is merely the most efficient system we have for assigning limited resources across society.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - em-bee 3y ago
      It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary by now the linux ecosystem has received to much commercial investment to separate out what is community effort and what is not, but i believe that most of the polish that went into linux desktop applications and interfaces have some commercial investment in them. the problem is that for most volunteers 90% of usability is good enough. if it works for me, my work is done. on the other hand the imperfect is almost necessary to attract contributors. a perfectly working application is more likely to attract users but less contributors. and as soon as contributors work on something it becomes imperfect again. this is not to say that contributors mess things up, on the contrary, but most do just enough work to make it work for them, leaving the work to polish it up for other users to someone else. and i think that is perfectly fine. contributors should not be expected to do work that is of no benefit for themselves. the benefit of a polished application is almost always for non-contributing end users, which in turn is almost always a commercial interest.
      - mcv 3y ago
        That's absolutely true. Valve has added significant value and I love them for it. And the community is still doing great work tuning configurations for each game. One particularly great thing about Valve's support is that it benefits all games, and not just those on Steam. It's absolutely a great example of how open source helps everybody.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  It's interesting to see Apple basically imitating this with their porting toolkit. The net result is game developers being presented with two growing ecosystems for the same game simply by ensuring they stay compatible with both. With their VR stuff coming out soon, there could be a big push to get some games going there. Either way, if you are a game developer, ensuring the games work fine via proton and Apple's porting kit should be a no-brainer. Basically, it should just work mostly without too much effort. All you need to do is a bit of Q&A and maybe avoiding to use some stuff that is problematic or coming up with some workarounds for those things. Neither ecosystem is very big. But at the same time, growing your market by a few percent is always nice. It's big enough that not supporting that is becoming an odd choice to make. I've been using Steam on my Manjaro laptop for some casual gaming. The setup was pretty easy and I'm able to run most of my steam library. I'm not much of a gamer but I've bought some things over the years. And most of those things stopped working on macs. My guess is that Valve is starting to see a lot of Linux users with steam accounts that don't own a Steam Deck. It wouldn't surprise me if that's actually most of their Linux users. As for OSS, Wine is basically very successful thanks to efforts like this. Most successful OSS projects need active users and, like it or not, the private sector tends to be by far the largest stakeholder in these projects. Wine as a hobby project was basically a bit of a niche thing. They got a lot of amazing stuff done of course. But it was kind of a bit of a pain to set it up and use it and progress was slow. Also support for a lot of games was a bit lacking and very dependent on the community chasing that. Steam makes this super easy and they made huge progress with getting a lot of games working. More importantly, they are big enough that game developers themselves now care about compatibility. And that's of course more commercial users.
  - Adverblessly 3y ago
    > My guess is that Valve is starting to see a lot of Linux users with steam accounts that don't own a Steam Deck. You don't have to guess, just look at the steam hardware survey - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=linux https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=linux - 44.18% of Linux is SteamOS Holo (a.k.a. Steam Deck), while overall Linux is 1.82%. Since historically Linux usage hovered around 1%, I'm guessing that the Steam Deck by itself didn't drive any additional users to Desktop Linux (or at least not in huge amounts), though the 1% by itself is probably driven by Valve's efforts to improve Linux support.
- maccard 3y ago
  > The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. I don't think that assumption has been validated, and I don't see that from this article. The premise of this article isn't that the steam deck is taking market share, it's that it's increasing compatibility of games on linux. More to the point, the steamdeck hasn't made a dent in the desktop market, see [0] it's a fraction of a percentage of _gamers_ never mind any other use cases. Don't read this as me saying this isn't progress, but we're still a far cry (pun intended) from a dent. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
  - ajvs 3y ago
    Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics. That's a decent milestone, and it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes.
    - maccard 3y ago
      > Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics. Linux is more popular than OSX _on steam_ according to those statistics. > it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes. I think you're wrong here. Take a look at the wayback machine [0] for a history of this data. There was absolutely 0 growth in linux use over the past decade until last year. The thing that changed wasn't enshittifaction, it was a piece of hardware that provided a good user experience. It's nothing to do with windows/mac getting worse or less privacy focused, it's valve providing a smooth usable product that _happens_ to run linux. I'm curious if Proton's success causes a decrease in windows users and an increase in other distros, but right now that's not what we're seeing. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://store.st...
- arp242 3y ago
  > Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. Proton is basically just Wine, right? Aside from that CodeWeavers has been doing commercial Wine development for a long time. Almost all of Wine already existed before Valve got involved. Yes, they help out too, and that's great, but people are hugely over-crediting Valve (and here, hugely under-crediting all those open source contributors, who did the overwhelming majority of the work).
  - 4death4 3y ago
    According to the article, Steam OS also uses two Direct 3D to Vulkan translation libraries. That’s obviously a big part of running a game.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Neither are written by Valve.
      - 4death4 3y ago
        Valve is a contributor, so that’s not an entirely true statement. And I was replying to your original statement that “Proton is just wine”, which again, is not true.
        arp242 3y ago
        I never said "Proton is just wine". I said "Proton is basically just Wine". Leaving out that qualifier makes a big difference.
        4death4 3y ago
        Basically means: “in the most essential respects; fundamentally.” So in this case, no, omitting the word basically makes no meaningful change to the meaning of your sentence.
  - 3y ago
- em-bee 3y ago
  the interesting thing for me is that my assumption was that linux gaming would not pick up until the desktop experience of installing and using games would improve, but i somehow missed that creating a separate "game desktop" would do the trick. i didn't consider before that it absolutely makes sense to keep games in their own environment which does make the task a bit easier. but this also validates another assumption of mine, that it would take funding probably driven by commercial interest (and here i was thinking of companies like redhat) to fix this.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  By "emulating" Win32 and DirectX, in detriment of native Linux features.
lproven 3y ago
Thanks for posting a link to my story. :-)
- zem 3y ago
  it was a good article :) plus I've been a register fan since the slashdot days, I like y'all's style!
  - lproven 3y ago
    That is great to hear. :-) Me too, FWIW. I have been freelancing for them since 2009 but I've only been on staff for just under a couple of years. It's a fun, if challenging, job. P.S. is your screen-name mattress-related, at all?
    - zem 3y ago
      > P.S. is your screen-name mattress-related, at all? it is indeed :) i've been using hitchhiker's guide-derived usernames ever since i got on the net.
- elkos 3y ago
  Thanks for writing insightful stuff in an engaging way then.
  - lproven 3y ago
    Oh great! I am glad you enjoyed it. :-)
0dayz 3y ago
It's interesting how this is just like how when Linux started being used in super computers we saw a similar creeping feature improvement for everyone else. I think that will always be one of the strongest points of Linux, the variety of different areas improvements can come from.
tru1ock 3y ago
I bought a modest gaming rig in 2016 and used systemd/loginctl to convert it into a multiseat setup. One seat for myself and one for the rest of the family. The amount of value I got so far from this setup is unbelievable. Part of that is proton taking off and giving me and my kids access to most games on steam. Very grateful to all involved that made it possible. Still running ubuntu that have just been upgraded over the years on it.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
  Would you recommend any particular guide for setting up multiseat?
  - tru1ock 3y ago
    https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/ I did not follow a specific guide but the setup is relatively simple. The commands I list below is all you need to set it up. To view existing seats: ~ loginctl list-seats To show assigned hardware for a specific seat: ~ loginctl seat-status seat0 Initially there will one seat. To create a new seat just attach some hardware to it. Lets reassign a usb port to a new seat: ~ sudo loginctl attach seat-1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:05:00.0/usb3 Lets reassign a sound card to seat 1 instead: ~ sudo loginctl attach seat-1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:02:00.1/sound/card2 You will typically do this for a screen card, sound card and some USB ports and then you will have another seat available. If you want to reset run: ~ sudo loginctl flush-devices Some gotchas: Seats and users are two different concepts. You can log in on any seat with any user but then you should not log into the other seats with the same user. That generally causes issues for me but is fixed with a reboot. Use GPU's that run on the same driver.
    - stavros 3y ago
      Sorry, what's multiseat?
      - 3y ago
kibwen 3y ago
Windows is enshittifying so rapidly that I firmly believe that, if Valve really wanted to, they could eat Microsoft's lunch when it comes to the non-enterprise desktop market, which is almost exclusively gamers these days. Fortunately for Microsoft, Valve seems content to officially position and market SteamOS as just for its handheld, even though it's entirely possible to run it on other hardware.
- tw04 3y ago
  They already tried that, it was a failure. https://venturebeat.com/games/valve-unveils-13-partners-for-its-steam-machine-alternative-to-windows-gaming/ https://venturebeat.com/games/valve-unveils-13-partners-for-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)
  - saidinesh5 3y ago
    It is not as much of a failure as just a product released at the wrong time. Most of Steam Deck is basically what lessons Valve has learned with that experiment - Steam Input, Proton, Steam Link (?). Now that the ecosystem is more mature, there is again some interest towards it. A lot of tech reivew youtubers are now making content on how to get Steam OS to run on X device (X = GPD Win, low profile gaming PC etc..). Honestly, It is good enough to meet most of my "non technical" friends' requirements for their "Home Theater" PC.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Emulate Windows that is the lesson. They are using Linux to avoid paying the licences.
      - saidinesh5 3y ago
        > They are using Linux to avoid paying the licences. Windows already doesn't charge any license fees for screens less than 9" no? It may have started out that way but I think with projects like DXVK, Gamescope etc.. it is also about controlling the whole software stack to provide a console like experience. Also allows them to do things without worrying about drivers from AMD or some random Windows update breaking their customization. Another interesting thing maybe Valve's idea of reducing the friction. People used to purchase their games on steam even when pirated copies were easily available. Now that there are more competitors to Steam (Windows Store, Epic, Uplay, Orign, Gog, etc...), Valve is creating their own vertical to make it easier for people to ignore those places when buying games. Eg. I had the option of purchasing a DRM free copy of an old game on Gog vs. the same game on Steam Deck. On desktop, I'd have definitely gone with Gog. but on the deck, I actually went with Steam that day. Still baffles me.
saidinesh5 3y ago
I'm so happy to be wrong about how Proton/Wine taking over might result in a suboptimal user experience for gaming on Linux. On my Deck, I couldn't care less if the game was a native Linux version or runs via. proton. The experience is so smooth. And more and more game developers are willing to get their games to run on Linux now. It is honestly nice to see so many famous tech youtubers pushing videos on how to get Steam OS to run on their gaming devices. Thanks to Valve for changing the Gaming Landscape on Linux.
BlackLotus89 3y ago
> The snag is that Steam OS 3 uses Btrfs No it doesn't? There are converter that inject some services that handle even the update process, but by default steamos uses ext4.
- lproven 3y ago
  Are you thinking of Steam OS 1/2? That was a whole different distro, based on Debian. SOS3 is based on Arch, uses dual Btrfs boot partitions and an ext4 games partition.
  - BlackLotus89 3y ago
    Probably, but I also had to manually convert my home directory to btrfs so maybe this is why I remembered ot wrongly? I seem to remember that earlier steamos releases also had ext4 as rootfs, but I can be wrong. To be extra sure I downloaded a fresh steamos install and yes my rootfs is btrfs
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
unstruktured 3y ago
This is the year of the linux desktop! Finally!
red-iron-pine 3y ago
Lotta users == lotta bug reports, complaints, and motivated people. Great example is CP2077, which just got a 2.0 release, and naturally has a lot of issues, with a few that are related to Linux. The one I got was related to not detected the keyboard well via Proton Experimental. There was a workaround up on steam discussion boards in like < 1 week, and it's getting plenty of attention.
- zdware 3y ago
  Ha! The hex/exe patch! Had to do the same thing. This issue also sent me down the path of downloading cutter and trying to reverse engineering/interpret the .exe.
phendrenad2 3y ago
> optional case-insensitivity to the F2FS, the Flash-friendly file system Gosh, I've been lambasted for years for telling Linux folks that case-insensitive file systems are actually good for the average user. Maybe we'll actually get it now that Valve paved the way.
- guenthert 3y ago
  Why would the average gamer on a couch with a steam controller as sole input device (that's what SteamOS is about, isn't it?) care about case sensitivity of file names? It's not like they would actually type those.
  - phendrenad2 3y ago
    Well, Valve is probably adding it to better support games that expect a case-insensitive filesystem. However, case-insensitive filesystems are beneficial for the average business software user. I'm just hoping that they accidentally make this work for ext4 also, and some distro maintainer sees the potential there.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
rldjbpin 3y ago
open source contributions partly funded by corporate time is often a win-win. i would be cautious about being too optimistic about x year being the "year of linux desktop" just yet tho. but it does indeed have gotten much better if you just play singleplayer games and get all work done on a browser.

141 points by zem 3y ago

It's good to see an assumption I had, be validated. The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. I'm happy that a big company is finally backing this effort and with nvidia open-sourcing their gpu kernel modules, I'd say exciting times are up ahead :)

zem 3y ago
just to be pedantic, the valve devs are absolutely open source contributors, they just happen to be paid to do it.
- mcv 3y ago
  It's great that Valve is willing to pay them for it. It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. As someone who has just switched to Linux gaming, I've got to say it's working great. Maybe it's slightly less stable, but not by much, and performance is excellent.
  - zem 3y ago
    it was the opposite for me, I was tempted into getting the steam deck because it seemed like a fun device and an exciting new frontier for linux, and it's gotten me into gaming in a way I haven't been since college.
    - reuben364 3y ago
      When I got my SteamDeck, I thought I was going to do a lot more tinkering than I did gaming. I planned on getting NixOS working on it. I ended up just playing games and having fun just using the stock install.
    - stavros 3y ago
      I'm tempted to get one, but it's going to be sitting on a shelf, along with my Oculus Quest. Gaming is a thing that sounds nice in principle, but I rarely can get into it in practice.
      - zem 3y ago
        i was in the same boat - i wanted to enjoy games again, especially indie games, but i was mostly just buying them during steam sales and then never playing them. i bought the steam deck in order to see if it would be a more fun gaming experience than my laptop, and if not at least i'd have a fun linux device to tinker with. but it absolutely did get me back into playing (maybe an hour or so a day) and i've been enjoying it a lot.
        stavros 3y ago
        Hmm, that's very interesting. I'm exactly the same as you, I really like indie games but it's always "meh, I'd rather do something else". Maybe I'll borrow a friend's Deck for a weekend to try it, thanks!
  - close04 3y ago
    > It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary I think it's great that someone invests. That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work. It's just a normal part of work/life where the alternative would be to do it for free, out of passion. But you also have to make a living.
    - zem 3y ago
      fully agree! I'm biased because I also work for pay on open source products but I think it's a great "rising tide lifts all boats" model of software development.
    - mcv 3y ago
      > That investments are necessary is no sadder than that salaries are necessary for your work. Well, that's also sad. I just wanted to say it would have been nice if the community would have been able to get this working more easily. But clearly it's too much work to do it without some dedicated fulltimers.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary, but I can live with that. People getting paid is a good thing.
    - mcv 3y ago
      But only because it is necessary. It would be better if we could be independent from commercial considerations.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        I don't know what that means. It would be better if everything were free?
        mcv 3y ago
        Well, yes. But what I mean is that it would have been nice if hobbyists were able to accomplish this without needing the help from a commercial entity. I'm a bit at a loss why some people here prefer commercialised open source over community-driven open source. I mean, I'll take it, and Valve did an amazing job, but there have been plenty of attempts to make this work before Valve stepped in, and it just didn't work that well back then, and it would have been nice if we didn't have to rely on Valve for this.
        robertlagrant 3y ago
        This sounds the same as you wanting other people to do things for free. I don't know about nice, but I certainly wouldn't lament people being paid to do something.
        mcv 3y ago
        You're missing my point. The issue isn't money, it's dependency. Using Steam and the whole Valve-supported infrastructure still doesn't cost me anything. But what if Valve decides the Steam Deck isn't commercially viable for them?
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    That's how reality works. In order to do something, resources must be invested. In order for resources to be invested, people must perceive value in the thing they are investing in. In order to do something big, many people must invest many resources, and they would only do so if they all see great value in the thing. In order to have resources to invest, all of the people must have excess resources that they have generated from previous endeavors. Remember, capitalism is merely the most efficient system we have for assigning limited resources across society.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - em-bee 3y ago
    It's a bit sad that such capital investment from a commercial party is necessary by now the linux ecosystem has received to much commercial investment to separate out what is community effort and what is not, but i believe that most of the polish that went into linux desktop applications and interfaces have some commercial investment in them. the problem is that for most volunteers 90% of usability is good enough. if it works for me, my work is done. on the other hand the imperfect is almost necessary to attract contributors. a perfectly working application is more likely to attract users but less contributors. and as soon as contributors work on something it becomes imperfect again. this is not to say that contributors mess things up, on the contrary, but most do just enough work to make it work for them, leaving the work to polish it up for other users to someone else. and i think that is perfectly fine. contributors should not be expected to do work that is of no benefit for themselves. the benefit of a polished application is almost always for non-contributing end users, which in turn is almost always a commercial interest.
    - mcv 3y ago
      That's absolutely true. Valve has added significant value and I love them for it. And the community is still doing great work tuning configurations for each game. One particularly great thing about Valve's support is that it benefits all games, and not just those on Steam. It's absolutely a great example of how open source helps everybody.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
It's interesting to see Apple basically imitating this with their porting toolkit. The net result is game developers being presented with two growing ecosystems for the same game simply by ensuring they stay compatible with both. With their VR stuff coming out soon, there could be a big push to get some games going there. Either way, if you are a game developer, ensuring the games work fine via proton and Apple's porting kit should be a no-brainer. Basically, it should just work mostly without too much effort. All you need to do is a bit of Q&A and maybe avoiding to use some stuff that is problematic or coming up with some workarounds for those things. Neither ecosystem is very big. But at the same time, growing your market by a few percent is always nice. It's big enough that not supporting that is becoming an odd choice to make. I've been using Steam on my Manjaro laptop for some casual gaming. The setup was pretty easy and I'm able to run most of my steam library. I'm not much of a gamer but I've bought some things over the years. And most of those things stopped working on macs. My guess is that Valve is starting to see a lot of Linux users with steam accounts that don't own a Steam Deck. It wouldn't surprise me if that's actually most of their Linux users. As for OSS, Wine is basically very successful thanks to efforts like this. Most successful OSS projects need active users and, like it or not, the private sector tends to be by far the largest stakeholder in these projects. Wine as a hobby project was basically a bit of a niche thing. They got a lot of amazing stuff done of course. But it was kind of a bit of a pain to set it up and use it and progress was slow. Also support for a lot of games was a bit lacking and very dependent on the community chasing that. Steam makes this super easy and they made huge progress with getting a lot of games working. More importantly, they are big enough that game developers themselves now care about compatibility. And that's of course more commercial users.
- Adverblessly 3y ago
  > My guess is that Valve is starting to see a lot of Linux users with steam accounts that don't own a Steam Deck. You don't have to guess, just look at the steam hardware survey - https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=linux https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey?platform=linux - 44.18% of Linux is SteamOS Holo (a.k.a. Steam Deck), while overall Linux is 1.82%. Since historically Linux usage hovered around 1%, I'm guessing that the Steam Deck by itself didn't drive any additional users to Desktop Linux (or at least not in huge amounts), though the 1% by itself is probably driven by Valve's efforts to improve Linux support.
maccard 3y ago
> The assumption was that Linux would struggle to make a dent in the desktop market until it managed to make a tempting proposition for gamers. I don't think that assumption has been validated, and I don't see that from this article. The premise of this article isn't that the steam deck is taking market share, it's that it's increasing compatibility of games on linux. More to the point, the steamdeck hasn't made a dent in the desktop market, see [0] it's a fraction of a percentage of _gamers_ never mind any other use cases. Don't read this as me saying this isn't progress, but we're still a far cry (pun intended) from a dent. [0] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
- ajvs 3y ago
  Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics. That's a decent milestone, and it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes.
  - maccard 3y ago
    > Linux is now more popular than OSX according to those statistics. Linux is more popular than OSX _on steam_ according to those statistics. > it's only going to grow as enshittification forces further downgrades in user experience, freedom and privacy in commercial OSes. I think you're wrong here. Take a look at the wayback machine [0] for a history of this data. There was absolutely 0 growth in linux use over the past decade until last year. The thing that changed wasn't enshittifaction, it was a piece of hardware that provided a good user experience. It's nothing to do with windows/mac getting worse or less privacy focused, it's valve providing a smooth usable product that _happens_ to run linux. I'm curious if Proton's success causes a decrease in windows users and an increase in other distros, but right now that's not what we're seeing. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://store.st...
arp242 3y ago
> Projects like WINE tried, but there's just not enough you can do only with open-source contributors, with such a massive undertaking. Proton is basically just Wine, right? Aside from that CodeWeavers has been doing commercial Wine development for a long time. Almost all of Wine already existed before Valve got involved. Yes, they help out too, and that's great, but people are hugely over-crediting Valve (and here, hugely under-crediting all those open source contributors, who did the overwhelming majority of the work).
- 4death4 3y ago
  According to the article, Steam OS also uses two Direct 3D to Vulkan translation libraries. That’s obviously a big part of running a game.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Neither are written by Valve.
    - 4death4 3y ago
      Valve is a contributor, so that’s not an entirely true statement. And I was replying to your original statement that “Proton is just wine”, which again, is not true.
      - arp242 3y ago
        I never said "Proton is just wine". I said "Proton is basically just Wine". Leaving out that qualifier makes a big difference.
        4death4 3y ago
        Basically means: “in the most essential respects; fundamentally.” So in this case, no, omitting the word basically makes no meaningful change to the meaning of your sentence.
- 3y ago
em-bee 3y ago
the interesting thing for me is that my assumption was that linux gaming would not pick up until the desktop experience of installing and using games would improve, but i somehow missed that creating a separate "game desktop" would do the trick. i didn't consider before that it absolutely makes sense to keep games in their own environment which does make the task a bit easier. but this also validates another assumption of mine, that it would take funding probably driven by commercial interest (and here i was thinking of companies like redhat) to fix this.
pjmlp 3y ago
By "emulating" Win32 and DirectX, in detriment of native Linux features.

lproven 3y ago

Thanks for posting a link to my story. :-)

zem 3y ago
it was a good article :) plus I've been a register fan since the slashdot days, I like y'all's style!
- lproven 3y ago
  That is great to hear. :-) Me too, FWIW. I have been freelancing for them since 2009 but I've only been on staff for just under a couple of years. It's a fun, if challenging, job. P.S. is your screen-name mattress-related, at all?
  - zem 3y ago
    > P.S. is your screen-name mattress-related, at all? it is indeed :) i've been using hitchhiker's guide-derived usernames ever since i got on the net.
elkos 3y ago
Thanks for writing insightful stuff in an engaging way then.
- lproven 3y ago
  Oh great! I am glad you enjoyed it. :-)

0dayz 3y ago

It's interesting how this is just like how when Linux started being used in super computers we saw a similar creeping feature improvement for everyone else. I think that will always be one of the strongest points of Linux, the variety of different areas improvements can come from.

tru1ock 3y ago

I bought a modest gaming rig in 2016 and used systemd/loginctl to convert it into a multiseat setup. One seat for myself and one for the rest of the family. The amount of value I got so far from this setup is unbelievable. Part of that is proton taking off and giving me and my kids access to most games on steam. Very grateful to all involved that made it possible. Still running ubuntu that have just been upgraded over the years on it.

Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3y ago
Would you recommend any particular guide for setting up multiseat?
- tru1ock 3y ago
  https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/ https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/multiseat/ I did not follow a specific guide but the setup is relatively simple. The commands I list below is all you need to set it up. To view existing seats: ~ loginctl list-seats To show assigned hardware for a specific seat: ~ loginctl seat-status seat0 Initially there will one seat. To create a new seat just attach some hardware to it. Lets reassign a usb port to a new seat: ~ sudo loginctl attach seat-1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:05:00.0/usb3 Lets reassign a sound card to seat 1 instead: ~ sudo loginctl attach seat-1 /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.1/0000:02:00.1/sound/card2 You will typically do this for a screen card, sound card and some USB ports and then you will have another seat available. If you want to reset run: ~ sudo loginctl flush-devices Some gotchas: Seats and users are two different concepts. You can log in on any seat with any user but then you should not log into the other seats with the same user. That generally causes issues for me but is fixed with a reboot. Use GPU's that run on the same driver.
  - stavros 3y ago
    Sorry, what's multiseat?
    - 3y ago

kibwen 3y ago

Windows is enshittifying so rapidly that I firmly believe that, if Valve really wanted to, they could eat Microsoft's lunch when it comes to the non-enterprise desktop market, which is almost exclusively gamers these days. Fortunately for Microsoft, Valve seems content to officially position and market SteamOS as just for its handheld, even though it's entirely possible to run it on other hardware.

tw04 3y ago
They already tried that, it was a failure. https://venturebeat.com/games/valve-unveils-13-partners-for-its-steam-machine-alternative-to-windows-gaming/ https://venturebeat.com/games/valve-unveils-13-partners-for-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer)
- saidinesh5 3y ago
  It is not as much of a failure as just a product released at the wrong time. Most of Steam Deck is basically what lessons Valve has learned with that experiment - Steam Input, Proton, Steam Link (?). Now that the ecosystem is more mature, there is again some interest towards it. A lot of tech reivew youtubers are now making content on how to get Steam OS to run on X device (X = GPD Win, low profile gaming PC etc..). Honestly, It is good enough to meet most of my "non technical" friends' requirements for their "Home Theater" PC.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Emulate Windows that is the lesson. They are using Linux to avoid paying the licences.
    - saidinesh5 3y ago
      > They are using Linux to avoid paying the licences. Windows already doesn't charge any license fees for screens less than 9" no? It may have started out that way but I think with projects like DXVK, Gamescope etc.. it is also about controlling the whole software stack to provide a console like experience. Also allows them to do things without worrying about drivers from AMD or some random Windows update breaking their customization. Another interesting thing maybe Valve's idea of reducing the friction. People used to purchase their games on steam even when pirated copies were easily available. Now that there are more competitors to Steam (Windows Store, Epic, Uplay, Orign, Gog, etc...), Valve is creating their own vertical to make it easier for people to ignore those places when buying games. Eg. I had the option of purchasing a DRM free copy of an old game on Gog vs. the same game on Steam Deck. On desktop, I'd have definitely gone with Gog. but on the deck, I actually went with Steam that day. Still baffles me.

saidinesh5 3y ago

I'm so happy to be wrong about how Proton/Wine taking over might result in a suboptimal user experience for gaming on Linux. On my Deck, I couldn't care less if the game was a native Linux version or runs via. proton. The experience is so smooth. And more and more game developers are willing to get their games to run on Linux now. It is honestly nice to see so many famous tech youtubers pushing videos on how to get Steam OS to run on their gaming devices. Thanks to Valve for changing the Gaming Landscape on Linux.

BlackLotus89 3y ago

> The snag is that Steam OS 3 uses Btrfs No it doesn't? There are converter that inject some services that handle even the update process, but by default steamos uses ext4.

lproven 3y ago
Are you thinking of Steam OS 1/2? That was a whole different distro, based on Debian. SOS3 is based on Arch, uses dual Btrfs boot partitions and an ext4 games partition.
- BlackLotus89 3y ago
  Probably, but I also had to manually convert my home directory to btrfs so maybe this is why I remembered ot wrongly? I seem to remember that earlier steamos releases also had ext4 as rootfs, but I can be wrong. To be extra sure I downloaded a fresh steamos install and yes my rootfs is btrfs
deleted 3y ago
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unstruktured 3y ago

This is the year of the linux desktop! Finally!

red-iron-pine 3y ago

Lotta users == lotta bug reports, complaints, and motivated people. Great example is CP2077, which just got a 2.0 release, and naturally has a lot of issues, with a few that are related to Linux. The one I got was related to not detected the keyboard well via Proton Experimental. There was a workaround up on steam discussion boards in like < 1 week, and it's getting plenty of attention.

zdware 3y ago
Ha! The hex/exe patch! Had to do the same thing. This issue also sent me down the path of downloading cutter and trying to reverse engineering/interpret the .exe.

phendrenad2 3y ago

> optional case-insensitivity to the F2FS, the Flash-friendly file system Gosh, I've been lambasted for years for telling Linux folks that case-insensitive file systems are actually good for the average user. Maybe we'll actually get it now that Valve paved the way.

guenthert 3y ago
Why would the average gamer on a couch with a steam controller as sole input device (that's what SteamOS is about, isn't it?) care about case sensitivity of file names? It's not like they would actually type those.
- phendrenad2 3y ago
  Well, Valve is probably adding it to better support games that expect a case-insensitive filesystem. However, case-insensitive filesystems are beneficial for the average business software user. I'm just hoping that they accidentally make this work for ext4 also, and some distro maintainer sees the potential there.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

rldjbpin 3y ago

open source contributions partly funded by corporate time is often a win-win. i would be cautious about being too optimistic about x year being the "year of linux desktop" just yet tho. but it does indeed have gotten much better if you just play singleplayer games and get all work done on a browser.