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Apologies if I'm misreading your intention, but are you suggesting that Valve's work on Wine is somehow worse than asking game developers to target Linux/other

Apologies if I'm misreading your intention, but are you suggesting that Valve's work on Wine is somehow worse than asking game developers to target Linux/other OSes natively? As a Linux desktop enthusiast, I much prefer the Valve's approach: the library of existing Windows-only games that are unlikely to be ever ported is too vast, and the benefits of targeting a disjointed[1] platform with <2% market share[2] for new games are not at all clear. It's only thanks to Valve that I (and hopefully many other Linux users) do not need to maintain a second Windows system for fun, as the majority of games run perfectly fine on Linux and require nothing more than clicking Install then Play in the Steam client. [1] Case in point: glibc's compatibility guarantees are weaker than what you get on Windows. (For instance, your system's glibc cannot be older than what a game is built against, which may present problems for devs using Fedora/Arch and players on Debian/LTS Ubuntu, something I've experienced first-hand for my apps.) The X11 to Wayland migration is also still underway. (Though things are getting better, the attitudes of some Wayland maintainers are a bit concerning: "I don't [care] what you think is normal behavior for games. You get certain guarantees with wayland. Deal with it. If clients decide to do exactly what they do on windows or X11 they won't work correctly." [3] I'm not sure game developers would enjoy such reception.) [2] https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey [3] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/18359#note_1832873 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/merge_requests/18...

blibble 3y ago
indeed Windows is going to end up as the 2030s version of dosbox edit: as in Windows ends up with the same fate as MS-DOS: replaced with a piece of software analogous to dosbox
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Which runs MS-DOS games, not GNU/Linux.
  - blibble 3y ago
    yes, that was indeed my point
pjmlp 3y ago
Yes I am, everyone worshiping Valve for that, has skipped classes on OS/2 history lesson. Porting games from Android/NDK into GNU/Linux is relatively a child's play. Playstation OS is also POSIX friendly. Finally every serious middleware engine supports GNU/Linux. Still the amount of studios that care about GNU/Linux is almost zero. With Valve, there are no reasons to bother at all as a studio, target Windows/DirectX, let Valve do the work, collect the money with zero additional effort. Now with Windows based handhelds, Valve will learn what happened to netbooks.
- pjc50 3y ago
  "GNU/Linux" doesn't have a stable binary graphics API. Someone rather controversially pointed out that if you want to make a binary that runs for the longest possible time across the widest set of linux distributions, you should make a Win32/DirectX binary and tell people to install WINE/Proton.
  - kbolino 3y ago
    Wine/Proton works because it can be recompiled for every version of every Linux distro, whereas the average video game can't. Honestly, somebody could have done something like this for "native" Linux but the incentives never really fell into place. It could even have been Valve, but I would guess they weighed the options and found this to be the one that gave them the widest compatibility without expecting too much of the game developers, many of whom were reluctant to make their games available on Steam at all.
  - Ygg2 3y ago
    Sure Linux has a stable graphics ABI. It's called Proton./j It's a riff on only stable OS API on Linux is Win32.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    If they cannot manage themselves, it is not by becoming Windows/Linux that would save the situation.
- kbolino 3y ago
Cloudef 3y ago
That mesa issue reminded me of wayland issue thats been open for 3 years now where apps crash if theres even a slight stall due to the wayland socket becoming full. Instead of providing quick fix for actual app devs and users who are affected most, they have been designing this perfect solution for apps and compositor to agree on the socket size for 3 years now. Its similar crap with the server size decorations where they finally had to admit people want them and merged the protocol but don't implement it in gnome compositor :) I'd say wayland really was barebones when it was being pushed and major contributions to actually get it usable on desktop was from outsiders. I'd say win32/flatpak/libretro are the only sane way for games to target linux right now. The fact that linux doesn't have real "runtime" and major components required by games link against libc is what makes linux really unstable for anything that needs to open window, draw stuff using GPU and play audio. It's possible to create static binaries for linux that work for eternity, thanks to kernel being actually stable. But link against something in /usr/lib and it all goes to hell. If the GPU drivers and libs that provided basic window / audio did not depend on libc and were standalone, the situation would be much better. Here's good video about this problem space btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1XqP4-qOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1XqP4-qOo

blibble 3y ago

indeed Windows is going to end up as the 2030s version of dosbox edit: as in Windows ends up with the same fate as MS-DOS: replaced with a piece of software analogous to dosbox

pjmlp 3y ago
Which runs MS-DOS games, not GNU/Linux.
- blibble 3y ago
  yes, that was indeed my point

pjmlp 3y ago

Yes I am, everyone worshiping Valve for that, has skipped classes on OS/2 history lesson. Porting games from Android/NDK into GNU/Linux is relatively a child's play. Playstation OS is also POSIX friendly. Finally every serious middleware engine supports GNU/Linux. Still the amount of studios that care about GNU/Linux is almost zero. With Valve, there are no reasons to bother at all as a studio, target Windows/DirectX, let Valve do the work, collect the money with zero additional effort. Now with Windows based handhelds, Valve will learn what happened to netbooks.

pjc50 3y ago
"GNU/Linux" doesn't have a stable binary graphics API. Someone rather controversially pointed out that if you want to make a binary that runs for the longest possible time across the widest set of linux distributions, you should make a Win32/DirectX binary and tell people to install WINE/Proton.
- kbolino 3y ago
  Wine/Proton works because it can be recompiled for every version of every Linux distro, whereas the average video game can't. Honestly, somebody could have done something like this for "native" Linux but the incentives never really fell into place. It could even have been Valve, but I would guess they weighed the options and found this to be the one that gave them the widest compatibility without expecting too much of the game developers, many of whom were reluctant to make their games available on Steam at all.
- Ygg2 3y ago
  Sure Linux has a stable graphics ABI. It's called Proton./j It's a riff on only stable OS API on Linux is Win32.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  If they cannot manage themselves, it is not by becoming Windows/Linux that would save the situation.
kbolino 3y ago

Cloudef 3y ago

That mesa issue reminded me of wayland issue thats been open for 3 years now where apps crash if theres even a slight stall due to the wayland socket becoming full. Instead of providing quick fix for actual app devs and users who are affected most, they have been designing this perfect solution for apps and compositor to agree on the socket size for 3 years now. Its similar crap with the server size decorations where they finally had to admit people want them and merged the protocol but don't implement it in gnome compositor :) I'd say wayland really was barebones when it was being pushed and major contributions to actually get it usable on desktop was from outsiders. I'd say win32/flatpak/libretro are the only sane way for games to target linux right now. The fact that linux doesn't have real "runtime" and major components required by games link against libc is what makes linux really unstable for anything that needs to open window, draw stuff using GPU and play audio. It's possible to create static binaries for linux that work for eternity, thanks to kernel being actually stable. But link against something in /usr/lib and it all goes to hell. If the GPU drivers and libs that provided basic window / audio did not depend on libc and were standalone, the situation would be much better. Here's good video about this problem space btw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1XqP4-qOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq1XqP4-qOo