6 ms·

A lot of stuff like this shows up, they also have a fork of waydroid and box64. I think a lot of them are projects and a lot of them are just devs with a lot of

A lot of stuff like this shows up, they also have a fork of waydroid and box64. I think a lot of them are projects and a lot of them are just devs with a lot of agency who share the dream

scheeseman486 2y ago
Steam Deck was made possible by their ongoing efforts to enable the play of most of their games catalog on any hardware platform that is computationally capable of running them, regardless of OS or architecture. The end game for Valve isn't Steam Deck 2 or 3 (which is statistically impossible for Valve to produce), but for Steam to be on everything.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Steam Deck was made possible by the plethora of the Windows games developer market and Proton. Most of the studios that own those games, and target POSIX like OSes on mobile phones and game consoles, are yet to bother with GNU/Linux versions for SteamOS.
  - scheeseman486 2y ago
    Wine and DXVK are already running on Android and they play Windows games with the rendering and computational complexity of Fallout 4 at playable framerates on many of the latest smartphone SoCs. It's still WIP, but it's already gone beyond proof of concept, people are using them. Valve don't need the developers to be on-board in order to run their games on anything else, that's why Proton exists. What Valve want is the dissolution between platform/architecture and store. By my eye, it's the driving force of their efforts, more so than them selling hardware or being the open source good guys. Not to undervalue their work in helping make Linux a first class citizen for gaming, but the core of their business model is getting people to engage with their store, full stop, and being able to sell their games on Android (and elsewhere) would massively extend their reach. This may go both ways too, there's also been indications that Valve have been tinkering with Waydroid, meaning Steam could also become a store for Android-native games.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      It looks more like how to avoid paying Windows licenses for the SteamDeck to me.
      - wtetzner 2y ago
        I'd guess SteamOS is more about control than licensing costs. I don't think Valve wants to be at the mercy of Microsoft and their policy & technical decisions.
      - kbolino 2y ago
        That's a small part of it, I think. They've almost certainly spent a lot more on pouring time and effort into Linux than they ever would have saved on license fees. It seems like Valve doesn't want to be beholden to Microsoft in any way. They support Windows because that's where the users and the games are, but they don't want Microsoft to be able to rug-pull them either.
        pjmlp 2y ago
        Except that they are, to the extent they depend on Microsoft technologies for the games that run on Proton.
        kbolino 2y ago
        As far as I am aware, neither Valve nor the independent Wine/Proton developers are bound by any licensing agreements with Microsoft. They are clean-room implementing the same technologies, but they are not beholden to Microsoft in any legal way. Of course, drastic changes in laws or policy regimes could alter this dynamic, but those are out-of-context risks. In order for Microsoft to rug-pull the technology (which is quite different from rug-pulling the business model), they'd have to break compatibility on Windows itself. Video games remain a major reason for home users to run Windows. Making ABI-breaking changes to Win32 or DirectX is just not very likely to happen. And if it did happen, it would be a boon to Valve and not a harm. The biggest risk (and this would be a classic Microsoft move, to be fair) I can foresee is aggressive API changes that make it hard for Valve/Wine/Proton to keep up but also make it hard for game developers not to. I'm not exactly sure what this would look like, and a lot of the core technologies are pretty stable by now, but it's a possibility. It's not, however, going to harm anything that already exists.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    You are right that many developers don't care and haven't bothered with Linux, but one reason for optimism is that this seems to be changing. Just looking through the list of native Linux games today compared to what it was like a year or 2 years ago, there are a lot more options. I was looking through the list of Linux games on Gog, and it is likewise in a much better position than it was prior. I think there is much reason for optimism!!
    - grahamj 2y ago
      “There is now sufficient reason for greater optimism” - Automated Personnel Unit 3947
- reassembled 2y ago
  Everything except Windows 7 and XP that is.
  - jchw 2y ago
    I believe Valve dropped official Windows 7 support in Steam because Chromium did and they weren't going to fork it. I empathize if you don't like any version of Windows newer than 7 or XP, but it's time to let the dream of running them forever go. It's not weird when software doesn't support the 2009 version of an operating system anymore in 2024. If they never dropped support, it would be difficult to take advantage of improvements that occurred in the last 10 years, because we'd forever be stuck in baggage. Of course when it's feasible everybody loves software that really never does drop support, like 7-zip, which I think happily still works on Win9x without KernelEx... but I'd rather 7-zip stopped having serious security issues than continued to work on old Windows versions.
  - kbolino 2y ago
    Windows 7 was great and I'd love to go back. If I really had my druthers, Windows 2000 was peak and XP was just a vulgarized version of 2000. However, it is Microsoft more than anyone else that has decided to stop supporting those operating systems. Windows XP does not have support for any modern version of TLS (only TLS 1.0). There's no good way to support a browser-based app like Steam on a platform that cannot natively provide a secure connection to a modern web server. There is not such a hard reason to drop Windows 7 support (again, except that Microsoft no longer supports it) but there are security-relevant APIs that are only available starting in Windows 10 which means special patches would have to be maintained just for Steam on Windows 7 to continue working securely.
- lucasban 2y ago
  What do you mean Steam Deck 2 or 3 would be impossible?
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Steamdeck 3 being statistically impossible is a joke about Valve having an aversion to releasing a #3 of anything. Half life 1, 2… hm. Ok we’ll make three HL2 episodes to follow that up. Ep I. Ep II. Uhhhh… and let’s stop there, just like forever I guess. Portal 1. Portal 2. Left4dead. L4D2. Team Fortress. TF2. Counterstrike. CS2. Oh shit we’re releasing a third one, we might have to use the number three finally, oh no… I’ve got it: CS:Go!
    - jakogut 2y ago
      Also, the successor to CS:Go is...Counter-Strike 2.
      - vundercind 2y ago
        Oh damn I got the order on those mixed up. Was probably thinking of CS Source. Regardless, point stands: they hate the number 3.
        echoangle 2y ago
        They’re probably doing it on purpose as a joke at this point.
        jakogut 2y ago
        It would have to be, CS2 is the fourth major installment in the Counter-Strike franchise. Then again, all kinds of companies take liberties with naming including numbers. Look at Windows 7 (12th major release), Windows 10 (successor to Windows 8), the game Battlefield 2 (third in the series), Battlefield 3 (three games after BF2), Battlefield 1 (after the release of BF4), etc.
  - 2y ago

A lot of stuff like this shows up, they also have a fork of waydroid and box64. I think a lot of them are projects and a lot of them are just devs with a lot of agency who share the dream

scheeseman486 2y ago

Steam Deck was made possible by their ongoing efforts to enable the play of most of their games catalog on any hardware platform that is computationally capable of running them, regardless of OS or architecture. The end game for Valve isn't Steam Deck 2 or 3 (which is statistically impossible for Valve to produce), but for Steam to be on everything.

pjmlp 2y ago
Steam Deck was made possible by the plethora of the Windows games developer market and Proton. Most of the studios that own those games, and target POSIX like OSes on mobile phones and game consoles, are yet to bother with GNU/Linux versions for SteamOS.
- scheeseman486 2y ago
  Wine and DXVK are already running on Android and they play Windows games with the rendering and computational complexity of Fallout 4 at playable framerates on many of the latest smartphone SoCs. It's still WIP, but it's already gone beyond proof of concept, people are using them. Valve don't need the developers to be on-board in order to run their games on anything else, that's why Proton exists. What Valve want is the dissolution between platform/architecture and store. By my eye, it's the driving force of their efforts, more so than them selling hardware or being the open source good guys. Not to undervalue their work in helping make Linux a first class citizen for gaming, but the core of their business model is getting people to engage with their store, full stop, and being able to sell their games on Android (and elsewhere) would massively extend their reach. This may go both ways too, there's also been indications that Valve have been tinkering with Waydroid, meaning Steam could also become a store for Android-native games.
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    It looks more like how to avoid paying Windows licenses for the SteamDeck to me.
    - wtetzner 2y ago
      I'd guess SteamOS is more about control than licensing costs. I don't think Valve wants to be at the mercy of Microsoft and their policy & technical decisions.
    - kbolino 2y ago
      That's a small part of it, I think. They've almost certainly spent a lot more on pouring time and effort into Linux than they ever would have saved on license fees. It seems like Valve doesn't want to be beholden to Microsoft in any way. They support Windows because that's where the users and the games are, but they don't want Microsoft to be able to rug-pull them either.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Except that they are, to the extent they depend on Microsoft technologies for the games that run on Proton.
        kbolino 2y ago
        As far as I am aware, neither Valve nor the independent Wine/Proton developers are bound by any licensing agreements with Microsoft. They are clean-room implementing the same technologies, but they are not beholden to Microsoft in any legal way. Of course, drastic changes in laws or policy regimes could alter this dynamic, but those are out-of-context risks. In order for Microsoft to rug-pull the technology (which is quite different from rug-pulling the business model), they'd have to break compatibility on Windows itself. Video games remain a major reason for home users to run Windows. Making ABI-breaking changes to Win32 or DirectX is just not very likely to happen. And if it did happen, it would be a boon to Valve and not a harm. The biggest risk (and this would be a classic Microsoft move, to be fair) I can foresee is aggressive API changes that make it hard for Valve/Wine/Proton to keep up but also make it hard for game developers not to. I'm not exactly sure what this would look like, and a lot of the core technologies are pretty stable by now, but it's a possibility. It's not, however, going to harm anything that already exists.
- freedomben 2y ago
  You are right that many developers don't care and haven't bothered with Linux, but one reason for optimism is that this seems to be changing. Just looking through the list of native Linux games today compared to what it was like a year or 2 years ago, there are a lot more options. I was looking through the list of Linux games on Gog, and it is likewise in a much better position than it was prior. I think there is much reason for optimism!!
  - grahamj 2y ago
    “There is now sufficient reason for greater optimism” - Automated Personnel Unit 3947
reassembled 2y ago
Everything except Windows 7 and XP that is.
- jchw 2y ago
  I believe Valve dropped official Windows 7 support in Steam because Chromium did and they weren't going to fork it. I empathize if you don't like any version of Windows newer than 7 or XP, but it's time to let the dream of running them forever go. It's not weird when software doesn't support the 2009 version of an operating system anymore in 2024. If they never dropped support, it would be difficult to take advantage of improvements that occurred in the last 10 years, because we'd forever be stuck in baggage. Of course when it's feasible everybody loves software that really never does drop support, like 7-zip, which I think happily still works on Win9x without KernelEx... but I'd rather 7-zip stopped having serious security issues than continued to work on old Windows versions.
- kbolino 2y ago
  Windows 7 was great and I'd love to go back. If I really had my druthers, Windows 2000 was peak and XP was just a vulgarized version of 2000. However, it is Microsoft more than anyone else that has decided to stop supporting those operating systems. Windows XP does not have support for any modern version of TLS (only TLS 1.0). There's no good way to support a browser-based app like Steam on a platform that cannot natively provide a secure connection to a modern web server. There is not such a hard reason to drop Windows 7 support (again, except that Microsoft no longer supports it) but there are security-relevant APIs that are only available starting in Windows 10 which means special patches would have to be maintained just for Steam on Windows 7 to continue working securely.
lucasban 2y ago
What do you mean Steam Deck 2 or 3 would be impossible?
- vundercind 2y ago
  Steamdeck 3 being statistically impossible is a joke about Valve having an aversion to releasing a #3 of anything. Half life 1, 2… hm. Ok we’ll make three HL2 episodes to follow that up. Ep I. Ep II. Uhhhh… and let’s stop there, just like forever I guess. Portal 1. Portal 2. Left4dead. L4D2. Team Fortress. TF2. Counterstrike. CS2. Oh shit we’re releasing a third one, we might have to use the number three finally, oh no… I’ve got it: CS:Go!
  - jakogut 2y ago
    Also, the successor to CS:Go is...Counter-Strike 2.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      Oh damn I got the order on those mixed up. Was probably thinking of CS Source. Regardless, point stands: they hate the number 3.
      - echoangle 2y ago
        They’re probably doing it on purpose as a joke at this point.
        jakogut 2y ago
        It would have to be, CS2 is the fourth major installment in the Counter-Strike franchise. Then again, all kinds of companies take liberties with naming including numbers. Look at Windows 7 (12th major release), Windows 10 (successor to Windows 8), the game Battlefield 2 (third in the series), Battlefield 3 (three games after BF2), Battlefield 1 (after the release of BF4), etc.
- 2y ago