15 ms·

It will be interesting to see whether Valve can encourage the move to Linux gaming. Their biggest asset at this time is the distribution model of Steam, but tha

• terabytest 13y ago
  OS X is not a good platform for gaming. It has a significantly smaller user base of which only an even more significantly smaller are gamers. Playing on a MacBook (or at least on my MacBook) is impossible, and I wouldn't buy an iMac for gaming. On the other hand, you can put Linux on anything (for free!), from your mom's 2002 pc to the latest generation hot stuff. This means there is indeed a potential, and somebody just has to set the foundation.
  • stinkytaco 13y ago
    You seem to be contradicting yourself. Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. Playing on a Macbook is impossible (presumably for performance reasons?), but you talk about putting Linux on a 2002 PC for gaming. And Linux may or may not run on the latest generation hot stuff, depending on how much time you want to spend to get your newest graphics card working. I'm not sure what potential you are talking about. If gaming doesn't work on OS X, I can't see it working on Linux. As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and massive platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare.
    • LukeShu 13y ago
      I think GP's point is that the user base of OS X-capable hardware is a lot smaller than the user base of GNU/Linux-capable hardware.
    • cloverich 13y ago
      > And Linux may or may not run on the latest generation hot stuff I've now installed Linux on two custom built machines, both with new hardware, neither of which were specifically built for linux. I was very surprised, compatibility was really good, and hardware issues were almost none... > depending on how much time you want to spend to get your newest graphics card working. Other than the one that had a dedicated GPU (even here, worked out of the box on Ubuntu). But then, this is an area that Valve seems to be focusing on heavily, and throwing steam support behind linux is a good reason to get Nvidia (et al) involved in better driver support. It's still a longshot overall IMHO, but I do agree that the potential user-base is higher. You can't get a budget gaming Mac - the closest is the iMac for >$1,000, and that can be easily out-performed by a $5-600 custom built box.
    • Mikeb85 13y ago
      > Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware. > As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and massive platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare. You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform... Have you ever developed anything for the desktop? It's not particularly difficult to get things to run on computers with different hardware...
      • edoloughlin 13y ago
        Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (although it does work on 13.04).
        • Mikeb85 13y ago
          Your problem is using Linux Mint... Both Steam and Wine work perfectly on Ubuntu 13.10 (I'm running both on my 13.10 laptop).
          • stinkytaco 13y ago
            > Your problem is using Linux Mint... I think you just provided a shining example of the potential problems linux gaming faces...
            • Mikeb85 13y ago
              I've used Steam successfully with Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, Arch, Manjaro... Mint is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.
    • ekianjo 13y ago
      > And Linux may or may not run on the latest generation hot stuff, This is quite wrong. Most of PC gaming occurs on the desktop, and desktop hardware Linux compatibility is excellent. You see more issues on laptops, true, but again that's not where the main gaming crowd is on PC.
      • stinkytaco 13y ago
        I would not go so far as to say that 3D hardware support in linux is "excellent". Probably as good as on Mac, true, but far from excellent. Basically if you want high end graphics on Linux you need to use an Nvidia card and their closed drivers. This closes of a section of the linux community right away. Intel and AMD have open source drivers but AMDs are terrible (no power management, buggy) and Intel still does not approach the performance of Nvidia for 3D gaming. The Nvidia drivers are good, but always lag behind their Windows cousins. Things are improving, but "excellent" is not the word I would use.
        • aclevernickname 13y ago
          See, this right here is a perfect example of "Moving the Goalposts" [1]. We first redefine "excellent" to mean "without flaw", then state that using non-open drivers, which are freely available, no longer makes linux driver support excellent because it closes a section of the linux community. This also comes dangerously close to being a "No True Scotsman" fallacy as well [2]. What's even more interesting is that in a different post, you said that AMD's open drivers were better than their closed ones, citing power management and less bugs as one of the benefits. Here you are doing a complete 180. Go to Phoronix.com and show me the benchmarks where Nvidia's windows drivers consistently outperform the Linux ones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman
    • zanny 13y ago
      > because it has too small a user base Maybe we should instead speak to potential user base. For OSX, the potential userbase is always whoever has the money to buy extremely pricey Apple hardware, at least if you want to game on it, since getting a competent gpu almost always requires the rest of the components be really pricey. For Linux, it is the sum total of all PCs out there with compatible hardware and firmware that can boot a Linux iso. Sure, you have to subtract the subset of the population that would never be able to install it - which is quite sizable - but you also have to consider they don't have to do it themselves, a tech shop or techie friend could. > It sounds like a development nightmare. When I develop for Linux, I use the Open Build System and throw my build script up on the AUR. If you are writing games you are using SDL, and if you aren't I personally use qt. Through that, I get FS access, services acccess, apis for almost everything, such that I don't even need to care about what audio backend you use, what your window manager is, what display server you use, etc. Yes, there might be bugs, but unlike the Windows model, which is write for the buggy APIs because you can't do anything about it, on Linux you send the bugs to the upstream projects they originate from. Yeah, it is about 2 years until that bug fix sees mainstream adoption, but it beats using a buggy DX call for 15 years.
      • stinkytaco 13y ago
        >For OSX, the potential userbase is always whoever has the money to buy extremely pricey Apple hardware, at least if you want to game on it, since getting a competent gpu almost always requires the rest of the components be really pricey. But the kind of gaming that Linux lacks is the kind that need pricey components. I can play Organ Trail or World of Goo on Linux right now. If I want to play COD, I'm going to need something substantial. That narrows the user base even more.
        • jeremyjh 13y ago
          "Something substantial" is still a computer costing less than $800, or one that is four years old.
        • mcb3k 13y ago
          I think you're over-estimating how much money it takes to get a relatively good gaming computer. You could probably build an entry-level gaming machine for around 700 to 800 dollars. Add in a keyboard, mouse, and a nice monitor and you'll probably end up closer to 1,000 USD. That's still 200 to 300 dollars cheaper than a Macbook Pro or an iMac, and 100 dollars cheaper than building the equivalent system running Windows (OEM Windows Home Premium is 100 dollars). That would be equivalent to, say, buying a desktop from Dell (300~500 USD) and an XBox One (500 USD), which is a reasonable cost if someone wants to play the more graphically intense games.
    • neckro23 13y ago
      Gaming on Mac has gotten a lot better, mainly thanks to Steam. I'm a huge gamer type, but for assorted reasons my "real" gaming PC isn't actually at home so I'm usually "stuck" with my Macbook. SteamPlay has therefore has been a huge boon to me -- I apparently have 272 games on my Steam account, and of those 121 run on Mac. That's a really impressive batting average. Of course, a bunch of those I can't actually play due to the absolutely terrible Intel HD 3000 GPU in this thing (Witcher 2? Yeah, right!), but most indie games run fine because they're usually 2D or light 3D.
      • erifneerg 13y ago
        I'd like to say that with Mavericks adding OpenGL 4.1, I can play a number of games much better on my Macbook Pro (early 2008).
      • anoncowherd 13y ago
        >> I apparently have 272 games on my Steam account, and of those 121 run on Mac. How many of those 121 are AAA-titles? I'd like to be a Mac gamer too, but it seems to me there are extremely few AAA grade games available for the Mac. What else is there besides Valve, Blizzard, and .. Borderlands 2 & Arkham City?
        • stonith 13y ago
          I dumped my gaming pc for an iMac a couple of months ago as I got sick of rebooting linux > windows and back to get shit done when I wasn't playing games, and figured OSX was a good middle ground. It really depends what you're interested in as to whether that's possible for you at the moment. The Blizzard titles all run, the Valve titles all run, LoL runs, and as mentioned in this thread a good portion of my steam library is available. The big missing pieces for many are the Battlefield series and the CoD series, but since I don't play that type of game I'm fine - ymmv
          • anoncowherd 13y ago
            Well, I've been using a Mac exclusively for a few years now. I just think the gaming situation is still really sad, even if things may be gradually improving. It's difficult to believe that even 25% of those 121 games you mentioned are AAA quality, and that's what I was curious about. What's your estimate? Could you list a few AAA games for the Mac?
    • erpellan 13y ago
      The difference here is that every Windows user is a potential Linux user. They just need to download and install some free software. The platform fragmentation is precisely the same as it is on Windows and is largely a solved problem.
    • nullsoldier 13y ago
      Nothing about what he said sounds contradictory to me. In short, what I gained from reading his post is that OSX is small and it doesn't have room to grow to host a gaming population because it's expensive and the hardware doesn't lend itself to gaming. One does not simply just build a mac gaming machine for a reasonable amount of money. On the other hand, he's saying Linux does have that potential because it's cheap and pushes by certain distros have made it much easier to use.
  • SkyMarshal 13y ago
    Why is playing on a MacBook impossible? (not a Mac user, serious question)
    • pjmlp 13y ago
      Intel GPUs lack performance when compared with ATI/NVIDIA. Plus they manage to have even more buggy OpenGL support, and their drivers are well known among OpenGL developers for lying about supported features.
      • Kurtz79 13y ago
        There are Macbooks (and Macs) with dedicated GPUs.
        • pjmlp 13y ago
          Which cost almost three times the average salary of most European countries.
          • Kurtz79 13y ago
            I bought mine refurbished for 1300 euros, which is comparable to the price of similarly specced PCs (and about the average salary of most European countries). Even if it was three times this price, what has that to do with its ability to play games ?
            • pjmlp 13y ago
              So lets see on my home country, Portugal. where the minimum wage is around 380€ netto. The cheapest iMac with dedicated GPU costs 1549€. The cheapest Macbook with dedicated GPU costs 2649€. A gaming rig that outperforms any Mac hardware can be obtained around 1000€, or even lower if a local OEM is used. So why pay 1300€ for a refurbished Mac, when a brand new computer can be obtained for much less, given the saving effort one needs to do?
            • pantalaimon 13y ago
  • Djehngo 13y ago
    For what it's worth my macbookpro runs Dota2 without complaint.
    • mimiflynn 13y ago
      My 2011 Macbook Air runs Portal perfectly.
      • pantalaimon 13y ago
        That's a 2007 game.
  • wmoxam 13y ago
    I regularly play Dota2 on my MacBook Air. Works well enough.
    • darklrd 13y ago
      Ditto.
  • dimillian 13y ago
    You'll be amazed on how it has changed. First, latest Macbook are kinda powerful on the GPU side, even with the integrated one, the Intel HD 5000 or Iris can run modern game at low/med settings. While it's shit for gamers who cares about graphics and performances, for any casual gamers it's sufficient. My Macbook is my work machine but also my gaming machine. The other things is about Wine, they're working on accelerating the Direct3D driver, and OMG, it's soooo fast now. I'm running Skyrim on a custom Wine engine (1.7.1 with a patch from the D3D boost branch), on hight/ultra settings on my Macbook Retina, It's running at 80% of the Windows performance. And it's only the beginning, it's far from done. I also have it running on a friend Macbook Air, it run at medium setting at a solid 30 FPS. My point is that you can actually plays with Macbook nowadays. Edit: The PR from codeweavers is relevant (Especially the part about the Command Stream). http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20131112/ http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20131112/
    • salient 13y ago
      Last I checked Mac OS also had very poor OpenGL support, from what I hear because it's Apple the one writing their own OpenGL driver and building it into the OS. Have they even caught up to OpenGL 4.0 yet? Even if they did, that's still what - 3-4 years behind the others? (4.4 is the latest)
      • robin_reala 13y ago
        In short, mostly. Full 4.1 support in Mavericks: http://rk.md/2013/opengl-osx-mountain-lion-vs-mavericks/ http://rk.md/2013/opengl-osx-mountain-lion-vs-mavericks/
    • sandGorgon 13y ago
      is this the case only with OSX-Wine or Linux-Wine as well ? I dont mind paying for professional quality wine on linux - a.k.a Crossover
      • dimillian 13y ago
        From what I understand Crossover already integrated the performance improvement from the in progress Wine branch into their closed source alternative. It's still coming soon on the main branch for Wine, but they still have a lot of works to do. But yeah once it'll be merged, both OSX Wine and Linux Wine will benefit from it. And it's a big, big performance improvement. And if you want to try Crossover, go for it (They have a trial), so you can compare the performance.
  • lsdafjklsd 13y ago
    I've been playing Dota 2 / Hereoes of Newerth on my 13in mac air for years just fine. My only gripe is the mouse acceleration on OS X... the mouse feels horrible and you have to get third party software to make it only slightly better.
    • danbee 13y ago
      http://smoothmouse.com http://smoothmouse.com
    • goostavos 13y ago
      Which third party software do you use to fix the mouse acceleration? I'm in the process of porting some Wx stuff over to OS X, a processes for which work provided a shinny new macbook, but I hated the way the mouse handled so much -- I mean, to the point where I was yelling at the computer -- that I ended up virtualizing OS X on my windows box and developing that way. I don't know what it is. The Macbook's track pad is miles above its peers -- an absolute joy to use. However, the second you plug a mouse in, the cursor becomes an unusable, inaccurate, enraging piece of garbage.
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • girvo 13y ago
    I game on my iMac. Currently just played through BioShock Infinite, and play StarCraft 2 daily, and really should get back to Guild Wars 2 at some point... but yeah, I'm considered odd by my friends for doing so.
    • lloeki 13y ago
      Throw in Diablo 3 and Portal 2 into the mix and you've got what I'm playing these times around on my rMBP13's HD4000. I've actually run through both SC2:LW and D3 on a '09 MBP. Sure you don't get all the bells and whistles, but a steady 25fps (capped through INI settings) matters more to me than shiny effects and had the games be perfectly enjoyable.
  • benihana 13y ago
    In my opinion, this will only take off if installing everything is easier than installing Windows + Steam + drivers. If Valve can give you an image to download that has the OS, the drivers, Steam, Firefox, and all the basic codecs you need to use a computer for gaming and common things like browsing the web, reading email, watching video and listening to music, this has a chance.
  • trumbitta2 13y ago
    I play The Witcher 2, Skyrim and so on with my rMBP on the Windows 7 partition, while I played Batman Arkham City on the OSX one.
• ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  You shouldn't think of OS X and Linux as two completely separate platforms in this regard, since they share a lot of relevant tech. I would imagine the work put in to making OS X ports translates well to Linux and vice versa and it's the combined sales that people will consider when deciding whether to port (or what base technologies to build on for brand new projects). As SteamOS takes off there's also the possibility of using Bootcamp to switch your Mac into a SteamOS machine if that gives you access to better GPU drivers (I believe currently some people do this for windows for the same reason) but of course you can play (mostly) the same Steam games library from either OS. edit: a quick glance at Valve's site suggests 598 games for Mac, 253 for Linux and of those only 9 weren't also available for the Mac (they're all available for Windows).
  • malandrew 13y ago
    On that note are there any changes or improvements on the horizon that would let you fast user switch between two or more booted and running operating systems. It'd be great in the future if you could allocate a small chunk of your RAM to keeping the background machine in a chunk of RSm so it switches faster than you can switch between users on the same OS. E.g. Of 16GB of RAM, 12GBis allocated to the foreground OS and 4GB to the background. Then when you switch you get a near instantaneous switch and the 8GB difference is allocated to the now current foreground system as necessary.
    • kilburn 13y ago
      This can be done today using kvm's memory ballooning. Essentially, you install a driver in the guest VM and it takes care of (1) reclaiming RAM from the guest OS when the host OS needs more; and (2) providing more RAM to the guest if needed and available.
  • keeperofdakeys 13y ago
    While both may be Posix systems, the GUI, mouse and audio apis are much different - so there is still a lot of work you'd need to do. Since both use opengl though, you get rid of half the trouble by porting. It's also important to remember that many game makers don't make their own engine, and so the engine must support OSX/linux (most classic linux ports have used the unreal engine, or source engine). Unity is quite good in this regard, you can hit a button to export your project to all three different platforms.
• k3n 13y ago
  > Their biggest asset at this time is the distribution model of Steam IMO the Steam Machines will offer a very supportive backing as well.
• grahamburger 13y ago
  They also have SteamBox. I think big developers will target SteamOS.