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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 Mac

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.
        clarry 13y ago
        Ubuntu is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable. Fedora is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable. Arch is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable. We could play this game all day to make stinkytaco's point.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        You're right, any bleeding edge Linux can be unstable. But I'd put an app into production on any of the ones listed over Mint. Either way, the fact that Steam doesn't work on Mint is Mint's problem, not Steam's...
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.

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.
      - clarry 13y ago
        Ubuntu is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable. Fedora is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable. Arch is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable. We could play this game all day to make stinkytaco's point.
        Mikeb85 13y ago
        You're right, any bleeding edge Linux can be unstable. But I'd put an app into production on any of the ones listed over Mint. Either way, the fact that Steam doesn't work on Mint is Mint's problem, not Steam's...

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.