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PayPalReddit seems to be buzzing with information from SteamDB (full credit to them for finding it) showing indications that Valve might be adding support for compatibility tools to enable you to play games on operating systems they weren't designed for, like Wine.
I won't copy all of it, but a few interesting bits do certainly stick out like the string named "Steam_Settings_Compat_Info" where the description reads "Steam Play will automatically install compatibility tools that allow you to play games from your library that were built for other operating systems.".
There's also "Steam_Settings_Compat_Advanced_Info" which reads as "You may select a compatibility tool to use with games that have not been tested or verified to work on this platform. This may not work as expected, and can cause issues with your games, including crashes and breaking save games."
Valve do also have a Valve Compatibility Manifests and Valve Compatibility Manifests for Beta Testing set of packages that show up on SteamDB.
That certainly sounds like something Wine related, perhaps with a sprinkle of something like DXVK, don't you think? However, it could even just be DOSBox, a Valve-sponsored tool or anything—we simply don't know enough at this point.
Having the ability to use tools like Wine from within the native Linux Steam client, is actually something that has been requested for a long time by quite a number of people. It could certainly make using Wine less of a hassle for Steam games. If so, it might even give developers a better idea of how many people are on different operating systems if it showed up in their statistics when someone's using such a feature.
It might even be quite a smart business move for Valve, as it might push more people to buy games that have a decent enough rating through one of these compatibility tools.
It could all end up being nothing, so take it with your usual pinch of salt. Even if it does end up being a real feature, it could be quite a long way off too. I'm only posting it because I personally found it quite interesting, I'm pretty sceptical about it for a number of reasons, but doesn't stop it being somewhat exciting too.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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For everyone worried about WINE making companies think Linux ports are unnecessary, newsflash we already have that even without WINE. That's our reality right now, today.
Guys the industry genuinely doesn't think anything of Linux for all the same reasons everybody else discounts it. "It's too hard to use" even though in Ubuntu/Mint you can install update, and even change graphics drivers without ever using a command line. So Linux is considered the exclusive domain of hi-IQ nerds that don't add up to enough sales to even worry about.
And that's where Microsoft is actually going to be a big help right now. Confused?
The reason SteamOS even exists, the reason for the Linux storefront on Steam is because Gabe absolutely HATED Windows Flat Design/8. And it seems that he realized that Valve was uncomfortably dependent on Microsoft, and that should Microsoft falter it would actually negatively affect Valve. Ever since Gabe has been pushing to make and then keep Steam OS-neutral. All three major PC OSes plus Playstation 3 if that's still a thing.
Assuming this is happening and that Valve is incorporating WINE or something like that, then my guess is that it's a reaction to Microsoft's announced subscription model. Oh, and the Windows10 spying that you can't turn off without third party utilities. Gabe used to work at Microsoft. He sold his Microsoft employee stock to fund Half Life. And now he looks and does not like what he sees at his former employer.
Which brings us back around to my point. If you want to stop ~80% of something,just add a little bit of friction. Inversely, if you want to increase something, decrease the friction. Right now I try to evangelize for Linux and all I get back is "muh Photoshop" even though a bunch of it seems to run in WINE. Or its "muh games" even though most of them run in WINE. And then it hits you, the problem is needing to configure WINE. WINE is the friction holding everything up. If you could just log into Steam and install Fortnite seamlessly, the Fortnite players that hate Microsoft would switch.
If Valve is really doing this it's the end of dual booting. Won't need to do it anymore. And when you can log into Steam in Fedora/Manjaro/Ubunut/Mint/Arch/Gentoo/etc and select Fortnite or Medal of Duty or whatever the hotness of the moment is or PHOTOSHOP without even knowing what WINE+DXVK is despite the fact that you're running it, well, then the stage is set. All we need at that point is Microsoft to continue to be Microsoft and we'll add to our user baser exponentially as they push people our way.
And then Valve can publish numbers of a growing Linux user base. And then we get more native ports. This will not happen overnight. Nothing ever does in FOSS. But it will happen.
Guys the industry genuinely doesn't think anything of Linux for all the same reasons everybody else discounts it. "It's too hard to use" even though in Ubuntu/Mint you can install update, and even change graphics drivers without ever using a command line. So Linux is considered the exclusive domain of hi-IQ nerds that don't add up to enough sales to even worry about.
And that's where Microsoft is actually going to be a big help right now. Confused?
The reason SteamOS even exists, the reason for the Linux storefront on Steam is because Gabe absolutely HATED Windows Flat Design/8. And it seems that he realized that Valve was uncomfortably dependent on Microsoft, and that should Microsoft falter it would actually negatively affect Valve. Ever since Gabe has been pushing to make and then keep Steam OS-neutral. All three major PC OSes plus Playstation 3 if that's still a thing.
Assuming this is happening and that Valve is incorporating WINE or something like that, then my guess is that it's a reaction to Microsoft's announced subscription model. Oh, and the Windows10 spying that you can't turn off without third party utilities. Gabe used to work at Microsoft. He sold his Microsoft employee stock to fund Half Life. And now he looks and does not like what he sees at his former employer.
Which brings us back around to my point. If you want to stop ~80% of something,just add a little bit of friction. Inversely, if you want to increase something, decrease the friction. Right now I try to evangelize for Linux and all I get back is "muh Photoshop" even though a bunch of it seems to run in WINE. Or its "muh games" even though most of them run in WINE. And then it hits you, the problem is needing to configure WINE. WINE is the friction holding everything up. If you could just log into Steam and install Fortnite seamlessly, the Fortnite players that hate Microsoft would switch.
If Valve is really doing this it's the end of dual booting. Won't need to do it anymore. And when you can log into Steam in Fedora/Manjaro/Ubunut/Mint/Arch/Gentoo/etc and select Fortnite or Medal of Duty or whatever the hotness of the moment is or PHOTOSHOP without even knowing what WINE+DXVK is despite the fact that you're running it, well, then the stage is set. All we need at that point is Microsoft to continue to be Microsoft and we'll add to our user baser exponentially as they push people our way.
And then Valve can publish numbers of a growing Linux user base. And then we get more native ports. This will not happen overnight. Nothing ever does in FOSS. But it will happen.
6 Likes, Who?
Quoting: jarhead_hThe reason SteamOS even exists, the reason for the Linux storefront on Steam is because Gabe absolutely HATED Windows Flat Design/8.It's not because of design, of course. There were rumours Microsoft were going to lock all Windows software to UWP and its store.
3 Likes, Who?
Quoting: kazrikoIt seems like a short term benefit, with a potential long term downside.
In a universe dominated by network effects, short term benefits cannot have significant long term downsides. Short term success sets you up for further success, short term loss sets you up for losing some more. Other things can be wrangled one way or another. Side issues (like the Wine disincentive to native development) are real but ultimately unimportant next to brute percentages.
This is not a way I like thinking, but it seems to be how the world of networked things works.
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smokinglizards Aug 16, 2018
I haven't read all the comments, but just being real here. Wine doesn't work that smoothly for many newer games, especially AAA. I think adding in this support, if that is what they are doing, should be something you turn on in the options and highlighted as experimental/unstable so no expectations otherwise. Low expectations here are critical.
other than that, i'd be down :D. Considering I run steam via wine anyway for a few games but generally avoid it because of the issues and lower framerates.
other than that, i'd be down :D. Considering I run steam via wine anyway for a few games but generally avoid it because of the issues and lower framerates.
0 Likes
I personally hope this isn't true. Maybe it's just me but I personally think it'll be a dark day in the Linux world when devs target Windows and just expect wine or some other compatibility layer to be used. I understand that it can be a good transitional tool to make coming to Linux easier but I still wine is a generally negative impact on Linux. I don't want to live in a world where the software is open but MS controls the specifications because all the FOSS software has to be compatible. That's just one of the many philosophical issues I have with wine and similar utilities. A lot of people don't care as long as they get their games but I don't like the idea of relying on compatibility layers and the easier and better they become the less reasons devs have to do native ports. If you had a tool that could run windows software exactly like it was on windows with no bugs then no dev would bother porting. I doubt it'll ever get to that point but wine is getting pretty good these days.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: ScooptaMaybe it's just me but I personally think it'll be a dark day in the Linux world when devs target Windows and just expect wine or some other compatibility layer to be used.Yeah, sure, it would be much worse than now, when devs target Windows and just don't care about anything beside Windows. *sarcasm*
EVERY big modern software uses compatibility layers in some ways. At least we would know it's FOSS Wine and DXVK, not something unknown and proprietary.
Imagine this situation:
1. Games on Steam get Linux support,
2. Ubisoft (for example) watch significant income from Linux users,
3. They don't want to share that money with Gaben,
4. Uplay and some games there get ported to Linux.
4 Likes, Who?
Quoting: liamdaweActually that's a very common problem. In the end, running the windows game under linux on wine tends to give less problems than running the windows game on a newer windows or running the linux game on a newer linux.Quoting: DamonLinuxPLWell this is amazing news but I have been disappointed with such things many times. Worst of all if it will be a compatible profile for running games from xp/vista/7 in Windows 10 :DYou know, it didn't even occur to me (it should have) that it could indeed be for Windows games no longer running on later versions of Windows...
And I am not talking about wow-win16, but all games that started on win32 always had problems.
Divine Divinity needs a directdraw to directx layer or something for windows(GOG), and it needs the original directdraw for linux to run good on wine (not available on GOG :-( ).
Buy a new win10 system and try installing any GTA up to GTA IV, and hook up a generic xbox controller. Good luck.
It will certainly eventually work though, but you have to be an expert in dll's and interfaces to know what else you need to install to make things work.
Even with the extra challenge that the screen is rotated on my WIN2, installing GTA IV EFL was pretty straight forward, if you don't use any of the wine installers, but just install steam, EFL.
The only thing is that I killed my wine install by trying to get the xbox controller to work.
Which is a well documented problem for GTA IV on windows.
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I hope they do, I'll be so glad to ditch the copy of windows I keep for the couple of windows only games I have.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: ageres"Ported." Everyone makes the FOSS argument but the entire game is proprietary so what does it matter if the layer is FOSS? If you don't have 100% free software then you're not in control anyway. That proprietary code could still do anything it wanted. As far as existing ports using layers. A compile time layer is not the same as a runtime layer but even still I do avoid most AAA ports for this reason anyway. I only occasionally buy AAA Linux games I'm extremely interested in. I mostly stick to Unity and UE4 games which are as native on Linux as they are on any platform.Quoting: ScooptaMaybe it's just me but I personally think it'll be a dark day in the Linux world when devs target Windows and just expect wine or some other compatibility layer to be used.Yeah, sure, it would be much worse than now, when devs target Windows and just don't care about anything beside Windows. *sarcasm*
EVERY big modern software uses compatibility layers in some ways. At least we would know it's FOSS Wine and DXVK, not something unknown and proprietary.
Imagine this situation:
1. Games on Steam get Linux support,
2. Ubisoft (for example) watch significant income from Linux users,
3. They don't want to share that money with Gaben,
4. Uplay and some games there get ported to Linux.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: ScooptaI personally hope this isn't true. Maybe it's just me but I personally think it'll be a dark day in the Linux world when devs target Windows and just expect wine or some other compatibility layer to be used.
You mean right now? Because that's what we have. Right now. This world you're worried about where Linux is an afterthought if it's thought about at all is the world we have right now.
We've hit the chicken-egg problem head on. Valve isn't going to force devs to cater to us. They won't even force devs to use Vulkan which would make the WINE experience a whole lot nicer. But what they will do is spend their own resources to make their catalog available to us. It's very likely that DXVK is actually a Valve project, and it's open nature is Valve using us to beta for them. Happy to do it. More than happy if this eventually makes Steam's Windows catalog easily accessible to new users, and frankly, to me because WINE is a hassle.
I know it's not FOSS, but without any hyperbole, Valve doing this could be the most important computer news story of the entire decade because if Valve really does kick over this domino it means the eventual end of Microsoft's dominance because it means for the first time normies will have a real alternative to Windows. GAMERS will have an alternative to Windows. Do you look out and see a lot of love for Microsoft? I don't. I see a lot of people that want Windows without Microsoft there to ruin it. In other words, there are a lot of people that would be okay switching to Mint Cinnamon if they had easy access to the all the stuff they care about on Windows. Eye on the prize.
We can worry about Saint Stallman's blessings after we're free of Redmond.
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