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Quoting: LukeNukemActually, I'd like to see a category for "Tiling Window Managers", or see that added as a choice under "Desktop Environment".

Maybe there could be an option to manually fill in some data so you could figure out who uses what and add the relevant info over time?

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I like to see in the distro to list, some more generic to join the unknown distro, like Debian based, Arch based, Slackware based

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I have enabled the javascript option for the graphs, which now enables me to show the percentage in a tooltip hover thingy when you mouse over each bar, as requested by a few of you :)

I already mentioned that you will eventually be able to look at older graphs once the basics are done (pretty much there). Being able to see a graph of changes over time is another interesting thing to do too, so that's probable.

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Great work, these are starting to look really nice! I have a few comments though. As have been mentioned earlier in the comments it would be nice to see some graphs that displays the progress over time. Also it would be nice to be able to see the percentage for a alternative in the graph, and not just the number of people who chosen it. I know the percentages is listed under "click for full statistics", but it would be nicer to have them directly in the graph.

I would also be interested in seeing some sort of breakdown of the "Window Manager Only" alternative in the "Desktop Environment" graph. But I can see how that could easily clutter up the graph so maybe it is best as is after all. Also, I think the "Monitors" graph should be renamed to "Number of Monitors" or something similar to be extra clear :)

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Okay: Resolution and RAM graphs fixed up with their natural sorting all correct. All others go from highest to lowest now as requested (because it makes sense).

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Quoting: cprn

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: z3ntuEverything under 14GB RAM is missing!

Yeah working on that ATM, [...]

...on prod? Duuuude. :'(

No, locally, i just didn't realise it wasn't working correctly for that one graph when I put it up.

Quoting: Segata SanshiroI still think sorting it out by distro families is the way forward, you'd have to spend such a disproportionate amount of time to include all the most obscure distros. Hannah Montana Linux doesn't mean much to anyone except to the one person using it, so from a user statistics point of view it would be pointless to include.

That's just my opinion, I know people tend to feel very strongly and want what distro they're using to be known, but from a gaming standpoint, it's somewhat irrelevant.

I prefer having it not per-family, as you don't get a decent breakdown of exactly what people are using, which is actually a major point of what I am doing here. To really see what people are using, not a broad family definition of the distro.

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I asked whether those who purchase it from deliver2.com would get steam keys and haven't gotten any response for three days. I still says awaiting assignment.

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Add ObscureOS No Users Edition plz.

No, I jest... but where does the line get drawn? Should there be an option for the guys who do Linux from scratch? Maybe it would be better served to have a text box option if one can't find their distro on the list.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: z3ntuEverything under 14GB RAM is missing!

Yeah working on that ATM, [...]

...on prod? Duuuude. :'(

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I still think sorting it out by distro families is the way forward, you'd have to spend such a disproportionate amount of time to include all the most obscure distros. Hannah Montana Linux doesn't mean much to anyone except to the one person using it, so from a user statistics point of view it would be pointless to include.

That's just my opinion, I know people tend to feel very strongly and want what distro they're using to be known, but from a gaming standpoint, it's somewhat irrelevant.

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Actually, I'd like to see a category for "Tiling Window Managers", or see that added as a choice under "Desktop Environment".

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Quoting: ripperGraphs should be sorted in descending order, so the most used item should be on top. For example, distribution list should start with Ubuntu on top. Currently it's counter-intuitive. I'd keep current sorting for number-based graphs, like RAM or Resolution, it makes sense in those cases.

I agree, I'm doing that now.

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Quoting: dubigrasuWell, got the game from GOG and added the patch. The game is running well and I had no issues so far. Not sure what to say about the game itself.
It looks very old obviously and if you didn't like it back then probably you won't like it now even with the recent improvements.
But, too early to tell.
View video on youtube.com

(The video is a bit dark, I know)
late edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFfnppJqzH4

Compared to old videos, AVGN's play, and what I remember, widescreen and enhanced video options and resolutions make it look a fair bit nicer. The frogs and flies are super annoying, but at some point I will take the challenge and play it to completion. Too busy with Day of the Tentacle right now.

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Got this running on Arch Linux, good resource:

Steam Community - Daikatana Guide

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I'd like to see percentages, not just total numbers, for example on mouse over. Currently it's extremely hard to say e.g. how many percent of people use an AMD graphics card, or, even worse, GNOME Desktop.

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Graphs should be sorted in descending order, so the most used item should be on top. For example, distribution list should start with Ubuntu on top. Currently it's counter-intuitive. I'd keep current sorting for number-based graphs, like RAM or Resolution, it makes sense in those cases.

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Are you keeping the 'history' of these stats? Like, keeping a backup of all of the stat refreshes?

Would just be cool 6 months, a year etc down the line to see how things have changed since the statistics page launched.

Thanks for keeping this up!

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My personal setup is still missing the distribution: BunsenLabs

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Quoting: z3ntuEverything under 14GB RAM is missing!

Yeah working on that ATM, it's tricky because people want it sorted by RAM, not just by total users. Have to work out a decent natural sorting method for it.

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I would love to see some statistical progression of different hardware trends, like a graph for the GPU trends as an example, what vendor is gaining and so on... just with data for each month, quarter or year, what ever makes sense :)

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Everything under 14GB RAM is missing!

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Quoting: HalifaxI just wish Valve gave incentives to game devs who make a Linux port. Like instead of taking a 30% cut of every sale, they take a 10% cut of every Linux sale. Hypothetical, I have no idea what the real percentages are. Valve could make it a time limited thing, and keep advertising it to devs and re-upping at their discretion: "Extended for six more months: 75% off our cut per sale of any fully ported Linux Steam game! Time is limited, so act now!"

But, Valve wouldn't want to take that kind of hit to their pocketbook just to push Linux adoption forward. Greed is what greed is.

You know what the problem with having a million dollars is? You want another million dollars.
You know what the problem with having a 100 million dollars is? You want another 100 million dollars.
You know what the problem with having a billion dollars is? You want another billion dollars.
You know what the problem with having a 100 billion dollars is? You want another 100 billion dollars.
etc. :-)

I think it's a little more complicated than that. Companies offer discounts all the time--like the numerous sales on Steam itself. Valve could be offering such an incentive right now and I wouldn't know. You admitted you don't know what the real percentages are either, so I imagine you're in the same boat. Even assuming they're not, the reason they're not could simply boil down to something they've never really considered.

I do think Valve could push to support SteamOS more, and even make some sacrifices along the way, but it really comes down to cost-to-benefit. The great thing about capitalism is that "greed" as you put it motivates companies to generate value for society in order to exchange it for value in return. (As opposed to government which satisfies its insatiable lust for resources simply by force.) So, they could figure that if they made some deals now and took some cuts in the short term, it could pay off in the future with their own entrenched platform and whatever profit opportunities that presents.

The problem is I think SteamOS has always been a bit of a contingency plan. It's a fallback should Microsoft ever try to place some limits on Valve by forcing developers to use the Windows store or other like shenanigans that MS might pull with their OS that cuts into Valve's potential profits. At this point, I think Valve has essentially called MS's bluff and MS in turn has backed off. Accordingly, they can keep SteamOS in stasis as long as they like, ready to drag it back into the light should MS start making any moves again that Valve doesn't like.

In a way, it's a bit of a nuclear option. The biggest thing Valve could do to support SteamOS is to release some kind of exclusives (timed or otherwise) for SteamOS and/or subsidize their console like Microsoft and Sony does, selling the system at or below cost on a gamble to drive adoption. Their talk of exclusives violating the "spirit" of things or whatever is a load of BS. Developing for one platform over another has costs--as plenty of devs will tell you when you ask about a Linux version. Accordingly, if Valve encouraged/paid a developer to make a game for their platform in a very standard limited-time non-compete agreement for a few months or at the very least released a game or two themselves as some kind of exclusive, there's nothing more immoral about that than the DRM restrictions they facilitate all the time with Steam itself. Likewise, actually producing Steam machines directly rather than offering immaterial support to third-party vendors--leaving them to sell their systems at a premium on par with any other prebuilt PC in order to turn a profit--likewise demonstrates Valve's lack of commitment to really turning the industry around to support their own platform.

And it all makes sense when we consider that Valve isn't really trying to shake things up this way. It would irritate some existing "PC" gamers to think that they have to wait for, say, Half-Life 3 to come to "PC" or go out and purchase a Steam machine. But the outcry would be minimal, and plenty of gamers would begrudgingly purchase yet another console like they have in the past should they really be unwilling to wait, and the outcry from the community and all of its empty threats and other assorted drama would pale in comparison to the bigger concern: Microsoft's response. Should Valve make the first move and truly give people incentive to abandon Microsoft's flagship OS--especially in a time when MS is failing in other markets, such as mobile--then you can bet Microsoft would definitely tighten the reins and enforce some policy that would push Valve off their OS entirely.

Neither company is short-sighted enough to violate their own interests, and so there remains a stalemate. At some point--maybe if more than 50% of Steam's library was available on SteamOS (random guess really)--perhaps Valve might consider parting ways with MS and actively pushing for folks to adopt their platform. But whatever the case is that precipitates such a departure, make no mistake: it would be a departure. Valve is only really going to push SteamOS with any kind of real weight once they're comfortable with any kind of retaliation from Microsoft.

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Quoting: wojtek88If it is not a secret and you're not obligated to keep it to yourself - could you tell if the project was a "once paid" job or do you have some profit of the income that each copy gives? And if the contract you have in this game is typical or does it differ from project to project?

Cheese said elsewhere that he doesn't get a cut of any sales and that this is pretty much the norm for third party porting contracts. It's different for companies like Feral and Aspyr probably because they also publish, market and support their ports.

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@Cheeseness I have to say I enjoyed a lot this article. But I miss one thing - it did cover technical part of the porting job, but did not cover business part.
If it is not a secret and you're not obligated to keep it to yourself - could you tell if the project was a "once paid" job or do you have some profit of the income that each copy gives? And if the contract you have in this game is typical or does it differ from project to project?
What's more - assuming that you have a profit from each copy of the game - what part of income does go to you?

There is a reason why I ask - I wonder if buying games on sales have influence on a money you (as a single porter) get or does it influence publisher influence (which of course has an impact on a money that publisher can divide between developers, but does not influence your income, because you decide if you take the job with given money or you don't).

Anyway, great article!

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There needs to be a good how to for (re)beginners like me who haven't played in a while, atm they are all 'starting out in story mode' but I wan't sometihng to show me how to play, also how do you make pickaxes now?

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View video on youtube.com
:)

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AMD's lack of updates during the Catalyst driver drove me insane, especially when using newer distros. Everytime xserver got updated it broke my system. Never ever had that issue with Mesa drivers. I really wanted to test Vulkan out, but they haven't brought support to my GPU in Linux yet anyway. So I will wait for this open Vulkan driver and see how things progress.

But I need to make a choice in 6 months time. Does my new computer stay team red with improving open source drivers, or do I go to the dark side and get a GTX 1070.

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I've posted a support request regarding the force feedback issue and this is the response:

QuoteIt is caused by a bug in the Xpad driver, which has not yet been patched. Our current suggestion is to switch to using xboxdrv instead.

:/ I'm curious what that bug may be as I've never had something like that in any games (with FF or without)...

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I haven't noticed any issues here with AMDGPU-Pro, but I'm mostly using the AMDGPU-Mesa stack from git. The only game in my collection which I need AMDGPU-Pro for is Dying Light. AMDGPU-Pro is also nice for testing DirectX 10 and 11 games with Wine, since Wine is making use of those newer extensions to support such DirectX API calls. However it should be noted that only a handful of DirectX 10/11 games have just started working in recent weeks, and I expect the AMDGPU/Mesa stack will achieve OpenGL 4.5 support well before Wine is ready for use with most DirectX 11 titles.

So in practise, AMDGPU-Pro isn't too useful by this point for post people that know how to compile Mesa. I also have no interest in keeping an AMDGPU-Pro installation around just for Vulkan, and will happily wait until the free software stack is in good shape. There are no Vulkan-only games around right now, and it should be some time before they make an appearance.

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Quoting: PlintslchoToo many bad ghetto-themed Hollywood flicks lately?

The strength of your argument is directly proportional to the number of f-bombs dropped. That's why gangsta rappers should rule the world. Preferably not this one, but that's just my opinion and I don't curse much.

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