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Latest Comments by CatKiller
Linux updates tease Valve 'Galileo' and 'Sephiroth' - Steam Deck refresh? Or new VR?
5 Sep 2023 at 2:33 pm UTC Likes: 13

They're being added under "Valve Jupiter device", with Jupiter being one of the names Valve seems to use for SteamOS.
I could be wrong, but I think that "Jupiter" is the hardware platform of the Steam Deck - the computer gubbins - and "Neptune" is the input platform of the Steam Deck - the controller gubbins. SteamOS itself is called Holo for the version with the Deck, and was named after DOTA characters for the Steam Machines - .Alchemist, Brewmaster, and Clockwerk.

If we assume that there's some underlying logic to the codename, Galileo the person and Galileo the probe are both famed for looking at Jupiter, which suggests it might be a Valve gaming platform linked somehow with visuals: a new display, or VR, maybe? It's all pretty thin, though.

Linux user share remains above macOS in the latest Steam Survey
4 Sep 2023 at 7:42 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: EikeI was opening in tabs as well... but I don't drink tea, so obviously, I couldn't do all of it.


Ah, yeah, that's the issue: not enough tea.

Ah, on the semi-serious side: Where would the trend lines meet?
May 2025, I think?

Linux user share remains above macOS in the latest Steam Survey
4 Sep 2023 at 6:28 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: EikeDid you fetch all of that manually from the website? It sometimes took like half a minute for it to display the link(s) for a certain day for me...
I did. I've done data hunting for Liam's tracker before. The trick is to load the results into new tabs so that they can be getting on with loading while you wait for the next link to appear. And to make a cup of tea if it's getting too tedious, of course.

Linux user share remains above macOS in the latest Steam Survey
4 Sep 2023 at 6:04 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: EikeAnother question, does somebody have survey results of the last months or years stored? Would be interesting to draw the Mac line as well. :D
Wayback Machine.
Well, that did work!



If it's a trend, it's a new one it seems.
Or I need to dig further down the timeline.

*edit* Fetched some more data, and I don't see a Mac decline between August 2021 (oldest number fetched) and May 2023. Wayback Machine is slow. It must be reading the data from tape. X)
I went back as far as Liam's Steam Tracker does (since some subset of data before then is hinky):



(Edit: added trend lines)

Linux user share remains above macOS in the latest Steam Survey
3 Sep 2023 at 10:31 am UTC

Quoting: EikeAnother question, does somebody have survey results of the last months or years stored? Would be interesting to draw the Mac line as well. :D
Wayback Machine.

Canonical give some thoughts on the future of Ubuntu Desktop
26 Aug 2023 at 3:12 pm UTC

Quoting: sprocketb) Push for an immutable operating system, something many of their competitors are doing. I'm not sure if this can be done with snaps (i legit don't know).
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/06/canonical-planning-an-immutable-desktop-version-of-ubuntu/

Epic Games' new exclusive deal gives devs 100% for 6 months
23 Aug 2023 at 3:42 pm UTC Likes: 4

It seems largely a move to make accounting easier: before they had to offer a big bag of money for exclusivity, and they had to work out how big the bag had to be, and developers had to work out if the bag was big enough to offset the lost sales. They already established that that approach wasn't working. This is a much simpler first bite of the cherry to exclude Steam, GOG & Microsoft. Whatever sales a game can get in the first six months drive people to bother with the Epic Store, and publishers get a bigger share of the revenue.

5 years ago Valve released Proton forever changing Linux gaming
21 Aug 2023 at 3:55 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualI still don't see Valve funding any work to get Soft-Denchi, DMM Game Launcher, or Buddy Launcher to work in Wine (not Proton, because these games aren't sold on Steam), but I would be very happy to be proven wrong. DRM is such a huge blocker for visual novels, even beyond the codec issue.
Having things fixed in upstream Wine is Valve's favoured outcome. They don't want to have to maintain a wildly divergent code base all on their own. That's why they give money to CodeWeavers. DXVK is the exception: it was never going to be included with Wine, and performed way better than wined3d, so Valve brought it in-house.

Japanese non-Steam visual novels aren't going to be a priority compared to other low-hanging fruit, sure, but if the unimplemented-in-Wine functions that those games use are holding people on Windows - especially if they're also used by other software - then Valve are going to be perfectly comfortable giving a bag of money to CodeWeavers or Collabora and saying "make this work, please."

5 years ago Valve released Proton forever changing Linux gaming
21 Aug 2023 at 1:31 pm UTC Likes: 8

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualAnd on that note, while I appreciate Valve's work on Proton and the Wine ecosystem, I know the work they're funding isn't going to help me out with the games I most play—visual novels. Most Japanese language visual novels aren't published on Steam, so Valve doesn't have a reason to care about them.
That's not really true.

Valve aren't using Linux to make more money. The vast, vast majority of their money comes from customers that use Windows. Valve are using Linux as a strategy to ensure the survival of Steam against Microsoft misbehaviour: they need their customers to be able to be Steam users that don't use Windows rather than Windows users that don't use Steam should Microsoft make Steam-on-Windows non-viable in the future. Anything that keeps their customers locked to Windows, including but not limited to games that aren't on Steam, is an obstacle to that plan.

Valve can't rely on hardware manufacturers or game developers to make it happen - the Steam Machines demonstrated that - so they're just brute-forcing it themselves.