I'm down for fun event marketing. We're going to be pelted with marketing anyway so why not make it a fun event. I'm also a huge fan of demos and trials. If a game demo hooks me, I'm more likely to buy it than put it off for later. I think it puts pressure on developers to step up their game and with the flood of mediocrity hitting the market, that's a good thing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

This is a link to their forum with distros that it runs on and any issues or hacks reported for the distro. https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/520-linux-distrosconfigurations-under-which-vs-is-known-to-run/ [External Link]

I wish they supported Steam then I could choose to use either the Proton Windows OS compat layer or the SLR Ubuntu OS container. It would make things so much easier. I want to like Itch but it's such a pain in the badunkdunk, and a lot of the "Linux" games I've tried from that charity bundle didn't run out of the box.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: randyl

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: furaxhornyx

Quoting: grigiNo, the "fragmentation" isn't a bad thing. Think of it in terms of innovations, if only one thing is allowed, will we ever actually get progress?

In terms of innovation, yes, but no so much in terms of development (I quote below a good illustration):

Quoting: randylWhen we ask a game studio to support "Linux" and provide us a native "port", what exactly are we asking? What are they supposed to target and support? Do we expect them to support all our various packaging systems?

--8<--------------

Quoting: slaapliedjeIn my mind we should be asking 'please support this game on Linux via Steam or GOG or itch.io.' not "please make debian packages."

But wouldn't targeting a "store" end up for example like what we see with Epic Game Store getting exclusives ?

Not anymore than 'we sell from our own store, and you can only get this one package that works on *buntu, but you are on your own with anything else."
But otherwise that is already happening. Commercial games for Linux are only really being released on those two, or from individual store fronts. Maybe if we had more choices, like Origin and Uplay, then we could ask for those to be released... as it is, we get mediocre suplort from GOG and only really have Steam and Itch. Unless snap or flatpqk gets some sort of retail support or we get some weird shock like EGS coming to Linux, it is what it is.

I've found Itch to be a bad experience overall because the games target old OS versions that are either statically linked to out of date libraries or dynamically linked in a manner that breaks when libs change. Dynamically linking sounds smart but every library maintainer has their own idea of how backwards compatibility works. But don't worry, fragmentation isn't a problem.

Has anyone ever asked why GoG doesn't support us? Don't ask too deeply or you won't like the answer. Market share always takes the blame, but it isn't the only reason. We're a huge pain in the ass because "supporting Linux" means everything and nothing at once. It isn't worth their effort.

Why won't EGS "come to Linux"? Because it isn't worth the effort for a fraction of a fraction of marketshare for a distribution that doesn't even know if it wants to be a desktop OS or not. Canonical can't even figure out a plan for 32 bit blob support going forward. They just backtracked on that a little and pushed it out to be dealt with some other time.

There is no fragmentation or consistency issue. This is fine.

Mountain of molehill...
You know why there are so many different Linux distributions? Because different people have different needs. You don't think that if Windows was open source and 100% customizable that there wouldn't be all sorts of crazy and awesome configurations? You don't think the same would be said about iOS? Choice is good. There isn't so much as fragmentation as there is a lack of understanding how to package things cleanly. A platform like Steam does it mostly correctly with few bugs. AppImage is another method. Flatpak as well. These are things that actually are trying to solve the packaging / library differences you're so concerned with.

If you're preferred use of Linux is to just play games on it, use GamerOS or one of the other ones that are optimized as such. Me, I enjoy general computing usage and gaming, so I use Debian. The fragmentation thing is really a myth, as any distribution that doesn't suck will have work arounds to make them more usable. Look at Arch, generally not the friendliest to install, but you can keep the same install updated for many years, and the user community is fantastic and make all sorts of PKGBUILDs for just about any software you can think of. Does this make them different than Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL/Cent, Fedora? Sure! Is it a good or bad thing? I think it's a good thing, as I sad, we all have our use cases!

Are you a developer for anything Linux related? If not, I'd say talk to some and find the real issue. Sure support can kind of be a pain from the "well I have Arch installed and...' well when did you last update? "three months ago..." "Update, then see if the issue is still there..." But I mean if you're running Arch... you should be punched if you did that.

It's simple enough to say 'we'll help with whatever issue, but if it takes more time because you're not running 'supported' OS than we may have to give up, as we can't support every config.' That's basically the 'correct' way to support software on Linux.

Thanks for that perspective. I'll take it into consideration.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: randyl

Quoting: berarmaI would have liked that you started with a supported title like HL:Alyx. It would have been more representative of the state of SteanVR on GNU/Linux.

Besides, add to that, like others said, that you're using an unsupported distro and it seems you're going for the big prize. Yesterday I read Lutris isn't supporting Mint for the issues with Wine games.

I'd like to read the experiences from someone not going so hard on it.

Wait, does Valve VR only support Ubuntu? That would be a terrible marketing decision on their part.

Like all Valve products, Ubuntu is the only "official" supported platform. However, as you can see from this article, Mint works with a bit of foresight, and I can see extensive notes on the ArchWiki [External Link] too, so there's plenty of platforms you can use if you prefer not to go with Ubuntu. You haven't filled in your profile details, so I can't see what distro you do run, but I unless it's Linux From Scratch, I doubt you'll have too many issues making this stuff work.

I've filled in my distro details. Maybe I haven't put them in the right spot? As far I can tell my hardware and distro info are present and the little Fedora logo is next to my name.

I think my confusion came from seeing Linux support on a lot of Valve's site and even in community comments when they really mean Ubuntu. For me, Ubuntu is Linux, but not the other way around.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: berarmaI would have liked that you started with a supported title like HL:Alyx. It would have been more representative of the state of SteanVR on GNU/Linux.

Besides, add to that, like others said, that you're using an unsupported distro and it seems you're going for the big prize. Yesterday I read Lutris isn't supporting Mint for the issues with Wine games.

I'd like to read the experiences from someone not going so hard on it.

Wait, does Valve VR only support Ubuntu? That would be a terrible marketing decision on their part.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: furaxhornyx

Quoting: grigiNo, the "fragmentation" isn't a bad thing. Think of it in terms of innovations, if only one thing is allowed, will we ever actually get progress?

In terms of innovation, yes, but no so much in terms of development (I quote below a good illustration):

Quoting: randylWhen we ask a game studio to support "Linux" and provide us a native "port", what exactly are we asking? What are they supposed to target and support? Do we expect them to support all our various packaging systems?

--8<--------------

Quoting: slaapliedjeIn my mind we should be asking 'please support this game on Linux via Steam or GOG or itch.io.' not "please make debian packages."

But wouldn't targeting a "store" end up for example like what we see with Epic Game Store getting exclusives ?

Not anymore than 'we sell from our own store, and you can only get this one package that works on *buntu, but you are on your own with anything else."
But otherwise that is already happening. Commercial games for Linux are only really being released on those two, or from individual store fronts. Maybe if we had more choices, like Origin and Uplay, then we could ask for those to be released... as it is, we get mediocre suplort from GOG and only really have Steam and Itch. Unless snap or flatpqk gets some sort of retail support or we get some weird shock like EGS coming to Linux, it is what it is.

I've found Itch to be a bad experience overall because the games target old OS versions that are either statically linked to out of date libraries or dynamically linked in a manner that breaks when libs change. Dynamically linking sounds smart but every library maintainer has their own idea of how backwards compatibility works. But don't worry, fragmentation isn't a problem.

Has anyone ever asked why GoG doesn't support us? Don't ask too deeply or you won't like the answer. Market share always takes the blame, but it isn't the only reason. We're a huge pain in the ass because "supporting Linux" means everything and nothing at once. It isn't worth their effort.

Why won't EGS "come to Linux"? Because it isn't worth the effort for a fraction of a fraction of marketshare for a distribution that doesn't even know if it wants to be a desktop OS or not. Canonical can't even figure out a plan for 32 bit blob support going forward. They just backtracked on that a little and pushed it out to be dealt with some other time.

There is no fragmentation or consistency issue. This is fine.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Imperator Rome isn't a game in a genre I dive deep into or spend a lot of time with, however, the cross platform multiplayer sounds brilliant. I hope it works well because I like being able to play with the people I want to regardless of their platform choice. I don't feel their hardware choices are any of my business. So, I like the idea of knowing someone has a game and I can play with them without the platform questions.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: DragosakPlease reassess what you consider "mainstream". Mint is higher on distrowatch than Ubuntu for instance and used to be number one there. Does it mean it's more popular? Probably not, but it is pretty popular and mainstream. Also, with the same package base it's basically Ubuntu 18.04 with some different skinning, tooling and without some weird ubuntu choices.

Distrowatch is not a good measure of a distribution being mainstream or popular [External Link]. For Steam specifically, the Steam Hardware Survey [External Link] is much more relevant and in there Ubuntu 20.04 is the supreme leader, with almost 20%, Ubuntu 18.04 being second with ~13%. But specifically, Ubuntu is the distro officially supported by Steam and the games (besides SteamOS that is almost irrelevant these days), and we would assume that's where they test their games to work. Valve was going to drop support for Ubuntu due to the 32-bit-libs debacle, but gave up on it when Canonical took steps to extend the longevity of these libraries -- and 20.04 mostly works with them yet.

I am not saying I agree with Canonical, I am not saying I like the power they get from being a "standard" to follow because I recognize how wrongly they leverage this power, I am not saying I wish everyone to use Ubuntu and I myself am pretty disappointed with Canonical (I expressed my anger towards them in some messages, you might find those occasionally), but let's be real, it is close enough to a good standard desktop experience on Linux, and I find it sensible that developers use it for their testing and support. I would even recommend it to new users even though I am myself moving away from it.

This is exactly why I believe the Linux ecosystem needs to address its incredible fragmentation. From my persective I don't consider Ubuntu the standard or a standard at all. At best they're ~40% of 3% and that's tiny and in no way automatically defaults them to a standard. In fact since they're so far off from upstream development (with their own odd customized riddling the OS) they can't be a Linux standard. Linux doesn't have a go to standard. That's one of our problems.

Excellent write up Scaine. I've been following VR for a while, watching it slowly mature. I played around on a friend's VIVE a few years ago and enjoyed it but felt it still had a long way to go and that experience was on Windows. There is slow progress.

I'm curious if you or others using VR in the thread have vision issues or wear glasses? I'm farsighted and not sure how well my eyes would do for long stints wearing the headset.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Recognizing fragmentation issues and solutions doesn't imply all paths lead to homogenization. When we ask a game studio to support "Linux" and provide us a native "port", what exactly are we asking? What are they supposed to target and support? Do we expect them to support all our various packaging systems?

This doesn't even touch on all the Linux ports that only work with specific package systems, distro, or library versions. Most of the titles in consumer gaming fit into the category of closed proprietary binaries that are specifically subject to fragmentation.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The one thing I hope comes out of this summit is a better way forward for application development. Our diversity is one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses (due to fragmentation). I feel like we're often so worried about courting Windows and Mac users and making our software available to their platforms that we've neglected the deep fragmentation in our own.

View this comment - View article - View full comments