Quoting: tofuhead

Quoting: nanohazardWill it support Arch Linux tho...

is it that different from the rest of the distros?

It's a rolling release distribution, and those don't make for stable targets.

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Quoting: appetrosyanNow consider two scenarios: one with our current state of affairs and one I proposed.
A) "Well, you have some good games, like Deus Ex Mankind divided, but not Human Revolution (the good one), you have almost no complete franchise ports. Everything runs (at best) 5% slower than on Windoows, we only support the most counter-FSF GPU designer (nVidia), all thanks to using a (bad) Winwows wrapper (SDL). We do have Wine, that runs stuff better, but it's not officially supported. And yes, if the game runs on one of the three officially supported native game engines, you should expect Graphical glitches and maybe 2% fewer FPS. No exclusives. In fact, games that do come out, do so weeks after release."

B) "You can run almost any game that you could on Windows. You sometimes have to do some work in order to get decent FPS (about 25% slower on average), but almost everything on DX9 runs as good as on Windows. It uses the exact same files, so should have pretty much the same capabilities. Also Valve have Half Life 3 exclusive to Linux and their console. A couple other exclusive games too".

Wouldn't you agree that the latter case

No. The first one shows you don't really know what you are talking about, and the second one shows you're not cut out for marketing. I mean "like windows, but slightly worse for gaming" isn't much of a slogan, and not even true. Linux is different, and that's a strength, not a weakness. Also I don't think platform exclusives would be a good idea.

This thread seems to have attracted the gloomiest bunch of killjoys in our community. Cheer up guys. Play a game or something. We're doing just fine. :)

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Quoting: roothorickLinux needs to be the better option. For the consumer, having a thousandth the content available eclipses any advantage Linux could possibly achieve. You have a better idea for solving that problem?

I don't have any better ideas, I just don't think yours solves anything either. We don't have to support everything Windows does anyway. We just need a decent catalogue of games people actually want to play. Wine or emulators are just fine for playing the oldies.

In any case, the way MS has been going from one bad decision to the next lately, they might just do the work for us and push gamers away at some point. The camel's back will only bend so far before it snaps. Let's just do our part and be ready to welcome the refugees. :)

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Quoting: roothorick

Quoting: appetrosyanAnd in all fairness, Carmack was right.

Linux is unsuitable for business. Maybe as a development environment, but not as a target. But if I were to push for games on Linux, I'd focus on such projects as Wine

I've been saying this for a while now.

A lot of what Carmack says about Linux comes from a fundamental (and very common) misunderstanding of what Linux is and what its free and open source nature actually implies. Experts kept saying the same about Linux in the server space for years, and look what happened. Open source software and closed source software simply do not play by the same rules, and their success can't be measured by the same standards. The biggest obstacle Linux has ever faced is nothing technical. It's corporate and cultural inertia.

Wine is a wonderful piece of software, but not a real solution to this particular problem. It provides a means for developers to relatively quickly and painlessly publish ports of their Windows games, or for gamers on other platforms to play them. But that's all it is and will ever be IMHO. Intermediate porting layers and wrappers won't solve the bigger challenges. Gamers won't switch to a different platform just because it's available.

But I guess time will tell. For me personally this makes very little difference. I love gaming, but wouldn't consider doing it on a closed operating system or a console.

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Quoting: ALinuxGamerMesa still not supporting Vulkan and closed source drivers (especially AMD) are low performers (I am not excited by the Nvidia closed source performance either).

What do you mean? Mesa has anv for Intel and for AMD there's radv. Both should support all the Vulkan features and extensions in Vulkan 1.0.

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Quoting: SamsaiPicture has a guy with a beard. Guess what game has dudes with beards? Skyrim. So, it's Skyrim and you can cite me as a reputable source.

A reputable source of what? Salt?

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Quoting: MohandevirThis said, I really hope that you are right, but do not underestimate Microsoft.

Hard to underestimate a company that scrapes the bottom of the barrel so regularly. I gave up with them and their products about 16 years ago and they haven't yet made me regret my decision.

Microsoft can struggle all they want, but they're simply not the only big fish in the pond any more. They're still the biggest in the desktop computing space, but that simply means anything they do to push others off the playing field is considered anticompetitive.

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Quoting: MohandevirMicorsoft Surface with Windows 10S. Their hardware, their OS. They will try to convince gamers to use the Xbox One X to stream to the Surface. That's Microsoft's vision of the future. Not sure it's going to happen but it's heading this way.

Windows 10s is Microsoft's answer to ChromeOS. In essence it's the next Windows RT. A lightweight, stripped down Windows with very limited software compatibility and application base, enforced Bing etc. It's an example of a new platform instead of trying to close down an existing one. I certainly don't see it as a threat.

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Quoting: stretch611(Microsoft's only problem is with anti-trust law; which is not likely to be enforced with the current administration, it doesn't mean it wouldn't be enforced with the next.)

You write like MS only cares about the US market. The truth is, this would face an immediate antitrust challenge in the EU. It's much harder to close an existing platform with a majority market share than get a new, closed platform out there. How do you expect them to enforce a single marketplace when they can't even legally require/enforce a single web browser?

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W: Clue not obscure enough. Unless it's a double bluff and Feral is just trolling us.

I for one don't mind at all if it turns out to be the TR sequel.

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