Didn't read through all the posts, but there is this bit of news that might have a link to what's going on or that Steam may benefit from...

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/11/google-outlines-plans-for-mainline-linux-kernel-support-in-android/ [External Link]

ChromeOS gaming PCs? Mmmmm... :)

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Quoting: NociferWell, now I can't help but feel absolutely certain that Nvidia's "big open source announcement" scheduled for March 23-26 (more info [External Link] will be to reveal their top secret business partnership with Valve, aiming to produce the next generation of Steam Cuda™ Machines, running on an open core Wayland stack, as a masterfully orchestrated counterattack to AMD's partnerships with Sony and MS as regards to providing the GPUs for PS5 and XboxNext.

I'm calling it first folks: the Year of the Linux Desktop (2020 Edition) is finally upon us, and it's all thanks to Nvidia. Rejoice.

Spoiler, click me

(Bad) jokes aside, Valve's continuing dedication to the future of Linux as a competent gaming platform throughout the past decade is truly praiseworthy. Many, many kudos to them!

A "little" overoptimistic and funny. :D

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: iwantlinuxgamesI'm not holding my breath for wayland on nvidia. xorg works just fine for me with the nvidia proprietary driver.
<...>
I'll give up nvidia and xorg when u pry them from my cold dead fingers.

That's why I said, ditch Nvidia if you care about innovation and progress of the Linux desktop. In case you don't, you can stay with the blob that can't handle modern use cases.

Just note, that it slows things down for everyone else too. While Nvidia usage is still high, Wayland won't be prioritized. I expect things to move faster, once Nvidia blob usage will drop below both AMD and Intel.

This said... Valve and Nvidia have worked closely in the past, so who knows, maybe when the time comes for a full and official deployment of Gamescope... But I'm not holding my breath either.

I made the choice of a GTX 1660 Super because it was the best GPU for the 450W PSU in my Mini-itx build and I use a lot of in-home streaming... For these use-cases, I'm kind of stuck with Nvidia. AMD has the tendency to have an higher tdp, unfortunately... Don't know if it's going to change with the RX5600XT.

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Really look forward to try that piece of tech. ^_^

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: MohandevirImo,Valve would do better to put their efforts on Steam Cloud Gaming if they don't plan to travel the road they have paved, 6 years ago.

There is no reason for them not to sell their own gaming oriented PCs with Linux, as long as they provide high quality support. Having that is one of the way to beat MS monopoly. No partners I'd say, that route is ineffective.

Exactly my stance.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Whitewolfe80Well i could of gone with retarded financially irresposible dumb fuck decision but i thought silly covered it theres a reason sega arent in the console business anymore and even nintendo had to be bailed out of going bankrupt after the diaster that was wii u. Granted it was never in real danger because of the amount capital the shareholders have but still. MS looses money on every xbox 1 sold still Sony i think break even now on every ps4 they all attempt to recoup the money in game sales. Wheres the problem steam has games i hear you say yes it does third party games that you can buy on epic store or gog the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago.

"the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago"? I doubt it. I've seen no real indication that Epic has made much difference to the market. Let me see if I can find some info to back my intuition . . . google google . . . OK. So, the total size of the PC game market in 2018 was according to one source $28.6 Billion, not counting browser games. Epic games just yesterday put out an article bragging about how much money their store has made. Ready for it?

$680 M spent by PC players in the Epic Games store

Sounds like a lot, although rather small compared to $28.6 billion. Hang on, wait a moment . . . they added another figure:

$251 M spent by players on third-party PC games in the Epic Games store

So like, more than half the sales in their store was just Fortnite. In terms of actually being a game store that people buy games from other than theirs, do some quick math, that would appear to be slightly under 1% of the market. 3% if you count Fortnite.
Steam has less to worry about than I thought. Even if you assume Epic's sales have been on a gradual upward slope from zero, so that their market share as of the moment is twice the average market share over the year, that's still only 2%. Gog probably has more.

So yeah, they probably could recoup the losses on discounted hardware from an open platform. Especially since sure, people could go buy outside Steam with a Steam Machine, but they were build with an interface setup that takes you straight into Steam by default. I don't see why that would change if Valve were making the hardware themselves. Hardly anybody would go to the trouble of making some other store their main go-to place after buying a Steam Machine that boots them into Steam. People would be as free to use other game stores as ordinary PC customers are to rip out Windows and install Linux.

In fact, ripping out Steamos to replace it with Windows is exactly what happened the first time... Alienware Alpha, anybody?

The "licensed hardware partners" ended up offering Windows variants of the same Steam Machines hardware, making them irrelevant. And that's what is going to happen again if they try the licensing model again.

Imo,Valve would do better to put their efforts on Steam Cloud Gaming if they don't plan to travel the road they have paved, 6 years ago.

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Quoting: somebody1121Also i find interesting to see on page 4 Metro exodus using Vulkan. I hope it's for a linux port (the other two have a native one), not only for stadia...

We might have an answer to that on February 15. :wink:

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: rustybroomhandleI still think all of this is leading up to a second attempt at Steam Machines, except this time with Valve also being the hardware provider.

I dont think they are silly enough to be a hardware provider i think they will go for the licence model again but how many takers there will be after the first attempt bombed.

Personnally, I doubt that we'll ever see another wave of Steam Machines, if they don't intend to go "the silly way". All these tweaks are probably Steam Cloud Gaming oriented (you know, Steam Linux streaming servers) and the desktop user might gain new features because there is no reason to not let them (Steam in-home streaming and the diy sofa gamers).

I would be the happiest guy to be proven wrong.

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Could it mean that it might get included in the Steam Desktop client as a "DE" for any supported distro? That would be really awesome!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this. I'm a steamos-compositor fan. I still use it to this day, on top of Ubuntu.

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1-CyberPunk 2077
2-Divinity: Original Sins II
3-Borderlands 3 / Metro Exodus

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