Quoting: gradyvuckovic

Quoting: Purple Library GuyIncidentally in theory, if we continued that rate of % increase, like a 37% increase every 8 months, we'd reach 90% in 9 years and 4 months!

And here's me, who would be over the moon happy with reaching 5%. Because 5% would mean there are about 6m Linux gamers out there. Which would be more than sufficient marketshare to ensure the PC gaming industry (hardware makers, game developers, middleware developers, etc) give us at least some degree of meaningful support.

It's true. But in a sense the first few percentage points are the hard part. If we get to that level where vendors, hardware and software, give Linux support . . . then the big chicken/egg problems blocking growth are gone. That doesn't mean automatic further growth, but certainly some doors we've been experiencing as wedged shut would suddenly be ajar.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: GuestAnd Valve have directly discouraged native title development. How can that be a good thing?

Directly? I think promoting Proton can only really count as indirectly discouraging other things. Have they come out and directly said people shouldn't do native title development? I suppose at some point they've said you don't have to because there's Proton, but I don't see how they can promote Proton without somehow saying that.

Actually yes they said that. I'm sure for them they're thinking running through "Proton" gives them more quality control (and in some cases...fair enough!) but I'm certainly no fan of anyone saying not to develop natively for any platform.

When? I thought I'd been following all this fairly closely and I don't recall that.

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Incidentally in theory, if we continued that rate of % increase, like a 37% increase every 8 months, we'd reach 90% in 9 years and 4 months!

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I find the comments interesting in that there were a few years when bashing Microsoft had gone out of style, and if anyone started talking smack about M$ other people would immediately come along and say they're not so bad, they've changed, they like Linux now, they're not so dangerous now because they only dominate the desktop and it's on its way out anyway, etc etc. There was a feeling among many that being down on Microsoft was old fashioned political, GPL zealot thinking that was no longer relevant.

Lately I'm seeing a marked return to the old days of seeing Microsoft as the dangerous enemy and nasty monopolist that I personally have considered it all along. I wonder why?

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Edgy.

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Quoting: The_AquabatI will check Hitman Absolution , but Just Cause 2 is not working for me.

Why not?
Apparently just 'cause.

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So since February we've gone from the doldrums of 0.8% to the not-quite-so-doldrums of, looks like over 1.1%, which is, what, something like a 37% increase. Not too shabby.

OK, the total's still tiny. I'll definitely be interested to see what happens when Steam Decks start to sell.

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Quoting: ElectricPrismOnce again I arrive to the conversation feeling like I'm the only one that still sees Steam Machines 2015 as a HUGE success.

I would certainly have to agree that it was a HUGE learning experience, and that Valve does seem to have learned from it. And even that the development of the Steam Machine spurred the development of various tools, which were then built on since to pave the way for what looks like it will be success in the Steam Deck (although I mean, they haven't actually started sending them out yet, so technically it could still fail . . . but good buzz from those who have tried developer ones, plus back orders out to a couple of years, is a pretty good set of hints). And some of those same tools have improved Linux gaming more generally.

So I would have to agree that many good things came out of the Steam Machine initiative. But I still want to make a distinction between that and actually being a huge success as a project in itself. It wasn't. It was a huge learning experience partly because Valve made so many mistakes on the Steam Machine itself, most of which they are not making again this time around.
What Valve wanted was not just a learning experience and some development. The hope was that Steam Machines themselves would sell a ton of units, that all the people Valve had persuaded to do ports would make a bunch of money from having done so and that would become the new normal, that Linux would then have most of the games and become a more viable potential desktop, so much so that if Microsoft tried to make its own store a big thing and lock Steam out many people could be expected to prefer ditching Windows than Steam, thus discouraging Microsoft from trying it. None of that happened, at least not then, and Valve lost significant credibility with game companies.
Valve is lucky that so far, hints of Microsoft pushing towards trying to nobble Steam in favour of their own store have continued to fizzle. But it sure wasn't because of the Steam Machine.

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Quoting: GuestAnd Valve have directly discouraged native title development. How can that be a good thing?

Directly? I think promoting Proton can only really count as indirectly discouraging other things. Have they come out and directly said people shouldn't do native title development? I suppose at some point they've said you don't have to because there's Proton, but I don't see how they can promote Proton without somehow saying that.

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Quoting: redmcg"The main use case is emulating Windows' WaitForMultipleObjects which allows Wine to improve the performance of Windows Games." (1)

It's a bit of a worry seeing this cited as the main use case for futex2, given that the last I heard from Zebidiah (developer of the "fsync" patchset) on that topic was:
"this isn't really accurate" (2) ... "it is an out-of-tree implementation" (2) ... and "will remain out-of-tree due to compatibility and robustness problems" (2)

Before going on to say:
"I believe there is potential for an upstreamable implementation
which does not rely on futex or futex2." (2)

These quotes are from an older thread post to the kernel mailing list, but were in response to using Wine as justification for the inclusion of futex2.

(1) https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/163572864413.3357115.7664423060313420054.tglx@xen13/
(2) https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/4/20

Presumably something must have changed or someone else must have had a different opinion or it wouldn't now be going into the kernel.
I do get the impression there have been significant revisions to the implementation over time.

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