Quoting: lucifertdarkUEFI was the first step to making Windows the only operating system that works on a PC, killing steam & replacing it with Windows store would be a further step down that route, it may take a few years but it is going to happen.

I'm sure MS would love to make that happen, but the problem for them is that hardware is commoditized and economies of scale very much operative for computers, and MS only "owns" the desktop segment of that hardware (which is shrinking as a percentage of the whole enchilada). The more of the same widgets Intel or whoever can make, the better for their bottom line, and everywhere except the desktop, those widgets gotta run Linux. Doing the desktop different enough from everything else as to make it not run Linux even though the servers and TV-managing boxes and embedded thingies and supercomputer clusters and yadda and yadda and yadda all have to run Linux, would hurt profits. So they ain't gonna do it, and MS does not have enough muscle in this age to make them.

Also, UEFI is a different category of thing from locking down what runs on Windows. The former was in part a, mostly unsuccessful, move to stop things other than Windows from running on PC hardware. The latter would be an attempt to get more control of, and extract more money from, Windows itself--but if anything it would tend to push more people into running things other than Windows on PC hardware.

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Quoting: CreakAnyone against Linux would have said the same kind of "in five years, they'll control the whole universe!" would have been accused of FUD'ing.

We've got to be fairplay and not accept this kind of arguments because it pleases us.

Normally, you would expect different arguments to be plausible about a loose group with 2% of the market than about a monopolist that has been convicted of using illegal practices to maintain said monopoly. See, if you say "This person may be about to leverage their monopoly power to gain still more control and revenues!" that is basically a plausible thing to say about the monopolist, but probably not about the group with 2%.

If you wanted to say Linux was going to plot to use their near-monopoly of the supercomputer market to do something, that might be plausible--if it weren't for the fact that open source platforms make Microsoft-like shenanigans very difficult in the first place, and that "Linux" isn't a unified entity.

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Well, on the plus side, if Mr. Sweeney is right, I expect the Valve people will at some point notice it. And if Gabe and the Valve people conclude MS is back to trying to screw with them, we can anticipate SteamOS and the Steam Machine to be on the front burner again.

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Quoting: neowiz73I blame the Mac vs PC commercials for starting the paradigm of calling all windows based systems "PCs".

Probably intentional. Apple want to take market share from Microsoft, but they'd certainly prefer to do that while not giving any to Linux. Characterizing things in that very binary way where PC hardware appears to == MS in the same way that Mac hardware really does == Mac OS (almost) helps them freeze Linux out.

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I'm thinking what you're not usually is a big "puzzle" fan. Not "pizzle", although I'm willing to believe you're not a huge fan of those either. :D

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I quite like this game. There is one thing that annoys me about it, though. At least when I play it, the chance to hit it tells you is systematically different from what you actually get, which is noticeably lower, to the point where if I calculate roughly what will happen based on expectations from what it claims will happen, I will always find that the results are distinctly off from that, with more enemies surviving than expected, leaving me significantly exposed. If I have a unit with like a 60% chance to hit, I invariably find that in five attacks they will maybe hit twice rather than three times--40% rather than 60%. The only way to get a result approximating what the game tells you should on average be happening is by silly amounts of save-scumming. Otherwise, you have to guesstimate what your real chances are and basically ignore the game's claims except as an idea of who can hit more often.

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Quoting: mr-eggPlaying advocate here

And who might you be advocating for? Could it be . . . THE DEVIL??!!

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Quoting: mr-egg

Quoting: Finn

Quoting: Purple Library GuySide question: It seems like Chromebooks have been selling surprisingly well lately. Is anyone writing games for them? Would such games run on normal Linux? If they don't, could a library be written to make a normal Linux run them (or vice versa, to make a Chromebook run games for SteamOS as long as they were lightweight enough for the little thing)? Would any or all of these things be useful for general Linux gaming?

You can already play Steam Linux games on a Chromebook via a crouton chroot. I've done some gaming on my Toshiba Chromebook 2 2014 via an Ubuntu chroot and it plays stuff like Nuclear Throne, Risk of Rain and Binding of Isaac fine. I mean, it's not ideal (don't expect anything 3D to run), but for simple 2D games it's adequate. I've actually been thinking of trying out some VNs on it.

I don't think that was what he was asking. It was not can you technically put Ubuntu on a weak chrome book and play Steam games. I think it was more can chrome games work on Linux with some fiddling/api easy on an existing dedicated gaming PC with Ubuntu on it.. because they are both Linux.

Well, looking up the crouton thing, I think it has potential. It's not a virtualized OS or a wiping of ChromeOS to install something else. It wouldn't be possible to do crouton on Windows, say--it depends on the kernel being compatible. And, apparently it doesn't cause speed penalties. Currently it's kind of rough-and-ready and apparently completely insecure, but it wouldn't be hard to slap some kind of convenient UI on the thing (I don't know anything about security though). The only thing is that it's kind of overkill at the moment--it basically substitutes the other OS' whole userspace, starts up XFCE or something and letting you go from there yourself. But it's a proof of concept for sure--seems like it should be possible to use the same basic idea to launch straight into individual programs meant for the other OS.

I was also interested in the other direction, but actually the solution looks like it should be fairly symmetrical--if you can do it in one direction, you should be able to do it in the other. So if you can make ChromeOS be Ubuntu, you should also be able to make Ubuntu or SteamOS be ChromeOS.

I think there are possibilities here. If something like this got developed and streamlined, then potentially ChromeOS users generally would be in a position to play light SteamOS games, and SteamOS and other Linuxes would be able to play ChromeOS games (and other programs, although since ChromeOS is so browser-centric, on a browser that's available in Linux anyway, that might not matter that much). And then Linux would have more games that run on it, some of them not runnable by either Windows or MacOS, and Steam would have a slightly bigger potential customer base (Chromebook owners), and Linux/SteamOS would have a bigger Steam market share. Everyone would be happier except Microsoft.

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Side question: It seems like Chromebooks have been selling surprisingly well lately. Is anyone writing games for them? Would such games run on normal Linux? If they don't, could a library be written to make a normal Linux run them (or vice versa, to make a Chromebook run games for SteamOS as long as they were lightweight enough for the little thing)? Would any or all of these things be useful for general Linux gaming?

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Quoting: EikeHm. We've got 25% on Steam, probably with more old than new games. 17% would, well... not be more than that.

Steam has very little presence in games outside the desktop/laptop form factor. This survey included consoles and phones, which are huge markets. So its face value before you add the needed big chunk o' salt is that if you take all the game developers on both computers (where Linux is an option) and consoles and phones (where it basically isn't), 17% of that whole field have Linux plans. Presumably if you removed the people concentrating on consoles or phones from the sample, the Linux percentage in the remaining group would be significantly higher.

Edited to add: Oh. Yeah, like JOndra91 already said.

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