Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: HamishI have been seeing people get blown away by Linux package management for as long as I have been using it.

There is no doubt that Linux has come a long way in the last ten years, and I am glad to see that people like Jason are recognizing this and enjoying it, but I can't help but feel that it often does not get enough credit for what is has been doing well for decades.

Linux software has never been that hard to install. I mean:

./configure
make
make install

This isn't rocket science. The problem is that people seem to have an irrational fear of the command line.

Ehhh, my experience back in the day when I was driven to that sometimes was that it was one of those "works in theory" things . . . half the time it would turn out that no, there was something else I had to get first, or I was supposed to be doing it somewhere else in the filesystem, or some damn thing. Never seemed to just end at those coupla commands. And once I did it, it still didn't have an icon in the menus so I'd have to fiddle with that.
Even .rpm stuff got really annoying. I envied Debian the dependency handling, but not enough to switch from Mandrake which was the only halfway usable desktop distro at the time.
Nowadays . . . smooth as silk and convenient as being handed a drink with an umbrella in it while lolling on the beach.

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Quoting: Madeanaccounttocomment

Quoting: Mountain ManMy wife recently bought a new laptop with Windows preinstalled. I spent a couple of hours uninstalling all the junk software that it came with and configuring the OS so that she could use it.

I had another older computer that needed a fresh OS install, so I put KDE Neon on it. The whole process from start to finish took about 30-minutes, and it "just worked".

I hate Windows.

Couldn't you have just wiped the computer and installed Windows from scratch? The fresh installs don't have any of the manufacturers bloatware. I personally dislike the invasive data collection, having antivirus software, and miss the linux command line when I use Windows but it's stuff all non-linux users are completely accustomed with.

Anyway, the stuff Windows has historically beaten linux hands down on are actively being worked on so hopefully the linux desktop will eventually catch on. Honestly, the last things linux needs to really take off are more OEM's willing to preload it, support for apps that keep people constrained to windows like Office and the adobe suite, and maybe its own exclusive killer apps.

Well, improvements to Wine don't just apply to games . . . and for everything short of rendering video, productivity applications generally make a lot less demands in terms of speed than games. Nobody's going to be worried if Acrobat is a few frames per second slower in Linux . . .

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I don't know why, but there's something about this thread--I really like almost every single comment. Even the ones that are nominally disagreeing with each other, I like both perspectives.

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Quoting: ArehandoroI hear loud and wide how Forbes nowadays it's not what it used to be anymore*.

Was it ever?

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Where is the Holy Hand Grenade when we really need it?

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Quoting: mrdeathjr

Quoting: legluondunetI'm waiting for a Proton version with:
--> DXVK directx10
--> Faudio integration: https://github.com/FNA-XNA/FNA/issues/90#issuecomment-415503383 [External Link]
--> windows media player replacement for video and music in games in MS format.

Gstreamer must be solve this issues (wmv and possible others) according andrew eikum

Also add fix for .net issues (mono modified?)

^_^

Finally a reason for Mono to exist :P

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy<snip>
Apple have made absolutely no attempt at grabbing some marketshare when it comes to PC gaming, and even their high-end computers are mostly rubbish when it comes to gaming... Not to mention the fact that most of Apple's range is financially out of reach for a significant portion of the population, even if they were (hypothetically) great for PC gaming.

That was more long-winded than I intended...

To get to my point, whatever the reasoning behind "Proton" (and Steam Machines, for that matter!), the PC industry could do with a little more competition because as the old saying goes, "competition breeds innovation".

Half-assed efforts at increasing competition - such as those efforts from GOG.com - do little in the grand scheme of things... Real efforts - such as those from Valve - actually make a difference when you look at the big picture.

Yeah people have been saying it's "the year of the Linux desktop" for as long as I can remember and realistically, that's probably a long way off... But when it happens - and there's a good chance it might - I guarantee Valve Software will be a part of the reason why it has happened.

If GNU/Linux desktop becomes more widespread, then it would be very, very bad if Steam holds dominance on gaming for the same reasons - and actually worse, because a core concept of GNU/Linux is to be open.

But, while Valve can play a part, I always point out that Valve never did so much alone, but are standing on the backs of giants: wine, AMD (opening up drivers, donating Mantle to Khronos, and more), radv, Intel (their drivers always were open), nvidia (drivers and long time OpenGL support), Unity3D (engine support before Steam was even thought to be on GNU/Linux), and of course TTimo and iD Software. And more.

And yes, Valve has been heavily involved in Vulkan from the start, and has contributions to Mesa, X, and porting their own games across. Valve definitely help improve - but the foundations were already laid out.

Now this I agree with. In general, I like Valve better than I like almost all other big companies--but that really isn't saying very much, because almost all other big companies I actively despise. Too much dominance by any player is not a good thing. Although, imagining a scenario in which Windows desktop dominance was broken, Linux became a major proportion of the world's desktop and gaming computers, but Steam dominated Linux gaming . . . no, I don't think that would actually be worse than the current situation. But better still would be if there were multiple significant players, best of all would be if there was some kind of open game portal infrastructure although I don't know just how that would work.

And it's certainly true that Valve by no means built all this stuff all by themselves. They took advantage of stuff which was and still is being built and improved by lots of other people. I have no quarrel with this point being made. "Proton" is a name that can readily obscure the nature of all the components rolled into it.

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Quoting: Guest....did you just compare Valve Software to a nuclear arsenal? Because they really don't have that kind of power. At all.

90% (or more) of Valve's customer base is on Windows. Windows already dominates. That bulk is more important to Valve than the 1% of GNU/Linux users, but the latter is a good playground for Valve.

I was making an analogy. One which you seem to have spent mental effort avoiding the meaning of rather than trying to assess what I'm actually talking about.

The analogy was about strategic preparedness in an uncertain world where you have identified major potential enemies. The world of international politics is that sort of world, and so makes a good analogy.
Also, no, to be precise, I specifically compared Valve Software to a country that does not have a nuclear arsenal. My point was that countries like Germany and Japan do not acquire nuclear weapons because it would be politically destabilizing and frighten neighbours. Japan doesn't need major confrontations with China, for instance. But they are aware that nuclear weapons are a very potent thing to have, which they might come to need in the future. So they put all the prerequisites in place, none of which prerequisites are particularly controversial or destabilizing in themselves (unless you're Iran), so that if they turn out to need those potent things they can quickly activate them. It's known as "breakout capability" and, again, everyone's very very upset about Iran potentially gaining it, but as long as you're not an official enemy of the US it's much much less politically noticeable than actually building the nukes themselves.

Valve are clearly not thinking just in terms of Windows = 95%, Linux = 1%. They spend a good deal of effort on Linux-related moves. This effort has not so far paid off financially in any direct way and they don't seem disappointed by this in particular. Clearly that's not the point. The point therefore is strategic in some way (or ways). The only question is, what is the strategy? Your objection makes little sense because you're not suggesting an alternate strategy but rather the idea that there simply isn't one, which I really doubt.

What strategy, then? Valve strikes me as backing Linux, putting infrastructure in place to make Linux as good a gaming platform as possible, so that they can "weaponize" Linux, make pushes to grow its market share rapidly with things like Steam Machines and in other ways, if they choose to do so. That is, to gain "breakout capability" for Linux as a market share weapon. They will certainly choose to do so if Microsoft screws with them. They may choose to do so if the platform has become so excellent that the chances of getting away with it and making a profit seem high. In the mean while though, even absent a major push the general improvement could cause gradual increase in Linux share, which would be good for us and Valve wouldn't mind.

But the thing is, since Linux is a potential weapon specifically against Windows, it is a weapon effective in direct proportion to how well it stacks up against Windows as a (gaming) platform. Making Windows better as a gaming platform (like by making Proton work on it so Windows users can play old games), therefore, reduces the potency of the weapon. Which isn't to say they absolutely won't do it if they feel they have more to gain than to lose, but that loss is there.

I don't think they'd gain that much, either--most Windows users would just use Proton to play the back catalogue of games they already bought but can't play any more, rather than spending new money.

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Very interesting. I almost feel like it'd be worth a look just as a sort of virtual museum even if it turns out to be a cruddy game.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: lucifertdarkSince Valve brought us Steam play my list of Steam games playable in Linux has gone from 950 to 1400, I now have 75% of my Steam games playable in Linux with little to no effort on my part. To say I'm impressed is an understatement. :D

Is that playable, or installable? The games might not actually run.
And they were probably playable before through wine. Steam Play changed none of that, it just means more focus going forward of Valve supporting running games in Steam through wine.

Food for thought: might Valve try this on Windows at some point? Not all games built for XP will run on 10 I suspect.

They might, although one might argue it would be strategically unsound. If they want to erode Windows dominance, fixing Microsoft's breakage so Windows does games better isn't really the way to do it.

Your assumption there is that they want to erode Windows dominance. I'm saying they don't care to - they only care about Microsoft not screwing them over. And they wouldn't be fixing breakage - the games would still run on the platforms they target, it's just users aren't using that platform. The same as for dosbox really - Microsoft didn't break dos, so games that used to run on dos...still do run on dos.

I guess it depends how far their chain of reasoning goes. I've always had the impression that they feel Microsoft dominance is likely, eventually, to lead to Microsoft screwing them over. So they want to either erode Microsoft's dominance or at least be in a position to credibly attempt to curtail Microsoft's dominance on short notice. Aside from that one outburst with the Steam Machines they've been keeping their moves background, infrastructural, so as not to provoke strong Microsoft reactions. It's like certain high-tech countries with no nuclear weapons who, however, have nuclear power, enrichment facilities (for medical and research purposes of course!), missiles capable of mounting nuclear warheads if they had them, and in general everything they need to suddenly become a nuclear power in a matter of months if they felt the need. I think Valve want all the pieces in place, in case they either decide to make a move or are pushed into making or at least threatening a move.

One of the potential pieces would be that edge--Linux being capable of playing old Windows games while Windows was not. No reason to give that card away.

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