A lot of this discussion has revolved around whether the amount and type of games now available on Linux is enough to drive adoption. And a lot of it seems rather simplistic to me. Everyone's talking as if there is one guy who buys all the computers and if you meet his conditions, all the sales could be Linux, but if you don't, we're stuck where we are. But that's not how the world is. There are people currently running Windows or Mac who play no games or just solitaire/minesweeper, there are people who play a few games casually but really only need a few to keep them happy, there are people who play games moderately, there are "hard core gamers". And there are a whole lot of other sorts of needs that have similar dimensions--photography, CAD, accounting, whatever.

For "hard core gamers", by most definitions, Linux is not a good platform right now. Workable, but unless you had some other overriding reason you'd pick something else, like Windows. Many of us here do have other overriding reasons, so we're here anyway, but it has to be faced: If you're the kind of person who really, really wants to have all the big name games, Linux is not your ideal platform.

But most computer users aren't hard core gamers. Most fall into one of the other categories. Now just a few years ago, Linux was pretty much only a satisfying platform for people who basically didn't game at all, who didn't even think they might want to game at all. This is a fairly restricted group, although already bigger than 2%. But now? Now, Linux is a satisfying platform for everyone up to and including moderate (or even, heavy but iconoclastic) gamers. This is a much less restricted group, certainly the majority of computer users.

Now, Linux overall as a desktop isn't going to be satisfactory for person X unless all their needs are met on Linux as well as on other platforms--or at least, unless any restrictions are minor and at least balanced by corresponding bonuses. Right now I would say Linux as a desktop in itself, or rather as a collection of desktop options, is on balance fundamentally better than any other desktop platform. It is as or more user friendly, more powerful, gives the user more control, less adware and spyware and viruses and on and on. There are still some restrictions in various areas, but it's mostly in applications and where once it was "You practically can't do this in Linux" now it's "If you are the niche equivalent of a 'hard core gamer' Linux may not be the best". Again, the number of people involved has shrunk way down. Any given person may have a few different kinds of needs; Linux is only going to be the best for someone if Linux applications meet their demands in all their areas of interest, so if there's 1% need better CAD than Linux has and 2% that want better video editing than Linux (or Windows) have and so on, it could add up to a fair number of people with one blocker or another. But the blockers are now pretty small; overall, the number of people for whom Linux is/would be as good as or better than other desktop operating systems is now quite large--certainly far more than 2%.

So it may not always have been true, but at this point the main restriction on Linux uptake is a matter of marketing, habit, existing corporate relationships and so forth. If you could wave a magic wand and suddenly all the boxen being sold had a user friendly Linux installed instead of Windows 10, hard core gamers would have problems and so would a few other people, but for many it would be an improvement. This was not always the case, and on gaming it has changed hugely in a very short time.

We need market share. Linux should and will continue to improve, but at this point there is no intrinsic reason why many more people couldn't use it than actually do.

(Edited to add: Note that for some niches, Linux is actually equal or superior even for "hard core gamer" equivalents)

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: sr_ls_boyThis suggest the answer is no. Nivida owns the patent.

https://www.google.com/patents/US5651104 [External Link]

Another patent own by Intel lapsed in December.

https://www.google.com/patents/US6816167 [External Link]

How is it the newer patent expired before the older one?

I guess someone forgot to do clever redrafting/extension tricks.

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Quoting: etonbearsThis is quite nice, but possibly more important is the Vulkan Portability Initiative [External Link]

The aim here is to identify the subset of Vulkan that can map directly to D3D12 and Metal, provide open-source libraries to effect the mapping and cross-compilers for spir-v to the D3D12/Metal intermediate shader languages.

That would possibly offer developers a single API ( Vulkan ) to target almost every platform at minimal performance cost.

The question would then be whether that is good enough for the main AAA developers ( it certainly would be for smaller teams ), and whether the parties that control D3D12 and Metal attempt to sabotage the initiative...

That does sound interesting. I wish it well.

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Quoting: GuestI can't justify giving Tim Schafer money. He, or at least his company, can't seem to know how to manage large sums of money and their recent projects (other than Linux ports) come out to be pretty horrendous.

That seems like a strange reason to take a principled ( "justify" ) stand against giving someone money. I mean, mismanaging money isn't an ethical failure, and the fact that someone makes products X, Y and Z which are lousy seems irrelevant to whether you should give them money for product A which is good. In a world where we all hand out money for products whose company CEOs and major shareholders are actively evil, this just seems a weirdly pointless cavil.

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Well, vive la (oddly commercialized) revolution!!!
It looks like fun and I love the French guy urging you to rise up, overthrow evil (and buy his upgrades).
Only on my wishlist until I can just install it and go, though.

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They say they have no plans for Vulkan right now

Of course, one of the beauties of open source is that someone could step in and contribute at any time.

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Quoting: minidouThey used to be supporters of DX12 but admitted they switch their focus on Vulkan earlier this year [External Link], so they might already have been working with crytek or have their own work for Vulkan.

Every time I am reminded of it, I think that Microsoft's decision to make DX12 work on Windows 10+ only was too clever by half and may actually result in Vulkan becoming the more dominant platform. They underestimated Vulkan because they've been able to pwn OpenGL all this time. So they just took DX dominance as a given, and decided to use DX12 to try to pull their user base to the newest versions of Windows. Only problem: Vulkan is at least as good as DX12, has moved pretty fast, and so is becoming viable while older versions of Windows are still a really big slice of the market. So, for all non-console games, Vulkan over DX12 is a no-brainer, and even for stuff that's going on XBox, you probably want both rather than just DX12 (since they're similar enough that it's apparently fairly easy).
Linux could reap the benefit of Microsoft's serious tactical mistake in its battle with Win 10+'s current major competitor, older versions of Windows.

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Quoting: Tiedemann

Quoting: melkemindIt doesn't seem like they're asking for much money. Am I just overestimating how much it takes to make a game, or does S$70,000 get you a lot more in Malaysia?

From the "Why Kickstarter" part of the page, it seems a lot have been done already:

I was thinking the trailer seemed pretty dashed slick for something that supposedly didn't exist yet.

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That seems positive. And while CRYENGINE may be less of a force than it was, it's still well enough known that the pros will notice. One would expect other engine makers to be all "Well if even CRYENGINE can do it we'd look lame if we didn't".
So this is one step on the way to Vulkan being a keep-up-with-the-Joneses, must-have checkbox. That's a Good Thing.

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First game in a while where my first reaction to the trailer is "That's so cute!"

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