Quoting: kerossin"AI+" in the name makes it sound like a garbage toy.

In this case, could well be truth in advertising.

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This kind of approach might make more sense than you'd think. I mean, what I've heard is that Valve has this kind of "Work on what you feel like working on" kind of approach for their developers, although presumably there have to be limits on that. Still, that would imply that it's possible for things to just not attract developer attention much, for their focus to drift away from older things, and so a big push like this could simply attract enough developer attention that work would get put in.

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That's a strange distinction in civilization types. I mean, everyone knows the point of science is to invent Really Big Guns! :grin:

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De-Duck-tion?! Aaaarrrggghhh! That's too low even for me. But in the spirit of that sort of thing:

Duck Detective: "Lady, you'll be getting my bill later."
Lady: "You're so cheeky! I haven't even said I'd go on a date!"

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYes and no. The difference, sure, at any particular snapshot in time. But that's not what I was wondering about. Linux's 4% on the web was 2% not so long ago--the Linux desktop web share has apparently doubled, while its Steam share has inched upwards, I dunno, maybe 10%. This during a time when using the Linux desktop to game has rapidly gotten more workable, so if anything I would have expected the ratio to shrink, not grow. Still seems odd to me.

Since September 2018 (the start of the GOL data) Linux in the web browser has grown from 1.68% to 3.77%, while Linux on Steam has grown from 0.78% to 2.32%.

Yesyes, but most of the Linux on Steam growth has been on the Deck, which is probably not used to browse the web very much. Desktop Linux growth on Steam has been much lower, although I'd forgotten we were ever quite as low as 0.78%.

Let's see, desktop Linux, based on the "SteamOS" distro being at 45% of the total, would now be at 1.25%. Well, that's not as out of line as I was thinking; let's see, 1.25/0.78 = Desktop Linux on Steam has grown to 1.6 times its 2018 level, while the "on the web" share has grown to 2.25 times its 2018 level. It's not an exact match, but that's not really a surprise; I was thinking in terms of the web share more than doubling while desktop on Steam went from around 1 to around 1.2, so this is not nearly as big a discrepancy. I mostly withdraw my point. I still would have figured that the rise of Proton would have seen growth in Linux used for gaming happen faster than growth in Linux used for other things, not slower.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: Purple Library Guywith all Windows versions you'd still have that "this doesn't work well on this kind of device" problem.

And that quite quickly leads the masses to the mistaken belief of "These portable PCs actually aren't any good.", leading to manufacturers no longer making them because the demand gets destroyed. :dizzy: As I've said far too many times (including in this very thread :tongue:), it's exactly like what happened with how the netbook product-category was killed off*.

I don't think you need to worry about that too much. To make that happen, the Windows netbooks had to dominate the category, at least briefly. They could do that because MS had a lot of control over the OEMs that were making them, so they could lean on them to mostly drop the Linux ones--maybe not completely, but slow down production, marketing and placement enough for the Windows ones to become the default. But Microsoft does not have any control over Valve, and no competitor that has yet appeared seems likely to dominate the Deck in sales or even publicity, certainly not enough to define the category in the public's eyes.

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Quoting: lucinos

Quoting: Purple Library Guystrong difference between the apparent growth speed of desktop Linux on the web (as noted here ), and the relatively slow growth of desktop Linux on Steam.

Mostly it is that Steam is also growing (and this is in places with small linux usage). You have to grow as fast just to stand still in relative terms. One way to see linux growth somehow clean (not completely of course but this is at least much better) of that effect is looking the English only percentages. Gaming on linux actually does that! Go to Sections->Steam Tracker and the last diagram is this. Linux has reached 5.29% in English.

No, that's a misunderstanding. Steam is growing, yes. Absent any other factors, that growth would not change the percentages. If the general population of computer users that join Steam, causing it to grow, include the same percentages of different OS users that they did in the past, the joiners would join in the same percentages, leaving the percentage of Steam users with various OSes unchanged.

The English percentage should also be irrelevant, since the web use stats giving 4% are drawn from a big worldwide sample of websites.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: Purple Library GuyGood news! I'm still wondering what's up with the increasingly strong difference between the apparent growth speed of desktop Linux on the web (as noted here ), and the relatively slow growth of desktop Linux on Steam.

Do you wonder about the difference between Mac's 14.9% on browser stats and 1.5% on Steam stats? It's the same thing.

Yes and no. The difference, sure, at any particular snapshot in time. But that's not what I was wondering about. Linux's 4% on the web was 2% not so long ago--the Linux desktop web share has apparently doubled, while its Steam share has inched upwards, I dunno, maybe 10%. This during a time when using the Linux desktop to game has rapidly gotten more workable, so if anything I would have expected the ratio to shrink, not grow. Still seems odd to me.

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Well, I have to admit this is a significant improvement, just from the battery alone. I mean, perhaps the biggest criticism before was, OK it has power and a higher definition screen but because of that it munches battery life like crazy. Bigger battery helps. It's expensive, but not bad considering all the hardware stuffed in it. I'd have to say I don't think this is a terrible offering.

Because it's up at the higher end, I don't think sales will be that strong--it doesn't matter if I think the price is worth it for the snazzy hardware if I just can't afford to spend that kind of money to play games. But from being an expensive thing that gave a crap experience, it's headed for being an expensive thing that gives an expensive experience--something viable as a more luxury item. I don't think the previous Ally was a machine that really had a niche; this one maybe does, or at most it would take a bit of tweaking controls and it would.

Still would be better with Linux on it instead of Windows 11. Heck, it would be better with some other Windows version instead of Windows 11, but with all Windows versions you'd still have that "this doesn't work well on this kind of device" problem.

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Good news! I'm still wondering what's up with the increasingly strong difference between the apparent growth speed of desktop Linux on the web (as noted here ), and the relatively slow growth of desktop Linux on Steam.

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