Quoting: japzone

Quoting: ElectricPrismThis talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

It's silly and a ridiculous use-case that would never be practical in its current iteration but I do wonder.

That would require TB3/4 or USB4, which have PCIe access. Unfortunately, the SD only has USB 3.2 which lacks such a connection. The only way to use an eGPU on the SD would be via an M.2 adapter, which you can find videos of people testing on YouTube. The problem with this is that it requires opening up the SD, and removing the SSD. So not only is it not convenient, you have to get an OS installed into a MicroSD card or USB drive. Not a practical solution for most use cases.

I mean you'd still be strapping a graphics card and then the VR headset to it, so of course it's not practical. Just like buying 40 year old hardware to play games that can easily be covered via FPGA or Emulation... but where's the 'fun' in that?? :)

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Gonna have to get this one on the VCS, definitely one of the reasons it exists! While the system is in fact fantastic... WHY Atari had to basically sell the controllers with proprietary USB cables is beyond me....

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: Mountain ManGames bought in Linux and played in Proton are logged in Steam as a Linux sale, so people refusing to buy any game that requires Proton are, at least theoretically, directly harming Linux.

So if I choose to buy a native Linux game instead of a Windows game, how exactly am I harming Linux? Please explain. Nothing theoretical about this, it happens regularly.

It reduces the number of Linux sales for certain titles, which tells those developers that they were right to not support Linux directly. That's the exact opposite of what we want.

So it tells people who did nothing that they can continue to do nothing, whereas if more Linux people bought their non-ported title it would tell them . . . that they could continue to do nothing. Sure, big loss there.
But at the same time, it increases the number of Linux sales for certain other titles, which tells those developers that they were right TO support Linux directly.
Really, I'm not seeing the net harm here.

In my mind, from what I have seen so far on the Deck, it goes with a 'Proton first' approach, which I think is a Bad Thing. Especially when the proton version crashes the Deck during install... (looking at you, Fantasy Grounds Unity).

In my mind, Proton has always been for older games that will never be updated and never ported properly. Newer games of course should be encouraged (in the friendliest way possible) to add support.

With the way Apple treats developers, I honestly have little understanding of why developers have ever really supported that platform. They've changed architectures and outright banned games from working so many times at this point, it feels like they have been through many divorces... 68k, ppc, intel, arm...

As I have always said, you get divorced once.. fair, you just grew apart, didn't discover who you were until later, etc. 2nd divorce, you count up to bad luck... if you divorce a 3rd and especially a 4th time... ask yourself, "maybe it's you?" 😜

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Quoting: tohur

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ElectricPrismThis talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

Here is where things get tricky/annoying...

I believe (not sure if this is the exact reason) that AMD doesn't have a license to use Thunderbolt, which is why it's so rare to find an AMD based system with TB. If the Steam Deck had a TB3/4 port on it, using a external GPU would definitely be an option. Not only that we could get a very cool dock that'd boost it's power in a similar fashion to how the Switch actually works.

Now step into bizzarro land; people have connected nvidia cards to the Atari VCS via a pcie -> NVME/SATA bridge. Something similar should be possible on the Steam Deck.

Well thunderbolt doesn't mean much anymore with USB4 coming on devices now as a few AMD laptops with USB4 now and eGPUs work on them now and a bunch of thunderbolt devices. at some point USB4 will come to AMD's other devices so maybe a future deck will have it also.

Unless they make them compatible 100%, which knowing the USB consortium, they will not, then they'll still matter for the next few years. I'm convinced at this point it's just so they can continually make everyone throw out their peripherals and force people to buy the new ones. Then again, those who don't throw them out will make tons of money on eBay when people 30 years from now want a 'retro' system, because cables are cool! (I'm guessing in 30 yeras everything will be wireless. At least one would hope so).

https://www.tomsguide.com/features/thunderbolt-4-vs-usb4-whats-the-difference [External Link]

Kind of sounds to me that overall TB4 have higher minimum requirements, supports dual monitors, and is also currently in far more use.

Ugh, this annoyance should stop. It is even worse than everyone using USB-c except Apple, because at least those ports looked different. Unless the cables were wired the same between the two... is everyone going to have a drawer full of USB-C cables to have to sort through to find which are rated for which port...

Even if that isn't the case, it is another AMD vs Intel fight we don't need or want...

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Quoting: ElectricPrismThis talk of VR makes me curious. It would make a great Linux video to learn if someone using a dGPU over USB could theoretically run VR.

Obviously the software stack is fine for it.

Here is where things get tricky/annoying...

I believe (not sure if this is the exact reason) that AMD doesn't have a license to use Thunderbolt, which is why it's so rare to find an AMD based system with TB. If the Steam Deck had a TB3/4 port on it, using a external GPU would definitely be an option. Not only that we could get a very cool dock that'd boost it's power in a similar fashion to how the Switch actually works.

Now step into bizzarro land; people have connected nvidia cards to the Atari VCS via a pcie -> NVME/SATA bridge. Something similar should be possible on the Steam Deck.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: slaapliedjeI do find it amusing that Half-Life: Alyx is on that list. It does, by the way, work flawlessly natively. Played through the entire game with no hiccups on a 2080RTX + Index.

Your rig has the capacity to do VR. The Steam Deck does not. Hence all VR titles are "Unsupported" across the board by the Deck Verified process.

Correct, my point was that these are on the top 50! Makes one curious about the install base of VR at this point.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyIt's interesting that of the Unchecked, two are Gold on ProtonDB and two are native. So presumably it wouldn't take much for all four of those to become Playable.
That leaves only the three Unsupported as definitely not workable on the Deck--but note that even that doesn't mean they don't work on Linux period, since all three of those Unsupported are actually Linux native. Presumably their Unsupported category is about specifically Deck-related issues, not Linux-related issues. I'd say that's particularly clear for Alyx, eh?

Bottom line: While only 43/50 of those titles are currently "Playable" or better on the Steam Deck, already a pretty dashed good figure, all 50 can be played on Linux. That's amazing.

Incidentally, 25 of them, exactly half, are Native, not even counting Tomb Raider. We get more native titles than some people think we do.

For sure there is a nice number of native games out there. What saddens me is the occasional one that works fine / better native, but defaults to Proton on the Steam Deck.

I do find it amusing that Half-Life: Alyx is on that list. It does, by the way, work flawlessly natively. Played through the entire game with no hiccups on a 2080RTX + Index. while I'm not sure the game is worth all the money you have to sink into a system, if you already have it... it is VERY cool. I should play more VR...

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Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: GuestWindows only, shame... When i saw the trailer it looked like a nice game.

Why is it a shame?

Are you asking that because you don't know the person's answer or because you do know and you're waiting for their reply so you can give them a hard time?
Proton is great, but I don't think there's any point to razzing people for preferring Linux native.

The reality is, Proton is a perfectly viable option for Linux gamers that, in many cases, gives native-like performance and grants access to hundreds of games we would otherwise never get to play on our operating system of choice. It's also a reality that even if every single Linux gamer boycotted every game that didn't offer native Linux support, it would not compel a single developer to suddenly produce a Linux version to take advantage of what is, by all accounts, a negligible sliver of the market. I wish it weren't it so, but those are the facts.

So, in the end, refusing to buy a promising game because it can only be played in Proton reminds me of the adage about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

I have no problems with using Proton. But I can totally see why people would refuse to use it.

It is the similar thing to emulation vs real hardware. Personally for me, it isn't even about the games, but the joy of tinkering with real hardware that makes me happy. Which is why, even with FPGA, it seems less fun than buying an old computer and trying to do things to it, that were never meant to be done.

The portion of getting a game to run in wine, proton, or native is just as enjoyable to me, if not more so than actually playing them sometimes. Then again, maybe it is akin to 'you can't do that!' And me saying 'watch me!'. Proton is good enough now that I think the point os almost entirely moot to say Game X works great in Linux!

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Quoting: dos

Quoting: slaapliedjeI just checked, the version in Debian Stable is 91.11.0. So there's that!

Debian's 91.11.0 is perfectly up-to-date (June 28, 2022), unlike 96.0.3 in SteamOS repos (January 27, 2022). Firefox 96 wasn't an ESR at all.

Yeah, I would think it actually would be better to stick with ESR wherever one can.

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Ha, I wonder if Liam should start a sister site called 'gamingondeck', as this site is slowly becoming that :P Not that I blame him, the Deck is rather awesome.

Here's a perfect example of this; my brother and I have started playing Children of Morta co-op. But with this freaking heatwave and the fact there is no fan in my office where my main game machine is (I do have a standing fan, but it's way too loud) so instead I switched to playing on my Steam Deck and could lay in bed with the ceiling fan on. It was wonderful! Also not sure how Valve fixed the shittiness that is bluetooth headphones so they work properly on the Steam Deck, but I've never had much luck getting them to work on any other Linux system...

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