Quoting: MohandevirAwesome!

I only hope that the Steam Controller's usb dongles will be compatible... Not a big fan of using the bluetooth alternative...

Do you think we may hope for a futur integration with Kodi (OSMC/LibreELEC) and/or Retropi/Recalbox?

Retropie and osmc are Raspbian-based, aren't they?
And regarding Kodi integration... you can probably launch the app already from it, but unless valve releases the code, I'd be surprised if someone creates a compatible addon for Kodi that replaces the UI or even has it's own reverse engineered base, but it's not impossible.

I'm currently setting up a retropie instance myself and am not quite sure if the app will replace my steamlink. I want to use my fighting sticks as primary controls and some 8bitdo's for games that need digital input, but it's also kind of tempting...

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If you are not into tradable card games, that's fine. But the whole "No one asked for a dota2 card game" arguments creep me out. Valve is not our bitch. If they want to create a card game, that's totally fine. And if you want to create a big cardgame, you'll need a consistent universe for it. They had a consistent universe that fit a card game, so they used it.
I'm very much interested in such games, as long as I don't feel forced to invest constant money to enjoy the game. There's a big difference between "I can invest infinite money" and "I must invest infinite money". There's a lot of room in such games to balance things out and find ways to make the game enjoyable with the base set alone.

I can hardly remember a Valve release that didn't cause a lot of flaming critics at first. HalfLife 2 was heavily debated because they used it to bind people to Steam. Usually, they react and turn the tides. I hope they will find the right answer to the negative responses they currently receive.
Obviously, they didn't f**k up the core gameplay, so there is hope.
One such solution would be "deck-value-matchmaking", where the decks of the opponents can't differ to much in value.

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Quoting: Beamboom...

That's like your opinion, dude.
I'd personally say as long as the map is wide and explorative enough, it doesn't really matter unless piloting your spaceship is a major and fun gameplay component. Even worse: if it's there and no fun.

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Quoting: jarhead_h

Quoting: SalvatosThat was to be expected. If Valve don't have the workforce to vet every game that is added to the store in the first place, they certainly won't pay an army to retroactively test everything on even one "standard" Linux configuration. I'll be surprised if we get more than a handful of additions to the list per month. That's why I'm curious to know how they choose which games to vet first, and why I was surprised to see something like Commander Keen there.

THIS. I seriously doubt Valve is expecting immediate returns here.

I actually think they hold back their whitelist announcements as they have to support the games they whitelisted and thatfor they have to manage risks. Testing is awesome, but there will be a certain percentage of users that will have problems and the bigger the audience, the higher the risk. So they pick up a set of games with some really notable candidates and fill it with some niche games to make it an overall compelling package, but they won't just whitelist 20 super asked for AAA games that they fear would attract to many people to handle. The now whitelisted games didn't even all have perfect scores in spcr.
Do people already playing on linux actually care for the whitelist? I have the impression that most people just look at youtube and spcr if they are interested in a game.

I personally guess that they have more then enough resources to test to match their willing rate to release, else they would go out and contract people in the community for it. Lots of people would be willing to agree to a little contract just to get free games and valve can get all the data they need to see if such a tester is trustworthy. Just playtime and trophies are a good hint if a game really runs well, so they don't even need to make anyone explicitly test if enough people played through the game with steamplay and they hear word of mouth.
Proton is build upon some really mature projects, but with many fixes to known problems still in the pipeline. FAudio, latest Vulkan extensions, state caches and latest drivers still need to be rolled out. It will take some time to get needed changes into proton and the distributions and get some good assumptions about support costs and with that, the number of whitelisted titles per month will probably increase over time.
On the one hand they are surely playing the long game, as pushing hard would just be to much risk, but they are still on a run to prepare the ecosystem for the worst. They don't invest for nothing and definatly not to just make 10% of their audience switch OS. They invest money to secure their business and they well know they can't bluff MS a second time like with the steam-machine campaign.

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I now wonder who those people are that do the whitelist testing. Are some of those part of linux gaming community? I guess there are worse jobs to have :P

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I may buy an extension for cities skylines, but unsure which. Are mass transit and green cities any good?

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Quoting: tuubiWhereas making Windows work exactly the way I want is impossible. ;)

Absolutely true

Quoting: tuubiFor the most common gaming hardware on the most common distro (Nvidia / Ubuntu), I don't think this requires more than installing a new graphics driver. Isn't that what you need to do on Windows as well?

But yeah, gaming still isn't as convenient as it could be for someone new to Linux. Worth it though and getting better by leaps and bounds.

Latest drivers are a thing and learning how to install them on your distro ist a lesson needed to learn, but why should it be necessary on a months-old distribution?
After fiddling around with it, I think GameMode is really improving the experience for a lot of games. Then there's stuff like xinerama. And input devices. I'm a linux user for 16 years by now, but handling my various game pads still feels like fighting the system. I just switched to manjaro and my steam controller did not work until i installed the steam-hardware package. On my also relatively fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install, I couldn't get it to work at all. Neither would my 8bitdo controller work. Also, keep in mind that Windows vs. Linux is not fair competition. People have experience with windows, they know people who can help. And they have expectations on how to handle problems that are probably wrong. That's why default behaviour can be really important.

I really think those things will improve in the next years, without doubt. And that's the positive side that can't be overstated: While Windows get's worse over time, Linux improves at tremendous pace.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: GuestIt requires know-how to use Linux system

Tell that to my elderly relatives. I'd say Linux is easier to use than Windows these days, but reality matters less than how people perceive it.

I actually agree with both of you :)
Using linux for everyday stuff is totally easy.
Switching from windows workflows to linux workflows can be a hassle or even impossible, especially for professional usage.
Installing linux is super easy 99% of the time.
Making linux work exactly the way you want can be a hassle.
Starting to game on linux can be a hassle.
Getting linux to perform at it's best for gaming is science AND fun for those that can enjoy it.

It's hard to accept, but linux gaming has it's edges and is still not ready for the lazy windows user who just want to start games and have optimal performance. I'd say with the next Ubuntu LTS a lot of things will have made their way upstream and documentation will be available so most can enjoy it right from the start.

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Quoting: Xpanderi doubt we will reach higher than 1% any time soon. Proton is great, but it still needs a lot of improvements to be just 1 click to download and play. Drivers still need to get up to date and so on and on. But we are on the right track with it. There are lots of people switching to linux (probably most of them won't stay for long though) as of late. Internet is full of "Hey i switched to Linux" posts. Linus Tech Tips Videos about the proton and Low Spec Gamer one really helped there also to raise some awarness i guess. Exciting times, but i doubt there will be any huge gains in the market share yet. Lets try to report and fix all those small and big issues before.

I totally agree. It feels like things are really coming together currently, but there are just so many things that need to get default to really show the potential.
Things like latest drivers, gamemode integration and steam-hardware support are still not default, while they can enhance the experience dramatically. Then there are so many things we know will come in a matter of time, like faudio and steam output support. That's really exciting for those who are willing to try out those new things and feel the difference, but a newbie user who just jumps over from windows will not be abled to enjoy this as much.

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What I find relatively surprising is the way proton has become accepted by the community. Beginning September, there was a lot of native vs. proton talk, but it seems we have come to an agreement to welcome the technology as a fundamental part of linux gaming in just one month. I bet there are still people that don't agree, but they are aware of the consensus.
It's there, it won't go away and it's pretty awesome.

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