Quoting: GuestI don't mind a company for not supporting my small platform because of a business decision because we're not yet profitable, but up until now that really hasn't been seen. Now that Epic sees Valve has paid out to Codeweavers and done a great deal of work with Proton/Wine, now they can jump on that bandwagon for a few thousand dollar grant and take some of those customers too. It's shady...

I started being a sysadmin since the MS-DOS and Windows 3.x era and I can easily see how different it is to support different versions of Windows, let alone completely different OS families. From a business point of view, it makes perfect sense to focus on the huge market share first.

Maybe some people don't know or have forgotten that Valve was bad-mouthed in the Linux community before they worked on a Linux client. And, by far, they're not as good as GOG at keeping (old) games functional/supported on various Windows versions, the Linux Steam client still doesn't have Broadcast support after all these years, and their business practice is also far from ideal [External Link].

Quoting: GuestIt's sad to see someone defending Epic on a Linux based website when overall, Epic and Linux's relationship is only being held together with a string. Hell, the only reason Epic even made the Unreal Engine's Linux support better at all was Valve.

There's no excuse/defense in my earlier post. EPIC, Valve, GOG, all have shady anti-consumer practices - yes, even GOG. They all do it for money, it's just that some do it better for their customers, to a certain degree. But the EPIC store is new and even if they had solid plans to expand to Linux territory, I won't hold my breath until that happens - because I believe it will happen at some point.

Valve still has a lot of work to do, GOG hasn't even hinted at a soon-to-be GOG Galaxy for Linux, and their Windows version only came out of beta 2 years ago. It's only logical to see how things move slowly for others as well, so it makes no sense to bash EPIC this early for a business choice. It makes people look like haters, which is why I kindly reminded everyone that we should try to be better than that. Because making ourselves look hostile is not a good idea for a business that would naturally expect hostility in their customer support departments, and bad reviews for even the slightest mistakes. Would you want that for your business?

Quoting: GuestThey are trying to be shady and take as much money as possible and they don't care about you and I because we are too small.

Every business wants our money - it's the purpose of their existence, so never expect any company *not* to want as much of your money as possible. That's how capitalism works: profit first. Even the Polish GOG did their financials in a tax haven (Cyprus) for years, and only decided to fully move their business to Poland after Cyprus lost its tax haven status. So yeah, businesses can look weird and shady in various ways.

And long before Microsoft acclaimed its public love for Linux, it still tried to enforce its Universal Windows Platform (over win32) onto software developers and that made both Gabe Newell (Valve) and Tim Sweeney (EPIC) to voice their concerns about it. The fact that Valve made the leap to Linux before EPIC makes sense - Valve had a horde of games on sale in their store, so they wanted to give Microsoft a solid reason not to mess up. But just in case Microsoft messed up, at least Linux would be a better world to grow in, compared to the other money-hungry business behind macOS. Valve choosing Linux was a better decision because PCs are by far more popular than macs, and with Linux they had access to the source and do whatever they needed with it, no NDAs and profit shares required by Apple, had they chose macOS. And as bonuses, they would get to become trend setters for others and gain popularity in a userbase minority that hadn't been tapped into (financially) seriously by other companies.

Quoting: GuestOf course, let Valve do the heavy lifting and tossing the Lutris guys a few thousand bucks to pick up on all of Valve's work sounds appealing to them.

The fact that they supported Lutris not even 6 months after the release of the EPIC store is rather an indicator that they're interested about the Linux market. Clearly they're not ready to commit to it, and there are a lot of reasons, like getting enough experienced people to take care of the development and support of all Linux-related software. Because you don't want your Linux customers to feel treated differently compared to Windows customers, right? And you can't make that happen with Windows-people, so it will be a process for EPIC to jump into new territories. Because doing Unreal Engine 4 for Linux is one thing, and addressing customer support issues for a host of games on Linux is another.

Quoting: GuestI'm sorry, but until Epic becomes a company I can respect, I will not have any need for anything from them, even free titles.

Surely that's your choice, but if they expand to Linux you will probably regret not adding the free games to your library. As for respect, I think you're turning a blind eye at everything wrong with Steam and probably GOG, because both of them have shady/anti-customer practices and they got a lot of (fair) criticism for it. That doesn't mean I won't continue buying games from them if I like their offer. I don't have to like them to do business with them. I just don't have to dislike them to an extent that makes me avoid them.

Quoting: GuestThe Epic store is a mirage. It looks all shiny and new but if you put your faith in it you're probably going to die of dehydration.

I don't put faith in businesses. I look at them pragmatically, and try to get the best from them, just as they want from us. It's only fair.

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How about we look at the Epic Games Store (EGS) like it's something new? How about acknowledging the need for a business to establish a new product first, and later evaluate expansion opportunities? How about considering the fact that opening the EGS client for Linux-based operating systems also means dealing with a different set of other customer support issues?

My point is that whatever their plans are, it makes perfect sense for them to be cautious with a market that they're new to. It's only logical to take smaller steps and see where it leads, while making sure what is built can sustain itself, because no one wants to burn money just because they have a lot of it.

As a Linux user for nearly 2 decades now, I also want more software available on my distros of choice - or at least the most popular ones. But we know a long list of reasons why Windows still has a large market share and how that impacts the decisions of other software makers. So why not leave them to do whatever they have planned and see where everything goes, without any kind of drama? We can still criticize the exclusive games, in a civilized/mature manner, without throwing them under a bus for not supporting Linux early on.

Aren't we supposed to be "smarter" than the average PC user because we're aware of, care for and uphold privacy and software freedom? Let's also try to be better people, not just more informed. I'm tired of all the drama we see all over the internet. Let's make our community a better one, for fun's sake.

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As a developer I can understand that every little feature has implications somewhere. It's not easy to just come out with new stuff that works perfectly and satisfies the majority. But then there are old issues with the Steam client and its platform that I can't understand why are still unsolved to this day.

Here, just two examples:

- During this winter sale I tried to buy 2 controllers, but I could only order one at a time. That's stupid and after I contacted their support I got some fruitless "bla bla" and I gave up. It made no sense to waste money on two shipping fees due to the basic missing feature of allowing the customer to get 2 items in one purchase. They could've also prepared the store before their hardware was released, so we can buy more than one per order, but either they don't care that people have to pay extra shipping fees or they get something out of it. They can't be that stupid to completely miss a detail like this, right?

- For a while now, I have plenty of downloads/updates with 0 bytes. Now I can understand that someone messed up, but a few simple features would make this issue much easier to ignore: "Start/Queue All" and "Remove All (Completed)". Why isn't this issue addressed? Who knows...

Huge amounts of money flow into the Steam store, so I hope the other stores will motivate Valve to step up. Obviously, I have plenty of reasons to like Steam or I wouldn't have a lot of games and use their platform, but I dislike seeing them dragging their asses not fixing simple things that keep getting in our way.

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Quoting: Imnotarobot

Quoting: TobiSGD

Quoting: kuhpunktLike if you try to use SteamOS and it would have to get all the game data through USB, that's not great.

If it is USB 3 that shouldn't be a problem.

Depends on the USB. USB is not really designed to be running OS. It usually works quite bad from my experience.

It's bad if you use USB 2.0 or older. With USB 3.x it's quite decent because the data transfer is bidirectional (unlike in older USB versions) and the speed is much improved. Here's my uptime for my current Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon session:
nicu@mint:~$ uptime 
 08:50:15 up 6 days,  8:25,  1 user,  load average: 2,69, 3,31, 3,52

Obviously, with a USB 3.x socket in the PC we must use USB 3.x storage devices if we want the proper speed.

As for my live session, I threw a lot at it, and the performance is good. I mean I installed multiple software, including QEMU to test the latest SliTaz release in a virtual environment. And then I watched movies, edited images, did some programming, "tortured" the system with a lot of software open and running simultaneously, and my PC is simply a Core i3-6320 (Skylake), but it has 32GB RAM - which is essential for live sessions.

Here's a screenshot with Firefox and multiple Chrome windows open, with a lot of tabs and 2 mixer streams running, plus LibreOffice Writer+Calc, TeamViewer and other stuff going on. Testing the limits is quite fun. :D



On-topic, I have mixed feelings about what Atari does with this project, but I think it's only fair to let them to their thing and come up with opinions later. So far I've been disappointed enough to criticize the stunts they pulled, and their lack of professionalism in various areas, but this is something even projects with large teams can "produce", so I'll just wait and see where this goes.

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Ooh, Surviving Mars would be great! :)

And here's a Linux joke: Microsoft <3 Linux.

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Quoting: elmapuljust wake up!
we are being made of fools, and we cant see it because "it runs linux, of course it will be a sucess"

I think it's safe to assume you missed my previous post. As it stands, their announcement is seriously underwhelming. I might be worth for collectors and people who don't have any consoles or who want a modern mediocre PC, but to everyone else I fail to see what's worth pre-ordering.

I hope this turns out way better than what they announced, and I know it's just wishful thinking but at least it doesn't cost me anything. :P

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Quoting: puckoAtari Vault is $10 on Steam, so that leaves the retro feeling.

Hmm... then Atari has to step up seriously. Even a 10 year old laptop can run the Atari Vault, so I hope their next announcement will bring something consistent to the table. And that can either be the hardware, or - in addition - some very attractive perspectives, whatever those might be. We'll find out on May 30th, but my excitement just flew out the window.

I don't even know why they decided to sell the console without any controller. Every package should have at least one, but apparently the $199 pre-order package will come without any. At least that's what we can understand from their announcement [External Link], unless it's not what they intended to communicate. :huh:

Quoting: stretch611You are making the assumption that is the only titles they will have. I have the Atari Vault (bought on sale for $5(US), and it is about 15-20 old 2600 games and roughly the same number of Arcade games.

The Atari Vault on Steam [External Link] says this:

Relive the Golden Age of Gaming with 100 of the most popular iconic games from the 70’s and 80’s.

So it's been updated, I guess. Check it out, you might now have all 100 games in your collection.

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Quoting: elmapulyou dont get the point, i dont know the number of transitors and i didnt specify if it as 2cm² or 2cm³ either.
the issue is, there is nothing that you can do in an small device that you cant do better on a bigger one, they could make something more powerfull but instead chose to make something compact.

Whatever you meant about the transistors... it seems pointless to me. The size of the device is only relevant to their goal. As long as it serves the purpose, it's good.

Quoting: elmapulthis thing is not what going to give us more triple A games, the multiplatform Triple A that we are missing from the current gen, so what is the point of this thing? an indie box for the price of an ps4? thanks but no, if i want to help linux i will spend those 200 U$D in games instead of this thing that contribute nothing to us.

A new PS4 is more expensive than $200. But the PS4 doesn't come with over 100 games, so buying the Atari VCS is a lot of fun out of the box, compared to the other popular consoles.

Quoting: elmapuldo you really think that atari can compete with sony, ms and nintendo?
with an smaller device launched in the midle of the generation?

Surely it can't compete at their level. But the purpose of business is not strictly competing with the top brands. Profit is also essential in business. So will this console make profit? I think it will, but the size of the profit depends on what Atari manages to pull off with the final product. So as long as there are happy Atari VCS owners and there's profit for the maker... isn't that a good thing? Not everything needs to be huge to be a lot of fun and successful. :)

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Quoting: GuestIt's called "Signal to noise ratio". There was far more hatred than praise, even after we fixed all the problems. Even 3 years on I saw people blasting the port saying how poor it was, even though the problems they were quoting had long been fixed.

We're not living in an ideal world, where everyone gives full feedback and the thumb up/down on a product, for the makers to get the full picture. Not seeing enough praise doesn't mean there's not enough people liking the game.

How many people bought the game and how many people complained unjustly? That's the only ratio worth looking for. Anything else makes no sense being bothered about.

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Quoting: GustyGhost

Quoting: liamdaweOn the subject of Vulkan adoption, it is interesting to note that the current Vulkan Developer Day in Montréal is actually being hosted by Ubisoft. Doesn't mean we will see their games on Linux (not what I'm getting at), but it does hopefully mean more of the bigger companies like them are looking more into it - therefore helping a possible future port from the likes of Feral and others.

Who knows? Maybe they will even walk away with a newly discovered passion for software freedom.

And if that happens... who knows? Maybe Uplay will come for GNU/Linux as well. :P They have a lot of old games they could make available with DOSBox, so Uplay could become a lot of fun if they want to - even with GNU/Linux.

P.S. I forgot to say thanks, Feral! :D You are awesome!

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