Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMakes me think . . . they make consoles to sell more games, they make games to sell more hardware. Does anyone ever make a thing just to sell that thing, any more? :wink:

IKEA? Or perhaps they have a stake in marriage counselling?

Bit offtopic, but isn't IKEA making furniture to be able to sell more meatballs? Or was it other way around? They might make more money from marriage counselling though...

If I would want to smooth jump back to the topic, rings are used to mark that people are married. Which would awkwardly lead me to Elden Ring...

The meatballs came much later, for the first 24 years they only sold furniture.

No company perfects their business plans right away :tongue:

True, but then Ingvar Kamprad was a very strange businessman, while having billions in his bank account he used to travel via public transport to business meetings since it was cheaper than riding limo.

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Quoting: Anza

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library GuyMakes me think . . . they make consoles to sell more games, they make games to sell more hardware. Does anyone ever make a thing just to sell that thing, any more? :wink:

IKEA? Or perhaps they have a stake in marriage counselling?

Bit offtopic, but isn't IKEA making furniture to be able to sell more meatballs? Or was it other way around? They might make more money from marriage counselling though...

If I would want to smooth jump back to the topic, rings are used to mark that people are married. Which would awkwardly lead me to Elden Ring...

The meatballs came much later, for the first 24 years they only sold furniture.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: KimmoKM

Quoting: JahimselfAre the performance any good? If yes what hardware do you have? There are thousands of posts on the forum of person with High End computer running very poorly.

Before refunding the game at 1h played because it didn't seem like I would end up liking it, I didn't have performance issues despite having below recommended minimum spec setup (RX580, which was listed as the minimum requirement, and CPU below the listed minimum). With medium settings (sans motion blur and other silliness) rendered at 1080p (upscaled to 1440p using FXR) I was getting 60fps indoors, 30-40fps once I entered the open world, no framerate-instability. I've also seen videos of Chinese journalists with review copies running the game smoothly on Steam Deck, which has an even lower spec (although I guess that was 720p and minimum settings).

For a game that doesn't look very impressive in terms of tech that's not very good performance, but unless the later areas are more demanding or something, that almost sounds like above-Windows performance, it certainly can't be much worse, because I keep hearing a lot of complaints (indeed, that's the prime reason for its mixed Steam rating, along with other technical deficiencies like capped framerates, lack of widescreen support, etc).

Whats the point of ever increasing hardware performance if devs just throw out millions of TFLOPS with poorly optimized games. Im hoping that the steam deck spawns even more PC handhelds and is of course a massive success so at least some developers can target the 1.8TFLOPS of the Steam Deck and not the 10TFLOPS of the highest end consoles.

To sell new hardware of course :)

Makes me think . . . they make consoles to sell more games, they make games to sell more hardware. Does anyone ever make a thing just to sell that thing, any more? :wink:

IKEA? Or perhaps they have a stake in marriage counselling?

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Quoting: Lofty

Quoting: KimmoKM

Quoting: JahimselfAre the performance any good? If yes what hardware do you have? There are thousands of posts on the forum of person with High End computer running very poorly.

Before refunding the game at 1h played because it didn't seem like I would end up liking it, I didn't have performance issues despite having below recommended minimum spec setup (RX580, which was listed as the minimum requirement, and CPU below the listed minimum). With medium settings (sans motion blur and other silliness) rendered at 1080p (upscaled to 1440p using FXR) I was getting 60fps indoors, 30-40fps once I entered the open world, no framerate-instability. I've also seen videos of Chinese journalists with review copies running the game smoothly on Steam Deck, which has an even lower spec (although I guess that was 720p and minimum settings).

For a game that doesn't look very impressive in terms of tech that's not very good performance, but unless the later areas are more demanding or something, that almost sounds like above-Windows performance, it certainly can't be much worse, because I keep hearing a lot of complaints (indeed, that's the prime reason for its mixed Steam rating, along with other technical deficiencies like capped framerates, lack of widescreen support, etc).

Whats the point of ever increasing hardware performance if devs just throw out millions of TFLOPS with poorly optimized games. Im hoping that the steam deck spawns even more PC handhelds and is of course a massive success so at least some developers can target the 1.8TFLOPS of the Steam Deck and not the 10TFLOPS of the highest end consoles.

To sell new hardware of course :)

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So the videos are starting to come in and so far they look quite good for the Deck despite the clickbaits.

LTT have made a very positive video despite the clickbaity thumbnail and title:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXIOuUUZO2s [External Link]

I do have to disavow one of my previous predictions because it sounds like LTT is actually planning to do a Windows install review of the Deck sometime in the future.

Gamers Nexus similarly (which is somewhat unusual for them) also went the clickbait road today but with a very positive video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUh2qtjZu4E [External Link]

And Adam Savage have myth busted out a very indepth 1h review of the Deck (by way of Norman Chan):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRdZsYBv0gk [External Link]

Digital Foundry is ecstatic (PS4 console quality on a Handheld):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44TRzEGPbfE [External Link]

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Quoting: Alm888

Quoting: areamanplaysgameI think you are talking about two different groups of people, honestly. "Ordinary people" do not buy consumer electronics and then try to replace the operating system on them.

Well… Maybe you are right.
But! We are not talking about ordinary "ordinary people" here. Steam Deck will not be sold at brick&mortar stores. It must be pre-ordered through a dedicated gaming store. People on Steam (provided they know how to make a pre-order) are more than likely to tinker: install mods, stream on TVitch/YouTube, make benchmarks. You know, typical (glorious) PC gamer (master race) stuff. It would not be fair to treat them as "console players" who are more accustomed to "power-on & play" behavior. So, when they find out Valorant (for example) does not launch… What will they do?

Quoting: areamanplaysgameMost people I bet will not bother installing Windows on it. Only tech nerds will care. Your typical console player certainly won't.

What should they do, then? Cancel their purchase, demand refunds and send their new handheld PC back to Valve?
I think at least some people will make attempts to "negotiate" their new devices before giving up. And I think they at least deserve to know what perils await them should they try to circumvent the problem by using Windows.

Quoting: areamanplaysgameBut as Liam pointed out, drivers aren't ready yet. This is custom stuff made by Valve/AMD from what I understand of it. So while it's a x86_64 setup, it has custom GPU, not to mention all the custom control inputs.

Well, yeah. I figured as much. But will those drivers be ready by the time first owners get their devices? Will said owners be able to easily find those drivers? Will those drivers be included in the box on a mini CD (like the good old times) or flash drive? :P

Plus, I'm honestly curious about performance loss of the SteamOS against Windows (provided I do not even have a Steam account and have forgotten already the last time I've used WINE for gaming).

Well, it is Liam's choice not to test Windows games in their native ecosystem; I believe some reviewers will do such tests eventually.

Quoting: LoftyValve & the community need to put emphasis on how tailored Steam OS 3.0 is for the Steam Deck so people don't think it is just a binary choice of one OS over the other.

Yes. But Valve also needs not to alienate potential (still Windows-using) customers preemptively. And people really do not like to be put in stressful situations. In this case, knowledge that in case something goes wrong there is a "Plan B" (installing Windows) as a fallback will assure gamers of the purchase safety.

I know you just used Valorant as an example but it's still a very interesting choice of yours since it's Epic exclusive and isn't something that you will be able to play via Steam on anything. And I know that some part of the younger generations for some reason refuses to look things up before they buy (and that not all games work is quite hard to miss when you try to buy a Steam Deck) but being angry that Valorant does not work on your new Deck is equal to being angry that neither it or their new PS5 also doesn't play Breath of the Wild.

AND why on earth should we, readers of Gaming on _Linux_ care about how easy or hard it will be to install Windows on this thing or about the availability of Windows drivers?

And to be completely honest, I don't even think that you will see such a video by the likes of LTT, my money will be on Phoronix to attempt it (perhaps not first, that will probably be some obscure Windows tinkering site/channel).

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: hephaistion

Quoting: IvancilloI don't like all of this emulation things.

Proton is not an emulator.

Yeah, yeah, but you know what they mean.

For me, while I get their point, I think it's shortsighted. The problem is, Linux gaming hasn't been going anywhere. Without Valve it would have been far more nowhere than it is. At our size in the market, it's a major chicken-egg problem: Few were going to release their games for Linux unless there were more Linux buyers, and few were going to play games on Linux unless there were more games released for it. And as a side note, few would be likely to use Linux as their desktop at all if they couldn't play their games. At best, the status quo undisrupted sees Linux dragging along with a few decent games and stagnating market share; at worst, even the level we're at turns out to be a long-tailed artifact of the failed "Steam Machine" push and we gradually get fewer and fewer games released, trickling down in the general direction of where we were before Valve's initial Linux push.

So. Here's Valve, trying to break the cycle. They back Wine and DXVK and use 'em to make Proton, with the potential to allow nearly all games to be played on Linux so close to native as to make no practical difference. And yes, in the short term that means fewer games actually developed for Linux natively.
But they also release the Steam Deck, a mass market game machine running Linux, which would not be practical without Proton. If it goes well, suddenly the market share for Linux gets far larger, making Linux a much more noticeable development target. If they succeed, the chicken-egg problem will be, if not broken, at least seriously weakened. And Linux gaming in general becomes significantly more practical for a wider variety of gamers, making growth more plausible off the Deck as well.

So yeah. If the Steam Deck fails, and market share doesn't grow, then Proton could turn out to be a long term net negative. But the status quo is not tenable anyway.

Exactly this. Let's get the Linux user base up to a reasonable amount first, then we can talk about native vs wine. Until then, that whole discussion is completely moot. It's like being trapped in the middle of the desert and arguing of you prefer Perrier over Evian.

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Quoting: Hamish

Quoting: Purple Library GuySays it also supports doing various old Linux distributions. Maybe I could use it to play my old Loki games.

What is the support for GPU pasthrough like with this I wonder?

None I would imagine. It looks like they emulate various old graphics cards from the 80:ies up to VoodoFX.

Quoting: GeamanduraRepresenting all the noobs out there, and taking one for the team.

Could anyone kindly explain the difference between this, and DosBox? As long as I can run Transport tycoon and Sim city 2K and Mortal kombat in DosBox, what can I use this tool for?

DosBox emulates MS-DOS so you can run MS-DOS software like old PC games. This emulates various old style PC:s at the hardware level so you could install MS-DOS on it to turn it into a slower but very accurate version of DoSBOX but that would probably be way overkill. This is mostly for people wanting to play around with old hardware and not so much play old games.

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Quoting: Kithop

Quoting: GuestI never said that.

Apologies - I must have fumbled trying to trim down the quote on my phone :p Meant to be a reply to this one further up I think? https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/02/retro-x86-based-machine-emulator-86box-32-brings-linux-support/comment_id=220331

Either way - more just general info for anyone who might think their AppImage is the only route.

That's not the one either ;). I don't think any one is protesting the devs of 86Box to provide an AppImage image at their web site for people to download and use. The discussion is more that we would like the regular distributions to include new software in their repos so that people could install them "the proper way" to avoid the problems of security and bloat.

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Quoting: M@GOid

They went with AppImage for Linux so it should run across most major distributions.

I wished more devs wold opt for this for their software. Some things shouldn't need you to plug a new repository, compile code or anything that requires a admin password. Just run it from the Download folder without much fuss.

I can hear the security minded folks furiously typing right now, but remember, I said "some things", not all apps.

I agree with "some things", not sure if this type of application fits that category, for me that is. However I think the main problem is that distros don't add new software to their repos until they release a new version of the distro, sometimes I wish that they would just add new interesting software to the existing repos as long as they don't come with dependency breaking stuff.

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