Quoting: M@GOidIf SteamOS is 7.6% of ~1,623,600 million Linux users, it is safe to say Valve delivered about 123,000 units so far?

I don't think so?

SteamOS has existed since 2013, and even though it didn't really get competitive in terms of gaming before 4.0 with the inclusion of Proton, it's still available to install on any machine that meets the hardware requirements.

So a large portion is probably Steam Decks, but I wouldn't expect all of it to be.

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I'd just like to add that the 5.21 wine runner that now is available in their 0.5.8 versions once again works for World of Warcraft. No need to use system staging builds anymore. And we can also use esync again, it appears! :grin:

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Quoting: setzer22Another notable change is that they brought back FXAA! It was removed when they moved to Godot 3.

FXAA is a very cheap anti-aliasing technique, frequently used in 3d mobile games instead of MSAA (the only one supported until now). A great fit for Godot!

Well that is awesome news! FXAA is one of the few methods of AA my computer can do without severely impacting the performance. Really looking forward to their 4.0 release, though. Vulkan will be great! :D

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Quoting: Perkeleen_VittupääOne of the biggest challenges for seasoned Linux users is to place oneself in the shoes of a new comer that's also a Windows refugee. What is "simple, handy and easy" (*just a few commands on the terminal*) for us, might be a set of total deal breakers for a "normo" to start with :grin:

Don't call them "normos". The right term is "muggles". :happy:

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Not sure what others have experienced, but I finally got to try it in Arch Linux today, through Steam Play. Today is June 26th, 2020, just for the reference. Since my experience seems smoother than what some others had a month ago, I'm sharing!

I had to install the amdvlk driver, which is simple enough. And after that, it was just a matter of changing the API to vulkan(beta) in the Path of Exile options, and voila. Just as smooth as on windows. No weird driver builds, patches, lutris or custom wine builds were needed. Just my arch linux distro, official repo drivers, and official proton versions in steam play.

I'm using proton 5.0-9, which at the time of writing was the most recent one. My gpu drivers in my arch system are primarily amdgp, amdvlk and the standard mesa packages needed. And as mentioned it's all from the official arch repos, no AUR or custom builds needed.

Can't really say how much more "smooth out of the box" we really need it here. I'm happy. This was my sole reason for having a windoze dual boot. So goodbye crapsoft windoze. Forever! :)

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Quoting: jordicomaThe next step is forcing to have x.y.z version installed with y.z hardware to be able to play. They should put a warning before buying a game like this.

EA should just stick to consoles. They've never appeared to accept the multitude of setups on the PC platform anyway.

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Anything that brings more gaming that works to linux is a good thing.

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A lot of people go into game design with high attitudes, a lot of idealism and really just the best of intentions, unaware of the enormous amounts of planning, structure, strategy and sheer workloads they'll actually be facing. This isn't just true for game development, this happens with a lot of startups in all areas of society.

So kudos to these two for seeing it through and even offering refunds. Seems like they are very open about the situation, their intentions and everything. At least now. So they're ok in my book.

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Well it's not that hard. Developers don't change their minds based on loud forum posts, they go by statistics and market shares. Linux has a really small part of the market.

How to get more linux out there? I'm honestly not sure we can. Macs come with macOS. And nearly all other sold computers come with windows, because microsoft have OEM deals with the computer manfucturers. What exact distro of linux can promise the same customer support deals that microsoft can? I can't think of a single one. And don't say Ubuntu. Sure, they're the most MS of the distros, but you still need a bunch of extra PPAs to really enjoy the variety of stuff out there, and then we're back at the subject of learning curves, knowledge levels and all sorts of things that really isn't selling it to the computer manufacturers.

Linux is awesome, and beats the alternatives by miles. But the day where a solid portion of sold computers come with a good distro pre-installed? I don't see that happening anytime soon.

And if that's not happening, then native linux games will continue being low, no matter how much we "demand" or how loud we are out in the various forums and message boards. All that does is to make us all appear rather troublesome and not worth the hassle. Demanding games to have native linux versions is just firing at the completely wrong target. It starts and ends with the linux marketshare on new computers.

And thus Wine and Proton and tools like Steam Play and Lutris helping us run windows games on linux really is our best bet. Not the best bet to get more people to use linux, because that's not really something we can do anything about, at least not to the degree needed for large gaming companies to ever consider us a viable alternative. But the best bet for ourselves to get to play the games. At all.

So this whole "Steam Play is hurting linux gaming" discussion is to me just so far off the point. I guess some of us are living in an echo chamber. Just because we continously are talking to other linux users and linux gamers, doesn't mean we're anything else than a tiny, tiny minority. But luckily a minority with a bunch of kickass developers and individuals in, bringing amazing tools like Wine and DXVK to us! :)

Steam Play is making gaming better for linux users. That's the truth. That's what matters.

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Either way I'm sure we'll still have both Steam and Proton going forward, Valve has shown their interest in linux since the very start. I played the first Counter Strike on linux, about 20 years ago.

I do understand Valve's decision here, though. They need 32 bit support because of their immense game library on Steam, and I get why they don't want to offer official support for any OS ditching 32 bit.

Still. Will follow this one, want to see what happens here. I'm sure we'll be fine and we'll still have a working steam, I've been on Arch Linux which isn't supported all this time and it's been working great for me. But still interested in where this will lead.

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