For me this was a great review. Really like the fact that both the review and game-play video do not reveal and then spoil the story. Amused by the fact that I already have this game in my big Steam collection. Little tidbits of useful information like the community levels being good to extend game-play after you've finished the story, and what other things the developer has worked on - All good to know.

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Never had any problem playing Dying Light on my Linux rigs. Played on Debian and Mint Linux, using a range of Nvidia graphics cards ( GTX960, GTX970, GTX1070, GTX1080TI ). In my early days of playing it, I was using an AMD FX8350 processor, and it was one of the most graphically stunning and smoothest games on that processor. The FX8350 is 8-core and suited to well-threaded code, whereas many (other) games favour a very fast single core, where the FX processor is pretty underwhelming compared to Intel's core processors. Thankfully, AMD's Ryzen processors do a good job of redressing the balance and are amazing for multi-threaded code.

Currently play Dying Light on Ryzen 5 1600, GTX1080TI, 4K resolution, and maxxed out graphical settings. Thumbs up Techland for all your hard work on it. Really want the new game to come to Linux.

My own perspective on games which don't come to Linux - I don't buy them until they are *very* reduced in sales, e.g. 80% discount. So, if you want full money off me, make sure it comes to Linux. (I'm looking at you, Flying Wild Hog - Shadow Warrior 2 - still not bought that yet.)

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Cool that it is on Linux so quickly. Also, it is offered with 35% sale discount from now until 5th July on Steam.

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I'd probably build drones to look like ships from Star Control I and II. Urquan Dreadnought, Arilou Skiff, Chenjesu Broodhome, Ilwrath Avenger, Mycon Podship, Spathi Eluder, Yehat Terminator, Thraddash Torch, Androsynth Guardian are example ships. Those games bring back many fond memories. Free open-source release 'The Urquan Masters' was created as a modern port of those old games.

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Regarding the Steam Link - It isn't as good a deal as it seems, because £2 for the item and then £7.40 extra for delivery.

I'm all for hacking hardware, but this device is properly locked down. Yes, you can get Linux running on it, but reboot it and you have to mess around all over again to get chroot-ed Linux back. This is non-ideal for setting it up as a small low-power Linux box (media player, web server, simple desktop for browsing, etc).

Your best option is to forget about this idea, and use a Raspberry Pi instead. The Pi Zero W is similarly cheap (when you factor in the delivery) and isn't locked down.

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I bought For The King today, and it did a good job of sucking me in - I played for about 4 hours.

There are some BUTs though...

1) I play on Debian most of the time, and my main rig is Debian 10 Buster. Well, For The King (FTK) popped up a black screen and did nothing. Tsk! After reading Steam Forums and trying different things and getting nowhere, e.g. trying windowed mode ( -screen-fullscreen 0 ) and trying the command line: STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 steam (from here: FTK Steam Info [External Link] )

Eventually, I went into the FTK Properties on Steam, and selected the 32 bit Beta, rather than the regular game, and the 32 Bit one loads up and works fine. I tend to feel this is probably the fault of Unity3D but I'm sure the devs could include some sort of hot-fix in their release.

EDIT: So, for me on Debian 10 I needed to do both of these things to get it to run:
(a) STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES=0 steam # launch steam with this command-line
(b) Play the 32 bit version of the game (found in the Beta section of the game's Properties)

2) My 4 or so hours of game play. As you might already remember me mentioning - Love FTL, love Slay the Spire, love the design of Darkest Dungeon but it is just too punishing and unpleasant to actually play it. Well, For The King is too punishing and too random for my proper enjoyment. There should be an Easier Level setting below the "Apprentice" level, because Apprentice level is still much too hard.

The problem is that the game pushes you forwards, faster than you have time to recover (to heal your party, to stock up on potions, to search the surrounding area, to level up your party) and you either go too slow (and the world situation goes out of hand) or you try to keep up (doing the main story) and your party is too weak to take on the baddies.

Not happy with the balance and not happy with the game level adjustment. YMMV.

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Noticing that Terraria [External Link] is at 50% discount in the Steam Summer Sale. This is pretty much the lowest it has been for 2 years. It is not the sort of game you normally find a good discount on.

Overwhelmingly popular too. 2-D Minecraft-style game but lots more depth and content (items, crafting, etc) than Minecraft. I have bought it.

Also, I picked up "For The King" too. And a couple of comments on that - which I'll put on the recent FTK post.

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Just noting that the free Shadowrun Returns: Deluxe on Humble store gives you a steam key, which can be claimed until 15th July, and then if unused it expires. The Deluxe version will upgrade the regular version with some extra content - I did it and the extra DLC was added to my regular game (which I already owned).

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Feel I can share some of my perspective on this:

A big thing that stops the average person from adopting Linux is technical ability. The average person never installs an operating system and frankly doesn't want to install one. They just want it there on the PC/laptop which they purchase. Of course, when their Operating System (or hardware) stops working, then often they can't solve the problem themselves and need to find someone technical to help them out. [It would be good to have lots of decent quality walk-through videos and tutorials on the web, explaining how to do things - for new adopters. Too many videos ramble and don't provide concise information.]

If that person received a computer with no OS, then Linux is actually a very pleasant experience to get up and running. Also, when a person has an old computer where maybe the Windows install is messed up and needs replacing, these computers can be refreshed with a Linux install and a simple desktop (e.g. XFCE). Linux with a lean desktop can run amazingly well on low-spec or old hardware. [I personally have Xubuntu on a 4GB RAM Chromebook with Celeron processor, and it boots up to the desktop in less than 10 seconds.]

What these people need is help (to install) and encouragement (it'll run nice and fast, you won't get any viruses, it is legal and free, and there are plenty of games to play on it - Steam, GOG, itch, etc.) Linux enthusiasts can help with this. It helps to be friendly and pleasant to newbies. A RTFM attitude does not help with user adoption.

Also, there are many people who'd be happy to give Linux a go, *but* don't want to get rid of Windows, and we can help them to get a dual-boot environment set up. Tell them all the great things about Linux - The fact that the OS isn't spying on them, you can have a very fast resource-light machine (which boots in seconds), you don't have to suffer the slow-downs that occur in Windows every time it goes through patch updates, the fact that you don't have to reboot Linux anything like as often as Windows, the fact that you can customise the system any way you want (not restricted like the Mac / Windows world).

Aside from platform adoption, which I've just been mentioning, many of the points made by mdiluz I'm in complete agreement with. One thing I'd like to see is less confrontation in the Linux gaming forums and posts. It isn't winning us friends to fight amongst ourselves (e.g. GOG vs Steam, Debian vs Redhat, DRM-free vs DRM, and name-calling and derision between competing sides. Sure, discuss things, but keep it polite and respectful.)

On the subject of game developers, we Linux game-purchasers, need to be polite and respectful there as well!!!

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Quoting: Gryxx

Quoting: mortigarWorks on Manjaro, so it should technically work on any arch distro. Just tried it!

I've asked brother, he still has VAC error on launch (Opensuse)
Still, nice to know I'm not limited to Debian-ish distros to play

I'd be tempted with your situation to run a dual-boot system, then if a specific game does not work under distribution A then you can boot up to distribution B and play it instead.

To set up such a system, I'd probably use GPT partitioning and UEFI bootloaders, as well as LVM to partition everything. It would probably take some experimentation to get it just right.

Something "like this"...

500G drive

/dev/sda1 EFI partition 200M
/dev/sda2 boot1 1G
/dev/sda3 boot2 1G
/dev/sda4 LVM partition for volume group vg1 497G

/dev/mapper/vg1-swap swap area (share between distros) 8G
/dev/mapper/vg1-root1 root file system for one of your distros 50G
/dev/mapper/vg1-root2 root file system for another of your distros 50G
/dev/mapper/vg1-home1 /home file system 100G
/dev/mapper/vg1-home2 /home file system ~ might be able to share or not ???G
/dev/mapper/vg1-games /home/games file system, where you tuck away your steam folder ???G

Assuming that you'd mount areas of each distro for each boot environment, i.e. swap area would be shared between both and "maybe" games (steam folder) could be shared between both.

If not sharing any of the Logical Volumes between each boot distro, then you could perhaps arrange it so that your primary distro has bigger Logical Volumes, and your second boot distro has smaller Logical Volume space. Another example below:

/dev/mapper/vg1-swap swap area (share between distros) 8G
/dev/mapper/vg1-root1 root file system for your primary distro 50G
/dev/mapper/vg1-root2 root (inc home) file system for your secondary distro 50G
/dev/mapper/vg1-home1 /home file system for your primary distro 350G

There's quite a number of possible directions you could go with this. I'd also be tempted to consider having very small (empty) home directories, and storing most of my files (docs, video, music, games) in a separate directory structure which I would then access from each distro.

Also, using LVM allows for relatively easy resizing of the partitions should you wish to change things around later.

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