I think this is good:
1) Valve is pushing Vulkan. They clearly state: if you want good compatibility with all platforms: use vulkan, nothing else.
2) Using vulkan it takes the biggest burden against linux out of the way: a good 3D API
and controversial
3) This might install wine as middle ware for gaming. Both Windows and Linux have major problems playing older games. Try installing GTA up to IV and have it work... It's not native on Linux, and on Windows 10 it throws so much garbage in your face, you'd better give it up.
Proton and the controller compatibility would make Linux (or if it works on Windows too) *the* platform to use to play GTA up to IV(!).
Now the middleware needs to step down the amount of windows specifics, and concentrate on the gaming specifics.
Let Valve handle the lower part, and it would be fantastic. Games that you can install and play 10 years from now... I would love to play quake again. But I won't because I need to get all the data from the CD-ROMS, that means, I first need to have a player somewhere in the network.
Then I need to find the most recent quake engine and read how to set it up, because my original binaries won't work.
It would be like GOG, but working.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: DamonLinuxPLWell this is amazing news but I have been disappointed with such things many times. Worst of all if it will be a compatible profile for running games from xp/vista/7 in Windows 10 :D

You know, it didn't even occur to me (it should have) that it could indeed be for Windows games no longer running on later versions of Windows...

Actually that's a very common problem. In the end, running the windows game under linux on wine tends to give less problems than running the windows game on a newer windows or running the linux game on a newer linux.
And I am not talking about wow-win16, but all games that started on win32 always had problems.
Divine Divinity needs a directdraw to directx layer or something for windows(GOG), and it needs the original directdraw for linux to run good on wine (not available on GOG :-( ).
Buy a new win10 system and try installing any GTA up to GTA IV, and hook up a generic xbox controller. Good luck.
It will certainly eventually work though, but you have to be an expert in dll's and interfaces to know what else you need to install to make things work.
Even with the extra challenge that the screen is rotated on my WIN2, installing GTA IV EFL was pretty straight forward, if you don't use any of the wine installers, but just install steam, EFL.
The only thing is that I killed my wine install by trying to get the xbox controller to work.
Which is a well documented problem for GTA IV on windows.

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Quoting: STiATInteresting, that Mesa and DXVK need game based workarounds. Seems game devs / engines are not always compliant to standards.

Eh... they all have...
Nvidia always comes with a giant list of tweaks and workarounds for games. If you change the name of the game those tweaks suddenly don't work. Just like those 3d benchmarks that suddenly score lower when you change their name.
The same with ATI and fglrx, especially for crossfire use.
I assume the same with AMD.
For now mesa still seems to be very distant of making gamename based fixes.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: CorbenEverybody who thinks the Steam Controller is hard to setup, try this tool instead of Steam's Big Picture mode.

Also the main value is for those who aren't using Steam.

Or even a PC :-)

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The most interesting thing: will it work in SteamVR on linux?

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80If they wanted Steam os to be the go to linux distro they would need to make shit loads of improvements not just drivers also the last time they actively tried to talking to developers we got promises of Witcher 3 and Street Fighter 5 and we have neither of those.

I bought a steam machine with steam os, and it saved me a lot of time figuring out how to optimize my system for being a low power embedded software development platform and being a gaming rig.
So it was well worth the investment.
Now Valve is investing *a lot of time* making Linux the gaming platform of choice, by making it the most advanced platform. You can see how Cro-team and Valve work together to resolve stutter in high end setups that plague all platforms. Except now for Linux. Because they can fiddle with and fix the Linux platform (mostly being graphics drivers needing to expose more information).
Make no mistake about it: Valve is creating the ultimate gaming platform, and it is using Linux to do that. And it is the opensource (AMD cards, intel even) drivers that help them fix issues, and recommend improvements to the vulkan standard.
Steam os itself gets new stable releases regularly. If I get my controller, and turn it on, there is a 99.999% chance I can select and play my favourite game that I played last year. If not, I can submit a bug and be sure Valve is hunting down platform changes, and either contact the original developer or make a steam platform backwards compatibility layer, like they did last time when they EOL'ed an old API rendering at least 10 of my games defunct. They fixed that for those that could not (for legal reasons even) compile and publish against a newer library.

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I don't know man. I really don't like it when war games hit reality too much. I already had a lot of problems getting myself to hit a dodo in Ark...

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Quoting: GuestI think the Stallman I've "seen" (interviews, reading material, etc), and the one you just described, are two different people.
Stallman is very careful and considered with his words, measured and reasoning. I think a few more people acting like that would be a good thing.

The Stallman I know would never ever use twitter. So I don't know what that guy was smoking.
Stallman has always been very pragmatic, and the worst thing he ever said was POSIX_ME_HARDER, and he was right about that.
I do acknowledge that the linux community contains the same salty persons the windows community has: demanding, feeling superior and totally without respect.
That's not a problem with our community, but a problem with humanity. But since we are the underdog, any such a person should not be in our community, or should be silenced.
I even was surprised that a major open source developer was playing Ark: Survival Evolved, and had the same idea as I about it: It's an amazing game, and who cares that the graphics are less than on windows, just as long as you can enter a cave. No hate, no whining. Just totally ok because he could game, and he could do his work.

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80Good to see Valve doing some work on their OS and still helping with Mesa and kernel updates, sadly it does look like they have lost some of the drive they had when MS were threatening to try to take on steam with App store. Now that MS has backed off valve seem to of backed off the linux investment laying off their man linux developer and coder early last year and not replacing him still concerns me.

They are doing what Valve does best: keeping quiet and continue developing.
They really are working, but you as a consumer won't notice.

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Quoting: subOn a side note. Quite interesting read when it comes to Valve.

https://www.pcgamer.com/ex-valve-employee-describes-ruthless-industry-politics/?utm_content=buffer537a4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer-pcgamertw [External Link]

So far I'm a big supporter of them and grateful for what they did for Linux.
Yet, if that's even remotely true then I'm deeply disappointed by the mismatch
between what they want people believe how they are working and what it is really like.

I am really not a fan of Rich Geldreich, maybe the name has something to do with it (it means rich, money, rich). But his tweets are only salty, so I don't listen anymore to anything he has to say.
Here is a more objective story about Jeri Ellsworth:
https://www.polygon.com/features/2017/4/12/15257842/jeri-ellsworth-profile-castar-valve [External Link]
She was hired, and booted, and got to take all her research with her for the symbolic price of $100. The payment is a legal thing to be able to transfer the work done.
It was currently the right move for Valve to fire her, but I hope when VR is crystalized and done (they are still developing and fixing graphics in linux just to get VR just right), they hire Jeri again to get on with AR.
Her CastAR project in the mean time seems to be dead.

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