Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
Latest Comments by Shmerl
ZED from Eagre Games and Cyan Ventures is out for Linux now, it’s quite an experience (plus an interview)
27 June 2019 at 1:47 am UTC Likes: 2

Great interview, thanks! I backed the game and wait for the Linux version to get to GOG.

This part though was a bit strange:

QuotePlatforms like Proton and Lutris are beginning to make WINE obsolete.

Wine is really the base of Proton, and without it Lutris won't work with Windows games either, so it's hardly obsolete ;)

Valve release an official statement about the future of Linux support, they "remain committed" to Linux gaming
27 June 2019 at 12:16 am UTC Likes: 9

Interestingly, if you read the announcement carefully, they write that they'll be able to continue to support Ubuntu officially, but they didn't say they'll continue recommending it as the first choice for their users. So would be interesting to see what they'll recommend.

Valve release an official statement about the future of Linux support, they "remain committed" to Linux gaming
27 June 2019 at 12:06 am UTC Likes: 8

Great to hear about Valve working closely with more distros! And especially backing efforts to improve desktop experience. I suppose the recent KDE/KWin work announcement is related to that.

Reminder: Update your PC info for the next round of statistics updates
25 June 2019 at 7:22 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdaweDone, took some research and some hair-pulling but I managed to get it to work.

Great, thanks! It shows a drop in the total number of users, when checking some trends. Is it because some users aren't updating profiles, or because some users stopped specifying some particular parameter in their profile?

Reminder: Update your PC info for the next round of statistics updates
25 June 2019 at 3:04 pm UTC Likes: 3

@liamdawe: can you please add the total (and specific) number of users to trends in the tooltip, when hovering over specific data point? I.e. something like (30% [300/1000]). Percentages alone are not as informative without absolute numbers.

Canonical have released a statement on Ubuntu and 32bit support, will keep select packages
24 June 2019 at 8:16 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: RedfaceToo little would be too just continue to build the whole distribution in 32 bit. Now the actual needed libraries and programs will be identified so that better future proof solutions.
Or to continue with their plans as announced where there was way to many problems and to little time for the 19.10 and 20.04 release.

My trust in them increased by their new plan.


No doubt their current proposal is a lot better than before. But I don't trust Ubuntu in general. This whole debacle didn't help.

Canonical have released a statement on Ubuntu and 32bit support, will keep select packages
24 June 2019 at 6:23 pm UTC Likes: 11

Quoting: GuestThat's fine, you can be out. Just how many 32 bit apps do you run on your machine? I run one, steam.

I guess you are not a gamer and not in this topic then. A lot of older games are 32-bit, especially Wine use case. I'd say any game older than from 2015 - is very likely 32-bit. That's a lot of games! So Steam client itself is pretty much irrelevant in comparison with sheer amount of 32-bit games.

Canonical have released a statement on Ubuntu and 32bit support, will keep select packages
24 June 2019 at 6:20 pm UTC Likes: 14

I'd classify it as too little, too late. Trust is pretty much gone. And I doubt anyone would recommend Ubuntu for gaming after this.

Epic's Tim Sweeney thinks Wine "is the one hope for breaking the cycle", Easy Anti-Cheat continuing Linux support
24 June 2019 at 4:16 pm UTC Likes: 1

QuoteLet's take Feral Interactive as an example of this, I've seen a lot of comments from people saying they buy directly through the Feral store, so Feral gets the full cut and that's just one of many such examples. However, the difference of course is the majority of the time the games are available across multiple stores, you still have the choice.

Feral are the counter example, no? Even games bought in their own store require Steam. So they essentially are equal to Steam exclusives? Feral staunchly refuse to release their games on GOG and other Linux stores.

QuoteI'm personally torn on it all. I don't particularly like exclusives, as I don't like any kind of lock-in but I don't blame developers for doing it. Good games take a lot of time and money to produce and support after release. Offering developers the chance to earn more money from a smaller store cut, plus limited-time exclusive funds to help them finish their game and improve it, developers are obviously going to take it.

Exclusivity is the wrong way to do it. Not only it's anti-competitive which is bad, it's anti-user, since it limits users' choice. So to answer Tim - no, exclusives can not be justified with agenda of lowering "Steam tax".

Canonical are now saying Ubuntu's 32bit is not being entirely dropped, 32bit libraries will be "frozen"
24 June 2019 at 2:02 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: x_wingIn short, all the suggested workarounds are by far more expensive than simply compiling the base deps for x86.

They might be more expensive to develop, but it can be better than having nothing when upstream libraries simply decide to drop 32-bit support to begin with. They can do it at some point. Then what?