Quoting: JanMicrosoft and DirectX on the other hand is a different case. They're the elephant in the room of PC gaming and a big player in the console space with Xbox. I guess DirectX > Vulkan conversion and feature parity is the deciding factor for Linux in the future, not a handful of Metal titles.

Sure, DX is even worse in this sense because of its size in gaming, but we were talking about Apple specifically.

MS by the way just recently made their own HLSL → SPIR-V compiler: https://github.com/Microsoft/DirectXShaderCompiler/blob/master/docs/SPIR-V.rst [External Link]

So they seem to be somewhat on the right track at least with Vulkan.

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Quoting: JanApple is a giant in mobile, but a dwarf on the desktop. If we're still discussing graphics APIs for demanding PC games I don't think the argument of "Apple is slowing down progress" is strong enough. How could they? They are only a fraction of the market and don't offer gaming specific hardware.

Didn't Feral above claim, that MacOS sales are higher than Linux sales? It means as I said, engine and game developers would prioritze it more, and the fact that they don't use Vulkan would mean Vulkan development will get lest time in result.

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Quoting: JanThey built their entire business on integrated, relatively closed down systems. It's how they roll. This might be wrong for you and me and Linux geek 52 on stackoverflow, but it doesn't influence Linux' success in a meaningful way.

Lock-in has no impact only if those who push it are small players. Apple are far from small, they quite unfortunately have significant influence on various markets. So their anti-competitive moves cause actual damage (slowing down progress and so on). "That's how they roll" doesn't justify it in any way. You can repeat that "no agenda" argument, but it doesn't change the fact of actual damage caused.

Regarding Swift, Apple only opened it because of strong competition (Rust). Which is good in the end, but personally I'd prefer Rust by a huge margin. In general Apple is a complete opposite of openness when it comes to development tools.

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Quoting: JanWhat about CUPS, WebKit, Swift, Darwin, OpenCL/Grand Central, Bonjour/Zeroconf, USB-C/Thunderbolt, FireWire, embracing of HTML5 instead of Flash, etc.?

Apple abandoned OpenCL as far as I know. Sure, in some cases they are doing something useful. But their general culture is very toxic.

Quoting: JanApple is not preventing Linux from succeeding.

It's not about preventing. It's more about putting more roadblocks on purpose. They can't prevent it in the end.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeAs far as the Metal vs Vulkan thing. Vulkan wasn't created mainly for Android, that was an afterthought. In fact only the most recent Android versions even support it. It was started as a low level API to replace openGL, which Apple had already long ago ditched. They created their own for lock-in there is only one reason to create an API that isn't cross platform. Same reason as MS not releasing DirectX everywhere.

Yep. I totally don't buy the argument "Metal was needed because Apple has some quirky hardware". Apple had all the time to join Vulkan working group, and address the needs of their hardware through participating in the API design. Apple didn't want to. Because lock-in.

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Quoting: De1m0sTo become a real alternative to windows, there must change a lot of things in linux.
I'm linux-user since 2 years, and i'm still wondering some times, how software is released.

This is a non issue. There are two common methods. First, is software released through repositories. That's normally FOSS software, packaged by distribution maintainers. You just install it with your package manager. Second method, is independent distribution, by software vendors. These are more commonly (but not necessarily) closed projects. They provide tarballs / packages to install. If you need to build something from source, it means no one is distributing it for your system, so you do need to build it from source in such case indeed.

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Quoting: JanDoes someone really think the richest company in the world is following a hidden agenda against the adoption of desktop Linux or even Linux gaming?

They have a simpler agenda, but still quite wicked. Insane lock-in everywhere, total NIH and sabotage of open standards when they can get away with it. Linux is just a collateral damage of that stance, but it doesn't make Apple's behavior any less evil.

Consider other cases (besides graphics). Apple didn't join Alliance for Open Media (while even MS did). Apple refused to support WebRTC in desktop Safari, they refused to support MSE, trying to sabotage adoption of DASH, and so on and so forth. The bottom line, they are the most notorious lock-in jerks around and they are causing a lot of damage to the industry because of that.

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Quoting: manus76Does it all impact linux gaming in any way? In other words: do you think there would be a lot people suddenly installing a linux distro on their computers if Apple changed its practices?

All that has a negative impact. Consider for example engine developers like Epic and their UE. Because they need to support multiple redundant backends (DX, Metal, GNM, and then OpenGL/Vulkan), what do you think they are focused on more? Bigger ones of course. That's why games like Everspace suffer from bugs on Linux that aren't fixed in a long time. All that is a direct consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs, instead of using open ones which would allow engine developers to produce higher quality result for each OS. What other practical demonstration of that impact do you need?

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If you look at the combined stats, Linux is mostly eating away at MacOS market share. Which is not surprising, given that Apple basically let their system rot until very recently. This trend might slow down, because of the big MacOS update, but I don't think Apple will change much. They are too busy with their mobile craze, to really pay attention to the desktop. MacOS will continue to bleed users to Linux.

Quoting: stretch611Sadly, It appears that our growth is at the expense of Apple... not Microsoft.

That is a good thing for Linux. Firstly, MacOS users are more likely not be interested in Windows, while at the same time their growing dissatisfaction with Apple pushes them to look for better alternatives. Linux is quite a natural choice for them. I.e. for instance, more than once I've heard from former MacOS users, that they switched to Linux because of OpenGL stall, and not being able to run recent games in Wine. Apple sure know how to shoot themselves in the foot. Though these are most probably "power users", who do something more than casual usage of their systems. The rest are less likely to switch.

To unsit Windows on the other hand, there should be more pre-installed systems. I.e. we need a major partner with someone like Dell and etc.

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Quoting: manus76even if there was a direct link between Apple's practices and the state of linux gaming at the moment, I haven't seen anyone demonstrating such a link.

1. Lock-in taxes cross platform development making it more expensive.
2. In practice it means some simply won't do it, and will limit their releases to bigger platforms (not Linux).

MS, Apple, Sony and the like do a lot to perpetuate lock-in and tax developers who don't want to limit releases to their platforms. Example of that is them not supporting Vulkan on their locked systems.

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