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Latest Comments by danniello
NVIDIA has a new Vulkan beta driver, fixes for Hitman 2 with DXVK and Total War Warhammer II
20 Feb 2019 at 4:53 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: wvstolzingI used nvidia's installers for about a year on Fedora (and briefly on openSUSE), with no problems; the kernel modules would be automatically rebuilt with each update. I moved to negativo17's repos just out of laziness -- and because he updates his repo very quickly. (The only drawback is that he doesn't package the beta drivers for stable (so to speak) Fedora.)

I understand distros' general caution about this, but I don't get why they don't explain (in wikis or manuals; whereever the topic of proprietary nvidia drivers comes up) *exactly* what's under risk of breaking. It can't *just* be that they don't want newbies to panic when they have to boot into a virtual terminal.
The problem with scripts started as root (it is the case with installation of nVidia driver via official script) is that they could do everything. In another words your system is no longer "legit" after such installation outside packaging system. Proper driver package (I mean from trusted sources like https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/nvidia-driver/ [External Link]) could be fully uninstalled via system dnf tools. With driver installed via script - you do not have certainty that uninstall script will work properly (I mean it will properly restore original files).

Nowadays situation is much better, but in the past proprietary nVidia driver installation was a mess. I mean in the past nVidia proprietary driver to work required replace many Linux system libraries related to OpenGL and others... It was one of many reasons why nVidia was banned by Fedora for many years... Nowadays thanks to Red Hat/Fedora and nVidia cooperation - situation is much better. For example thanks to GLVND (OpenGL Vendor Neutral Dispatch Library) proprietary libraries could coexist in system without removing their open counterparts.

The war of the PC stores is getting ugly, as Metro Exodus becomes a timed Epic Store exclusive
29 Jan 2019 at 8:38 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: johndoe1. Metro is made by russian developers.
Not true. 4A Games is made by Ukrainian people that had to migrate businesses to Malta, because Russia invaded east part of Ukraine...

The war of the PC stores is getting ugly, as Metro Exodus becomes a timed Epic Store exclusive
29 Jan 2019 at 7:56 pm UTC

Quoting: ShmerlThey can sell high end consoles. It's a different market than current incumbent consoles that can't run anything at higher than 30 fps.
And who will buy this high-end Linux PC console that is not subsidized (so expensive)?

PC gamers that already have high-end Windows PC that could play all games for this PC console? I do not think so.

Console gamers that are quite happy with console game quality will buy overpriced Linux PC console (in comparison to much cheaper PlayStation/Xbox)? Probably some of them yes, but not enough to be profitable as a full ecosystem.

Without comparable price - PC Linux console do not have chance with Sony/Microsoft competition.

Perhaps there is other way... Maybe prepare two versions:
* cheap "entry level" PC console (with option to manual upgrade) with price comparable to PlayStation/XboX
* expensive "power" Linux PC console (VR ready:) - also with option to manual upgrade in the future...

The war of the PC stores is getting ugly, as Metro Exodus becomes a timed Epic Store exclusive
29 Jan 2019 at 6:45 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: iiariThey also need to double down on social/chat/voice to maximize the value of everyone having extensive friends lists here, and also need to push on home and over-the-web game streaming before Google/Sony/Amazon eat their lunch here. If all Valve does in 2019 is refresh the launcher, it will seriously have been a lost year. This is the critical time. Proton is great, but it's developing their own IP, streaming, and social that will save them...
Very true.

Linux gaming is almost not existing market (less than 1% of Steam hardware survey), so Valve investments into it doesn't make sense from economic point of view.

There are three possibilities:
1. Valve perhaps will back to Steam Machine initiative (PC Linux console)
2. Valve is preparing to start streaming service
3. Both:)

It could be possible that Valve is preparing Steam Machine 2, but after failure of first initiative (with Dell cooperation) - it could be difficult. Also let be honest - Valve is too small company to subsidize Linux PC console that will be sold cheaper than production cost. Sony/Microsoft/Google/Apple are big enough to subsidize unprofitable initiatives for years - without economic threat for company, because they have plenty of income from other sources.

Streaming service probably is less risky initiative. Valve already have big network infrastructure across the globe. Of course streaming require much more investments into network and hardware, but it feels less risky than subsidize console. And Linux also is very important for streaming service.

Why Linux for streaming service? Because every started session of streamed Windows game require pay license fee to Microsoft. If Windows VM could be replaced with Linux VM - it means millions of cash not spent for unnecessary licenses. Google also doing something similar, but closed-source and for new games only - Project Stream Assassin's Creed Odyssey is streamed from Linux servers.

Game streaming probably is the future of AAA games, but local, standalone games will not vanish. There will be always market for it - indie games, but also very fast, competitive online games like Quake - "real" gamers will prefer local clients, because even little lag it is disaster for very fast FPS games. But for "Sunday gamers" - streaming will be "good enough" (and finally almost no cheaters!!!).

The devs of Tower Unite remove the broken Linux beta in favour of Steam Play, mentioning Unreal Engine issues
9 Jan 2019 at 9:17 am UTC

Quoting: GuestNative always beats wine/eon/etc... because it means that the devs actually care about using standard tools instead of platform-locked technology.
Hmmm... So according to your definition Mad Max also is worse. This game is using very sophisticated, but still, abstraction layers. "Real" native ports of AAA games are probably very rare. Linux indie games are native ports, because has been exported from Unity/Unreal editor as "Linux" - and probably it is the reason why they are so bad (in "Istanbul: Digital Edition" even keyboard is not working properly!)...

For me - as a gamer - I do not care how game internals has been prepared. The most important thing is "game works as it should be". As a gamer I'm very upset that Linux port is obsolete and without all features of Windows edition (like for example "Ticket to Ride").

We will see in the future what will be with Linux games support. In my personal opinion it could be easier to start "vintage" Steam Proton 3.7 (and all Windows games that is working on it - for example GTA5) than today native ports that will be abandoned in next 10 years.

Example: Doom 3 native Linux port in the past was working OK, but now it is not something that could be advertised for "average user".
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/playing-doom-3-on-linux-in-2017.10561
"Getting the game to run properly on my modern Arch Linux setup involved removing the bundled libgcc_s.so.1 and libstdc++.so.6 libraries from the install directory. Doing this allowed the game to launch without issues, but still I did not have working sound. This was resolved by modifying the DoomConfig.cfg file located in the hidden ~/.doom3/base directory to change the “seta s_alsa_pcm” value from “default” to “hw:0,0” instead."
Linux port of Doom 3 was abandoned years ago, but Windows Doom 3 is working quite well via Steam Proton - at least you do not need to remove/change game files to start it with sound.
https://www.protondb.com/app/208200 [External Link]

The devs of Tower Unite remove the broken Linux beta in favour of Steam Play, mentioning Unreal Engine issues
9 Jan 2019 at 7:55 am UTC

Quoting: GustyGhostecho "PixelTail" >> ~/List_of_cancer_developers.txt
So in your opinion publishers/developers that are lying are cool?!

By lying publishers/developers I mean games that are advertised as Linux supported but in reality Linux port is not working or working worse because it was abandoned (like for example Ticket to Ride).

If Tower Unite via Proton is working much better than "Linux native" - remove Linux native is good decision and developer is honest.

Also many AAA ports (like Civilization VI, Mad Max) are using professional, dedicated abstraction layers - so something like Steam Proton, but much better customized for particular title. If Linux port is abandoned anyway (sadly it is the case with many, many "Linux native" games) - in my opinion it is much better if developer will be honest and remove it and focus on "not broke" Proton with updates.

PS. Your list is not complete. Arma 3 also was never advertised as Linux supported and also recently Linux port has been abandoned. So according to your criteria - Bohemia Interactive also should be on this list.

132 of the 250 most highly rated games on Steam support Linux, even more when counting Steam Play
7 Jan 2019 at 12:54 pm UTC

Quoting: HoriI agree that we should compare it against the version of Windows that those games were designed for, but many games were designed for Vista or 7, and don't work in 10, which begs the question why do they still sport the Windows icon on their store page. Especially since Steam doesn't support Windows Vista anymore. If a game ONLY works on Vista, and no other version supported by Steam, it should lose its icon.
But this is a recent change (Vista being unsupported) and I trust Valve will do something about this. At least in the meantime, we can ask for a refund if there's any problem, so that's nice.
Valve will do nothing. Already there are plenty of games that in theory cannot be legally played. Max Payne for example - Windows XP only. Steam is already officially not supported in Windows XP... In my opinion such games should be released like it is on GOG - without Steam DRM. But Valve do not want publish games outside Steam service. Probably they even cannot do it because it would be considered as precedent. In theory Steam it is not game shop - it is subscription based service (with one time per game payment - at least for now). So they cannot publish download version of service based applications.

Unsupported Windows games is one thing, other is very bad state of unsupported/abandoned Linux ports. Like Ticket to Ride - native port not updated from very long time. Linux version should be removed and Steam Proton should be the only option, but it is publisher decision. Publishers prefer to leave Linux icon - probably because they do not care. Plus more system icons looks better from marketing point of view, so they do not care even more.

There's another (better) workaround for the Unity graphical glitches with NVIDIA on Linux
20 Dec 2018 at 11:58 pm UTC

So Linux native game issues support in short:
Unity knows about issue from months. nVidia knows about issue from months. Developers know about this issue (and others like keyboards problems) from months. So what? Nothing. Deal with it.

You know what is funny? When I manually force start Windows win32 version of the game - no issues at all - no graphic glitches, no keyboard issues, no functional issues (at least these games that I tested).

I asked politely one of developers of very broken Linux port (Istanbul: Digital Edition) if they cannot support Linux - maybe they should remove it, because Windows version of the game is working great via Steam Proton. As an answer I received free code for Android version...

PS. Valve also knows about very poor Linux ports from months. Who cares? Publisher/developer paid Valve fee so they do not care - everything is OK from their perspective. In fact Valve is very happy to add every "game" - even if it is copy/paste from some sort Unity/Unreal/other engine tutorial with free assets.

Grab a glass, the first release candidate for Wine 4.0 is now available
12 Dec 2018 at 10:57 am UTC

Quoting: djb190I looked more into this and you are right so thank you for correcting me. It seems that newer variants of Denuvo can run Windows games via Wine. The older variants including 4.9 and below can be problematic. Ultimately, it depends on which variant the developer bundled with the game and if other DRM or Anti-tamper technologies are involved (e.g. VMProtect).
True. The real problem is BattlEye DRM - as for today it is really issue that prevent start popular network games via wine.

I'm not developer but in my opinion that could be very hard topic. BattlEye it is anticheat system, so even if wine/proton could start it - user could be banned, because of using "suspicious software". I read somewhere that is is even banning legit Windows PUBG gamers only because in the system background was started some VM via VMware! So support for BattlEye would require some sort of agreement between Valve, BattlEye and game developer (like PUBG) to not ban such users. It is possible? Who knows...

Grab a glass, the first release candidate for Wine 4.0 is now available
11 Dec 2018 at 7:10 pm UTC

[quote=djb190]
Denuvo DRM protection is likely the culprit as Wine has no support for it.
You forgot to add on beginning of your statement: "I have no knowledge at all, but in my personal opinion". Denuvo DRM as itself could work via wine/Steam Proton.

Sorry for harsh statement, but this "cannot play Denuvo games on Linux" myth is very often spread on many places. It is not good advert for Linux gaming, because it consolidate opinion that "cannot play "fresh" Windows only AAA games on Linux".

Example of Denuvo protected games that are working on Linux:
Prey (2017) https://www.protondb.com/app/480490 [External Link]
Just Cause 4 (2018) https://www.protondb.com/app/517630 [External Link]