When I remember correctly the space quest adventures and night mission where the first games I ever played on PC. These were the times where DOS was the operating system ;)

Later I also enjoyed some pinball simulators, but haven't played any for a long time. I guess the time has come again.

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It's difficult. There are a lot of ups and downs regarding playing games on Linux. There are times, where I cheer about every game coming to Linux, but then I see how many people are still playing on Windows and there is no way for them to change their operating system.
But then there are coming big titles to Linux, thanks to all the hard work of all the porters and porting companies, so I cheer again. Just to realize, how much you have to fiddle around with those games, to make them work. There is always something you have to fiddle around on Linux, and it feels like it's a lot more than on Windows. Of course Windows also has its problems, but in general, it have to admit to get the impression, it's more stable in general. Even though it's running on even more different hardware setups.

So I'm torn about what to think. Atm I'm happy about what I can play on Linux without having to boot Windows. I've been to a LAN party again last weekend, and played a lot of games this time and never had to boot into Windows. Ok, I was playing some of the games with wine, but I'm fine with that. The performance was great and I could attend a lot of tournaments.
Also what flibitijibo has reported about Steam Dev Days, e.g. that all demos have been running on Linux machines, including VR!

On the other hand I'm afraid that this might change again. This article here, the article about Everspace... that's all not sounding pretty well. In the end, the money will decide. If not enough people are buying Linux games or Linux machines the support will be dropped.

I would really like to hear more details from Valve, what plans they have, how far their progress is, etc. But in fact we don't hear anything and just can hope it will all turn out good for us.

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That is sounding way worse than in their last Kickstarter Update:

Linux State of Mind

We know the promised Linux support is dragging along but we're making progress. We fixed the graphic glitches using OpenGL 4.0 and we see some good performance, too. We also got the mouse controls working in windowed mode but in full screen we still got quite a few issues. It turned out to be a lot harder to port the game to Linux than we originally thought, but rest assured that we are still working on it and hope to get the remaining issues solved, soon.

What's disturbing me is, that they worked on a XBox One version before the Linux version, even though the Linux stretch goal was reached, but the console stretch goal wasn't. So it looks like the work on the Linux version was indeed started way too late, and now we might never get it :-(
Who knows what deal they had to sign, to get in on XBox One, maybe now we have to pay the price. Just guessing :->

If this really fails, it was the last Kickstarter game I pledged, that promised Linux support. Because here I pledged a lot of money. All Kickstarter games promising Linux support (also those with Linux only as a stretch goal), should present a working demo, like System Shock or Greedy Guns did. Here we can be quite sure to get a Linux version.

Meh, it would be too bad if Everspace won't come to Linux.

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Hmm... how about people buying it on Windows, still wishing for a Linux version, and when made available play it on Linux then?
Those aren't counted as Linux, right?
As Windows having over 90% market share, this isn't unlikely. Valve should make available stats, which show how the percentages are where people are playing their games. This would be a much more accurate number for the devs, than only on which platform a game is bought.
Also there might be a significant percentage of players waiting for having enough games on Linux before they stop dualbooting. Those people might also buy their games primarily on Windows instead of Linux.
Of course this is just a guess, as there aren't any official numbers, and devs can only see on which platform their games are bought.

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You can also watch it directly on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/534600/ [External Link]

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Yeah let's see how the performance on my old rig will be. I'm still enjoying Feral's ports (like Tomb Raider or Mad Max) on it, with decent framerates and not even on lowest settings.
Looking forward to this game! Hopefully the predecessor will also be ported.

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I would love to see Homeworld Remastered on Linux, but looks like Gearbox wasn't pleased by the sales of their Borderlands ports?

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Another aspect is, this will vanish over time.
Hardware is getting more and more powerful, but good games can be played at any time. Even when they are already a few years old (which is a lot regarding the fast paced times nowadays).
E.g. I still like to play Aliens vs Predator (2010). It doesn't perform very well on my desktop (C2Q, GTX670) in wine, but it's running perfect in wine on my new notebook hardware (i7, GTX1070). I would love to have a supported port, even if it would use wine on steam then. Just the requirements would be higher than on Windows.
Nevertheless my desktop is still powerful enough to play Alien: Isolation, Tomb Raider, Mad Max at playable framerates. So I don't see a reason to upgrade my desktop too (especially as the notebook was expensive enough *g*).

So I guess with my new hardware even a port of Batman: Arkham Knight would have been playable.

Nevertheless there is a chicken-egg problem. If ported games have a bad performance (unbearable to play performance), people won't buy them, so devs/porters aren't getting money and won't port more games. Additionally most people prefer to play recent games, and not games which are already half a decade old.

Personally I'm fine with ports of games, which are already finished with their sales on windows. I prefer to get more games ported, and play them later on a newer hardware than having no ports.

And as Feral is doing a really good job in porting, I think the performance discussion is mainly from people looking at benchmark numbers rather than at gameplay fun.
Of course it's a valid argument, but imho it doesn't have as much weight as it seems. Otherwise the SmachZ kickstarter campaign wouldn't be successful. There people already know they won't have the best performance playing games. But it will be enough to enjoy playing them.

Yeah, I see, I should also send some cookies to aspyr, cheese, feral, flibit, icculus, knockout_games, ttimo, etc pp... all the lovely people bringing us the games we long for ;)

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Pretty decent performance on my old desktop:
Core2Quad Q9550 (unsupported) @2.8GHz
8 GB DDR2
GTX 670 (driver 370.28)
Native resolution (1680x1050)
Not on minimum settings and getting between 40 to 80 FPS which is very well playable.

Unfortunately I couldn't buy it on the Feral store, as I didn't want to pay 2.50€ for additional fees (e.g. for paypal), and due to a verification issue credit card didn't work (have to sign up for 3-D security on my VISA first).

But as I'm playing on Linux I hope this also counts ;)

Many many Kudos to Feral for another great game brought to Linux!

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I'm a little bit torn about this device.
On the one hand, cool! Mobile PC Gaming. And from the stats, a lot of games could run decent enough for some mobile fun.

On the other hand... an expensive gadget that will be already outdated when it's being released. New games which will be released from now might even not run properly anymore on that device.

I want them to succeed, I was thinking about pledging. But the early bird tiers have already been gone some minutes after the start, and I recently got new hardware, so I want to save some money.

Their custom Linux version sounds interesting though. It's cool to read they are recommending Linux, as they can better adopt to their hardware. I'm curious how this turns out. Maybe I'll get the second version, if it succeeds.

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