Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: aldyIf they see that their games are selling well on Linux then they'll consider porting games.

They're already buying, why invest money?

You will know as soon as your game is not Proton compatible and therefore will not sell to Linux users.

So you're with me it's no incentive to port...
(And the incentive to do larger changes, like using Vulkan instead of DirectX, wouldn't be bigger.)

Yes, I think right now it is no incentive to port to Linux natively, with a big BUT.
I think Proton made a big number of games availlable to play on Linux. It made and will still go on to make large portions of peoples libraries availlable to play on Linux. I think the percentage of new released games playable on Linux is higher than ever. Although the percentage of native releases might/will decrease, and although we will never know if the percentage of native games would have risen significantly without Proton (which I strongly doubt), I really do think Proton is the only hope for a rise in Linux user percentage. This rise should make developers at least look for Proton compatibility, which is achieved by using Vulkan and non Windows exclusive content. That would make native ports much easier, and that might rise the number of native ports and again Linux users in the long run.
It's a hope, yes, but I know of no other mechanism to reach that goal.

You show your own faulty logic by saying "that might rise the number of native ports and again Linux users in the long run." What will increase the number of Linux titles is an increased demand for Linux titles. If the demand for Linux support doesn't increase, there's no reason why developers would give more Linux support. Gamers have to come over to Linux and demand Linux support in order for us to have more Linux support. GOG, itch.io, etc need to grow with more Linux support, too.

Demand for Linux games won't grow if Linux gamers are demanding Windows games by buying Windows games. That will just mean more Windows games. Will some of those gamers demand better and demand Linux games instead and show that by buying Linux games? Yes. And that's what we need more of. But if they buy more and more Windows games, that means more and more financial support for developers who decided to not give a shit about Linux.

I think whats faulty is to think that you'll find lots of Windows gamers who are willing to install Linux, and happily doing without large parts of their game libraries.
If buying Windows games means demanding Windows games that are also Linux games, then that's ok with me! If that (and other resons) helps making devs use Vulkan instead of DXxx, even better!

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Quoting: Avehicle7887The situation with Wine has always been 2 sided, it is both beneficial and damaging to Linux, which in many cases has been the former. While Steam Play/Wine helps users switch to Linux without sacrificing their favorite games, meanwhile from the devs end, they get to piggyback and profit from a platform they don't support.

In all fairness, I can sympathize with small companies where they lack the resources or the experience for Linux and Wine becomes the better than nothing solution. The large companies on the other hand, they have the funds but don't want to invest in Linux and id Software is a prime example of this.

I think developers tend to be quite pragmatic thinkers. They might not easily understand why someone would demand a native version when there is a Proton version that runs without issues. They may even think it's esoteric or amusing.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: aldyIf they see that their games are selling well on Linux then they'll consider porting games.

They're already buying, why invest money?

You will know as soon as your game is not Proton compatible and therefore will not sell to Linux users.

So you're with me it's no incentive to port...
(And the incentive to do larger changes, like using Vulkan instead of DirectX, wouldn't be bigger.)

Yes, I think right now it is no incentive to port to Linux natively, with a big BUT.
I think Proton made a big number of games availlable to play on Linux. It made and will still go on to make large portions of peoples libraries availlable to play on Linux. I think the percentage of new released games playable on Linux is higher than ever. Although the percentage of native releases might/will decrease, and although we will never know if the percentage of native games would have risen significantly without Proton (which I strongly doubt), I really do think Proton is the only hope for a rise in Linux user percentage. This rise should make developers at least look for Proton compatibility, which is achieved by using Vulkan and non Windows exclusive content. That would make native ports much easier, and that might rise the number of native ports and again Linux users in the long run.
It's a hope, yes, but I know of no other mechanism to reach that goal.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: aldyThanks to Steam play I was able to play Doom 2016, Fallout 4, Skyrim, GTA V, The Witcher 3, etc.

I understand this...

Quoting: aldy2) Companies don't care about people complaining on internet, they just trust on concrete numbers. If they see that their games are selling well on Linux then they'll consider porting games.

... but not this.

We're going in circles, but again:

If releasing for Windows only and losing 1% of customers, it won't hurt me and I wouldn't change anything.
If releasing for Windows only and not losing customers (because I see Linux users buying it nevertheless) - why the hell would I change anything?!?
They're already buying, why invest money?

You will know as soon as your game is not Proton compatible and therefore will not sell to Linux users.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: GuestI've said it before and I will say it again, "no tux no bucks" does more harm than good and this shows why

No Tux No Bux is exactly what we need more of so that we get more Linux support. We want to be Linux gamers and help the Linux support ecosystem, not Windows gamers helping the Windows support ecosystem.

The cold hard truth is that devs will not support linux until the market grows. You think they support Windows because they like Windows? Nope, they support it because that is where the users are. Devs won't develop for linux because there are not enough users, users will not move to linux because that is not where the games they want to play are. Emulation and compatibility layers were always the best hope for linux gaming

No, the cold hard truth is supply and demand, which means Linux support depends on gamers demanding it, and if Proton hurts gamers demanding it rather than encouraging more of that demand due to more gamers switching to Linux and then demanding it, then Proton is hurting more than helping.

If the demand for Linux support overall decreases, then there will be fewer and fewer games with Linux support, and Microsoft wins. We don't want Microsoft's APIs being used more, we want them being used less, and we want developers providing us with more support not less.

I see it differently. Demand for "games on Linux" is shown by the number of Linux sales, which are native and Proton sales.
One day, if all goes really really really... well, Valve will have to stop supporting all Proton sales, because they are a big chunk of all sales then. Maybe they have to grant developers that support Proton directly or even Linux natively slightly better revenues.

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Quoting: Sir_DiealotOr there are fewer games for Linux released now that SteamPlay is around. Who can say with certainty? Historical data and statistics probably can. Who is going to dig in?

It will be both! But that's irrelevant! In my opinion the only relevant questions are:

1. Are there more games playable on Linux with or without Proton?
2. Are there a majority of games that got no native Linux version because of Proton, and that do (and will) not run with Proton?
3. Is the percentage of new released games running on Linux bigger now or before proton?
4. Is and will the quality and/or performance of Proton games be lower than that of native games?

Any other consideration has more to do with preferences than with the number of playable titles.

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Quoting: nattydreadwhat about LMDE? Does anyone still use it? :P

I really would have, if would be based on Debian Testing.
I'm trying out Testing KDE Plasma itself instead, keeping Mint Cinnamon as a safe haven on another partition..

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Quoting: Guest

KWin is windows manager for KDE, the changes will introduce better handling of games in fullscreen and address issues with game windows.

Does it basically mean all Steam games will ask kwin to disable compositing (most games do but not all), because of the fact kwin does not unredirect fullscreen windows like mutter (kwin devs designed it differently) ?

Here's the blog-site of the guy who works on kwin for Valve:
https://subdiff.org/blog/2019/new-website-new-company-new-partners-new-code/ [External Link]

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Quoting: mjfa12Very happy to see this. This most recent decision/confusion by Ubuntu is what made me finally switch to Fedora. First the whole Unity 8 fiasco. Then the GNOME themeing arguments. Now the 32 Bit decision. It's clear Ubuntu is being geared toward server and cloud and away from the desktop. That is fine and probably a good financial decision for Ubuntu. But for me, a desktop user, I have switched to Fedora. Steam works well on Fedora when downloaded from RPM Fusion. There is also a flatpak, but I need access to external drives when using steam. I am looking forward to seeing how they enhance their Fedora support.

Access to external drives is no problem with Flatpak. Just type

flatpak override com.valvesoftware.Steam --filesystem=<PATH>

This will just create a textfile named "com.valvesoftware.Steam" in the directory "~/.var/flatpak/overrides", which you also can edit to add more paths or mountpoints.

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Quoting: Gryxx

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Gryxx

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Gryxx

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Gryxx

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: Gryxx

Quoting: Nevertheless

Quoting: x_wing

Quoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...

No. Issues. At. All.

But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?

And what about proton games? Do they work without problems?

I have no problems at all.

So, how you can install games to non-system drive? As i recall, flatpak Steam is isolated from the rest of OS. You cannot go out of flatpak's file system.

EDIT: Without changing location of Steam, of course. For example leave Steam (and some games) on SSD and keep rest of them on two separate HDD drives.

You can do it with a flatpak override like described here:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1086529/how-to-give-a-flatpak-app-access-to-a-directory [External Link]

or you can mount partitions into the [edit: Steam flatpak] packages folder.

But as i said earlier in replay- you can't compare it to "native" solution. These are like 5 clicks or so, not mounting disks manually or changing flatpak permissions.

Yes, it is a container/sandbox solution. Therefore it is more complex by nature. On the other hand, in the simplest case, if your system is installed on a single big partition, there is no configuration necessary at all. In Linux Mint you install flatpak Steam via gui, and then just use it. Only adding a second Steam library on a second partition is one step more than it already is.

That is probably too hard for average user switching from Windows to Linux. And who today has one big partition? I don't see many people buying multi terabytes SSD-es. And HDD are falling out of favor, especially as system disks.

Probably true. I guess theres still room for optimization or configuration UIs, but not only with flatpaks. When I think about Nvidia driver installation and update mangement on some distros...

And that's the point.

Sorry, I edited while you were already answering! I had forgot a point to make my post clearer. But I think we generally agree that some things should be made easier to configure and understand in the future.
Still I think flatpaks are the right way in principle.

I think so. Flatpaks are great when it comes to proprietary software. But at this point Steam takes care of so many things related to gaming that isolating it hurts more then it helps. On the other hand, games as flatpaks or appimages on Steam would be totally awesome.

I really like it for its sandboxing functionality. I use Flatpak or Firejail for everything proprietary and / or connected to the internet.

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