I just spent half an hour on this well crafted post and it was wiped out by my log in timing out. [shrugs]

Quoting: x_wingVulkan is not a SDK, is just a graphic API. Unfortunately, porting an application to another OS is not just about the graphic API.

It's not all the work, but AFAIK it's the lion's share of it. It has to be done from scratch. That's where Vulkan comes in and cannot be understated as being the key to the future.

Quoting: qptain Nemo[LONG QUOTE THAT"S COMPLETELY CORRECT

Everything Nemo said. /\this guy/\.

Quoting: Guest1) SOMEONE has to support every game that runs on Linux. Valve, or the game's dev, doesn't matter, but official support is a requirement of course. There should not be a "run in Wine" or anything like that, because all gamers should be treated equally on Steam, and Linux gamers shouldn't feel like they're lesser gamers in any way. It's either supported, or it's not.

2) Valve HAS to communicate this clearly to gamers, and the way of doing that right now is with the supported platform/OS icons. Valve should simply continue this and show a Linux/SteamOS icon when a game is supported on Linux, whether it runs through Wine or a Wine bottle or native it doesn't matter, it's the support that matters.

Dude, admire the zeal, but chill. Should all gamers be treated equally on Steam? Why? We're not equal. There's lots more of them. Lots and lots and lots more. There are more Apple users than Linux users, and Apple makes technology for people that can't figure out technology. Last count has us at .5%. Not five percentage points, or a whole percentage point, but half of a percentage point. Now the number of Linux users that dual boot to game on Windows is probably half to three quarters of us because WINE is a hassle. But that makes us still less than 5% of Steam. Probably less than 3%. The fact that Valve even has a Linux storefront makes no short-term sense from a corporate financial standpoint. It's clear evidence of favoritism towards us. Linux is on Steam because Gabe Newell HATED Windows 8, and realized that so did everybody else. So he decided to start planting seeds for the day when Microsoft finally went off the rails and started pushing it's userbase around so badly that they actually jumped ship. We're almost there.

WINE, DXVK, and Lutris are miracles and gifts from the gaming gods, but they are also a chore to configure, they often don't run right, and cause performance penalties. But here's the thing, DOOM(2016) and other Vulkan rendered games run great because WINE just sends the Vulkan function calls straight to the graphics drivers. Vulkan is the future of Linux gaming because it's the future of WINE gaming. And I think that someone at Valve had that thought, and that's possibly why we have DXVK and now possibly WINE integrated into Steam. Imagine it, playing a game in WINE+DXVK and all you did was type "sudo dnf install steam" into the command line. Imagine it being that seamless. Maybe that's a pipe dream, but also maybe that's the plan.

We've been trying this FOSS thing for twenty years. It feels like we're actually going backwards now. The SteamOS push by Valve actually got us a bunch of AAA ports that we never would have gotten otherwise. We don't even get all the indie sales, and it makes way more economic sense for them to provide native Linux installs. We're even losing Linux support for titles every now and again that had it, like we did with Banner Saga.

This is a way to get rid of dual booting so that we can get accurate counts of just how many Linux gamers there are. It's also the only way to get around the fact that 80% of the titles on Steam will never have a Linux port. Ever. As for new titles, I think that actually depends more on Sony right now than Valve. If the Playstation uses Vulkan, we win. The outcome is that binary. Once a game is done in Vulkan the graphics stuff does not have to be redone for another OS. It just plugs in. Vulkan was designed to do that. That means a lot of Windows titles will come from the Playstation to Windows running Vulkan, which will run as seamlessly in WINE as DOOM and Wolfenstein do. And that's the end of Microsoft, because as soon as we don't need DirectX we don't need Windows.

That means we're free.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

That said, people we are .5% of Steam. Forget GOG, Steam is the big dog, the one the industry looks at. At the moment it looks REALLY stupid for Valve to have sunk any money in Linux at all. We are not holding up our end of this computing revolution. AMD has put out their ray tracing demo in Vulkan a few months back, was that a mistake? Should they be basing it in DX12 like NVIDIA?

Probably not a mistake even if Linux didn't exist. Vulkan runs on Android and older Windows.
I'd certainly love to see Linux with a bigger share on Steam. Any ideas?

I meant a mistake for AMD to put resources into Vulkan instead of the sure thing of DX12.

Unfortunately all my ideas are all tied to Vulkan and it succeeding. Well, Vulkan and setting up primary school computer labs with Goodwill computers running Cinnamon and the standard host of stuff like GIMP, Libreoffice, Blender, etc. Wouldn't cost much to do at all, and kids would soak it up in nothing flat if made into a game. Don't even need teachers, just have them follow along to Youtube tutorials.

But no, as strange as it sounds, Microsoft rules the world because of Direct3D. That's the actual cornerstone of Redmond's empire. Everyone talks about PCs as though they were always Windows or Mac or linux, and back in the 80's that wasn't even close to being the case. We had Commodore, DOS, Apple and Mac, Tandy, etc. In the 90's Amiga failed and Solaris was never going to be a home computer OS, leaving M$ and Apple. Apple was floundering, but Microsoft was not unbeatable yet. That didn't happen until DirectX completely outclassed OpenGL and 3DFX went under taking Glide down with them. Linux gaming basically meant Tux Racer at this point in time.

Now everything is directX, including the current Xbox, and it forms a feedback loop. Even Playstation games are translated to DirectX for their PC ports(Final Fantasy Remasters for example). This means that console games have almost no chance of making it to Linux with very few exceptions because we don't and never will have DirectX. People aren't just trapped in Windows with their productivity software, they're trapped in their entertainment software which is what has actually driven PC development for all these years. You don't need a GPU to type. You need it to render games. You always hear someone mention Photoshop, but how many people do you know actually make their living with Photoshop? I don't know a single one, but I know a lot of people that want to play Fortnite who don't want to to have to deal with configuring WINE.

This means that Steam is actually Microsoft's greatest potential threat. Valve could kill Microsoft via attrition simply by demanding all new 3D games on Steam have a fully working Vulkan/Opengl rendering option in addition to DirectX. After throwing a giant hissy fit, the industry embrace of it would lead to it's general adoption for Playstation, Apple, Linux, and even Windows, while DirectX12 would be available on Windows and Xbox, and eventually only Microsoft games would use DirectX. From there it's just attrition as more and more people ditch Windows because they don't like being spied on, don't want to pay the Apple tax for hardware they can't upgrade, and instead realize that Mint Cinnamon is actually very a familiar feeling UI that plays the games. Productivity software would follow.

Looks like Valve is going a different way, though, and instead is embracing WINE. Well, it foregoes forcing any devs to shape up, but Valve seems interested in committing the resources to bringing the games to Linux one way or another. Gabe said that they believe the future is open source back when M$ gave us Windows Flat Design/8. Looks like Gabe meant it because over the years Valve has been positioning itself to be OS neutral. Focusing on WINE potentially gets Linux Fortnite AND Photoshop,all in the easy familiar point and click gui-land of Ubuntu.

So, yeah, we're going to have to thank Valve for that world domination thing down the road, because from where I'm standing they've done more than maybe any single dedicated FOSS company to making Linux a viable home computer consumer OS.

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Honestly, people wondering about GIMP v Adobe should look to Blender. 10 years ago it was a punchline to a joke, not even the whole joke. Five years ago it was amateurish, something for hobbyists. Today it's used in small studios for TV work. Where will it be in ten years?

GIMP is there now, too. You CAN make a living using GIMP, just maybe not as well as Adobe. Not yet.

This is how open source works. First they mock you. Then they dismiss you. Then they hire out small jobs to you. Then world domination.

That said, people we are .5% of Steam. Forget GOG, Steam is the big dog, the one the industry looks at. At the moment it looks REALLY stupid for Valve to have sunk any money in Linux at all. We are not holding up our end of this computing revolution. AMD has put out their ray tracing demo in Vulkan a few months back, was that a mistake? Should they be basing it in DX12 like NVIDIA?

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I'm hoping that eventually they merge Portal and Half life, preferably into Half life 3. It's been ten years, so I hope the voice actors are still alive to reprise the roles should that end up being the case.

There was five years between HL1 and HL2. Newel said that he didn't want to produce a sequel unless they could blow away people with the second game like they did with the first. Well....not sure how they would be able to do that with a third game. Sure it would look MUCH better. But how would it play? Add the portal gameplay with the gravity gun,flying vehicles, and maybe add destructible environments? What about the control scheme, should it be streamlined? Here's a question, does it even make sense to make another Source engine? The few games that licensed Source all failed, so does it pay for Valve to crank out a new engine or does it make more sense to use something like UE4?

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Hmmmm.... Gunpoint, Sanctum2, DoW2. Maybe go through The Station and/or Firewatch.

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Things I don't understand #1,850,382 : Why Square Enix published the Final Fantasy PC remasters using Direct X when they were natively coded in OpenGL. Or were they? We're talking PS2 era, so maybe not.

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