Quoting: kon14...even after rebuilding their client from scratch for 2.0...

Yeah, that's what gets me every single time. I mean, I'd still be annoyed with them if we were still on Galaxy 1.0 and they just didn't care about developing it any further and adding Linux support, but they actually did care enough about it and devoted enough resources on it to build it from effing scratch, and they still chose to use a Windows technology (.NET) and give Linux the finger. This is what adds insult to injury.

Quoting: PublicNuisance

Quoting: kon14Nah, I'll pass.
I used to buy stuff from GOG due to their DRM-free policy despite them not offering Steam-tier sales.

A whole lot has changed ever since and not a single bit of it is for the better.
Not only did CDPR publish a TW3 banner on the Steam Store's front page only to go forever silent over it, but they also just keep ignoring their long-promised Linux support for GOG, even after rebuilding their client from scratch for 2.0 and regardless of Linux support being by faaaar the most requested feature in their Galaxy wishlist [External Link].

Hell, it's even top rated in multiple threads too! 10 out of 11 recently top rated threads are all about Linux support and they have the audacity to suggest we install Windows on the SteamDeck despite them still offering native Linux builds on their store and Proton being a thing.

I hope they finally get a change of heart and get their shit together so I can get back to supporting them, but at this point it feels like they're just another inconvenient store, with pricier games, that may or may not be available for my platform and whatnot.
They're barely even DRM-free these days. Why would anyone in their right mind not just buy their stuff on Steam and call it a day at this point. They'd even be supporting Valve's efforts towards building a better desktop/graphics stack.

Might have something to do with idiots issuing death threats to CDPR over the Linux port of The Witcher 2. The Linux community had to learn the hard way that you can't pull that crap while being less than 1% of the PC gaming market and expect to do anything but become ignored. If you want to blame somebody start with the moron Linux gamers who pulled those stunts back in the day.

Only an utter idiot would receive death threats from a couple of other idiots who use XYZ OS and reach the conclusion that XYZ as a product is created and used solely by idiots who send death threats.

Quoting: tpau

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualCan't get past one mention of GOG without talking about how GOG Galaxy doesn't have a GNU/Linux build.

There are various tools that cover that need like MiniGalaxy and Heroic.
The latter also installs linux native builds if available.

That does indeed make the situation a lot better (I use Heroic) but it still doesn't change the fact that:

1) GOG Galaxy is needed for online functionality.
2) GOG as a company claims to be the champion of DRM-free in the gaming world but has chosen to activelly ignore Linux, who is the de facto champion of "DRM-free" in the whole goddamn world.

But oh well, I personally wouldn't ever buy a multiplayer game on GOG (in most cases there isn't even cross-play with Steam, so multiplayer games are ghost-towns), so at this point I don't even have a real reason to care about (2) anymore. Hypocrites will be hypocrites, but as long as I don't have a need to associate with them, then who cares?

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: tpau

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualCan't get past one mention of GOG without talking about how GOG Galaxy doesn't have a GNU/Linux build.

There are various tools that cover that need like MiniGalaxy and Heroic.
The latter also installs linux native builds if available.

My point was more that other users can't stop mentioning it and what it means. Any post about GOG inevitably devolves into this. I don't mind the discussion, but no new points are ever raised.

It will inevitably take this form ad nauseum:

- GOG said they would release a GNU/Linux client in 2014. They didn't. They don't care about the platform, even though they should more than Windows. It's sad that Steam is doing more for GNU/Linux as a platform that ships a significant number of DRM'd games. I'm never buying another GOG game.
-- It doesn't bother me that GOG doesn't have a client. In fact, I prefer it that way—being forced to use a proprietary client to play a game like with Steam is far more annoying to me. I manage them in Lutris. If you want to use one, though, Minigalaxy has some of the features.
- But it doesn't have cloud saves, you can't play some online multiplayer games, [and it's missing some other features, probably].

Occasionally, as in this thread, there will be some discussion as to whether GOG's stance is morally or financially justified, perhaps a back-and-forth about GOG exposing the API.

I find it boring. But I suppose the comments section wouldn't be as lively without these comments.

Can't say that I disagree with you much, but on the other hand, there is really not much else to be discussed about GOG and Linux, is there? I guess we could just call the case closed and stop writing comments altogether, but then what's the point of coming to the comment section in the first place?

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Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: Nociferthere is ZERO investment in the platform

canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, [then went and made all the wrong moves like developing software behind closed doors (Canonical was GNOME before GNOME was GNOME) and with CLAs forced on the contributors, trying to force their own solutions onto the community instead of using their resources to help the development of established open source technologies (e.g. Wayland & Flatpak), refusing to cooperate with the other big Linux companies/entities, forming rivalries and behaving like a douchebag, making agreements and contracts with the Devil (Mocrosoft) to monetize Ubuntu, trying to manhandle the Linux userspace by pushing the Canonical-controlled Snaps as if they owned Linux], failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.

FTFY :)

Quoting: elmapulwhat valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?

Alright, I'll freely admit that I only read the first part of your comment before hitting that quote button. So yeah, turns out I pretty much agree with you :P

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They could have played it by the book, creating Proton for us and then using it to power the Steam Deck and reaping the monetary rewards, and it would have been enough, and certainly more than what many other, purely open source companies have done for Linux in their heyday.

But they actually are going all out and behaving like a real enthusiastic open source supporter, collaborating with independent open source developers, pushing out everything they develop as open source, and really investing in Linux instead of using it only as a convenient cash cow.

At this point I'm seriously considering changing my policy of buying my games on GOG first. I still prefer owning a game instead of renting it, but other than that there is nowadays zero incentive for me to not support Valve and at the same time enjoy the convenience of Proton (not that I don't, there's always Lutris, but still), all for the sake of a company that is stuck in the "free as in beer", Windows freeware mentality of the '00s and refuses to acknowledge that the world has moved on.

I know the article is about Valve and not GOG and I'm going a bit off-topic now, but damn, it's really sad how GOG has managed to go from Linux hero to zero in the span of a few years. And it's not even only about Linux, or about Valve rising up and taking the reins; it's more about GOG feeling like it's in a permanent maintenance mode - Galaxy 2.0, their forums, the community wishlist requests... there is ZERO investment in the platform.

This could all change in an instant if only there was somebody at the top willing and able to do it (like Gaben in Valve's case), but if you go by the sad state of affairs that was the Cyberpunk 2077 launch last year (yes, I'm treating GOG and CDPR as a single entity, let's not kid ourselves) I feel like they may be too far gone by this point. A shame, because other than the overpromised/half-baked features and the slew of bugs and performance issues that plagued it at launch, Cyberpunk 2077 as a game really, really rocks - just as GOG as a concept also really, really rocks. In both cases, it all reeks of extremely bad management.

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Quoting: AsciiWolfOne of the good things about Stadia was that it could potentially bring new native Linux ports (that could also be made available for regular GNU/Linux systems outside of Stadia). And for Stadia users, it was also much better because these ports were optimised for Stadia - basically a custom console-like ports. Google is killing all of this now and bringing a GeForce Now-like experience to Stadia (but you will have to buy the games again, unlike GeForce Now). I understand their reasons (they are trying to save a dying platform which Stadia sadly is), but this is not a good thing at all, at least in my opinion.

Well, not to beat a dead horse yet again, but it's a given fact nowadays that for the foreseeable future "gaming on Linux" = "gaming on Proton/Wine". Forget native ports, let alone native development from scratch, no one is willing to invest in that (I wouldn't either). If you look at things from this perspective, then more services/vendors adopting Proton/Wine and enabling Windows games to run on their Linux-in-disguise platform can only mean more incentive for developers to dedicate more resources into supporting the Linux toolchain that enables Windows games to run on Linux - aka, Proton/Wine. So it's a good thing after all. One can only hope that GOG will also eventually see the light and integrate Proton with their store.

The above is based on my guess that Google are talking out of their a$$es and they either intend to talk in theoretical terms about how one would go about developing a Wine-like solution, or they'll present some "new" solution that is really also based on Wine. If they've managed to actually create a completely new and competitive solution, then big kudos to them but this will completely change the game for Linux and gaming (for the worse), because now suddenly developers will not be able to target one single Linux toolchain (i.e. Proton/Wine) to make their games run on everything Linux-based, but they instead will have to choose to develop for a specific platform and its associated toolchain (i.e. Steam, Stadia, maybe Luna in the future, etc) which will fragment the Linux gaming landscape even more.

Oh well, time will tell.

Quoting: henriquecariocaProton is opensource and may have Google work with Valve to implement, as Steam will officially support CHromebooks !!! proton may have been designed for all 3 platforms: Stadia, Steam Deck and Steam for Chormebooks!!

And about Stadia games on desktop it depends on the developer !! maybe they are not interested!! which can change with steam deck, but it sure helps because Stadia runs Linux and Vulkan !!!! but the interest has to be of the developer, with Google not being able to simply force them to do this !!

Ah, yes, that's also a scenario I can very well imagine: "So dear people, let's discuss this Proton thingamajig that our good friends over at Valve have recently created for their Steam Deck. Oh, did we mention that you can now enjoy the entirety of the Steam catalogue also on our Chromebooks? No? Well, there you have it."

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Solitary

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: SolitaryRealistically, there is no rush to cover entire catalogue, because not all games are being actually played or have been played by any significant number of gamers in recent time (especially if those games are not a good fit for Deck anyways). Nobody really waits for the Deck rating of the Asset Flip #345: The Sequel. If Valve rates all games that cover 95% (or more) of all Steam users/owners they are good as finished and that might not be such a big task, the rest they can slowly do over the years or just change the methodology by then.

The number of games is inflated, let's be honest.

i agree that assetflips dont make a difference, but there is a bunch of high quality games that people dont play anymore because they already got tired of the countless hours playing it or moved to sequels

that is especially bad for those like me who waited those games to run on linux to play then.

Linux gamers aren't that different from other people. If some game is so dead that nobody has been playing it then I doubt there is any significant number of Linux gamers waiting for it... and waiting for Deck rating of all, not the game itself. Also if it was highly played (countless hours) game then it does not fit in my description, that's a game with probably high count of owners and playtime... and will be or probably is already rated.

I might obviously be off in my expectations. But I think I can quite confidently say that 95% of ownership/playtime of games does not equal to 95% of Steam library, but what is the real number is what decides how much work Valve has to do to make the coverage so high that the actual numbers stop being relevant.

Maybe, but at the current pace they're barely keeping up with the number of games released, so they have little to spare for rating anything in the back catalog. I still think they'd better speed it up some.

You have to keep in mind though that many (and I'd dare say most) of these new games fall into that same "asset flip #345" category, i.e. they're useless crap that practically nobody cares about playing, period, let alone playing them on the Deck. It's like how the Android store has "tens of thousands of apps" when in reality it's more like a couple of thousands if you exclude the crap. Or how Debian or the AUR have thousands of packages.

In my totally anecdotal opinion, I wouldn't expect the Real Games™ being published per year to be more than a few hundred at most (and I'm being generous here because nowadays making "games" has seemingly become the pastime of every other schoolkid and their mother, so I'll be nice and assume that the number of Real Games™ has also increased in direct proportion to the crap).

Still, I'd have expected that Valve would have taken care of certifying the existing Steam catalogue before the Deck's launch, at least in part. But I sort of get it, seeing as this is a completely new type of device with lots of quirks that needed ironing out even at the last minute, both in hardware and in software terms. You can't certify your games today if the capabilities of the device are bound to change tomorrow.

Quoting: F.UltraI guess every one have already seen this but it appears that Google have been busy writing their own Proton/Wine from scratch: https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/9/22969081/google-windows-games-stadia-emulator [External Link] hopefully they will release it as open source at some time.

It's funny how every player in the "let's take advantage of Linux to boost our bottom line" arena has quickly reached the conclusion that without compatibility with the already existing catalogue of Windows games, their service will never really take off. The only difference here is that Valve is a minuscule company compared to Google, so what took Valve a whole decade to do (make Linux machines -> fail miserably -> realize you need Windows compatibility -> invest in a compatibility layer -> profit) only took Google a couple of years; and they apparently even wrote their own Windows emulator from scratch instead of relying on Wine and its quirks, so their solution could very well prove to be an order of magnitude better/faster. Still, until I see it I won't believe it. And if it's not fully open sourced I won't even bother - the whole point of this "gaming on Linux" endeavour is to enhance the open source ecosystem with new tools and capabilities, not just to play mah gamez on a non-Windows OS.

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I'll refrain from saying anything very particular because I don't want to possibly ignite a flame war, but GOG... bad, bad move; not the least because the Russian people != the Russian kind-of-dictator who's invaded Ukraine, and this move will only hurt the former (well, "hurt", because it's not like anybody would give a rat's a$$ about GOG on a large scale; Putin hunting down and arresting Russian political dissidents left and right as we speak is e.g. a much more stressful situation for the average Russian IMHO). But oh well, the world is in full hysterical mode nowadays and far wiser people have already fallen into that sad, black-and-white state of mind, so I really shouldn't be expecting better from poor ole GOG with its sh*te PR and Marketing departments.

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Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: AussieEeveeHonestly, I am not a fan of when people say something is "the future". Especially in the Linux space, where choice is key.

Personally, I will keep using Xorg and Pulseaudio.

No one is taking choice away, I really don't get why you would even remotely think that. Use whatever you want.

That's what calling it the future means. It means that "This will be the standard going forward".

No, calling something "the future" means that it is (perceived as being) of better quality than the current solutions and will probably end up overshadowing them in the long run; it doesn't mean that users like you and me are suddenly forced to use it. But if a majority of users adopt this new something as a result of its better quality and thus make it into the de facto new standard, and as a result we are deprived of other choices*, again it's nothing more than evolution at work.

(*Because "choice" most certainly means that someone puts the effort into developing alternative solutions, so even though this is Linux, there can't be "choice" if there is no interest from developers in the first place.)

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Vulphere

Quoting: slaapliedjeHa, so in my time with Linux we've had many audio bits.
1) OSS
2) ALSA
3) Pulse
4) Pipewire.

Granted this is ignoring a few of them here and there that never caught on beyond some audio workstation stuff, and Jack itself seems to work with the four above.

But Audio definitely has improved over the many years! Pulse was pushed out before it was stable, which is why I always hate to recommend Fedora. But others are at fault for that too, and it gave Pulse a terrible reputation. It seemed to work mostly for me though. Hopefully Pipewire is mature enough now to not have that same issue.

One of the reasons why PipeWire was created is to unify consumer audio (high latency) and pro audio (low latency) in a common ecosystem (ala macOS' CoreAudio), CoreAudio has great concept and I'm glad PipeWire brought that concept to Linux (and eventually will provide long-sought stability in Linux audio ecosystem)

Yeah... but you could already set up JackD with PulseAudio. I mostly feel it is more like Pipewire was developed just to change the name away from the bad rep that PulseAudio has...

Wouldn't be the first time. Look at the mess that is Gnome. Gnome developers went all out and changed the whole paradigm of their desktop with Gnome Shell. The outcry forked two Gnome 2 clones. Then they added Gnome Classic. So really there were 3... if things made mire sense in developer land, at some point Mate and Cinnamon should combine efforts within Gnome and make Gnome Classic the best they can. But the forks still remain, and they all maintain their different ideas and code. But this for sure can be a good/bad thing as well. Now there seem to be a lot of splinter 'we can do one too!' With things like Budgie, Elementary, etc. This I think is due to people more than the tech. Would be wonderful if everyone could work together, but I sort of feel that the two coins would be either we would have the best desktop experience ever... but in 2050 after years of bickering. Or we just end up with a bunch of 'almost perfect' versions in the next 5. 😜

Nah, PipeWire was developed because 1) the Linux audio stack was a convoluted mess, 2) Pulseaudio was good from a usability perspective but terrible from a quality perspective (lots of issues still plaguing it that have been there from day 1, some of them having no real solutions because of how PA is designed) so real pro audio developers decided to take the reins, 3) audio and video unification, and 4) Flatpaks and sandboxing.

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Quoting: ridgeAnyway, I wonder, how come people are so eager to install SteamOS on their desktop computers? What sets it apart from Arch with KDE Plasma, or Manjaro KDE, both of which will supply a more recent kernel?

1) It's the shiny new thing everybody's talking about.
2) Not everybody is already using Arch or Manjaro, so it's an opportunity to switch.
3) Being a Valve-backed distro will probably mean less hassle and issues, more polishing, and far greater out-of-the-box compatibility with games because it will benefit from the Steam Deck.
4) Being essentially the Steam Deck in desktop form, it will possibly allow for more compatibility with the various anti-cheat solutions.
5) Nobody really cares about a more recent kernel if the Valve-patched kernel can already run the games perfectly.
6) It's the shiny new thing everybody's talking about.

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Quoting: jensDoes anybody knows what gave the push for KDE? I mean looking a bit from the outside, I would say Gnome Desktop seems more suitable for such a form factor incl. touch input.. or is the display without touch input?

(Just to be sure, I’m really not interested in opinions why KDE is better than Gnome or any other desktop or vice versa, that’s highly subjective, I’m just genuine interested in Valves thoughts and reasonings)

Yeah, it's a bit ironic that GNOME's oft disparaged for its touch-friendliness UI wasn't actually chosen for the first ever Linux touchscreen PC, but I guess Valve chose KDE for the following reasons:

1) No corp backing or directly controlling the development, which means it's much easier to influence the project and bring it closer to your vision without having to resort to out-of-tree patches and enhancements.
2) More configurable.
3) More similar to Windows.
4) Based on Qt, which is cross-platform, which means all in-house improvements and add-ons are much easier to integrate with all platforms (let's not forget that Windows is still the dominant gaming platform, and thus Valve's dominant cash cow, by far). Also, Steam is written in Qt, which means there is precedence of both experience with and preference for that toolkit. This makes KDE as a tech stack even more desirable compared to GTK and GNOME.

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Ah, it always feels nice when you read a well-written opinion piece by someone who gets it - whatever "it" may be!

As I said in the previous article, in essence it comes down to this: Epic as a company have two distinct sections that produce two distinct products, EAC the anti-cheat and Fortnite the game.

Epic the anti-cheat company have no problem cooperating with Valve and porting their product, EAC, to Linux and the Steam Deck via Proton, along with any caveats and gotchas this porting may have. From thereon, they leave it up to the individual game developers to choose whether they feel competent enough to iron out those caveats and gotchas and integrate EAC and bring their own product, aka their game, to Linux and the Steam Deck. But they do give them the ability to do so, even though this will primarily be to the benefit of their "archenemy" Valve and not their own.

Now, one of these individual game devs, Epic the game company, have decided that it's not worth the trouble going that route with their product Fortnite, for all the reasons outlined by Tim Sweeney, Samsai and all the rest who've more or less agreed with the validity of this argument - i.e. the caveats and gotchas. They believe the risk is not worth the effort in their particular use case. Does this decision invalidate the fact that EAC is being offered as an option for Linux? No, it does not. Is this decision illogical or hypocritical in the face of EAC being offered as an option for Linux? No it is not, because offering an option for others to use, and making use of that option yourself, are two entirely different things.

What this means is that Epic on the whole are not being hostile to Linux when it comes to EAC, IMHO it's rather the opposite. But what Tim Sweeney et al have said unfortunately does make sense, even though it may feel hurtful and/or annoying to some of us Linux fans.

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