Let's talk about the current state of Gaming on Linux! I was watching The Game Awards ceremony last week, when I realised that more than a half of all nomine...
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Kinda misleading.
First of all, games do not have to be on Steam & launch through Proton to be able to run on Linux. Wine hs gotten extremely good too, even if it may require a bit more tinkering in comparison.
It’s also not like this because of the Deck. Proton has been on a good run for several years now, which was very much evident based on the stats on ProtonDB. The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.
And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.
Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
there should have been more if not better ways.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such.
Such as? Also are you implying the Steam Deck wasn’t built for gaming?
Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
You do know that you can install any launcher in the Steam Deck, right? Even Tim Sweeney praised this feature and he bad mouths Valve on almost everything.
Also, Proton is open source, anyone can fork and develop it independently of Valve. See “Glorious Eggroll”.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed.
What should have existed then?
Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best?
You’re just nitpicking now. The form factor isn’t ideal but it’s appropriate for running a full fledged PC.
They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
OK, so what should they have done then. Please enlighten us.
The keyboard is awful, want to type something? You better press on the screen or have physical keyboard. One hand holds the steam deck the other requires touching the screen. Shouldn’t have to come to such annoying conclusions, oh and takes like a good portion of the screen like any android phone. The answer is the deck should not be bigger again the bigger device is the issue not the software offered by another company that only made it for desktop computers. You don’t hear android users complaining about their keyboard.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it. Genshin Impact blocked it, stop with the fake information.
SteamOS is not open source, Proton is a copy of wine. Valve has no business controlling your product but people are okay with it and the whole thing is mess up. A group believes in Corporate than Linux is not the future of Linux gaming.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass. The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself. Making people buy bluetooth devices is just speaking cheap or laziness in the design. You can’t make this stuff up, Valve thought a few extra plastic was too much or something. Oh the controller you know the thing gamers have to play the game. Well can’t recharge and use controllers if you’re using cables and were forced to buy/use bluetooth versions. A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
The “repair kit” is not easy and can break the hardware or system. Oh and Valve clearly never intended to be repaired because the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place. Android batteries and iPhones don’t have such problems but Valve took the cheap way for profit.
you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
What you say is true, but I should credit Valve for making many games “just work” when clicking the play button without involving more steps for the user.
I know some time ago, I had to set up a bunch of wineprefixes manually whether it was using Steam or Wine to play a game, but Steam’s automatic management puts it a little bit ahead now in my view. Even though Lutris makes managing it much easier as well compared to before, it’s still a few more steps that some users would get confused or frustrated doing.
Yup, I ran MtG: Arena since public beta on Linux (way before the Steam release) and it was fine. I would have to manually reinstall every update until someone fixed it in the Lutris script, but the installation process was totally fine. I also installed a bunch of games before Steam was even a thing on Linux and they ran just fine in WINE (old PC game Lords of the Realm II, Starcraft & Starcraft 2, and others).
The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.
While true, it represents a greater investment by Valve into gaming on Linux. Before the Deck, there was a steady improvement, but great strides were pretty rare. After the Deck, there was a ton of fixes that landed, especially during the 6-12 months leading up to the launch and the year following (i.e. as backorders were being fulfilled). So they absolutely invested more resources when the Deck launched.
And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.
It’s still hit and miss, but a lot more hit than miss these days. I still run into older games where the Unsupported flag really does apply, but more often than not, Unsupported just means I may need a small tweak to get it to work.
Kinda misleading.
First of all, games do not have to be on Steam & launch through Proton to be able to run on Linux. Wine hs gotten extremely good too, even if it may require a bit more tinkering in comparison.
It’s also not like this because of the Deck. Proton has been on a good run for several years now, which was very much evident based on the stats on ProtonDB. The Deck helped more with popularity & spread of Linux, rather than actual compatibility.
And those unsupported titles are almost all competitive multiplayer games. Regular multiplayer titles that are mostly PvE focused work usually fine under Linux.
The main thing people need to remember is that Proton is a fork of Wine.
I suspect the Steamdeck and Steam machines were the main motivations for Valve to put as much resources behind Proton as they did.
The windows store was. Gabe is playing the long game.
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No they did it for the money, steam deck isn’t a good handheld, it can become outdated in a few years, Linux hacks is a real possibility, etc.
No real reason for Steam deck existence other than money.
Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Such as? Also are you implying the Steam Deck wasn’t built for gaming?
You do know that you can install any launcher in the Steam Deck, right? Even Tim Sweeney praised this feature and he bad mouths Valve on almost everything.
Also, Proton is open source, anyone can fork and develop it independently of Valve. See “Glorious Eggroll”.
What should have existed then?
You’re just nitpicking now. The form factor isn’t ideal but it’s appropriate for running a full fledged PC.
OK, so what should they have done then. Please enlighten us.
The keyboard is awful, want to type something? You better press on the screen or have physical keyboard. One hand holds the steam deck the other requires touching the screen. Shouldn’t have to come to such annoying conclusions, oh and takes like a good portion of the screen like any android phone. The answer is the deck should not be bigger again the bigger device is the issue not the software offered by another company that only made it for desktop computers. You don’t hear android users complaining about their keyboard.
No you can not install any launcher, MMO games are going to block it. Genshin Impact blocked it, stop with the fake information.
SteamOS is not open source, Proton is a copy of wine. Valve has no business controlling your product but people are okay with it and the whole thing is mess up. A group believes in Corporate than Linux is not the future of Linux gaming.
No there’s nothing appropriate about your entire hand to hold on to brick sized plastic with good chance of breaking the glass. The usb for physical keyboard or mouse is poorly designed as you need it to power the device itself. Making people buy bluetooth devices is just speaking cheap or laziness in the design. You can’t make this stuff up, Valve thought a few extra plastic was too much or something. Oh the controller you know the thing gamers have to play the game. Well can’t recharge and use controllers if you’re using cables and were forced to buy/use bluetooth versions. A lot of batteries are used and throw in the trash because of Valve cheap design.
The “repair kit” is not easy and can break the hardware or system. Oh and Valve clearly never intended to be repaired because the battery and other components are tricky stuck in place. Android batteries and iPhones don’t have such problems but Valve took the cheap way for profit.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
What you say is true, but I should credit Valve for making many games “just work” when clicking the play button without involving more steps for the user.
I know some time ago, I had to set up a bunch of wineprefixes manually whether it was using Steam or Wine to play a game, but Steam’s automatic management puts it a little bit ahead now in my view. Even though Lutris makes managing it much easier as well compared to before, it’s still a few more steps that some users would get confused or frustrated doing.
Yup, I ran
MtG: Arenasince public beta on Linux (way before the Steam release) and it was fine. I would have to manually reinstall every update until someone fixed it in the Lutris script, but the installation process was totally fine. I also installed a bunch of games before Steam was even a thing on Linux and they ran just fine in WINE (old PC game Lords of the Realm II, Starcraft & Starcraft 2, and others).While true, it represents a greater investment by Valve into gaming on Linux. Before the Deck, there was a steady improvement, but great strides were pretty rare. After the Deck, there was a ton of fixes that landed, especially during the 6-12 months leading up to the launch and the year following (i.e. as backorders were being fulfilled). So they absolutely invested more resources when the Deck launched.
It’s still hit and miss, but a lot more hit than miss these days. I still run into older games where the Unsupported flag really does apply, but more often than not, Unsupported just means I may need a small tweak to get it to work.
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I agree on all points. Maybe I dont see the misleading part but everything else is exactly how i experienced it as well.