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Steam Linux Usage Drops During August

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  • Originally posted by sarmad View Post
    But I've never heard of this DRI_PRIME thing. I'll give that a try and see if that makes a difference. Thanks for the recommendation.
    Also I want to note, when I talk "switch discrete GPU with FOSS driver (via vgaswitcheroo" I mean switch on or switch off. To run some game on discrete GPU (when discrete GPU is switched on) you have to use DRI_PRIME.
    Originally posted by sarmad View Post
    The FOSS driver was also using a lot of CPU, causing the fan to be pretty much always on and causing battery drainage (battery down from 4 hours to 2 hours!).
    That with properly configured and working radeon.dpm or without it?

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    • Originally posted by RussianNeuroMancer View Post
      Also I want to note, when I talk "switch discrete GPU with FOSS driver (via vgaswitcheroo" I mean switch on or switch off. To run some game on discrete GPU (when discrete GPU is switched on) you have to use DRI_PRIME.
      That with properly configured and working radeon.dpm or without it?
      Good question. I don't really know if it was properly configured, but I assume DPM wasn't there as my experiment with it was prior to adding DPM to the FOSS driver, I think.

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      • What I'm not understanding is how you're getting the idea that the percentage of Steam users using Linux dropping means the number of users is dropping. Have you not considered the fact that other platforms might be getting more users and Linux is just kinda leveling off for the moment?

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        • Originally posted by MWisBest View Post
          What I'm not understanding is how you're getting the idea that the percentage of Steam users using Linux dropping means the number of users is dropping. Have you not considered the fact that other platforms might be getting more users and Linux is just kinda leveling off for the moment?
          The sheer number's of Windows/MacOS people to offset the -.5% of linux would have to have been in the MILLIONS.

          The only thing likely to have done this is DOTA2

          I play DOTA2 on linux. No complaints (Using Mint and tried Xubuntu whch worked well too)

          EDIT: Aaaand I made an unreferenced and unproven statement again, but eh. The point is still valid. I gotta stop exaggerating!1L!!@@
          Hi

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          • On the weekend I finally installed Steam on an OpenSuSE 12.2 machine (i7 CPU, 7970 video + AMD proprietary driver, 32 GB RAM). I played L4D2 for a while and also Half Life. I was running Trinity desktop but KDE 4.something and Gnome are installed.

            The rendering was good - detailed and no artifacts. But the framerates were very low, probably below 30FPS.

            Also sometimes Steam client appeared to grab all the mouse and keyboard events, making it impossible to interact with the desktop or other windows.

            I got the Steam RPM from an OpenSuSE sponsored repo. I did not investigate reasons for problems, ie I did not try to debug.

            Maybe it works better on Ubuntu?

            Still, nice to see it working. If the framerates can be improved and Sid Meier ports Civ 4 & 5 then I can get rid of Windows finally!

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            • Originally posted by hoohoo View Post
              On the weekend I finally installed Steam on an OpenSuSE 12.2 machine (i7 CPU, 7970 video + AMD proprietary driver, 32 GB RAM). I played L4D2 for a while and also Half Life. I was running Trinity desktop but KDE 4.something and Gnome are installed.

              The rendering was good - detailed and no artifacts. But the framerates were very low, probably below 30FPS.

              Also sometimes Steam client appeared to grab all the mouse and keyboard events, making it impossible to interact with the desktop or other windows.

              I got the Steam RPM from an OpenSuSE sponsored repo. I did not investigate reasons for problems, ie I did not try to debug.

              Maybe it works better on Ubuntu?

              Still, nice to see it working. If the framerates can be improved and Sid Meier ports Civ 4 & 5 then I can get rid of Windows finally!
              If it was running in a window (or fullscreen window) rather than exclusive fullscreen mode, there would be a performance hit.

              Also multi-core rendering doesn't really work so you'll want to disable that. You can't disable it in L4D2 in the menu however, due to a bug, so you have to open the console and disable it there by entering "mat_queue_mode 0".

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              • If everyone let's 4 games on Steam running over night every day, Steam usage statistics will skyrocket.

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                • Originally posted by johnc View Post
                  If it was running in a window (or fullscreen window) rather than exclusive fullscreen mode, there would be a performance hit.

                  Also multi-core rendering doesn't really work so you'll want to disable that. You can't disable it in L4D2 in the menu however, due to a bug, so you have to open the console and disable it there by entering "mat_queue_mode 0".
                  Thanks John! I will try these things you describe - I definitely would like to run L4D2 on Linux instead of rebooting into Windows.

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                  • Basically there are two reasons for Steam/Linux

                    a) It does not need to compete with Win8+/Apple App Stores.
                    b) OpenGL games could be more easyly ported to Android, but that will be most likely only the case for goldsrc or maybe the nextgen version of the source engine as the current Source engine needs conversation tricks (which only runs fast on Nvidia due to a special multithreading code but needs newer OpenGL anyway)

                    Well when somebody has Win+Linux and compares the same games like Killing Floor/Serious Sam 3 then there are several rendering/speed problems visable because only Valve gets direct support from Nvidia/Intel and others seem to be less important for em. There are games which have got nice OpenGL performance but when Direct 3D is used by 99% and OpenGL by 1% then it seems that debugging/profiling is not the first priority for smaller companies. I hope that at least ID will use OpenGL by default, those games run at least fine via Wine/Nvidia (AMD devs are maybe forced NOT to try Rage with fglrx). Would be interesting if a little Wine wrapper could be done for those kind of games.

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                    • Originally posted by Desti View Post
                      If everyone let's 4 games on Steam running over night every day, Steam usage statistics will skyrocket.
                      Anything to back this up? AFAIK the steam survey comes randomly and not by how many games a user plays (I'm playing a lot on linux but never saw the survey).

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