Steam Linux Usage Still Roughly Around 1%

[Apopas]

Jump onto a "normal" gaming forum and most of the people even thinking about a Steam Box are planning to put Windows on it after they buy it, seeing it mostly as a good way to acquire a low-cost pre-built gaming rig.

Linux in and of itself has no value over Windows for the average user. If you want Linux to take over for gaming, it has to actually be hands-down better than the competition. Not one or two things better, but all around an _obvious_ improvement (coming from many different angles). Otherwise, it's just something different and people in general _really_ don't like change.

Valve is pushing Linux because Gabe fears the Windows Store and losing the ~30% of PC game industry profits Valve currently controls. That's an understandable reason for Valve to want to have a solid foothold somewhere other than Windows, but it's not a motivation for the consumers to switch to a new platform. Even the XBone and PS4 have been somewhat lackluster compared to original sales expectations, partly because there's currently no good reason to upgrade. They're not backwards compatible, they have virtually no "must buy" exclusives, and other than some of the Kinect2 media center gimmicks don't do anything new the old hardware didn't do. Point being, you need to make changing up platforms worthwhile, and Steam OS / Linux don't do that for the average gamer or consumer. Windows does what they need, doesn't cost all that much, and all their old crap keeps on working. Linux can't just be free and have some niceties here and there. It has to be so incredibly better that not switching looks stupid even to John Q. H4l0Bo$$17.

Failing that, the marketing needs to do it, but "Linux" (or even Steam OS) has no real marketing, especially not when competing against the _billions_ that Microsoft or Sony or Apple or Nintendo drop on advertising. Maybe Valve will start a serious marketing push after Steam OS is at 1.0 and commercial Steam Boxes are out, but they're going to have to be prepared to drop a very pretty penny, akin to what Microsoft had to do with the original XBox (which lost them a lot of money, even without the subsidized hardware costs).

In general you are correct. My only objection is that the average John won't care what OS his Steambox runs and won't buy it just to ditch it with windows. Hell, he doesn't even know what an OS is.

[Kano]

@bug1

The best performance with nvidia you get when you disable vsync with nvidia-settings before you start the game and inside the game disable vsync as well.

@kernelOfTruth

Wouldnt it be unlogical when i use another distro than Kanotix to play games? On wheezy the default gcc is 4.7.2, but for steamos this can be newer. What i guess on your system is that you only update the 64 bit mesa part and still use outdated 32 bit code. A 32 bit glxinfo should show the same output as a 64 bit one, then it should be correct, when you get llvmpipe or something similar then it is wrong.

@tbelvin

You are defintely correct that serval games have got stupid bugs that prevent em from running directly. In the #kanotix channel on freenode you find the current hacks for !duke3d !garry !dwarfs (f2p) and !shadow (warrior). Those could be fixed VERY easy but even when i write the issues in the steam forum or the tripwire (dwarfs) forum nothing gets fixed. When you have done the startup fixes the games usally run well.

[ryao]

@kernelOfTruth

Wouldnt it be unlogical when i use another distro than Kanotix to play games? On wheezy the default gcc is 4.7.2, but for steamos this can be newer. What i guess on your system is that you only update the 64 bit mesa part and still use outdated 32 bit code. A 32 bit glxinfo should show the same output as a 64 bit one, then it should be correct, when you get llvmpipe or something similar then it is wrong.

You are correct. Stock amd64 Gentoo uses binary packages for 32-bit support. kernelOfTruth would need to switch to the multilib overlay to be able to build the latest 32-bit libraries. Alternatively, he could file a bug for the person maintaining the binary packages that we currently use to obtain 32-bit support.

This is an annoyance to me too when I use the OSS 32-bit drivers. In the past, I would try doing something about it, but I have learned that there is only so much I can do with my time. On the brightside, the 32-bit support with the Nvidia binary driver is perfect and I plan to use it until Nouveau fixes the Linux 3.7 kexec regression.

[tomtomme]

I have been running linux full time right now, not on my gaming machine. But on my backup machine since my gaming machine is mining litecoin. I am running kubuntu on a a10-5800k 8 gigs ram and a HD6770, with catalyst drivers. For me its been a mixed bag, most5 likely due to catalyst drivers. TF2 runs badly even on low settings, Dota2 works very good on low settings, Dungeon defenders works very good on low settings. Bastion freezes, castle story freezes when you try and load a game. Towns wont even start up. HL1 works. Trine 2 cant run if you have 2 monitors hooked up, seems it ignores the aspect ratio and wants to expand to the other screen even though the res is set to 1080. I have 47 linux games in total and when roughly have of what you have tried does not work, its really bad. But I am not giving up on linux or steamOS yet.

you definitely should try the r600 open source driver through mesa. you may lose some frames in some games but at least they will work stable and you may even gain frames here and there...
and performance wise you should check if your monitor is connected to the mainboard (a10) or to the graka (HD6770)

[omer666]

Some games like Painkiller Hell and Damnation have Windows only DLC, or their earlier games in the series are for Windows.

All Windows DLCs are compatible with Linux version. I own all the Painkiller DLCs and I'm currently playing them. In fact, get them as soon as possible as, in reality, they are the where the game's meat is. I paid 2,40€ for the main title but paid 20€ for the remaining content, and for this price, I'm not disappointed. I own every Painkiller title ever released on physical support (which means I don't own the stupid Redemption and Recurring Evil titles) and to me, Hell and Damnation is the best yet, as it corrects real pacing issues I had with the original titles. You never have a single minute of resting, which is what Painkiller is meant to be. Also the game has been slightly sped up, and the physics feel more solid. Just my two cents.

As for earlier titles, I do agree, but if they did release them on Linux, they would use Wine wrapper anyway. Also Black Edition is priced 10€ whereas I got it for 2€ on DVD at my local retailer in bundle with Overdose (yet another 5€). Same for Resurrection (10€ on Steam, again). Not a real great deal if you ask me.

[newwen]

I guess many games that run on Windows/Mac but not Linux are not native MAC ports, but run on crossover. I believe that such a Linux port on Wine is more or less straightforward.

If Valve cannot push 1st tier game devs to do native Linux ports, they could at least team up with Codeweavers and offer help with the minimal ammount of work required to make them work on Crossover/Wine

[omer666]

I guess many games that run on Windows/Mac but not Linux are not native MAC ports, but run on crossover. I believe that such a Linux port on Wine is more or less straightforward.

If Valve cannot push 1st tier game devs to do native Linux ports, they could at least team up with Codeweavers and offer help with the minimal amount of work required to make them work on Crossover/Wine

I agree that porting games using Wine/Crossover in coordination between both teams could be really helpful and would extend Wine's capabilities and compatibility. But you will notice that the games we are dealing with are pretty old and already fully compatible with Wine, so there would be no gain for Wine development whatsoever. Also there is another problem : Steam does not support playing Windows games using stock system Wine installation, not even getting your Windows files for games you paid. This has to be corrected before we can even start to consider Valve as "Wine friendly".

[stqn]

Steam does not support playing Windows games using stock system Wine installation, not even getting your Windows files for games you paid. This has to be corrected before we can even start to consider Valve as "Wine friendly".

Just install Steam for Windows under wine, then you can get and play your Windows games.

[V10lator]

might be that the hardened toolchain & the -march=native optimization breaks stuff

I'm using gentoo linux with GCC 4.8 and -march=native (and even LTO and other freaky stuff at most packages) and all is working fine. So it might be the hardened toolchain or... are you compiling mesa with something like -O2 or -O3? If so: Don't do it! Let mesa pass it's own -O flags from its build scripts as there's a known bug.

You are correct. Stock amd64 Gentoo uses binary packages for 32-bit support. kernelOfTruth would need to switch to the multilib overlay to be able to build the latest 32-bit libraries.

No, don't do that! Gentoo is currently switching to a multilib path for itself which is incompatible with the overlay. I just finished a hard way going back from the overlay to mainline. The better way would be to add mesa (and some other packages) to the package.keywords file to get the new gentoo multilib approach for them. That's what I'm doing atm.

[tbelvin]

All Windows DLCs are compatible with Linux version. I own all the Painkiller DLCs and I'm currently playing them. In fact, get them as soon as possible as, in reality, they are the where the game's meat is. I paid 2,40? for the main title but paid 20? for the remaining content, and for this price, I'm not disappointed. I own every Painkiller title ever released on physical support (which means I don't own the stupid Redemption and Recurring Evil titles) and to me, Hell and Damnation is the best yet, as it corrects real pacing issues I had with the original titles. You never have a single minute of resting, which is what Painkiller is meant to be. Also the game has been slightly sped up, and the physics feel more solid. Just my two cents.

As for earlier titles, I do agree, but if they did release them on Linux, they would use Wine wrapper anyway. Also Black Edition is priced 10? whereas I got it for 2? on DVD at my local retailer in bundle with Overdose (yet another 5?). Same for Resurrection (10? on Steam, again). Not a real great deal if you ask me.

Okay, thanks. I was wondering if the DLC would work, but then the collector's edition also said Windows only and the total for the DLC isn't cheap. Glad to hear you liked it, since the reviews on Steam seem to not recommend it. Still, most of those reviewers seemed to be missing the DLC, and already played the earlier editions on Windows.

You are defintely correct that serval games have got stupid bugs that prevent em from running directly. In the #kanotix channel on freenode you find the current hacks for !duke3d !garry !dwarfs (f2p) and !shadow (warrior). Those could be fixed VERY easy but even when i write the issues in the steam forum or the tripwire (dwarfs) forum nothing gets fixed. When you have done the startup fixes the games usally run well.

I'll have to look into it then, since these games don't launch for me with open drivers.