Steam Linux Usage Saw A Notable Decline For June 2017

[Xaero_Vincent]

That's nice and all, but majority of new games don't work. Even a game like Roblox which is a relatively old game doesn't work. I have nieces and nephews who want to play this game and my HTPC runs Linux Mint. While the Roblox developers claim to maybe be porting it to Linux, it isn't a priority.

Two things need to happen. Someone needs to fork Wine and get that shit working properly, and Valve needs to create a company who ports Steam games to Linux. If your game is going to be put on Steam, then Valve needs to demand that at least they port the game if the studio isn't. Of course they'd make a share of the sales of Linux, but that's more incentive to port the game yourself.

Actually, Wine seems to have gotten much better lately now that DirectX 10 & 11 games like the Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and GTA 5 are beginning to work in it (although granted, still a little buggy). As far as Roblox is concerned, maybe try the Windows Store version of the game on your Linux Mint? That one seems to work for me.

[gbil]

bloody hell, as I was about to post that I've never got the survey myself, I run steam today and BOOM, the popup for the survey!!!

[Dukenukemx]

Actually, Wine seems to have gotten much better lately now that DirectX 10 & 11 games like the Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and GTA 5 are beginning to work in it (although granted, still a little buggy). As far as Roblox is concerned, maybe try the Windows Store version of the game on your Linux Mint? That one seems to work for me.

How exactly did you get the Windows Store version?

[mike44]

If their joystick doesn't work out of the box many potential new users walk away and those who google a little are p* off by having to create a udev rule. NO other os requires such.

Dukenukemx simply install steam with wine. Pretty simple and after that steam takes care of game dependencies. Doom demo, my only wine game, works out of the box.

[carewolf]

In my experience, when alt+tabbing many games are still visible on the desktop. They don't minimize automatically. They are treated as normal applications rather than full-screen games. Compositing gets in the way, triple buffer is not disabled automatically resulting in input lag, you still get desktop notifications displayed which many times mess things up (flicker, stutter), etc, etc.

In general, Linux desktops do not seem to understand the concept of "full screen". They think it's just "maximized window without borders and no window decorations." Uh, no. That's not what full screen is. Full screen means you should treat the application as a separate thing, independent from the desktop resolution and the desktop refresh rate. Just because I switched the game to another resolution should not result in my desktop's layout getting completed fscked up. That's just silly.

Linux still needs to get the basics right. It fails even at "computer game tech 101", the basic stuff. Microsoft on the other hand is adding new game-focused functions all the time, like full-screen optimizations and input lag reduction.

Unfortunately, many Linux developers (be it X.Org, KWin, etc.) do not actually understand much of this, and why it's wanted. They want every application to conform to their idea of "desktop", including games, even though games are a very special case of application that needs very special treatment and support that is not applicable to other kinds of applications. This attitude is visible in other areas too. KWin and xfwm4, for example, still run at 60FPS even if you use a high-refresh monitor. The human eye can't see more than 24FPS, right? Meanwhile on Windows, got a 144Hz monitor? Amazingly smooth desktop, super snappy and responsive, fluid, a joy to use. Night and day difference.

You and some games need to get it straight. Fullscreen can be fullscreen windowed or traditional fullscreen in both Linux and Windows. My window manager kwin, has no problems with any of the 100 games that I have, the worst I have seen is that some tell it to not list them in taskbar, which makes them only selectable by further alt tab.

[carewolf]

Unless Steam Linux has something that invites users, making it worth the job of manually installing a different operating system, it won't go far!!!

Not having to install a different os for gaming?

[RealNC]

You and some games need to get it straight. Fullscreen can be fullscreen windowed or traditional fullscreen in both Linux and Windows.

Then why do all my desktop icons get messed up when I switch to another resolution in the game? If it was exclusive fullscreen, the desktop would not be affected.

[xunil]

Certainly, any statistics based on those figures must be very iffy.
Been getting that survey like 2-3 times while running Steam in Wine.
Don't think I've seen it even once while running the Linux version of Steam.
I myself commonly use softwares like POL (PlayOnLinux) = Wine, for almost every Steam game since you can get almost every Steam game working fine under Wine.
Have far from tried all the different games in my library, but about 100 out of 460 games as of yet.

[nomadewolf]

It feels a little like the Linux gaming moment might be passing -- 2014 was a really ideal time period (easily the best for Linux gaming since, like, the winex/Loki era) in that Unity had just started widely supporting Linux builds of most titles, most new games still hadn't made the jump to next-gen engines and thus ran fine on Intel Mesa, Wine had reached near-100% compatibility with DX9 titles, and nobody wanted to use Windows 8.

Proportionally, there are a lot more DX11-or-bust games now than there were three years ago, Microsoft has rebuilt their reputation a little bit, and Linux Steam hasn't *greatly* improved from the first release of Big Picture etc. It's not just a Linux issue -- OSX support has declined almost as much -- but Valve's original push is looking somewhat short-lived and it's not clear what would reverse the trend again.

I completely disagree:
While there was a lot of hype back in 2014, it was clearly premature...
Valve continues to increase their efforts in Linux. They even have people specifically hired to work on AMD drivers. You can say what you want, but these guys are making serious efffort to get things to work. And that's why it's premature to think that Linux gamming should be taking off... How can it take off if the basic stuff isn't working?

[Strunkenbold]

I laughed hard when I read that wine users are "traitors". You guys still think you're participate in an epic OS war between good and evil? Of course Linux is the "good" OS, it uses much less resources thus general faster, no viruses, no bloatware, open source etc.
And now the reality: input lag, stuttering, graphical corruption, no OC tools, at the very most cases no performance advantage , no support for future technologies or at least very slow adaption, bugs staying open for months or years and even when they get fixed, it takes again months till a fix makes it into a stable version, even when the game is ported it misses features and so on, and so on...
Or in short: There is currently no reason to recommend any gamer to switch to linux.
Now people still want to play and are using wine but those Linux users are "bad" because they get counted as "windows" users. Now they should get their selfs in a state of austerity. Stop playing you favorite game, wait till Linux gains 50% market share and the company behind your favorite game has a reason to port.
Really?
Linux will gain market share if the gamer has a better experience and thus a reason to switch. Im honestly wondering why Valve dont fix mesa so that its possible to finally play their games without hassle. But they invest in VR in Linux, a niche in niche market. The basic stuff like Counter Strike needs to run perfectly. I guess an e-sports tournament running open source Linux clients would be an impressive step. And not just because its cool but because its better.
This is really a lengthy thread, if I could make a recommendation:
Stop wasting time discussing about those statistics, the Linux market share is small -whether we see absolute or percental numbers.
Report bugs, do regression tests, fix the drivers if you're skilled, thats the only thing which really helps.