Steam Linux Usage Saw A Notable Decline For June 2017

[duby229]

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Ok... i'm not a gamer since the good old ZX Speccy (Yep, ZX Spectrum still rules my land!!!), and i do understand their might be millions of Linux Users, but at the end of the day, either we like it or not, it will all come down to: "does it worth the spend?"

big companies, Valve included, will always take into account if the work/code they have to do to make their software/game work on linux gives them a return money that pays the bill. no matter how many we are, if they don't see the money in it, they wont get on board.

And lets be honest: Valve made a BIG BET, betting on Linux. All the games we have are surely being pushed thru the big companies by Valve. I would have not made this bet!

Unless hardware companies start selling computers with linux BIG SCALE, Linux will never have a chance on the desktop. While people still have to install it manually, it won't go far...

but hey, this is my POV!!! I might be wrong - Actually, i HOPE i am!!!

That's your opinion I guess, but in fact in the mean time there are millions of linux that want to game.

[Dukenukemx]

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.

Ok there is no Roblox for Steam. Not for Linux or Windows. I can't run Windows Store stuff on Wine either. So I don't know how you guys are running this game on Linux.

[Paradox Ethereal]

I think, you got it wrong. I am mostly with you, "traitors" is kind of overreacted However, I really think, that open source software is superior to closed source. In times of NSA, FSB, BND etc, it is more important then ever. Also as a software developer since 25 years I prefer linux to windows today, because windows is a joke if you ever seriously developed software on linux. There are also quite a lot another benefits, but as I told, in the end everybody should decide on his own. Regarding missing features and all the problems you are talking about, there are definitely many as in any other software, but what makes the difference is the interest of the industry. If a game (or any other software) comes for windows companies are investing a lot of money to fix or workaround the issues, but for linux it happens very seldom, because companies have a feeling, that there is no user (economical) potential for that. We have a classical chicken/egg problem, to get the situation improved linux must get rid of various problems, but companies are not interested to invest anything because linux has problems. So someone has to start going towards the solution, that's why I wrote, that people should try to show companies, that there is a lot of interest and so economical benefit for companies to invest into gaming on linux. If this means for me to ignore some games, well I'm ok with that, hopefully if I do it now, I'll have a lot more fun later.

Anyway, meanwhile it really doesn't look bad, I have huge pile of games here, thanks to AMD and the amazing community, all running flawlessly on my machine. If someone is not happy with the speed of incoming fixes and driver updates, I really suggest to try some rolling release distribution and can't confirm the so often told instability. I'm happy user of such since 2007, especially in the last two years, where mesa and AMD are pushing the limits. Hope to see it improving at same speed.

I don´t know if open code is a strong point of Linux always. Inventor of GNU, still mentions emacs, if that is the oddest thing about this video. At some point writing code, is work, and work like any, and should be payed for. Back in the days of terminals and Emacs, maybe an OS was something that was more tolerable to having the sourcecode open, but today it is so highly developed that one may even wonder if that is a security risk.

It is great fun though, and I did compile my own kernels for linux for a while, and even did a low-jitter kernel with extremely fast response, and smooth graphics. No slowdowns or I/O breaking frames.

Strangely, not many seemed to understand the point, and know what they are sitting on. It performed better than windows at that time. Rather it seemed debates about licences got GNU-culticness often in flamewars, even facist-style censorship of posts.

So if even a big company like Valve can´t attract games, then you know how it is. I looked at some of their patches too, realtime stuff, however my experience was that rather renicing X was better than putting it in realtime. And X indeed did perform very well.

That was many years ago. Windows is catching up, and who will care about those percentages then. As much fun as compiling own linux kernels was, it really had little practical use.

[Kendji]

In contrast to steam.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/stats-say-linux-marketshare-hit-time-high-last-month

Steam users might be turning away, but the rest of the desktop is slowly growing

[RealNC]

That is file manager job or whatever desktop icon app... that file manager or whatever need to be more smart with in your case i guess custom placement... yeah, actually it don't need to be smart there but stupid (or smart enough to *do nothing* actually) as custom icon placement shouldn't try at all to be smart on resolution changes - that is what you want i guess custom icons placement to be only and really exclusively where you set (even when that means it would be broken on changed res initially!) regardless of resolution changes ? Exclusivelly locked icons positions when in custom mode?

Custom shouldn't ever trying to be smartass by default whatever user decided to do there even when that means broken, i agree custom should always be non-automatic

I don't see what the file manager can do about it. When you set your game to use a different resolution, the desktop switches resolution too. Because it treats the game as a normal application and the resolution it sets affects the whole system

Desktop is running at 2560x1440. I start a fullscreen game that uses 1280x720. I alt+tab to the desktop, what happens? The desktop is now at 1280x720 too. Not only is everything messed up, but it's not usable. I want my desktop to use the resolution I've set it to.

On Windows, this doesn't happen, because Windows is wise enough to know that a fullscreen game should have its own resolution, separate from the desktop.

And god forbid the game crashes. Then you're left with the wrong resolution on the desktop. Because Linux can't get it right on its own, games on Linux are responsible to do all that stuff on their own. It's like co-operative multitasking from Windows 3.1 all over again.

This really is "computer games 101", and Linux doesn't have a clue about it.

[dungeon]

File manager should fix these icons, xrandr can fix if app crashes and desktop is left at wrong res (daemon or immediate pletora of --output --mode --fb --panning etc...) and that alt-tab and windows well it is window manager responsibility.

There window manager should be smart what happens during alt-tab, that should always check if native desktop res is there and if isn't to force it. Also instead of doing just next window switchig it might let say check every window and if it is fullscreen one set that resoultion before switching to it, etc...

Sounds to me file manager and window manager should be maded to be more smart about this File manager on custom icon placement and window manager need to implement more smart window detection alt-tabbing or so.

I dunno about Windows, maybe it is standardized on some DX version i don't think any API should switch proper but if it does on anything then they have sure some hack like this

Linux have no clue as that linux is just a kernel as there are hundreads of window and file managers more or less conformant ones

[humbug]

Steam is growing rapidly overall

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/steam-just-keeps-growing-according-to-a-presentation-valve-did-recently-ui-update-is-coming.9947

Means the linux userbase of steam is growing too in order to maintain these percentage levels.

[xiaochocobo]

I have 50 steam games that are native to linux and run as well as windows does, I don't have the problems some users are experiencing. Those problems mostly went away when valve released their native client a few years ago. No, i don't miss having to configure wine a million times to get something to run during my limited play time; so that is why i get native titles from steam and press play and away we go. I also have 50 steam titles that are not native and wish they would get ported but I am not going to cry about it. What valve is doing is awesome for linux and when win 7 does go EOL. The numbers will juggle again. Course it helps if your hardware isn't 10 years old...

[gutigone]

Steam is growing rapidly overall
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articl...is-coming.9947

Means the linux userbase of steam is growing too in order to maintain these percentage levels.

Sadly, this is something people just don't seem to look into. It makes sense, if Steam is growing where Linux isn't used much, then that will make the results for Linux lower over time. I'm glad some people at least attempt to think about it.

[Stankami]

I don't see what the file manager can do about it. When you set your game to use a different resolution, the desktop switches resolution too. Because it treats the game as a normal application and the resolution it sets affects the whole system

Desktop is running at 2560x1440. I start a fullscreen game that uses 1280x720. I alt+tab to the desktop, what happens? The desktop is now at 1280x720 too. Not only is everything messed up, but it's not usable. I want my desktop to use the resolution I've set it to.

On Windows, this doesn't happen, because Windows is wise enough to know that a fullscreen game should have its own resolution, separate from the desktop.

And god forbid the game crashes. Then you're left with the wrong resolution on the desktop. Because Linux can't get it right on its own, games on Linux are responsible to do all that stuff on their own. It's like co-operative multitasking from Windows 3.1 all over again.

This really is "computer games 101", and Linux doesn't have a clue about it.

I currenly have W10 on my main desktop and I play CSGO at 720p fullscreen on a 1080p monitor, funny enough the thing that you just said about Windows is exactly what I have to deal with on my second monitor and I'm not even mentioning alt+tabbing which is f'ing awful.