It's Been Three Years Since The Big Steam Linux Reveal

[Maxjen]

Omg, the article didn't even mention one of the coolest Valve related things: steamVR/openVR and the HTC vive.

Back then I had hoped that Steam's Linux support would result in some major changes for the Linux desktop. How wrong I was.

At least we can still hope that it gets better once Vulkan and Wayland arrive.

[gens]

Was also impressive to see commitment towards Vulkan from basically every major engine developer. Does it stand a chance to gain traction on windows?

it's a driver thing
all gpu manufacturers that i know of will support it, so it will work by default

better thing about vulkan is that it is easier to do in the driver, so mesa has a better chance to get to proprietary driver performance levels

[humbug]

it's a driver thing
all gpu manufacturers that i know of will support it, so it will work by default

I know it will work, on all PC platforms... What I'm wondering is if it will become widely used on windows, or whether devs will default to DX12 once both are available. In the past devs did not like openGL, but this is not openGL and many of the shortcomings have been addressed. Vulkan becoming popular outside of Linux will have a positive impact on the Linux ecosystem.

[johnc]

I know it will work, on all PC platforms... What I'm wondering is if it will become widely used on windows, or whether devs will default to DX12 once both are available. In the past devs did not like openGL, but this is not openGL and many of the shortcomings have been addressed. Vulkan becoming popular outside of Linux will have a positive impact on the Linux ecosystem.

Considering Johann Andersson -- who was one of those who revealed Vulkan -- has been on record as saying he would like all of Frostbite games to be on DX12 by 2016, I would say that the "industry" is probably going to consolidate around DX12.

[gens]

Considering Johann Andersson -- who was one of those who revealed Vulkan -- has been on record as saying he would like all of Frostbite games to be on DX12 by 2016, I would say that the "industry" is probably going to consolidate around DX12.

frostbyte can run on mantle
dx12 is probably mostly the same as mantle that is probably mostly the same as vulkan
although neither of them won't be of much use for smaller studios until libraries come, as you need a ton of code to draw anything

idk, we will see

[mike4]

Three year already. Oh my. And it still sucks. Games are slower than Windows, many times they look worse or don't support all features compared to Windows, drivers still lack the configuration options they offer in Windows, utilities are missing and are only available on Windows (OGL and driver tweakers, Injectors, etc.), the Desktops are still not giving a damn about games (no fullscreen exclusive mode, for example), and many more problems.
Back then I had hoped that Steam's Linux support would result in some major changes for the Linux desktop. How wrong I was.

X-Plane runs about 20% faster than on the two other proprietary OS with my GTX770.

As for Vulkan I think it has good chances to get widely used, as Unreal etc. will support it. Can't wait to see both my Intel Integrated Graphics and my GTX770 get used simultaneously together in Dota2.

[ronybeck]

Considering Johann Andersson -- who was one of those who revealed Vulkan -- has been on record as saying he would like all of Frostbite games to be on DX12 by 2016, I would say that the "industry" is probably going to consolidate around DX12.

Yes, if Microsoft platforms were the "industry" you might be right (until DX13 comes out).
I don't know how damning what Johann said about Frostbite games is. Maybe he can't see Frostbite switching APIs for good reason. It could be that Frostbite only ever intended to make games for the Microsoft platforms and their code base as well as the skill set of their programmers are around DirectX. So it wouldn't make sense to claim something else even if it is what he wished. It is also highly unlikely he would ever say "he would like to see all (Frostbite) games to be on Vulkan" until it had matured enough. Drivers for Vulkan are still, for the most part, MIA and it is likely Vulkan will see revisions before much of the "industry" will invest serious cash in developing with that platform. That can't be done until the GFX chips manufacturers start pumping out Vulkan as part of their driver kit. And that is assuming Vulkan gains traction at all. This poster certainly hopes so. If the OpenGL nay-sayers (and there are many of them, Phoronix has many articles on them) or DirectX fanboys were feeding input into Vulkan, that can only be good for Vulkan.

[ronybeck]

It is a modest achievement to see that there are more than 1000 games (and expansions) available for Linux via Steam. But linux is still far, far away from achieving significant gamer mind share. Valve have done a lot of good but they can't do it alone. I still believe that GFX chip manufacturers can do more (although Intel seem to be very active). And the statistics don't lie. 1-2% are Linux users. I wonder if this a chicken/egg problem. The publishers won't publish the big AAA tittles on linux until linux usage reaches criticle mass. While critical mass won't be achieved until the AAA publishes push their heavy hitting tittles to linux. My personal wish has been to ditch my windows partition and do all my gaming on Linux. But three years on, I am still no closer to that. The number of AAA games ported each year can still be counted on one hand. I can't help but wonder how much money Valve is willing to pump into this. For sure they aren't seeing a return that comes even close to matching their investment. They can't do that indefinitely. None the less, this gamer is grateful thus far for Steam.

[mike4]

I miss only very few. If for ex. Project Cars is not a AAA +++AAAAAAAA title, I don't know. The newer Bethesda for ex. titles are quickly done crap and no comparison to the old ID titles.
I boot Win8.1 a handful of times a year or so. To recompile my stuff and for Tomb Raider... (OSX86 only once to recompile)

[stiiixy]

Can someone, or does there alredy exist, a nice easy to understand graph for us luddites of how the whole GFX scene fits togethor, from hardware's >> applications?

Pretty please? Some of this stuff is getting confusing, such as vulkan being an almost bare-metal bunch of thingies, but still requires the full graphics stack anyway? It's just faster just because!