Linux Gaming Marketshare Regressed So Far 2016

[torsionbar28]

How they select which hardware appears in their survey seems a little wonky. For example, I have a GTX Titan, what at the time of its release, was billed as the ultimate gaming card. Yet GTX Titan appears nowhere on their video card market share list. I assume it's bundled into the 16.02% "Other" graphic card line item. Lame. Yet for CPU count, they have line items going all the way to 20 CPU's (including one for 5 CPU's which doesn't even exist), even though many of them show 0.00% market share.

[mitcoes]

I do play Quake Live and gemcraft CS on (wine) playonlinux's steam client with a Nvidia 750 Ti well enough.

I would love some Phorornix benchmarks (NVIDIA intel and AMD) wine steam vs native MS WOS I am sure many games will run well enough, and it will be good to know which ones don't and as wine is available for ARM, and soon for Android, Steam wine client can work for old games as Quake Live in modern ARM 64bit hardware as the Rasberry pi 3 - or not -

[mitcoes]

Valve knows there are a lot of actions they can take, but they have what they wanted, a scared MS that will not implement the MS online market software as the only way of purchasing games for their MS WOS, and they do not care if the Steam Machines grow slowly.

As soon as they sell their Steam links, machines, and controllers, plus an option to "upgrade to Steam OS" at their MS WOS Steam clients that would create a virtual machine with PCI-e (VGA) walkthrough or a MS WOS HDD formatting using a partition from which boot the liveISO or as easy as an easy way to make bootable USB 3.1 or thunderbolt pendrives able to install Steam OS at them for a MS WOS user (click next next next done) and easier to boot to play Steam games (stored at NTFS, or NAS zfs partitions too) they will grow enough to have a critical mass that are not us ( GNU/Linux geeks)

[Passso]

Valve wants more hardcore Linux/SteamOS players ?

Why not organize the Dota2 Compendium exclusively on Steam machines... This would be amazing!

[Taupi]

Yes, Steam on Linux is good when it runs well on your system. My point is the likelihood of running into problems in this context is still much higher on Linux than on Windows. BTW the issues I had with Metro were with a blob driver, namely Catalyst. It runs a lot better with the recent mesa driver. (Don't bother preaching nvidia to me. It has its own share of monumental problems)

As you say, it's a matter of luck with drivers blob and materials.
I had a AMD sapphire card (290 triX) still and a 7850 sapphire before. I had so many troubles on linux with those two specific graphic cards that i stayed on windows. Then, i built a microatx silent computer (for internet, mailing and home theater) with a nvidia card (750ti, gygabite, low-profil, a owl on the box) with lubuntu, I installed steam just to try at start... and wow! I didn't switch on my "gaming computer" since that day: I and my teenager son play Civ V, Civ beyond earth, borderland2, L4D2, Xcom, CS:GO, Chivalry, Middle-earth:Shadow of Mordor -but my graphic card is a bit limited there in native resolution- nicely without drivers troubles in a WQHD monitor (2560x1440, ... a amd freesync XD ) in silence and without windows annoyances (dat damned advertising window at start calling to install windows 10 argggh!). I even installed steam using playonlinux to play Mordheim (again, no troubles, great graphics, silence, ... and great game).

[Azrael5]

what lacks is the vision on gaming strategy. it's not enough to spread linux games.

[anda_skoa]

From this point of view, sure. I also like the convenience of being able to launch a game, play for 20min as a break and then resume work, seamlessly. But the point of my post was that for the hardcore gamer kind, who has been using Windows, Linux has currently nothing to offer.

Ok, then I simply didn't understand the original statement.
For me it made no sense to consider a situation where one would use Windows as their normal OS and Linux for gaming, so I interpreted that as advantages for someone already using Linux.

In which case the obvious (at least from my point of view) advantage is that you don't require any other machine or setup.

Looking for advantages or the lack thereof for a Windows user to use Linux for gaming sounds highly academic to me.

Cheers,
_

[jacob]

These are the kind of advantages that might make people pick one platform over another, so one or more might have been the reason someone is Linux right now.

This is rather orthogonal to the original question of "why play on Linux", because if you are already running Linux, for whatever reason, playing on something else either requires a second machine a rebooting.

So I think the primary reason a Linux user would have for wanting to play on Linux is not to have to switch machines or operating systems just for the game.


Sure, but this is a kind of reboot that should not happen and even if it unfortunately means you are losing your session state you are still in the environment that has all your applications and data.

Rebooting in the sense of dual-booting can even keep your session state if you suspent to disk and the boot the other system, but you still swicth into an environment that has just the game.

The only viable approaches for gaming on Windows as a Linux user are either virtualization or a second physical machine.


Well, for a Windows user, sure.
But it is a big difference for a Linux user and those are the target market for playing on Linux, no?

Cheers,
_

From this point of view, sure. I also like the convenience of being able to launch a game, play for 20min as a break and then resume work, seamlessly. But the point of my post was that for the hardcore gamer kind, who has been using Windows, Linux has currently nothing to offer.

Ironically, I found that the best gaming experience on Linux often comes from Wine. For example, one of my favourite titles, STALKER, runs like a charm under wine through the windows steam client. So much so that I never bothered booting into Windows to play it.

[anda_skoa]

These are all generic advantages of Linux, but when it comes to gaming, reality is somewhat different.

These are the kind of advantages that might make people pick one platform over another, so one or more might have been the reason someone is Linux right now.

This is rather orthogonal to the original question of "why play on Linux", because if you are already running Linux, for whatever reason, playing on something else either requires a second machine a rebooting.

So I think the primary reason a Linux user would have for wanting to play on Linux is not to have to switch machines or operating systems just for the game.

As for rebooting... well, when playing Metro Redux on Linux, I unfortunately reboot quite a lot, courtesy of the universally broken gpu drivers (it got a lot better with Mesa 11.x though, but there is still a very long way to go).

Sure, but this is a kind of reboot that should not happen and even if it unfortunately means you are losing your session state you are still in the environment that has all your applications and data.

Rebooting in the sense of dual-booting can even keep your session state if you suspent to disk and the boot the other system, but you still swicth into an environment that has just the game.

The only viable approaches for gaming on Windows as a Linux user are either virtualization or a second physical machine.

But currently, playing on Linux means essentially that you will see no difference with Windows.... if you are we very lucky. That makes it a non-starter.

Well, for a Windows user, sure.
But it is a big difference for a Linux user and those are the target market for playing on Linux, no?

Cheers,
_

[jacob]

I do not really share your opinion, I find Steam on Linux a complete and simple way to play. (but I only use blob drivers and LTS distros, so I may not experience so many bugs)

On the pure gaming point of view, Windows is the clear winner on all sides, but looking more globally: for simple management and time saved I really do prefer Linux, even if the game list is shorter.

Yes, Steam on Linux is good when it runs well on your system. My point is the likelihood of running into problems in this context is still much higher on Linux than on Windows. BTW the issues I had with Metro were with a blob driver, namely Catalyst. It runs a lot better with the recent mesa driver. (Don't bother preaching nvidia to me. It has its own share of monumental problems)