Steam Linux Usage Reportedly Hits 0.33% For March

[PackRat]

Ihonestly i dont see the average Linux user being a heavy gamer. It is pretty much the same thing on MacOS. People gravitate to these OS's because they need the power for professional reasons. If they really wanted to game Windows is the low effort path.

What Windows? Microsoft is killing windows and it will be cloud based service. The wall street journal- "Microsoft downgrades windows to focus on the cloud." https://www.wsj.com/articles/microso...omments_sector

People are already selling their xbox's and getting ps4's . People are calling xbox the sjw box. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/serv.../upcoming.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/serv...oming-faq.aspx How do I accept these terms?

By using or accessing our products or services on or after May 1, 2018, you are agreeing to the updated Microsoft Services Agreement. If you do not agree, you can choose to discontinue using the products and services, and close your Microsoft account before May 1, 2018.

Cloud based ransomware...

[TemplarGR]

Modern users have more demanding requirements: 10 to 16 bits per chan HDR / 3d / 8k high DPI graphics, extremely low latency studio sound cards (no Linux drivers), 802.11ac 4x4 MIMO AP chips, USB3 display cards, Wacom Intuos products, Apple products (e.g. 4k video streaming, intelligent gesture support with touch pads), proprietary pro scanners and printers, DRM streaming services (the old pipelight solutions require old Firefox), latest AAA games, DX realtime ray trace APIs, RAIDZ2 with Linux native Btrfs, full exfat support, full Mali 3d stack, ...

Yeah sure. Those requirements are so niche i think to find a more niche word for the word niche to describe them...

[Dehir]

Modern users have more demanding requirements: 10 to 16 bits per chan HDR / 3d / 8k high DPI graphics, extremely low latency studio sound cards (no Linux drivers), 802.11ac 4x4 MIMO AP chips, USB3 display cards, Wacom Intuos products, Apple products (e.g. 4k video streaming, intelligent gesture support with touch pads), proprietary pro scanners and printers, DRM streaming services (the old pipelight solutions require old Firefox), latest AAA games, DX realtime ray trace APIs, RAIDZ2 with Linux native Btrfs, full exfat support, full Mali 3d stack, ...

Hehe and in the end of the day. Those are just marketing tricks to steal money away from those poor kids (or more like from their parents). Hard to find any game actually using any low latency studio sound in gaming. Hell even music games eg: Rocksmith doesnt have studio level soundsystem.

But ya get your point. Too bad gaming industry which basicly draws the requirements for hardware is and are still prorietary and bloated.


On the otherhand i think Mac coreaudio is truly great. Linux sound specially if play games and tend to do some music stuff on same system is still too shattered. Not mentioning microsoft here cause their solution is the worst in my opinnion.

[TemplarGR]

You don't care about those games, and I don't care about those games. But millions of people do.

And more generally, if a PC gamer goes to Steam they can look at every. single. game. in the Steam Store and know that it's available for Windows. With OS X and especially with Linux, there's a game selection but there are thousands of titles unavailable. Most of those titles you can't get are worthless, but a gamer only needs one game they love to be on that list to lose 100% of their interest in Linux for gaming.

This is the same reason my kids have a Playstation 4. Their favorite game is Madden NFL, and that hasn't been on Windows since 2008. I could have offered them a $2,000 Windows gaming PC or a $300 Playstation 4 or Xbox One, and they still would have gone for the console because the console has Madden NFL 2015, 2016, etc...

Valve has done a lot of awesome things over the past few years for Linux gaming, really. The situation now is far better than it was. But they would need to spend more money than they have on game ports or maybe on Wine for SteamOS to go anywhere.

Yes, everyone of us has a specific title he would love to enjoy native on Linux. For me, i would love to have Skyrim SE, Fallout 4, and Witcher 3 as native games. Perhaps a few Blizzard titles wouldn't hurt either. But video games are just TOYS, i just play them to waste some time and have some fun. If i don't have the latest greatest AAA game and can't emulate it on Wine, then big deal, i will play something else.

It helps considerably that the modern single player AAA experience is DEAD. Only indies support single player games anymore, with the occasional cookie cutter ubisoft collectathon (watchtowerathon) here and there, like Farcry 5 or Creed Origins. Us solo players don't miss much by not having Windows anymore. And in 1-2 years when WineonVulkan/DXVK mature, we will be able to play almost everything we miss at decent speeds anyway.

Multiplayer games are another story entirely but most of those are just for kids who play the flavour of the month according to Twitch and then jump to the next thing.

[Kendji]

Atleast the trend ios positive for once..

[cjcox]

With the death of Steam Box, I have a feeling Steam for Linux might be on the deathbed as well. Valve, losing brain cells every day.

[gamerk2]

FWIW, Steam works perfectly fine as a streaming client and for the games that are available on Linux/SteamOS. There's really nothing wrong with the platform. I can't think of any technical reason not to use it (Well, maybe hardcore gamers game about the loss of 5-15 fps with some heavily overclocked setups). It's just the game companies don't want to invest in it.

As I've been noting for a very long time: Companies really don't want to revisit their codebase once they're done with it. The idea that they'll have to revisit the code in a year or so when someone else breaks compatibility with the system libraries the code is using is NOT very attractive to them. Nevermind the development time involved and cost of technical support for the platform.

It basically comes down to the fact there aren't enough users to justify the cost. Nevermind the most damming thing for gaming on Linux: "Just run it in WINE.".

[HenryM]

With the death of Steam Box, I have a feeling Steam for Linux might be on the deathbed as well. Valve, losing brain cells every day.

Nah, Valve keeps hiring people for Linux. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to make an AMD-based machine in-house, if AMD make a more powerful Ryzen+Vega chip available.

[HenryM]

As I've been noting for a very long time: Companies really don't want to revisit their codebase once they're done with it. The idea that they'll have to revisit the code in a year or so when someone else breaks compatibility with the system libraries the code is using is NOT very attractive to them.

That is annoying. one example that I discovered recently is the HL2 "update" mod; I played it before but an update to the steam client might be preventing it from launching.

some Linux users have worked around this and report that the issue is the new absence of a few system libraries. this seems to happen to quite a few projects. is it just me, or can this be avoided by the devs simply including a few small library files with the game? the steam client does that anyway...

[anarki2]

Crybabies, I've been using Steam exclusively on Windows for YEARS, and NEVER was offered any damn survey. Does that prove anything? No, it doesn't prove 2 f*cks. Just like your own stupid individual experiences. Stop coming up with this bullcr@p. Learn how sampling and statistics work.