Steam Linux Use Dips Back Below 0.5%

[duby229]

Could you calculate / estimate the total (absolute) number of Linux users over time? Some of the percentage decrease might be due to a rise in non-Linux titles (e.g. PUBG etc.) So rather than reflecting a decrease in Linux's popularity per se, it's just that people have no choice but to use another platform.

That's exactly what's happening, absolute numbers are definitely going higher for sure. Considering the steam survey, basically all of us here know it's total bullshit, I don't even bother thinking about it anymore. It's weird to me that Valve would try to sabotage public image of linux gaming but it's exactly what they are in fact doing by publishing these totally made up nonsensical data points.

[duby229]

Any fanboy has to read this, unless they want to remain ignorant. It's pure facts.

Amen.

However, identifying the problems seems to label you as "Windows shill" so no wonder they'll never get solved I guess. At least there's Wine.

Bullshit, that article does list a handful of legit issues, but almost all of them listed as a problem either isn't a problem at all or are in fact major benefits to linux. It like he made a list of some of the best things about linux and uses them as complaints... It's -THE- definition of hypocrit....

EDIT: And you think wine saves linux? Ha! It has horrible compatibility because they don't give a fuck about runtime behavior and they don't care because they refuse to admit that it -is- and in fact -needs- to be an emulator.

[PackRat]

Linux native gaming numbers are low just go on discord gaming servers and compare it to actual game servers and it's like 10 times the amount of people for windows.
Like arma3 has 2500 people and that's just one game. Arma3 could lose support so get your assess to their Linux discord channel and vote for better support for Linux. https://discord.gg/jMER2y

[duby229]

Linux native gaming numbers are low just go on discord gaming servers and compare it to actual game servers and it's like 10 times the amount of people for windows.
Like arma3 has 2500 people and that's just one game. Arma3 could lose support so get your assess to their Linux discord channel and vote for better support for Linux. https://discord.gg/jMER2y

I know you're just guestimating, but 10 times is still 10%.... Come on now think about what you're say.... If it was that high, and it's not, it would be hundreds of millions of people on linux. It would be fantastically huge number.

EDIT: You guys do realize Nintendo got stated in gaming by selling a few hundred thousand donkey kong games and Sega survived for nearly a decade on just a few million consoles..... Think about how huge the numbers you're talking about really are.

[PackRat]

We are talking about 200 to 300 people that are on popular gaming discord channels for all Linux games native and wine/lutris vs like one game discord channel.
Denying reality is not going to solve any problems here. It's not like Linux gaming is advertised all that much. The Linux gaming community has to attract more users and
keep those users on the platform by providing tech support. Amd needs to get those titles that don't work, working.

[nanonyme]

So if I am gaming on Lutris + Steam Wine, is that Windows or Linux?

Wine counts as Windows, most likely.

[PackRat]

Wine counts as windows sale but Steam survey detects the os as wine with version number. Wine works on mac too so how does it detect it as mac or Linux?

[Weasel]

Bullshit, that article does list a handful of legit issues, but almost all of them listed as a problem either isn't a problem at all or are in fact major benefits to linux. It like he made a list of some of the best things about linux and uses them as complaints... It's -THE- definition of hypocrit....

Would be good if you could list which ones you're talking about so I can, you know, argue against it. Some of them are retarded though, but it's still factual. Like the volume percent one, which he simply said "behavior not consistent with Windows", but Windows' behavior is just bad there. So it's not really a negative, but it's still a fact, and that's what I said.

EDIT: And you think wine saves linux? Ha! It has horrible compatibility because they don't give a fuck about runtime behavior and they don't care because they refuse to admit that it -is- and in fact -needs- to be an emulator.

This is quite insulting. Wine actually cares about quirks and compatibility more than the Microsoft's documentation itself. Most of the behavior is done using unit tests to be sure they are the same as on Windows. There are a lot of failed tests currently (i.e. behavior is not the same as on Windows), but it's not by design, just lack of manpower, because it's mostly for corner cases (i.e. rare).

You guys who fucking complain about Wine's compatibility, especially those who complain about inability to run some old game or whatever... what the fuck guys, seriously? How many Linux applications from 1999 can you run on today's distros without recompiling them? So why complain about Wine's compatibility when it's usually superior to native Linux apps? That's exactly my point!

Wine also doesn't really support some copy protection or anti-cheat crap. But Linux titles can't have those things anyway (nobody will bother), so they'll never come to Linux in that form regardless. I try to fix bugs when I can. It's better use of resources than rewriting a linux lib for 100th time anyway, because once an app works, it usually continues to work (and regression *are* regressions, not "ignored" by design).

[oiaohm]

You guys who fucking complain about Wine's compatibility, especially those who complain about inability to run some old game or whatever... what the fuck guys, seriously? How many Linux applications from 1999 can you run on today's distros without recompiling them? So why complain about Wine's compatibility when it's usually superior to native Linux apps? That's exactly my point!

http://www.improbability.net/loki/

You can run quite a few programs from the 1999 on current day Linux distributions without recompiling them you do need to provide a run-time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_Entertainment Loki existed 1998 to 2001 and people still run those games with work around on current day Linux distributions.

Of course these runtimes will be able to be made better in future.
https://meetings-archive.debian.net/...ing-the-p.webm
The above work.

Wine also doesn't really support some copy protection or anti-cheat crap.

https://wiki.winehq.org/Copy_Protection

Wine project is willing to support copy protection and anti-cheat stuff that can be supported. Only one I know that is on the not to be supported list is PunkBuster that thing is check summing the dll files. So unless you have Microsoft dll files the check sums will not match. Yes PunkBuster has at times banned people for running Windows 10 insider edition so its even anti to those running windows at times.

But Linux titles can't have those things anyway (nobody will bother), so they'll never come to Linux in that form regardless.

LOL no moron this is wrong.

https://www.evenbalance.com/pbsetup.php

Above is what annoys the wine project a lot. You have native Linux punkbuster for native Linux programs that works perfectly. Yet when running under wine you cannot have punkbuster. So there is a lot of copy protection and anti-cheat stuff that works on native Linux programs that you cannot have running a windows program under wine.

Yes the copy protection/anti-cheat stuff that is known not to work under wine works if it in a native Linux version of the game.

Please note the linux version of punkbuster checks code flow and does not need checksums to see if operational path is being played with(ie cheating).

Weasel so lot wrong in that post.

[duby229]

Would be good if you could list which ones you're talking about so I can, you know, argue against it. Some of them are retarded though, but it's still factual. Like the volume percent one, which he simply said "behavior not consistent with Windows", but Windows' behavior is just bad there. So it's not really a negative, but it's still a fact, and that's what I said.

This is quite insulting. Wine actually cares about quirks and compatibility more than the Microsoft's documentation itself. Most of the behavior is done using unit tests to be sure they are the same as on Windows. There are a lot of failed tests currently (i.e. behavior is not the same as on Windows), but it's not by design, just lack of manpower, because it's mostly for corner cases (i.e. rare).

You guys who fucking complain about Wine's compatibility, especially those who complain about inability to run some old game or whatever... what the fuck guys, seriously? How many Linux applications from 1999 can you run on today's distros without recompiling them? So why complain about Wine's compatibility when it's usually superior to native Linux apps? That's exactly my point!

Wine also doesn't really support some copy protection or anti-cheat crap. But Linux titles can't have those things anyway (nobody will bother), so they'll never come to Linux in that form regardless. I try to fix bugs when I can. It's better use of resources than rewriting a linux lib for 100th time anyway, because once an app works, it usually continues to work (and regression *are* regressions, not "ignored" by design).

This is exactly what I"m talking about, you take one of the best things about linux and use it as a complaint... wtf.... I'm a gentoo user so I'm gonna generalize for gentoo of course, but the fact is as long as I have the right sources going down the whole dependency tree including build time and runtime dependencies, I can in fact recompile anything that was once known to compile correctly. Gentoo is quite old and there are ebuilds that can be reused or modified. It may not be a simple project, but it certainly can be done. So yeah, this is something you could call "behavior not consistent with Windows". And that is an attribute that can be ascribed to linux libraries and tools and programs of all sorts. Many times there are no direct equivalent behaviors...

Which brings me to a damn good point... Runtime behavior is emergent..... It would take billions of unit tests to sample expected runtime behavior across every single windows application that exists. The fact is that wines unit tests don't cover even a tiny proportion of behavior that can and does occur.

I believe the wine developers have themselves caught up in a Banach-Tarski paradox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86-Z-CbaHA