Valve's Steam Survey Data Shows Linux Usage Pulling Back During June

[boxie]

Until Valve allows surveys for beta users, these results are always going to sound much worse than they really are.

FYI: I am on the steam Linux beta and like I said, just posted my survey...

[Guest]

Most people have NVIDIA cards, and on NVIDIA cards it's exactly the opposite. The fact you are gaming at 4K is likely an issue. The 580 is NOT a 4k card. Hell, I have a 570 (slightly slower, but the performance gap isn't that big) and 4k games are a slideshow on that card even on low settings. The only cards capable of decent 4k gaming (at max or high details at least) are 1080ti or RTX 2070 and above cards and in many cases the Radeon VII. Polaris based cards are meant for 1440p tops, unfortunately. You may have gotten better results in Windows, but short of trying the closed and open source drivers in Linux, and double checking that the Windows and Linux settings match, and the versions of the game are the same, you will have a hard time with an Apples to Apples comparison.

For the record, I lost 10-15% of my framerate and frametimes increased when I used X over Wayland for GNOME. This does not appear to happen on KDE however. I am also unable to use Wayland on KDE to test if Wayland is any faster, just that X performs better when using KDE vs GNOME for gaming. It could be due to the KDE compositor offloading GUI work to the GPU. Indeed changing the compositor settings makes game performance worse (Phoronix verified that later after I tried it with a review of their own).

I get 20-50 FPS on FFXIV with a mix of high and low settings, possibly at slightly less performance on Linux, but it wasn't really much better on Windows. But in any case, it's plenty playable on Linux with GNOME on Xorg; along with the expected FPS, the cursor is responsive and works. Playing on GNOME on Wayland however has terrible cursor responsiveness and lower FPS than both Xorg and Windows; basically making FFXIV unplayable with how bad it is.

I've played a few other games (WoW, Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, GTA 4) at 4K with this GPU on both Windows and Linux (on Xorg) and haven't had much issue. Have to drop some settings occasionally to get somewhat decent FPS, but nothing too bad, and most of the time above 30 FPS.

[Aeder]

You have quirks/workarounds and other BS while I haven't got anything backwards. In Windows 10 you can run Windows 95 applications and you also can compile applications for older versions of Windows. That's both backward and forward compatibility - both of which are in an awful state on Linux. To be precise forward compatibility is damn near missing while backward compatibility is a royal PITA.

But you can keep coming up with awkwards workarounds for geeks. Now most users on this planet have other things to do rather than fight the war with the OS they are using.

There are zero successful desktop/mobile OSes which don't have good compatibility with old software. None.

You raise a good point about the lack of common installers/formats/packaging, but no software runs across versions of an OS forever without workarounds, that's just a myth:

• Diablo (released in 1996) didn't work on modern PCs at all without workarounds or a complete Win 95 PC. Blizzard had to reverse engineer the whole game to update it.
• Icewind Dale (GOG version, originally from 2000) doesn't start in Win 10 unless you delete ddraw.dll.
• Planescape Torment (1999) also requires workarounds or buying the remastered (essentially fixed recompiles) version to play decently.
• Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed (2000) doesn't work past Windows Vista unless you install workarounds.
• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines (1998) and Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty (1999) cannot be installed on any 64 bits system unless you manually install it and modify the registry.
• Grim Fandango (1998) cannot be installed or run without unofficial launchers on any 64 bits system.

I could keep going but PCGamingWiki has thousands of workarounds for different games listed there, and that's even with some late 90's/early 2000's entries still incomplete as no one filled the entries after trying to run them on modern systems. Gamers trying to play old games will always have to resort to workarounds, wait for GOG to charge them for applying those workarounds or wait for a remaster.

Also games, and specially games made before 2002, are the most awful choice for an example of backwards compatibility because game devs in general don't care about retaining any compatibility beyond five years at most. Most games don't get recompiled ever, just like on Linux, unless they want to sell you the same game again as a remaster. And most remasters like Dark Souls Remastered and Grim Fandango just drop support altogether for older versions of Windows they used to support, so the ability to compile for older versions is pretty irrelevant.

[doctorx69]

My word! I apologize. With the username doctorx69, your diction, and your apparent lack of understanding of what Wayland is or why it'd be great if it replaced X, I would have thought you're probably in your teens and not deeply familiar with Linux.

You're right, it's not yet a replacement for Xorg, but in my opinion it should be, and I think and hope it'll get there with more aggressive adoption than it's had so far. In the meantime, there is (and will be) X and XWayland. Nobody will be forced to use a compositor in which they can't take screenshots. When it is ready, Wayland will have better performance, be easier to work with, and interface with programs more similarly to the way Windows's compositor does. In the meantime, ignorant catastrophising does more to harm Linux than growing pains like Wayland will (which is to say: probably not much).

omg... are you a troll? Yes i know what wayland is and what it can and cannot do. I also run nvidia titan on my rig and wayland is a nonstarter for me. That being said, even with intel graphics, there was breakages everywhere. As for my nick, doctorx was taken.... and i have been using that since 1988. WTF is your problem? You assume and are gravely wrong i do not know linux. I started working on linux since 1997 on Red Hat.... back before they decided to try to make money. I had triple monitor support running back then when you had to use Xinerama and edit xorg.conf (and xinit) files to get graphics working. I used X11 on AIX, irix, sun, dec,hpux. Your assumptions and name calling shows you are an immature little brat that got butt hurt because someone calls out the elitism that seems to be rampant in linux and this site right now. The fucking OS is for end users... not developers. Even in business, the company is the end user. The days of this being a toy are long gone. Time to grow up.

[dungeon]

Weird results, usually when english goes up while chinese goes down also linux goes up... but not this time

I would take it as Ubuntu trolling about dropping 32bit last month and maybe hot weather as primary reasons

[oiaohm]

My biggest issue with Wayland (on GNOME) that I see barely anyone even acknowledge is the laggy mouse cursor with high CPU/GPU usage. Seriously, how does anyone use Wayland with that being an issue? Can reproduce this super easily by running GpuTest or prime95, but it happens randomly even with general usage; and forget gaming altogether with this. Meanwhile, under Xorg, cursor works perfectly under full CPU/GPU load.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutte...e_requests/661
The fault you are talking about is the fault this merge request should hopefully deal with some of it. Input being locked GPU redraw is fairly major performance killer. So the lower the frame-rate lower your input processing speed is what this defect causes. Yes you are talking about a Gnome issue not a wayland protocol issue.

Yes its not random in general usage it lines up with dropped FPS speeds.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...-Sysprof-Lands
When this tooling lands and you are replicating those speed dips you will be able to create map pointing straight at the problem. There is light and the end of tunnel on those input issues. Of course tooling is going to be very important so you are blaming the right parts.

[josh_walrath]

My biggest issue with Wayland (on GNOME) that I see barely anyone even acknowledge is the laggy mouse cursor with high CPU/GPU usage. Seriously, how does anyone use Wayland with that being an issue? Can reproduce this super easily by running GpuTest or prime95, but it happens randomly even with general usage; and forget gaming altogether with this. Meanwhile, under Xorg, cursor works perfectly under full CPU/GPU load.

I thought I'd give Wayland on GNOME another go the other day while trying to play FFXIV at 4K; absolutely horrible. Mouse was near useless, and FFXIV looked like it lost FPS as well. I'm using Fedora 30 and a RX 580, so nothing software-wise should be outdated when it comes to the graphics stack, GNOME, and Wayland.

Another lesser issue is that I can't seem to create a CVT-RB resolution which I need for stable 4K@60Hz. This is easy on Xorg (just toss a generated modeline into a xorg.conf snippet). On Wayland (on GNOME), this obviously doesn't work, and the only way I've gotten this to work was to dig through some manuals, a lot of searching, and eventually create this kernel option: video=HDMI-A-1:3840x2160MR@59, and then choose 59Hz for that option instead of 60Hz (the CVT-RB refresh rate for whatever reason doesn't show up if I use 60Hz; which again isn't an issue with Xorg and the snippet).

I'm not exactly happy after hearing the recent news about RH putting X on maintenance mode... It's actually usable.

None of what you're doing makes any sense.

You're taking a Linux windowing system that isn't ready for mainstream use and trying to *4K game* on it.

RedHat is "putting X in maintenance mode" so that Wayland can get ready faster.

[josh_walrath]

The fucking OS is for end users... not developers. Even in business, the company is the end user. The days of this being a toy are long gone. Time to grow up.

By "grow up", do you mean dumping calcified legacy code that consists a series of hacks bolted together with a new windowing system that doesn't prioritize gaming?

After all, companies don't do much gaming.

It's funny how you did a 180° on this. I can't say I agree though. Linux is very much a developer, and not average-end-user, OS. That's why so many developers love it and why so many average end users are frustrated by it and why the software ordinarily catering to them neglects it. I don't like this, and I hope it changes over time; I'd like Linux to one day have a desktop marketshare as big as its server marketshare.

[josh_walrath]

I started working on linux since 1997 on Red Hat.... back before they decided to try to make money. I had triple monitor support running back then when you had to use Xinerama and edit xorg.conf (and xinit) files to get graphics working. I used X11 on AIX, irix, sun, dec,hpux. Your assumptions and name calling shows you are an immature little brat that got butt hurt because someone calls out the elitism that seems to be rampant in linux and this site right now.

That's really cool if true though. I solemnly respect you regardless of the impression you've made on me here, sir. <3 I just discovered Linux last week.

[aht0]

You can compile applications for whatever OS on Linux too, just saying.

Theoretically. Practically, it does not tend to work out too well.. Building apps for FreeBSD on Linux is what I've tried in particular.