Steam On Linux Still Tap Dancing Around 0.9% Marketshare

[mdedetrich]

Nobody drive you to Ubuntu by force. On Arch I can install whatever NVIDIA driver version I want with a blink of an eye. With terminal, sure, but it's a child's play:

git clone https://github.com/Frogging-Family/nvidia-all.git
cd nvidia-all
makepkg -si (choose a version)
sudo mkinitcpio -P

Done.

Not everyone uses arch, and this is still much harder than what you have to do Windows.

And finally what you said isn't completely correct because makepkg only works if you have all of the other development packages installed (since you are building on source). Ontop of this since you are building direct from source, it can actually break if there is a regression in master/main. Ontop of this the package you mentioned is not even officially supported, good luck for the novice user trying to get support for this in Arch/Manjaro forums.

So yeah, actually great job in showing how Arch is not user friendly for novice people. FYI not even Arch says their distribution is easier, they say that its simpler which is not the same thing at all.

[mozo]

Oh, yes, it's easier - you don't have to go anywhere searching what to download and you don't have to download anything manually like Windows users are forced to do. While you are opening your browser I'm already downloading
Makepkg always works for it's downloads for you all dependencies automagically, without user's interaction. And actually Arch is very easy. If you want to install the official driver, you have to just open Octopi, Pamac etc, type NVIDIA and install it. There's no compiling for it's a binary package. Three clicks for childs. If that's hard for you, sell yout PC and go hermiting.

[chocolate]

Better how?

Thank you for asking! Again, this is all anecdotal and is a summary of my own experience, that of users on ProtonDB, and that of users on Steam discussions. In short: it depends on the game!

Some don't work out of the box on Windows 10 and people have to tinker with compatibility workarounds, whereas Proton boots them just fine.

Some have spotty controller support, or controller support in general is a pain in Windows itself, so people have to use sketchy third party software to remap their controllers and such; Steam Input/Proton/Linux drivers handle pretty much all cases for me.
Games where an Xbox 360 wired controller wasn't supposed to work do indeed work for me, some I've played with a Wii U Pro controller via Bluetooth with a profile on Steam Input or with no configuration at all. Once or twice I plugged in a PS3 controller via USB, maybe enabled a check on Steam Input, booted a local co-op Proton game with a friend and it worked just like an XInput controller.

Again, it depends, and it's anecdotal evidence, but there's a lot of it in ProtonDB that has to do with performance. Some people over there can make direct comparisons to their Windows installations; I can't, my Windows days are long over, but I don't recall ever having such luck with plug&play stuff with any Windows version up to 10, either on my devices or my friends' devices.
Some Windows users are using DXVK to improve performance with their D3D9~D3D11 games, see GTA4. They are the ones that have to download a file and drop it in a specific path, while my experience is transparent and integrated. While I'm obviously happy they have that tool at their disposal, I find this somewhat funny.

And what about NVIDIA/AMD Drivers Control Panels 95% of whose features are not available under Linux?
What about undervolting/fan curves/power limiting under Linux out of the box? Without using weird repos from github with software no one can vouch for?

Good questions. I know some users lament this lack of official GUIs even here on Phoronix. I've never found a use for those on Windows, so I will admit straight ahead that my opinion probably isn't worth much here.

Performance-wise I sometimes make use of Feral Interactive's GameMode, it seems to do alright and it's certainly from a trusted party.

I don't know about the rest, as it's tangential to gaming but I don't consider it essential, e.g. fan curves are not an issue for me, since I use a chassis with a horizontal layout and two 140mm fans adjacent to the GPU, pushing air towards it so that it's never too stressed. Those con be configured via the motherboard's GUI and the ones on the GPU are never too loud for me to care.

What about anticheat solutions? Do they work under Linux?

Some do, some don't. I check ProtonDB before buying to know whether I'll be able to play a game with friends online. To my understanding, anticheats that don't currently work require kernel intervention and a solution is being worked on. So maybe the situation will improve in the coming months and years?

What about RTX/DLSS support? OK, the latter is proprietary but the former is a standard and implemented in Vulkan as well.

I have no clue and my RX 5700 isn't capable of any of that anyway. I bought it precisely to play raster games on GNU/Linux.
My limited understanding is that the latest Nvidia drivers offer Linux users support for DLSS games via Proton, and that DXVK/VKD3D or whatever should translate the API calls for ray tracing, thus making it transparent if the drivers expose it. Might not be the case at the moment, I don't know.

What about proper OSD monitoring? Yeah, mongohud exists, what about configuring it using UI without editing and debugging god knows what text files? Oh, and mongohud doesn't always work, sometimes it's mangohud app, sometimes it's MANGOHUD=1 vkcube, sometimes it's MANGOHUD_DLSYM=1 mangohud glxgears.

You see, under Windows I install MSI Afterburner and I'm done. It works for AMD and NVIDIA. Everything in once place, easily configurable with a ton of options.

I see, so this goes back to the lack of widely accepted GUIs to do things that are tangential to gaming. I currently have no use for HUDs either, but I understand.

Again, Linux gaming is for those who have too much spare time and want to constantly learn and adapt. Under Windows it's "Install" followed by "Run".

And people wonder why Linux gaming doesn't take off. No everyone around is eager to dabble with command line and Googling to make things work. Some just want to play as they have more pressing issues in their lives.

Hey, that's exactly why I'm happy with my dedicated Pop!_OS gaming installation! Zero maintenance and all that. I suppose Linux is just better where it matters -- to me.

Cheers and happy gaming once again.

[blackiwid]

it mostly was. but if you sit around on linux forums you'll see people who cannot even get their storage working, or having boot loops in the live media. or the live media randomly booting or hanging on startup.

quite often it boils down to hardware quirks, e.g. system has two sata controllers and one is a bit off. or some other trickery. sometimes there are regressions in the kernel used on the media or hardware requires something special to get working.

so maybe the 'forget about it' part is true, but the 'install' part is sometimes really tricky.

It depends as you say on the distribution, sure a expert linux user that likes to take control over their live, will not give up just because of a boot loop and priotises his wish to install this specific distribution and will likely find the problem and send a bugreport and get a workaround or make it fixed upstream, but for the average unpatient user how about just assuming that the distro you chose sucks not "linux sucks"... and go to a different distribution.

I had once problems with Pop os! and a boot loop after installing it had to do with secure boot, I think the installer gave not even the choice to use legacy boot but could be wrong, so ok it's no major distribution, just go to the big names like ubuntu / arch linux / fedora / debian maybe suse did I forget one? and you are good to go.

And yes if you use Nvidia Hardware your choice might be different than with amd. And if you don't like any choice then well why would you want to install than any linux distro in the first place? The whole point of linux is to have choices, be able to choose between different desktop environments as example.

I think the question is not what does linux worse than windows, then of course not all games are supported, the question is what does it better, and just because some people have some issues with linux doesn't make windows not have such issues I had with my gaming pc that for some reason the pc woke up alone after some time when I put him in suspend mode... had to deactivate some feature of the network card and had to type in some magic bullshit in the dos box. That made the pc basically unusable I work in linux and when I want to game if I have to boot like 10hours before I can start playing that's unusable to me.

But you also have the forced reboots with updates and till windows 10 you had unusable destkop all windows were full screen no expose feature nothing, it was absolute horror, now with windows 11 they added I workspaces and tiling. So literally only animals could use windows before Windows 11. I mean as game starter if you hold yourself from puking when using a few tools here and there to do some tasks it was just a headage.

Even tried to replace a harddisk in windows? Heck till recently replacing something simple as a mainboard and different (both 64 bit so same architecture) pc often required a fresh install, but just move the data from 1 disk to another? to replace it? Under linux lvm just add the harddisk as second device move the blocks to the new device remove the old harddisk. Heck this all works even ONLINE. with zero interruption you can even do all that without any boots, with hotplug.

A simple software raid, yes windows has something simple but nothing that compares to lvm or btrfs raid or software raid. btrfs filesystem all the other features... and if you have any interest in linux you have it installed as second OS anyway, so you have the admin costs of linux anyway... that's the real question if you have zero interest in linux, well yes then linux is not your windows 1:1 replacement with some advantages... at least not yet, that might change at least to some degree with the new valve handheld, and if it's only with that hardware.

And of course all the surveillance. But yes I think the forced reboot is something I would take as far as people go with their gun rights, that a company takes dictatorship over my pc and reboots it against my will is such a infrengement on my liberty, it has a bigger impact on my live than if I would taken away my vote. Call me a radical but I just find that outrages, which of course is just a small practical way to see that you have zero control over your pc using their OS. I mean there are plenty of others, that you deactivate updates and it still installs certain updates, or that some people got just forced windows 10 upgrades on their computers, etc. That makes this OS a joke...

[nanonyme]

I do believe that back in the day Gabe addressed this himself, but its been a while so I don't specifically remember. The short answer is The Windows Store/The Microsoft Store is why so much effort is happening.

What would happen to the Steam client if Microsoft locked up the storefront and only allowed the Microsoft store on their platform?

Valve needed an insurance policy. Linux is that policy.

Well, the way things are blowing is Steam Store may end up getting promoted through Windows Store.

[mppix]

Driver handling overall is better on Windows. You don't want to maintain a driver? Microsoft designed Windows Update with Windows 10 just for you! During the OOBE (or shortly afterwards if you get through it quick with a slow ISP), a display driver will be downloaded. No open-source vs proprietary decisions, no concern about how dual-graphics laptops are configured, no concern about Xorg vs (X)Wayland.

Well, yes, MS Win is not about freedom nor privacy. Is this now a good thing?

I do. There's been a few times on Windows where I've had to switch drivers due to an issue.

On Linux, if any major part of the graphics stack updates (Mesa, kernel), good luck trying to downgrade it. No way an inexperienced user is going to be able to do this without opening a Terminal, and in most cases, having to go find some arbitrary package name (like Mesa-libGL1-21.1.4-1236.1.i586), force install it, and lock the package to prevent it from just being updated again. And this requires trial-and-error through browsing websites.

On Windows, it's as easy as downloading an older driver, and installing it (AMD's drivers provide an option to factory reset and remove the existing driver during install).

Meanwhile on Linux, you have different instructions depending on the distro and NVIDIA, and good luck if you have a laptop with an Intel iGPU/NVIDIA dGPU combo. For AMD, the past month or two I have some unknown color brightness/saturation issue that only affects the AMDGPU Xorg DDX driver, which comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 21.04, Fedora 34, and openSUSE TW. The fix for this is to uninstall AMDGPU and go to modesetting, and I only found this out by trial-and-error.

I use a good number of 'advanced' PCIe devices including high-speed networking, pro-audio interfaces, storage over multiple cards, etc.
The only devices that ever need attention are GPUs. In Win, you usually need to be in front of the machine (or have a BMC). In Linux (where it is usually only Nvidia), you can often resolve it remotely.
Sure, I'm looking at this more from workstation perspective than from a 15y old overclocker/gamer.

[mppix]

Of course but thats the point!

Its not even really possible to do this on Linux because the graphics drivers are tied to the release cycle of the Linux kernel which is incredibly flexible.

Why do you point at the Linux kernel in this context?
Many distributions (Fedora, Debian/Ubuntu, ..) ship multiple GPU drivers (e.g. multiple releases of stable and latest drivers) that may or may not be the ones in the kernel. Also, you can certainly install the GPU drivers directly from the manufacturer. This is even Nvidia's recommended approach (...good luck...)

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/unix/

Anyhow, if there is an issue/delay with optimizations, it is largely because of who performs them. Xbox, playstation, Win ports/optimizations are often done by the first parties. Linux optimizations are usually happening at the Wine, etc. level after the fact..

[theriddick]

I think once we have this whole anticheat thing working under proton that number might actually rise above %1, eventually. I've already got a couple games with EAC working thanks to some devs initial support, but Battleye and many other EAC titles are inaccessible (except for a couple which have Native Linux versions).

[swoorup]

Oh the amount of linux fanboyism and it just works mentality here is annoying. Linux requires lot of work for the end users. Just cause your system worked at an instant, doesn't mean every one has the same experience. Windows has the resources allocated for testers to test on wide variety of permutations of hardware, whereas for linux most of the desktop experience testing is up to the end user.

Development for open source drivers for a major vendor is done by few people who don't have resources to test every single permutation, at least to a lesser extent than windows does. If linux just worked, everyone would already have moved over to wayland years ago. But still we haven't fully transitioned yet and its more than decade already. Get over it.

[theriddick]

Oh the amount of linux fanboyism and it just works mentality here is annoying.

Well this is a Linux forum. But I get what you mean, it doesn't JUST WORK all the time, I mean some things CAN just work but there are plenty of cases where it doesn't thats for sure. Also the troubleshooting steps are radically different to windows thus are a massive learning curve for many people, I get it.

Still, MS is harvesting the shit out of peoples data on windows10 and soon 11, its just annoying they expect people to PAY for that platform after all the telemetry and advertising nonsense that has been going on, and growing.

Unfortunately I still must boot to windows10 if I want to play RUST/SCUM or TARKOV; and getting SQUAD+Mortal2Online working was no easy feat(under Linux).