Steam On Linux For March Drops Down To 1.00%

[Ironmask]

The OS of Steam Handheld is irrelevant and will not make Linux more or less popular because people just do not care. How many people around you know and understand what Android is? How many of them are aware that it contains the Linux kernel? 0.1%? Less than that? The same applies to this handheld.

If this handheld becomes really popular, of course Linux fans will use it as an opportunity to boast only it's effing stupid and has zero merit. How's the Linux kernel in Android improved desktop Linux overall? It hasn't.

Proton will surely get better and better at running Windows games - that's the only positive outcome only it's a very dubious one.

That will mean desktop Linux will get better at running alien software. Wow, great. Not at all. It's like celebrating how beautifully VirtualBox works under Linux.

I don't know how much you know about the Windows API, but WINE/Proton reimplement the Windows API. The Windows API is and was designed to be an abstraction layer over the operating system. It's much more 1:1 on Windows NT than it is Linux, but WinAPI is an abstraction layer for both. I think it's more fair to call it a shim layer than an emulation. Yes, it's true Windows software isn't designed for Linux, but it's also not really designed for Windows either. It's definitely not outright virtualization, it runs totally natively just like it does on Windows.

[PackRat]

The "pre-installed myth"?
The overwhelming majority of the sale of Windows is in pre-installed, they make virtually nothing by selling Windows to end-users. Windows being pre-installed is what made Microsoft the multibillion dollar corporation it is today. How is that a myth? It's basic business sense. People use the OS the computer comes with. The OS stops working? Time for a new computer. Most people don't even know they can reinstall their OS, much less install an entire new one. Most people don't even know how to get into their BIOS/UEFI settings! And you're blaming the billions of computer users out there of being smart enough to even know what a Linux is but just actively deciding they prefer Windows?
Now, being able to double-click an exe is very much a myth. Ubuntu and friends come with GUI app stores, everyone knows how to use that. And they know where to find the apps once they're installed. Is it totally streamlined? Not really, but it's definitely close enough. You certainly can't "double-click an .exe" in Android but that doesn't seem to be slowing down it's adoption.

birdie has a lot of good points. The Pc Master Race make their own computers and are computer enthusiasts. Hardcore gamers have a lot in common with Linux users both like to tweak.

"The OS stops working? Time for a new computer." ?! I am not going to buy a new computer I would rather buy a power tool at least that would make me money. lol I realize that people make money with Linux which is cool but I am not that guy.

Here comes the old joke... Amd radeon fine wine is that by the time you get a driver from amd the card is not supported... lol I won't be buying an AMD card any time soon. I downloaded the driver for windows and it was broken too,

This is becoming a drunken rant lmaoi... I have a love hate relationship with Linux and computers in general...

[birdie]

I don't know how much you know about the Windows API, but WINE/Proton reimplement the Windows API. The Windows API is and was designed to be an abstraction layer over the operating system. It's much more 1:1 on Windows NT than it is Linux, but WinAPI is an abstraction layer for both. I think it's more fair to call it a shim layer than an emulation. Yes, it's true Windows software isn't designed for Linux, but it's also not really designed for Windows either. It's definitely not outright virtualization, it runs totally natively just like it does on Windows.

Yeah, it's not pure emulation of course, but these are technicalities and nothing more.

Wine after all means "Wine is not an emulator".

[PackRat]

We still have a zoo of distros.
We still don't have a universal packaging format.
There's no API/ABI stability.
There's no compatibility between distros (LSB was killed off five years ago).
There's no stable and full-featured kernel - either use mainline with new bugs or an old stable version which doesn't support your HW.

Xorg used to work and worked great. Now we have Wayland and people have a ton of issues with it even under Gnome where it's supposed to work perfectly.

Overall you can never rely on Linux. It's a lego with broken pieces which sometimes works by sheer luck.

A lot of what you say here is true and documented. Like Richard Brown from Opensuse/suse has discussed some of these things in lectures. Brown talked about how windows and Linux had different approaches and solutions for installing software,.

It is like GNU!/Linux is competing too much with itself to be a contender. It's like too much freedom lol

Linux needs a benevolent fascist dictator with a whip that has a vision to get shit done! LMAO 10,000 desktop environments and no desktop market share!

"May my frame rates be high and my temps be low!" Pc Mastewr Race

I am kinda going full retard here I guess but something has to change but I am just talking out of my ass. I can't code yet I am a mildly retard dyslexic...

[tildearrow]

I don't get it.

If you are talking about Linux, libc, or the low-level libraries that supports Linux, they almost all have stable API/ABI.

Problem is that is not true.
If you make an AppImage under Arch Linux (2022) it most likely will not work under Ubuntu 16.04 (2016) as it will not be able to find the correct version of glibc. And there is no way to target an older version! (even macOS allows this)
Many libraries break API/ABI too much - protobuf and ICU are two notable examples.

Different distros are very compatible.

They have the same filesystem layout, most tools, once installed, can function in the same way.

The popular distros all use systemd, so the configuration for daemon is the same.

Mostly true, but some are different because some distros apply patches on top of the vanilla software.

Any software update can have regressions, you can never eliminate them.

Doesn't mean we have to tolerate them.

[tildearrow]

I don't know how much you know about the Windows API, but WINE/Proton reimplement the Windows API. The Windows API is and was designed to be an abstraction layer over the operating system. It's much more 1:1 on Windows NT than it is Linux, but WinAPI is an abstraction layer for both. I think it's more fair to call it a shim layer than an emulation. Yes, it's true Windows software isn't designed for Linux, but it's also not really designed for Windows either. It's definitely not outright virtualization, it runs totally natively just like it does on Windows.

Applications are able to issue system calls which have nothing to do with the Windows API.
It's not really native when it runs under Wine.

[NobodyXu]

Problem is that is not true.
If you make an AppImage under Arch Linux (2022) it most likely will not work under Ubuntu 16.04 (2016) as it will not be able to find the correct version of glibc. And there is no way to target an older version! (even macOS allows this)
Many libraries break API/ABI too much - protobuf and ICU are two notable examples.

You are right, I forgot about that.

Since AppImage uses dynamic linking with libc and some common libraries that they assume to be existed on all platforms, it is really not that portable.

A better example will be a completely statically linked binary, using musl libc, which can be statically linked, unlike Glibc.

Doesn't mean we have to tolerate them.

Not saying we should tolerate with it, but sometimes it will happen regardless and only thing can be done is to fix it, and improve the testing suite by adding more test cases.

The recent NUMA regression is a showcase for this.

Despite all the testing infrastructure in Linux kernel, all the companies who have their own testing infrastructure for Linux, it still get into 5.18

[F.Ultra]

Problem is that is not true.
If you make an AppImage under Arch Linux (2022) it most likely will not work under Ubuntu 16.04 (2016) as it will not be able to find the correct version of glibc. And there is no way to target an older version! (even macOS allows this)

You can but it involved a lot of work since you have to build every piece of software on that AppImage with references to the older glibc since glibc is forwards compatible but not backwards compatible. It's real pain but it is possible to link to the older versions of the functions in glibc, see e.g https://web.archive.org/web/20160107...om/blog/?p=103

birdie has a lot of good points. The Pc Master Race make their own computers and are computer enthusiasts. Hardcore gamers have a lot in common with Linux users both like to tweak.

A tiny percentage of the hardcore gamers are tweakers, the vast majority behaves exactly as Ironmask describes. And calling the pre-installed OS a myth is not "a lot of good points", that is just being disingenuous. The only reason why Microsoft have the position it has today is because they where included by default since day one, not even the big bad IBM manages to shake that tree back in the day.

It might be true that selling a pre-installed PC with Linux today won't change anything, but that is not because it's a myth, that is just because the damage has already been done for 41 years. Not acknowledging that is just insane.

[tildearrow]

Yeah, that's a problem for the file managers to solve.

But in general, I think making the downloaded files read-write only is a good idea.

Making them executable by default would create a more severe security problem.

What about a prompt? Windows does that on downloaded executables.

[NobodyXu]

What about a prompt? Windows does that on downloaded executables.

That sounds great and reasonable.

The browser could automatically detect bash/python scripts or ELF executable and prompts for making them executable.