Steam Linux Usage Still On The Decline

[johnc]

And not Windows 8?

I'm sure it does, but I don't have the personal experience to say.

[_artem_]

Portal was promised to be a release title for Steam on Linux, yet it still isn't here. Where is my Portal? It's really the only Steam game I'm likely to play at any point in the near future, and I already have a copy associated with my Steam account, so any day now would be good.

it's here dude, right in your steam

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/9944/steamportal.png

[_artem_]

Portal was promised to be a release title for Steam on Linux, yet it still isn't here. Where is my Portal? It's really the only Steam game I'm likely to play at any point in the near future, and I already have a copy associated with my Steam account, so any day now would be good.

it's here dude, right in your steam

http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/9944/steamportal.png

[ElderSnake]

I game exclusively on Linux, in Arch, and have no problems whatsoever. I said bye bye to Window$ last year and haven't regretted it at all.

But I do avoid Ubuntu for that reason. Hopefully they really fix their stuff, like with Compiz and the like, so the newbies will have better experiences.

As for drivers, that will be a problem for a little time yet. It amuses me the lack of understanding people have there though. Windows has enjoyed hardware and just general domination for some time so of course it will have greatest driver support. Apple have their total control thing going and a limited hardware set, so again not a huge deal for them.

No sane person can expect "Linux", if we're referring to it as a desktop OS, to just magically work with everything out of the box, it's not realistic at the moment. If you want to use Linux, prepare to get off your butt and put some effort in and/or help fund support for development. Running back to the Big Two OSes won't help Linux at all, as magical faeries aren't going to magically continue the advance of Linux as a desktop OS, we have to make it so if we desire it to be one.

[timothyja]

I game exclusively on Linux, in Arch, and have no problems whatsoever. I said bye bye to Window$ last year and haven't regretted it at all.

But I do avoid Ubuntu for that reason. Hopefully they really fix their stuff, like with Compiz and the like, so the newbies will have better experiences.

As for drivers, that will be a problem for a little time yet. It amuses me the lack of understanding people have there though. Windows has enjoyed hardware and just general domination for some time so of course it will have greatest driver support. Apple have their total control thing going and a limited hardware set, so again not a huge deal for them.

No sane person can expect "Linux", if we're referring to it as a desktop OS, to just magically work with everything out of the box, it's not realistic at the moment. If you want to use Linux, prepare to get off your butt and put some effort in and/or help fund support for development. Running back to the Big Two OSes won't help Linux at all, as magical faeries aren't going to magically continue the advance of Linux as a desktop OS, we have to make it so if we desire it to be one.

This is a genuine question. You seem to be telling everyone they need to do something. What are you doing about the situation? Maybe give some options rather than a generic statement. What projects exactly are we meant to help fund? As far as I can tell there are none that work directly toward general improvement of drivers and accept funding.

[timothyja]

I hear alot of install lubuntu or kubuntu. Why not install Ubuntu and if you don't like unity add kde desktop and xfce desktop? Isn't it the same thing?

Nope not the same thing. Last time I installed the kde desktop it stuffed around my unity desktop change default applications, changed Firefoxs themes, changed the shutdown screen, as well as all sorts.of other things. I guess if you are only going to use the KDE desktop this is ok but then why not install the dedicated KDE distro other wise your system is bloated with all the addition non kde stuff that is installed with the default Ubuntu install (you end up with two of every default application 1 gnome/unity and 1 kde e.g. text editors, email clients, etc, etc).

[madjr]

This is a genuine question. You seem to be telling everyone they need to do something. What are you doing about the situation? Maybe give some options rather than a generic statement. What projects exactly are we meant to help fund? As far as I can tell there are none that work directly toward general improvement of drivers and accept funding.

I say lets just keep on doing what we're doing now (kickstarters, HIB's and keep purchasing games on steam, etc.; Also continually improve the desktop experience and userfriendliness). Things are progressing (maybe still a little slow). but incrementally and sooner or later we will reach (like in a black hole) that point of no turning back or the "linux-singularity".

[ElderSnake]

This is a genuine question. You seem to be telling everyone they need to do something. What are you doing about the situation? Maybe give some options rather than a generic statement. What projects exactly are we meant to help fund? As far as I can tell there are none that work directly toward general improvement of drivers and accept funding.

I don't mean to be sounding on some sort of high horse or anything, I'm sorry if my post seemed so (I get pretty passionate about anything in the Linux world).

The driver thing is definitely tricky. NVIDIA, AMD etc are already big commercial companies so throwing extra bits of money at them won't change a whole lot. We already spend hundreds on their GPU's for starters. I think as madjr said above, all we can do is what we're doing so that we can get to the point where these companies take more notice of the platform.
With the FOSS drivers though and projects like Gallium, we can surely always help them out.

The more Greenlit and crowd-funded games we get for Linux the better too.

Personally I try to donate/buy whereever I can and try to spread the word on projects, programs or games or whatever is relevant to me and try to be a bug tester when I have time. Sadly I'm no true programmer so I can't help much in that area. I do think there's an increasingly vocal Linux crowd out there though and that things are mostly on the right track.

[necro-lover]

Or Dota2...

I also only wait for Dota2 and I'm willing to pay the full ~30? price not only "Free to play" ...

I'm a HON player so this game style is my favour.

[necro-lover]

What I usually hear from gamers would be: "Steam is on Linux now ? Can I play all my games on Linux then ? No ? Then forget it, I'll stick with Windows."

They really should implement wine-technique to "force" the games on Linux.

Even games like ARMA2 run on Linux even with the open-source drivers but STEAM must understand that people want THE STEAM VERSION WITH WINE TECHNIQUE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All other ways are BULLSHIT!

NATIVE IS COOL BUT ONLY IF ITS POSSIBLE: