Steam Linux Usage Drops During August

[johnc]

I'm curious...
Have you tried this yet? Did it make any difference?

Actually I think I have to amend my earlier comments a bit.

I run w/ EIST enabled in the BIOS. I think the cpufreq ondemand governor kinda doesn't work (the CPU runs at either lowest frequency or highest frequency or turbo frequency... nothing in between). With the ondemand governor set, I can't disable Multicore Rendering in L4D2 w/o using that console command. And with it on, there are too many stutters. I assume with multithreading the CPU frequency is set low and this causes a bottleneck.

If I use the cpufreq performance governor, Multicore Rendering is disabled by default (but it can be enabled... I think) and performance is fine either way.

So now I just set the governor to performance before playing L4D2.


Ohh and as a side note... I installed Steam on OS X for the first time the other day... and immediately the survey popped up.

[Bernard Swiss]

If it was running in a window (or fullscreen window) rather than exclusive fullscreen mode, there would be a performance hit.

Also multi-core rendering doesn't really work so you'll want to disable that. You can't disable it in L4D2 in the menu however, due to a bug, so you have to open the console and disable it there by entering "mat_queue_mode 0".

Thanks John! I will try these things you describe - I definitely would like to run L4D2 on Linux instead of rebooting into Windows.

I'm curious...
Have you tried this yet? Did it make any difference?

[V10lator]

If everyone let's 4 games on Steam running over night every day, Steam usage statistics will skyrocket.

Anything to back this up? AFAIK the steam survey comes randomly and not by how many games a user plays (I'm playing a lot on linux but never saw the survey).

[Kano]

Basically there are two reasons for Steam/Linux

a) It does not need to compete with Win8+/Apple App Stores.
b) OpenGL games could be more easyly ported to Android, but that will be most likely only the case for goldsrc or maybe the nextgen version of the source engine as the current Source engine needs conversation tricks (which only runs fast on Nvidia due to a special multithreading code but needs newer OpenGL anyway)

Well when somebody has Win+Linux and compares the same games like Killing Floor/Serious Sam 3 then there are several rendering/speed problems visable because only Valve gets direct support from Nvidia/Intel and others seem to be less important for em. There are games which have got nice OpenGL performance but when Direct 3D is used by 99% and OpenGL by 1% then it seems that debugging/profiling is not the first priority for smaller companies. I hope that at least ID will use OpenGL by default, those games run at least fine via Wine/Nvidia (AMD devs are maybe forced NOT to try Rage with fglrx). Would be interesting if a little Wine wrapper could be done for those kind of games.

[hoohoo]

If it was running in a window (or fullscreen window) rather than exclusive fullscreen mode, there would be a performance hit.

Also multi-core rendering doesn't really work so you'll want to disable that. You can't disable it in L4D2 in the menu however, due to a bug, so you have to open the console and disable it there by entering "mat_queue_mode 0".

Thanks John! I will try these things you describe - I definitely would like to run L4D2 on Linux instead of rebooting into Windows.

[Desti]

If everyone let's 4 games on Steam running over night every day, Steam usage statistics will skyrocket.

[johnc]

On the weekend I finally installed Steam on an OpenSuSE 12.2 machine (i7 CPU, 7970 video + AMD proprietary driver, 32 GB RAM). I played L4D2 for a while and also Half Life. I was running Trinity desktop but KDE 4.something and Gnome are installed.

The rendering was good - detailed and no artifacts. But the framerates were very low, probably below 30FPS.

Also sometimes Steam client appeared to grab all the mouse and keyboard events, making it impossible to interact with the desktop or other windows.

I got the Steam RPM from an OpenSuSE sponsored repo. I did not investigate reasons for problems, ie I did not try to debug.

Maybe it works better on Ubuntu?

Still, nice to see it working. If the framerates can be improved and Sid Meier ports Civ 4 & 5 then I can get rid of Windows finally!

If it was running in a window (or fullscreen window) rather than exclusive fullscreen mode, there would be a performance hit.

Also multi-core rendering doesn't really work so you'll want to disable that. You can't disable it in L4D2 in the menu however, due to a bug, so you have to open the console and disable it there by entering "mat_queue_mode 0".

[hoohoo]

On the weekend I finally installed Steam on an OpenSuSE 12.2 machine (i7 CPU, 7970 video + AMD proprietary driver, 32 GB RAM). I played L4D2 for a while and also Half Life. I was running Trinity desktop but KDE 4.something and Gnome are installed.

The rendering was good - detailed and no artifacts. But the framerates were very low, probably below 30FPS.

Also sometimes Steam client appeared to grab all the mouse and keyboard events, making it impossible to interact with the desktop or other windows.

I got the Steam RPM from an OpenSuSE sponsored repo. I did not investigate reasons for problems, ie I did not try to debug.

Maybe it works better on Ubuntu?

Still, nice to see it working. If the framerates can be improved and Sid Meier ports Civ 4 & 5 then I can get rid of Windows finally!

[stiiixy]

What I'm not understanding is how you're getting the idea that the percentage of Steam users using Linux dropping means the number of users is dropping. Have you not considered the fact that other platforms might be getting more users and Linux is just kinda leveling off for the moment?

The sheer number's of Windows/MacOS people to offset the -.5% of linux would have to have been in the MILLIONS.

The only thing likely to have done this is DOTA2

I play DOTA2 on linux. No complaints (Using Mint and tried Xubuntu whch worked well too)

EDIT: Aaaand I made an unreferenced and unproven statement again, but eh. The point is still valid. I gotta stop exaggerating!1L!!@@

[MWisBest]

What I'm not understanding is how you're getting the idea that the percentage of Steam users using Linux dropping means the number of users is dropping. Have you not considered the fact that other platforms might be getting more users and Linux is just kinda leveling off for the moment?