Steam Linux Usage Still Roughly Around 1%

[omer666]

The time being I own something like 40 Linux native games on Steam. I've got some issues with kernel 3.12 so I stick to LTS kernel (3.10). I'm running Arch with nVidia drivers and compatibility is not bad at all on LTS kernel. There are some crashes in Metro : Last Light, but nothing preventing me from completing the game twice. Also Shadowrun Returns has some problems on launch. I think using a binary blob or not is not the only concern for Linux gamers, they also want a good, stable OS to run their games. The problem is mainly that Linux ports are not tested enough (which anyway is the case for most PC games nowadays), and that even if developers do care, editors quite frequently don't (and they're those responsible for support - well, they are meant to). Also, we definitely need big franchise ports, not that I want to play CoD or shit like that, but that would bring some cash and attract attention from editors and players alike. So yeah, it's a small beginning, but at the moment, I don't have the messy experience some others have : I'm quite satisfied with Steam on Linux, in fact. They just need to keep things going, and it will attract people. Most certainly it will not make a hundred million people switch, but still.

[brosis]

the thing is:

disabling hyper-z helps for the first few minutes but the graphics looks pretty ugly - even in 1920x1080

then the screen turns black and the monitor turns itself off

when rebooting via magic sysrq the bios signals that there's an gpu error

The newer stack caused GPU hangs for me on 5850, till I manually forced radeon.dpm=1 via kernel cheat. It seems the card is unstable with old reclock method. Maybe worth a check?

[bug1]

How is using a binary graphics driver akin to using an entire OS that not only isn't FLOSS, but also is increasingly controlling of what you are allowed to install on it (Windows Store) and requires you to activate every machine and phone home to MS? I hope some day that Nvidia opens up more of their code, but for right now they're absolutely the best option on Linux, absolute parity with their Windows drivers in terms of performance and no driver related issues in any Steam game I've played (and I have 84 Linux games).

If NVIDIA could get away with controlling what you install, require you you to activate the card on every machine and phone home do you think they would do it ?

NVIDIA and Microsoft see FOSS as the enemy, AMD at least make noises about being friendly.

[johnc]

I play L4D2 as well, but it works great on my PC with nvidia driver.

Yeah but there are a lot of bugs on the github site for nvidia users. I know it's hard to track down every individual's issue, and the one in particular that I'm having is common, but this is the reality that people are dealing with on Linux.

If you can't play, you can't play. There's nothing more a user can do.

[blackout23]

Usage is at 1.85 % when you know how to add up the numbers. That's exactly the same as it ever was.

[kernelOfTruth]

@kernelOfTruth

I see no problem playing Serious Sam 3 with my HD 5670 with mesa 10 (i just created a repo that mirrors the packages from steamos) - just ignore the warning you see on start. Also Left 4 Dead 2 works. I did not play MLN yet.

you're using Kanotix, right ?

what gcc version is everything compiled with ?


might be that the hardened toolchain & the -march=native optimization breaks stuff


the thing is:

disabling hyper-z helps for the first few minutes but the graphics looks pretty ugly - even in 1920x1080

then the screen turns black and the monitor turns itself off

when rebooting via magic sysrq the bios signals that there's an gpu error

[verde]

I think the 0,75% of "other" is Linux too.

Still poor but thats a part of Linux community's blame. The short-sighted actions they do repelling users from trying Linux OS.

Why?

Ask any forum which distribution should a newcomer to Linux use and you will get 100 different answers. Why? Because of politics.

They dont understand that using for first time Ubuntu, Mint or whatever doesn't mean that the user will always use that OS.

I mostly play L4D2 right now and it still crashes on Linux so even though I use Linux as my desktop, I still have to play in Windows.

I play L4D2 as well, but it works great on my PC with nvidia driver.

[garegin]

Linux in and of itself has no value over Windows for the average user. If you want Linux to take over for gaming, it has to actually be hands-down better than the competition. Not one or two things better, but all around an _obvious_ improvement (coming from many different angles). Otherwise, it's just something different and people in general _really_ don't like change.
Failing that, the marketing needs to do it, but "Linux" (or even Steam OS) has no real marketing, especially not when competing against the _billions_ that Microsoft or Sony or Apple or Nintendo drop on advertising. Maybe Valve will start a serious marketing push after Steam OS is at 1.0 and commercial Steam Boxes are out, but they're going to have to be prepared to drop a very pretty penny, akin to what Microsoft had to do with the original XBox (which lost them a lot of money, even without the subsidized hardware costs).

You sir hit the nail on the head. To win you either have to beat the price (I'm not going to pay for a Cisco firewall and will go with an Untangle one) or give the buyer a better value proposition. People are not going to change their life around because Linux has a better NUMA support, the same way Linux server people are not going to invest their time learning BSD just so pf is better than iptables. You have to be all round better AND easier to use.

[dragonn]

On my laptop - i3 330M and Geforce 330M (closed drivers) L4D2 have micro lags, on Windows I don't expire this problem. This is really frustrating...