February 2014 Steam Hardware Survey Shows Linux At 1.3%

[sarmad]

personally I'm just waiting for my Win7 to crap out (gonna happen sooner or later, right? ) and after that I can go to experimenting with linux again and maybe settling down (i.e. having a go through various distros and trying how they feel on pure metal as compared to VM)

Make sure you actually try various distros rather than trying Ubuntu only. Ubuntu lately isn't as stable as some other distros.

[GreatEmerald]

Tools like SDL have fairly recently matured and made cross platform game programming in C quite a reality.

Not necessarily C.

[DanLamb]

Tools like SDL have fairly recently matured and made cross platform game programming in C quite a reality.

Not necessarily C.

Aren't "PC" games overwhelmingly written in C/C++? There are a handful of Unity engine games that have most of the engine written in C and a lot of higher level stuff in C#. There are also a few other games written in all Java, like Wakfu, and then there are web games using Flash or HTML5. What is the rest of your point?

[GreatEmerald]

Aren't "PC" games overwhelmingly written in C/C++? There are a handful of Unity engine games that have most of the engine written in C and a lot of higher level stuff in C#. There are also a few other games written in all Java, like Wakfu, and then there are web games using Flash or HTML5. What is the rest of your point?

My point is that you made it look like SDL didn't have bindings to languages other than C, although it does.

I agree with your other points. Although there is a pretty big difference between desktop and mobile OS paradigms (which however doesn't stop major game engines from having them as build targets).

[cynical]

Make sure you actually try various distros rather than trying Ubuntu only. Ubuntu lately isn't as stable as some other distros.

Well that's complete bullshit. I'm on the dev release just because I like running the latest software (and I'm capable of fixing issues if they do crop up) and it's been the most stable release by far. Ubuntu has become much more stable over time, not less.

[DanLamb]

there is a pretty big difference between desktop and mobile OS paradigms

There is a difference now, but why should the deep and complex stuff be limited to Win/Mac/Linux workstation OSs? A lot of that stuff should move to Android/iOS.

Currently, mice/keyboards are possible but not prevalent on Android/iOS. But many games are suited for touch and keyboard/mice options for Android/iOS will gain popularity.

[YoungManKlaus]

Make sure you actually try various distros rather than trying Ubuntu only. Ubuntu lately isn't as stable as some other distros.

Actually, Ubuntu is one that I definitely will _not_ test ... both because from what I saw both Unity and Gnome 3 are utter crap (actually, Win7 is pretty awesome when it comes to the start bar ... gotta give credit where its due), as well because of their policies (eg. regarding their huge NIH syndrome) and Marc getting a bigger ass every day (at least judging by press coverage).

PS: I gave Suse a shot in a VM some time ago and it looked quite promising, except graphics glitches and instability was huuuuge (very probably because of VirtualBox), so looking forward to giving that a shot on real hardware.

[GreatEmerald]

Currently, mice/keyboards are possible but not prevalent on Android/iOS. But many games are suited for touch and keyboard/mice options for Android/iOS will gain popularity.

Maybe, but who knows, maybe that will never happen.

[Fry-kun]

Actually, Ubuntu is one that I definitely will _not_ test ... both because from what I saw both Unity and Gnome 3 are utter crap ...

I don't know about Ubuntu, but Fedora comes with Gnome 3 by default -- which I intensely dislike -- but there's an XFCE "spin", which is exactly what I want. You're usually not locked in to the default installed UI -- though it does take a few commands to change it over to something else..

[sarmad]

Well that's complete bullshit. I'm on the dev release just because I like running the latest software (and I'm capable of fixing issues if they do crop up) and it's been the most stable release by far. Ubuntu has become much more stable over time, not less.

No, that's not bullshit, that is a reality from my own personal experience. I was on Ubuntu 13.4 using Gnome Shell DE. When I upgraded to 13.10 I had the following regressions:

* Gnome Shell became sluggish even though I am on i7 quad core with HD 3000 graphics.
* VirtualBox no longer integrates the mouse correctly.
* Putting the PC to sleep does NOT lock it, i.e. you wake the PC up and you are into the desktop without being asked for a password!!
* Steam with DRI_PRIME doesn't render correctly unless I change view mode and change it back.
* The PC crashes from time to time that I have to a hardware reset!

I then tried Fedora and guess what, NONE of the above issues are present. Maybe Ubuntu works better under Unity, but if they don't support Gnome why do they put it in the standard repository?