Steam On Linux Competes To Stay Above 1%

[kpedersen]

...and, since nobody really mentioned it, I'll chime in with the obligatory mention that, of the people who do game on Linux, a higher percentage than on Windows are gonna want an officially-sanctioned method for downloading DRM-free installers/archives that can be saved and backed up.

It'll be very interesting to see how things turn out with GOG Galaxy.

Amen to this. People who moved to Linux originally to get away from the DRM in Windows certainly are not the prime candidates to use any DRM product.

[Dukenukemx]

My problem with Mass Effect maybe related to the gallium-nine patch. BTW I run it off Origin which has gotten extra shit lately. I can get the game to work with UseNative enabled but without it there's all sorts of worse problems. UseNative also just causes massive slow downs and texture corruption.

[pinguinpc]

I do play some games on my laptop to see how things are going in Linux but Wine 1.7 is just not there. I seriously can't get Mass Effect 1 running perfectly yet on Wine1.7.

Origin requires a patch to get working and it's still slow to download games.

Any games I do get working are at best 50% the performance if running on Windows.

I have CSMT in Win1.7 and it doesn't do much on a Intel i3. Gallium-Nine increases performance drastically but even fewer games work fine with it.

Wine really needs to get there. I'm really surprised that Valve hasn't stepped in and do something about it. Like make a fork of Wine or donate code.

Curiously in my case mass effect 1 works with and without texture mods but i have mass effect steam version

Without texture mod ME1UITM

With texture mod ME1UITM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNZ9wDQ6t50

However i use lastest wine vanilla with nvidia card + lastest propietary drivers

[Dukenukemx]

I would think Intel HD 4000's and 4600's would be what you'd find in Steam machines. It'll most likely be Intel Iris Pro graphics which can do amazingly well against even some mid range graphic cards.

As a gamer I only use Linux on my laptops cause I don't really game on them. I don't need MS Office cause I'm fine with Libre. I don't like not have Photoshop but I really don't use it that often. Seriously why hasn't Adobe made Photoshop for Linux yet? The rest of the applications on my Windows desktop machines is open source, except my games. My games are not and that's the only reason I haven't erased Windows and installed Mint 17.

I do play some games on my laptop to see how things are going in Linux but Wine 1.7 is just not there. I seriously can't get Mass Effect 1 running perfectly yet on Wine1.7. Origin requires a patch to get working and it's still slow to download games. Any games I do get working are at best 50% the performance if running on Windows. I have CSMT in Win1.7 and it doesn't do much on a Intel i3. Gallium-Nine increases performance drastically but even fewer games work fine with it.

Wine really needs to get there. I'm really surprised that Valve hasn't stepped in and do something about it. Like make a fork of Wine or donate code.

[Pecisk]

Yes they can, the Intel IGPs are too slow to RUN Metro at 640x480 with minimum settings. Nobody is going to buy an IGP based Steambox. The small ones like the Gigabyte Brix are going to be running high end MXM notebook GPUs. The whole point is to have something that looks better then the consoles that max out a 1280x720@30FPS.

Take a look at the R9 M290X http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Rad....108643.0.html and the GTX 880M http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-....107622.0.html

It would be to soon to rule out atractivity of very cheap IGP based Steam Machine. If it's cheap, it can deliver solid stream from PC, and you can play huge colleciton of indies on it, it's viable.

[Pecisk]

There are some good points in this discussion - in nutshell, it is very hard for gamer to move to Linux completely even if he/she runs Steam on both OS - because most likely there's game running only on Windows. In that light, ~700k players who has answered survey on Linux is quite a lot. It's also good observation that quite a lot people use Ubuntu, but just for work and they even might don't know that Linux games exist. SteamOS in this regard will be more solid platform, as people will buy it knowing it's limitations.

One way to help this is to advertise Linux based games to other Linux users. I have done this a lot, and got my friend to buy and play CivV, which we enjoy a lot. It will be slow uptake, but keeping doing this, we will get there.

p.s. never got survey, despite sinking huge amount of hours in TF2/CivV/Witcher/etc. Of course on Linux.

[sthalik]

CSMT is needed just as well, despite being a stopgap measure.

Within the bounds of D3D9 on top of opengl, that needs to support drivers from several vendors, for three different major hardware manufacturers.

Stuff's getting better after so much mediocre years, with no signs of return to mediocrity again. Whether it's good within 5 years, 10 or 15 isn't that important.

[Passso]

...when I'm done playing my game I don't want to go back to Windows 8 Metro UI either.

Nobody ever wanted to go back to Windows 8 Metro UI...

[Kivada]

I consider 12 hours per week quite a lot!
That's almost two hours per day on average.
I wouldn't even have the time for it.

Thats far less then most people spend watching TV.

[Kivada]

Roughly 1-1.5 percent is not bad. Out of 75 million, thats almost a million Linux Steam users.

Also I think some of the delay isn't all on Valve. Just look at the steam statistics, Intel has 20 percent of GPUs, but they only have opengl 3.3 support. The new Metro it requires opengl 4, so I doubt Valve would release their steam machines without propper Intel iGPU support.

Yes they can, the Intel IGPs are too slow to RUN Metro at 640x480 with minimum settings. Nobody is going to buy an IGP based Steambox. The small ones like the Gigabyte Brix are going to be running high end MXM notebook GPUs. The whole point is to have something that looks better then the consoles that max out a 1280x720@30FPS.

Take a look at the R9 M290X http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Rad....108643.0.html and the GTX 880M http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-....107622.0.html