Steam Linux Usage For November: 0.27%

[Aeder]

Clearly you've never written more than a few lines of code in your life. Some modern game engines have more lines of code the the Linux kernel and they are insanely complicated. They stress your platform and its hardware to the limits. They require extensive QA/QC which costs some real money. Games are often written with certain assumptions which are only valid in the Windows world. It's not like flipping a switch, it's quite the opposite. If it had been flipping a switch Bethesda would have released immensely successful Doom for Linux ages ago. They haven't. Doom ostensibly should under Linux with minimal modifications.

It's so nice to read all those silly excuses why Linux is unsuccessful on the desktop. Even we throw apart the most technical issues, it still boggles my mind how people fail to notice that Linux distros get new releases every 12 months. It still boggles my mind how people fail to notice various things which are partially or completely broken with Linux, like hardware video decoding acceleration, power saving modes, drivers, etc. etc. etc.

And there are always little bugs all around, little features which either are not there or broken, it's always this and that, and "you just have to write a patch or report a problem". Yeah, right, like I have five open bug reports against the Linux kernel and there are zero comments from respective developers. No one gives a flying fuck.

It's funny you picked the one example, where none of the things I said apply. Doom was never developed on a mainstream engine. id Software made their engine from scratch (assuming no reuse from previous idTech engines), so if it needs to support Linux, they have to code that from scratch.

But you can't say the same of all those games made in Unity, or Unreal Engine 4.

Also the rest of your rant seems to be directed at arguments made by other people in the past so I won't even bother replying to them.

[aht0]

Doom isn't actually the 'most played game', even if you look at it from windows platform. It gets boring fast. "Fire up and forget afterwards" type of game. It is at best Technology Preview.

Where is the mass of Linux games made using Unity or UE4. Majority of games made using those engines are targeting Windows platform. Why, if making native Linux client should be "easy"?

[azdaha]

point taken. I was also expressing my own opinion about viability of Linux gaming.


Granted, but "life span" of a specific Windows version has approached decade, not just "couple of years tops". It beats even "5-year or 8-year support". For example Win7 was released back in 2009 and goes to EOL 2020. While upgrades are free (you don't have to resort to paid support).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_kernel_interfaces

General experience: take random machine and random Linux distro. You are guaranteed to run into some issue, be it minor or major.

Well it would make me. And Linux has also issue of lacking extra software for recording/streaming gameplay and for fine tuning your hardware for your gameplay. For example: when I play first person shooters, I have OBS Studio and MSI Afterburner running on background. Former for streaming into Twitch, latter for controlling GPU fan profiles.
OBS has Linux client but I haven't managed to get it working properly so that it would actually capture from game's window. MSI Afterburner has zero alternative on Linux.

Clanbomber, GNU Chess and Tuxracer.. can't see "thing" there.

You may like those "great games", there's been NOTHING for me. It's subjective.

Why do you think theoretically compatible games lack native Linux client? Because maintaining one would not be cost effective.

SteamOS has proven to be a failure, are you aware of it?

Can't see why one would want to play on Wine. First, you are limited to DX9 games max. Second, you get to deal with game's own bugs, compatibility-issues and reduced performance - compared to playing same game on Windows.

Progress is quite worthless, UNLESS you can use it.

You are guaranteed rude wake up about great drivers.

You can develop, you also have to support it afterwards. Which does not pay developer single cent but opposite: means serious overhead in expenses - especially considering marginal percentage of Linux users. There is no economic incentive here for creating and maintaining native clients for Linux, except perhaps for PR purposes. History has shown that even non-profit-driven Linux games tend to lag behind Windows. Like when I was playing Americas Army. It's Linux client was always multiple versions older than Windows client. And getting it running properly was rather PITA.

Name me ONE Linux MP game with modern physics, mechanics and grapchics. Where I could for example cut down a tree, make a hole into the side of a house etc? I've played such since 2008 or so on Windows. 2008 was also around when DX9 started becoming obsolete.


I think you are naive about Linux better security. I rather think the opposite. What saves Linux gamers, is it's marginal desktop usage.

I hate myself for liking this post (at least parts of it). Nevertheless, logic must win over emotion