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Ask Slashdot: Is Linux Set To Be PC Gaming's Number Two Platform?

Posted by Soulskill on from the year-of-linux-in-the-living-room dept.

monkeyhybrid writes "Following a tweet from the developer of Maia (a cross platform game soon to hit Steam) that Linux was bringing him more game sales than OS X. Gaming On Linux decided to investigate further by reaching out to multiple developers for platform sales statistics. Although the findings and developer comments show Linux sales to still be sitting in third place, behind those of OS X and Windows, they are showing promise. Developer feedback certainly appears to be positive about the platform's future. With Steam OS on its way, surely leading to more big title releases making their way to the Linux platform, could Linux gaming be set to take the number two spot from Apple?"

4 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising if you state Macs aren't supported by Volguus+Zildrohar · · Score: 5, Informative

    On the Maia website, for system requirements:

    OS: LINUX 64, WINDOWS. MAC SUPPORT COMING SOON.

    --
    When confronted with one problem, some think "I'll use recursion". Now they are confronted with one problem.
  2. Re:Does SteamOS count as a desktop? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Q: Didn't you tell me to develop for Ubuntu? Do I need to install Debian to build for SteamOS?
    A: All Steam applications execute using the Steam Runtime which is a fixed binary-compatibility layer for Linux applications. This enables any application to run on any Linux distribution that supports the Steam Runtime without recompiling.

  3. Re:Wine is not an emulator by tepples · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you use that definition, then nothing on Linux can be native because Linux is a UNIX emulator.

  4. Re:Apple doesn't take gaming on computers seriousl by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's one set of benchmarks from a guy who did it using a rather indirect way involving a thunderbolt-to-expresscard adapter combined with an expresscard-to-pcie adapter:

    http://forum.techinferno.com/d...

    And here's a guy who did it more directly using a thunderbolt-to-pcie adapter:

    http://forum.techinferno.com/d...

    You can see the benchmarks there for yourself. External monitor benchmarks are higher, probably because of the extra copying that has to go on to use the internal monitor. As an example, the first guy on an 11" 2013 macbook air got 69 FPS running Bioshock Infinite on max settings at 1366x768 (versus 15 FPS on the stock iGPU), and the second guy reported running Battlefield 3 on "Ultra" quality at 40FPS at 1920x1080.

    Is there a big performance hit from doing all this, including using a dual-core ultrabook-class CPU? Sure, but it's hard to argue that the results aren't playable. It certainly proves the concept, and a properly supported solution at an affordable price could make one hell of an improvement to a notebook docking solution. Having the portability of an ultrabook, but docking it at home to your home monitor/speakers/mouse/keyboard/storage/network/etc? That'd be pretty nice. For many people, it might obviate the need to have both a desktop for gaming and a notebook for portability.