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Ask Slashdot: Is Linux Set To Be PC Gaming's Number Two Platform?
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?"
Linux on the desktop, BABY!
I'll become a gamer again if this happens. Just the idea of this makes me incredibly happy.
It's a variant of Linux but it's not for use with a general purpose computer. By that standard, BSD (iOS sorta kinda) and Linux (Android) are already major game platforms.
..there isn't much holding me back from dumping Windows all together so seeing that Linux as a viable gaming platform is on the rise it shouldn't be too much longer before I can dump it all together and go full Linux. Sure Linux has Wine support but I would prefer to have native support instead.
Maia isn't a game that's "soon to be released". Maia is in a very early alpha stage with very little of the final functionality - you'd expect Linux to be over represented in that particular sample.
As I understand what I've read, Steam OS allows the user to exit the Steam client, run GNOME, and install games from unknown sources. Android (both Google Play and Fire OS flavors) likewise lets users install games from unknown sources. The odd man out here is iOS.
The problem is that Linux still needs a baseline distro for developers to target. Ubuntu had a lot of promise until the last few years where it's been shifted to target every device *except* desktops. Not to mention the weird shit they've been pushing like ads in the OS.
I'd really like to see something to the effect of a Linux Gaming Standard, where as long as certain structural conditions are met within any given distro, developers could simply target those standards and build their rpm/deb packages and not have to worry about supporting Ubuntu specifically. I'm talking things like specific libraries and drivers that need to be present for "Linux Gaming Standard" certification, so that people aren't having to worry about hunting down the right repo by blindly copy/pasting some forum suggestion for someone else into their terminal hoping to make magic happen.
Sure Linux has Wine support but I would prefer to have native support instead.
Wine is not an emulator but a reimplementation of the Win32 API. So long as the developer of a video game or other application tests its product on Wine, it's just another toolkit, just as GTK+ and Qt and SDL are toolkits. In such a case, I don't see how an app running in Wine is any less "native" than, say, a Qt app running on a GTK+-based distribution. If you complain instead that not enough developers and publishers of games designed for Windows care about Wine compatibility, I can agree with that complaint though. Is that what you're trying to say?
..there isn't much holding me back from dumping Windows all together so seeing that Linux as a viable gaming platform is on the rise it shouldn't be too much longer before I can dump it all together and go full Linux. Sure Linux has Wine support but I would prefer to have native support instead.
This is a very common opinion. However the problem is that switching from Windows to Linux does not really help the developer. The developer replaced a Windows sale with a Linux sale. Basically Linux will largely cannibalize Windows sales. So the justification to the developer for doing a Linux version has to go beyond simply the number of Linux sales.
For a small and not-well-known developer this benefit may be greater exposure and word of mouth. For the large established developer the benefits for a Linux version are a bit iffier. Assuming of course the large developer does not have a software distribution platform to promote.
Annoyingly, you'd be able to use discrete graphics cards with any modern Mac if Apple would stop refusing to license thunderbolt PCIe bays. Benchmarks (via enthusiasts hacking together solutions) show that even a Macbook Air can provide good gaming performance (5x or more the framerate of the iGPU) when connected to a high-end graphics card via Thunderbolt (even on the internal display). Since Apple refuses to license them, however, you're restricted to doing it under bootcamp with expensive enterprise-targeted enclosures.
In other words, there is no technical reason why you couldn't simply plug an external discrete GPU into any Mac and instantly get massively improved gaming performance. Apple is actively blocking such things.
Apple does not seem to be much interested on building affordable computers for gaming.
Then what are iPod touch and iPad mini? They're not general-purpose out of the box,* but they do compute, and they do run games.
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.
Basically Linux will largely cannibalize Windows sales.
Not for games designed around the 2 to 4 controllers and large monitor in a living room. Only a tiny number of people have put together a living room gaming PC running Windows. The Steam Machines, on the other hand, are designed for the living room in order to make it easier for developers to get controller-friendly games out to the public with less overhead and less red tape than the consoles.
when you incorrectly shut-down most linux distro's you'll actually destroy your OS ~ install ubuntu (non-virtualized) and force shutdown (for proof)
My experience differs. I have Xubuntu 12.04 LTS on my laptop and Xubuntu 12.04 LTS on my grandmother's decade-old desktop PC. Sure, Alt+SysRq+REISUB makes panic shutdowns cleaner, but if sudden loss of power rendered the operating system unbootable, you wouldn't be able to read the comment that I'm typing right now on the laptop.
FreeBSD would be a little stupid. I love BSD, but it lacks driver support for video cards. SteamOS has to support multiple different hardware configurations so going with Linux makes much more sense. Sony is a special case because they are in a position to standardize on a single hardware configuration. For them, BSD should be great.
It's called the Steam Runtime.
I would think Linux already has taken #2 if you include Android game apps.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Nice, but in case some fool takes you seriously...
Irrational statements like this show you argue from emotion rather than logic.
SteamOS being based on Debian means it could very well do so, as Debian readily uses GPLv3 packages and nothing Valve is doing would be impacted by the GPLv3.
Yet nothing indicates Valve will do so. If anything, their own behavior suggests the direct opposite.
What strings? Can you name them? You can't be contradicted if you won't lay out your claims.
" that's when you incorrectly shut-down most linux distro's you'll actually destroy your OS"
Citation needed or take your FUD elsewhere. I've been using a variety of distros since 1999 and have had FAR more problems with Windows when power is interrupted.
Incidentally, rescuing Linux with the live media I install it with in the first place is very convenient, though most rescues I use Linux to perform are on Windows machines.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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.
Sorry to double-reply here, but I thought I'd point out that one difference between previous external GPUs and what we're talking about here is the interface. Lots of previous solutions are using USB, which is a very resource intensive and low-speed interface. Thunderbolt is basically just PCI-Express over a cable, so when you route a PCI-Express graphics card over Thunderbolt, the PC and graphics card can communicate in their originally intended form. There is indeed a big drop in bandwidth because you're taking a graphics card meant for a 16x PCIe slot and running it over a Thunderbolt solution that behaves more like a 4x PCIe slot, but that's still fast enough for pretty decent performance. It helps that a graphics card on a 16x slot isn't anywhere close to bandwidth limited.
Hey., I'm not saying its bad that they target Linux... I'm saying that targeting Linux without actually having the development environment work on Linux is really shooting the whole notion in the foot. For most people that even care about it, the fact that Unity3D can target Linux is liable to matter only to people who don't use windows or osx in the first place. a group that can't possibly even develop with it because the software needs OSX or windows anyways.
If people are seriously going to migrate to Linux from whatever platform they use now for gaming, then it's pretty obvious that it's going to have to offer games that aren't available *on* their original platform... but if the dev tools only work on those platforms, then it's pretty much a given that, since they are making a desktop game anyways, it's going to be available for that platform, and from the user's perspective, Linux will offer no significant advantage over their current OS for gaming, meaning they won't switch and meaning that Linux stays pretty much at the same popularity level.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Eh hoser?
"The OWC Mercury Helios PCIe Expansion Chassis gives users of Thunderboltâ port equipped computers including the Apple Mac mini, iMac, and MacBook the ability to tap into a wide variety of professional-level performance PCIe adapters that were once the sole domain of desktop workstations. Helios utilizes any half-length PCIe 2.0 card (up to 6.5") to provide a massive boost to your workflow."
Number two.
That is all.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Maia developer here. To clarify, the game's website is out of date and the stats I gave to Gaming on Linux were based on the Steam sales rather than the limited direct preorders.