Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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?"

11 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Re:*Sure* it is. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Number two on the desktop?!? Bad baby!!!!

  2. Does SteamOS count as a desktop? by putaro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. 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. Maia and Linux by blackraven14250 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. It has to start somewhere by asmkm22 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  5. Wine is not an emulator by tepples · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Wine is not an emulator by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

      To keep this debate from collapsing into one of definitions, I'll offer some. In the retro-gaming community, an "emulator" simulates the operation of an entire computer, using an interpreter or dynamic recompiler to simulate the CPU. This emulator imposes a substantial performance penalty. For example, DOSBox and Bochs are emulators. Wine, on the other hand, is just a set of libraries that run on your existing machine; the application's code runs natively. VirtualBox and VMware are somewhere in the middle as "virtual machine monitors", which execute unprivileged code directly and recompile privileged code into the same instruction set but without use of privileged instructions.

      Let me put it another way: If you think Wine is an emulator, then Qt is an emulator too if I install it on a GTK+ based distribution like Ubuntu or Xubuntu, and GTK+ is an emulator if I install it on Kubuntu.

  6. 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.
  7. Re: *Sure* it is. by aliquis · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, an additional 40 FPS for everyone running Gentoo .. ;D

  8. Re:I'll be ecstatic! by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Funny
    Why? Did you look at those numbers?

    Puppy Games
    89% Windows
    6% Mac OSX
    5% Linux

    I have more good news for you. In a three way dunk competition between you, Kobe Bryant, and me, you have a good shot at coming in second!!!

  9. 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.