Slashdot Mirror
The State of Linux Gaming In the SteamOS Era
An anonymous reader writes: It's been over a year since Valve announced its Linux-based SteamOS, the biggest push yet from a huge company to bring mainstream gaming to Linux. In this article, Ars Technica takes a look at how their efforts are panning out. Game developers say making Linux ports has gotten dramatically easier: "There are great games shipping for Linux from development teams with no Linux expertise. They hit the 'export to Linux' button in the Unity editor and shipped it and it worked out alright. We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."
Hardware drivers are still a problem, getting in the way of potential performance gains due to Linux's overall smaller resource footprint than Windows. And while the platform is growing, it's doing so slowly. Major publishers are still hesitant to devote time to Linux, and Valve is taking their time building for it. Their Steam Machine hardware is still in development, and some of their key features are being adopted by other gaming giants, like Microsoft. Still, Valve is sticking with it, and that's huge. It gives developers faith that they can work on supporting Linux without fear that the industry will re-fragment before their game is done.
Hardware drivers are still a problem, getting in the way of potential performance gains due to Linux's overall smaller resource footprint than Windows. And while the platform is growing, it's doing so slowly. Major publishers are still hesitant to devote time to Linux, and Valve is taking their time building for it. Their Steam Machine hardware is still in development, and some of their key features are being adopted by other gaming giants, like Microsoft. Still, Valve is sticking with it, and that's huge. It gives developers faith that they can work on supporting Linux without fear that the industry will re-fragment before their game is done.
potential problem:
All the VMs I've tried (well, actually a grand total of one - Virtualbox) don't correctly configure for Direct3D. A yardstick app I use is (conveniently) Homeworld, the original one from 1999 not the reboot which I couldn't run if I mashed all my hardware together. If that doesn't run, then I don't have the DirectX driver in right.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
And that's where something like SteamOS can help by being "the definitive Linux". It eliminates all the political power plays, backstabbing and other nastiness that happens over Linux.
Yes, Linux is great - its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness - the diversity.
Developers don't care about fights over systemd or PulseAudio or whatever else stuff powers the modern Linux system. They don't. But with all sorts of distributions doing all sorts of different things, well, it doesn't help in the porting.
But Valve can easily dictate the game environment and say games must work on SteamOS. And SteamOS will (or will not - up to Valve) have services like systemd or PulseAudio or NetworkManager or whatever. So by basically dictatorial dictate, Valve creates a Linux-based OS for games without all the political Linux BS that goes with it. Sure the Linux admins will whine and complain that it's not "their one true Unix" or whatever, but everyone else is happy to have something to code for and work on.
And if it happens to work outside of SteamOS, bonus.
They don't require a user have expert knowledge.
This isn't 1998 anymore. Linux doesn't require "expert knowledge" to run and use. My parents in their 50's are using Linux full-time (even though they don't know they are) as is my sister - who knows it but doesn't really regard the fact as more than an interesting piece of trivia.
Linux works just as simply as any other OS these days. You want a program? Go to Software Center and search for it. It installs. The icon appears in your menu.
Yes, you CAN get technical and in depth with the system if you want, but that's no different than Windows having the registry and Powershell available if you want to tweak things.
Right now Linux just isn't popular with gamers because there are no games for it, and there are no games for it because gamers don't use it. It's chicken and egg problem, but it's changing, albeit slowly. I personally use my Linux system for everything EXCEPT games, though I'll admit that I'd be excited to ditch Windows even for the games if I could (I do have a PS4 that I play some stuff on). It is nice though that Pillars of Eternity will be available for Linux and is coming out very soon. I've been waiting for that one for quite a while and it may be the first "real" game I'm able to play there.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Please explain why I am able to play all the old Linux ports of games like the original unreal tournament (I haven't acquired new ports for a while) with no problem when Linux is a moving target?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I bought my 14 year old daughter a new laptop that had Windows 8 on it. She wiped it out and installed Linux. She runs Steam for most games, and WINE for a couple because Steam does not quite work for them.
She is not computer illiterate, but she is not an IT guru either. She googles what she needs to know and follows guides she finds.
Sorry but I predict that SteamOS will be dead in 3, probably less, and in the meantime it will be given a trickle of updates while it slowly winds down. The reason? Windows 8 and the MSFT store.
The entire reason for the existence of SteamOS was that Gabe feared Windows 8, specifically the Windows Store. He gave interviews railing on Win 8 and talking about how shit the MSFT store was gonna be for lock in, bla bla bla....so what happened? Windows 8 went over with all the desirability of a trainwreck, the MSFT store turned out to be a spyware ridden clusterfuck, and the CEO that pushed that crap "decided to pursue other interests" rather than get canned. The new guy? Seems to actually have a brain and isn't trying to fuck his partners by sticking a Winflag on everything under the sun.
So every. single. reason. given for making SteamOS? Gone, finished, wasted. Why spend who knows how many millions to develop your own Operating System to defeat somebody who has already waved the white flag? Not to mention as long as Torvalds has a pulse the driver situation will NEVER get any better as Torvalds refuses to let go of the same crap driver model he has been pushing since 1993, so they get the "fun" of dealing with that mess, and for what? MSFT is giving away Windows 10 so you can't compete on cost, MSFT has all but given up on the Windows store, in fact the entire time I've been running Win 10 I don't think I've ever had so much as a "FYI did you know we got a store?" pop up, so that is not a threat, and Steam already has big picture mode in Windows so they can't even use a 10 foot UI as a selling point!
The Linux fanboys can scream and curse me all they want, but time will prove me right. Gabe royally fucked up the SteamOS launch by telling the OEMs it was ready when it wasn't (probably because he didn't know what an unstable POS the Linux driver model really is) so they ended up being left with their dicks in their hands and had to rush out their "Steamboxes" with Windows 8.1, which with the amount of hatred Windows 8/8.1 has? Might as well have just flushed the Steamboxes down the john. After taking a bath like that you can bet your last nickel that Gabe will NOT be getting any more custom hardware, Linux users simply do not buy enough games, hell most will refuse to support Steam simply because its DRM, so the growth in that market is practically flatline, and finally no reason in hell for Windows users to switch to a limited subset of their Steam library when Win 8 is dead and Win 10 looks to be another Windows 7 level hit, so what advantage is there for Valve continuing to sink millions into SteamOS?
There just isn't any which is why they went from trumpeting SteamOS every chance they got to a trickle of low priority press releases, Valve knows MSFT isn't gonna push them off of Windows, hell since Gabe screamed bloody murder GFWL was shut down, the push to combine Windows and Xbox gaming has all but died, MSFT is just no longer a threat to Steam and Gabe knows it. Expect SteamOS to slowly wane until its nothing but a trickle, followed by a little press release a year or two quietly announcing SteamOS is gone, there just isn't a good reason for it to exist any longer.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No. I'm speaking of just Ubuntu on a desktop.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain