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Valve Seems To Be Working On Tools To Get Windows Games Running On Linux (arstechnica.com)
"Valve appears to be working on a set of 'compatibility tools,' called Steam Play, that would allow at least some Windows-based titles to run on Linux-based SteamOS systems," writes Kyle Orland from Ars Technica. From the report: Yesterday, Reddit users noticed that Steam's GUI files (as captured by SteamDB's Steam Tracker) include a hidden section with unused text related to the unannounced Steam Play system. According to that text, "Steam Play will automatically install compatibility tools that allow you to play games from your library that were built for other operating systems." Other unused text in the that GUI file suggests Steam Play will offer official compatibility with "supported tiles" while also letting users test compatibility for "games in your library that have not been verified with a supported compatibility tool." That latter use comes with a warning that "this may not work as expected, and can cause issues with your games, including crashes and breaking save games."
...2018 is the Year of Linux on Desktop!
Compatibility Mode? It's called OpenGL or Vulkan. Tell Microsoft to ditch DirectX; it's unnecessary and makes crap like this necessary. If people don't like the features of OpenGL or Vulkan you can always hop on the advisory board and get things changed.
-SaNo
The doom and gloom predictions of the Windows Store inserting itself between users and the internet at large seem more and more prescient every day.
actually really currious which card and what time, every radeon I've tried in the last 4 years seems to go full compatibility off the bat.
Somebody should send Valve a bottle of Wine.
deal with it and be done.
Which ones have you tried that worked?
I have ran and finished on Linux several WIndows only games, using Wine. Wine can be very useful, but in my experience, you lose a big amount of time just testing different wine versions and playing with configuration (Windows version, DLL overrides, runtimes, etc.).
So, even if it is only something like PlayOnLinux on steroids, managing different Wine versions and with scripts automating its usage, it could be good if Valve uses a decent amount of its resources to testing. This could avoid the end users to waste lots of time.
BUT, after writing this, I do now think this will be the case. Something like DOSBox, SCUMMVM and that kind of wrappers seem more feasible.
They should charge a 15% commission for all games launched on that OS, down from their normal 30%.
I wonder if they're starting from scratch, or working from the Wine code base. I'd hope the latter, and I'd hope they'd talk with groups like Codeweavers who've been doing this for a while.
#DeleteChrome
A shame that there will probably never be an official Half-Life 3 considering that Half-Life is what originally launched the Steam platform.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
4830 6850 7850 rx580
The last 4 ati cards I owned, all working just fine with just mesa and radeon drivers. Some problems with atis official drivers though.. perhaps the other AC only tried those? I gave up on those with the 7850
this would be enough to finally get me to stop using Windows.
I play a lot of PC games, windows is a must for this.
Hey how about getting your own shit to work with Linux before worrying about third party stuff.
Hello Vive? I'd love to use you on linux. Fuck sake.
The big reason people should use Linux is to free themselves from proprietary closed source OS that is designed to take away your freedom. You will notice that while SteamOS claims to be open source, actually the critical parts of it like the client, are closed source. I am all for Windows compatibility as a way for people transition away from windows while taking their apps with them. However the compatibility layer needs to be able to work on fully open source OSs otherwise people would just be giving up one proprietary OS with vendor lock in for another proprietary OS with vendor lock in. You should not have to use a particular Linux distro to be able to benefit from Windows compatibility. Wine is the best solution since it is open source. People need to work on making that better rather than fragmenting with another closed source platform.
and be done with it for petes sake.
will that push real Linux or just compile time wrappers / dev provided wine installs?
Couldn't even get the official drivers to work on the latest installs.
Apparently that is deprecated. Or something.
OS/2 was so good with windows that few true os/2 apps where made and then MS started to mess up OS/2 With all of the win32/s updates.
Games need to move away from wrappers in Linux.
Does anyone still care?
I cared in 1998 when windows was unstable and unreliable. Windows 10 runs rock solid for steam gaming, what problem are we solving here? I guess freeing people from the evil of Microsoft is an admirable goal, but it all seems so early 2000s
All i want is to run all my games seamlessly without messing around with wrappers or virtual machines or GPU passthrough or having to draw a summoning spell in blood on my monitor.
I don't to spend 4 hours googling or needing 2 GPUs or a different config file for every single game or losing a huge chunk of FPS from virtualisation (and needing twice the amount of stupidly expensive RAM) or getting banned because the anti-cheat engine got confused.
I don't want to dual boot, hell half the time i forget what i was doing in the time it takes my web browser to open let alone for a full reboot.
It's a lot to ask i know but gaming is stopping linux going mainstream.
It did actually work fairly decent, I played Civ4 that way IIRC (or was it Civ5 before the Linux port was available).
I'm still fairly wet-behind-the-ears when it comes to Linux (learning curve, gentoomen) but would the above be a viable path?
Yeah, I won't touch ATI again. Too much pain with their terrible support.
Nvidia has been a long series of wet dreams. It's just lovely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The only reason I use windows is for games.
But windows 7 will be leaving extended support in a few years, and the rumor is that Microsoft plans to charge a subscription fee for windows.
If true, the ability to play my games on Linux is welcome news, even if it involves some closed source code.
Why does nobody know about this?
Unity engine + game editor for Linux
Really slick 2D/3D game editor, nice and stable, great tutorials as far as they go (not very far), great demo projects, free asset packs, fair licensing. Not bad at all for $0.00. Current version is in the last blog entry. For some reason, not linked from their ports page, why? This one is really buried deep in the internet, but it's awesome.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
DirectX is more then just video!
how is sound in linux?
Directx had an network communication library (not really an issue now days)
How well do joysticks work in Linux?
I still can't get Linux to install and run with accelerated graphics on my Radeon card.
This post is a bit less than credible given that it does mention any specific Radeon model. My experience with Radeon cards is much different: every one I have (more than four) works flawlessly, especially with the open source drivers. You do need to install the card firmware package, without that they kinda work as VGA only, but no acceleration, low resolution, sucks. But works well enough to boot to KDE and figure out the bit about the firmware in comfort.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9439-QHKN-1308
Sounds to me like binaries compiled for the target platform, not a wine-like environment.
You need to install the card firmware, probably.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Kind of a clumsy troll.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The only thing keeping me from purging the last Windows machines from my family are two boxes running World of Warcraft. The company has zero interest in a Linux client and I have zero interest in logging in and fighting with updates every time they decide to tinker around on their game launcher.
Linux isn't going away, don't worry. It is very apparent that Valve continues solidly behind Linux gaming. Whatever way a game runs on Linux is fine with me, including running Windows in a VM. If there was a game I really cared about and that was the only way, then I would do it, because better than booting Windows, by far. But there is no such game so I thankfully don't need to have my face rubbed in all the things that made me run screaming away from Windows in the first place.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
True, but I recall other issues: its hardware compatibility was rather limited, and its marketing absolutely sucked.
I mean, holy shit. IBM was always so bad at reaching home users. For example, watch these ads touting the same feature, multitasking: OS/2 and Win95. What do you get from them? From the visuals, the music, the voiceover -- what do they make you feel? To me, the former makes it seem bureaucratic, unexciting, work stuff. But the latter makes it seem exciting, whimsical, empowering, fun! Whoever produced that ad nailed it.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Joysticks work great in Linux. I have a fancy, high end one with a bazillion buttons and thumb-sticks and sliders, and it worked out of the box without installing anything. I didn't have to touch a driver. Simply plug-in and go.
That was my experience too with an older, mid-range stick.
The new Radeons are flawless on open source drivers.
Im running Fallout4 on dxvk/wine. (through lutris) at near native speeds on high @1080p. This is with the open source driver stack. It's really impressive.
I still can't get Linux to install and run with accelerated graphics on my Radeon card.
This post is a bit less than credible given that it does mention any specific Radeon model.
Why? You saying that there's something different about some Radeon models that would matter? That's not helping the case for Linux. As I said, they promised ease, compatibility and a lot more.
Or are you just upset that I'm not bothering recounting details beyond the most cursory? I know what I experienced, it was a pain for me. Been so long, I can't recall the specific details. Don't believe me? That just convinces me you don't want to admit there's a problem.
My experience with Radeon cards is much different: every one I have (more than four) works flawlessly, especially with the open source drivers.
Another thing that's not helping your credibility, but Linux installed. Got janky non-accelerated performance. Or even non-working graphics at all so it just locked up (not sure I recall which distro that was with, maybe Ubuntu or Mint). Tried to find solutions. Found a hodge-podge of them, none of which worked. Yes, that included the firmware, which was specifically identified to install on at least one even before starting up. Still was a plotz.
Sorry, but it's still too annoying to use Linux. Valve should stop wasting their time. Finish Half-Life 4 or something.
Besides this, I'm not mentioning the wackiness of trying to get an iMac G3 to work, but that isn't something I expect much, and I wouldn't believe Valve would touch it at all. That's more recent though.
Why? You saying that there's something different about some Radeon models that would matter?
No. I'm saying that is unusual for a person with an honest hardware problem not to say exactly what hardware it is, as opposed to an entire brand. Makes the post look a lot like a troll.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Sorry, but it's still too annoying to use Linux. Valve should stop wasting their time. Finish Half-Life 4 or something.
You are a troll, and a bad one. The symptoms you describe are consistent with the card firmware not being loaded. But you never experienced this yourself, you just googled for some random Radeon hardware issue, and cut and pasted.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The client is just a CDN for your content you've paid for and a unified chat client that works across all your games and a launcher that will handle applying the appropriate wine settings per game that you're trying to play.
The new Radeons are flawless on open source drivers.
I'm fine with the performance I have now on Windows. Not going to buy a new graphics card just to run Linux with accelerated graphics, even if I were to believe your promises.
No. I'm saying that is unusual for a person with an honest hardware problem not to say exactly what hardware it is, as opposed to an entire brand. Makes the post look a lot like a troll.
Seems to me that you're not giving me a reason to identify the graphics card beyond your own desire to make a character judgment.
But since I know I had legitimately had problems, got frustrated with a lack of solutions(or rather with how I found a multitude without answers) , I'm more inclined to write you off.
That, and I really don't think it should matter that I have a 7870 LE. And you said it doesn't. Except for your desire to cast aspersions.
Great job you're doing.
Yes, I tried that install step, or chose the option in the install.
It was rather hard to miss.
Sure, I totally clicked on the little box to load the nonfree drivers like it asked, and it didn't work.
Fine, then the installer for the firmware was broken.
Believe it or not, I had a real problem trying to get accelerated graphics to work with my Radeon card on Linux, and instead of even admitting a person might have a genuine problem, you resentfully declare your derision and storm off in a huff.
That's not a mark in your favor. Or Linux's.
Here's a hint, I'm not bothering with recalling which Distros didn't even gracefully go to the software drivers. That was even more of a bother.
and I really don't think it should matter that I have a 7870 LE.
Interesting fantasy land you live in, where hardware details don't matter. Also interesting how you come in throwing around insults without having done a bit of research yourself.
The 7870 LE s an oddball using the Tahiti chipset instead of the more popular and well supported Pitcairn chipset. Bugzilla: Tahiti LE: GFX block is not functional, CP is okay
It seems, some people got it working, but if it were mine I would just junk that 2012 card. If you want something really minimal, HD 6450 is perfectly servicable, and fanless. If you want something powerful but cheap, RX 400 series or RX 500. That particular card is, unfortunately, a bit of an orphan. It happens.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Interesting fantasy land you live in, where hardware details don't matter.
I gave you what I considered sufficient detail. Radeon card. Should have been enough. You didn't even want to claim there are ones that might have problems.
Instead? You just came up with character attacks as your reasoning.
Also interesting how you come in throwing around insults .
You're the one who has been throwing around insults, me? I criticized your specific conduct without resorting to the use of the word troll. Aside for back in time, more than two decades ago, I actually remember when I criticized somebody else who threw that word around(said it was tiresome), they responded with an explanation of the term, and said it wasn't related to the term referring to the fictional creature. They didn't grasp how I would have found their usage less offensive if it had been the more mythological.
You should probably learn to not use it.
It would benefit you.
without having done a bit of research yourself.
But I did the research, remember I already stated I looked for solutions. You just didn't want to believe it. You didn't want to believe I had a problem. Because you were more interested in attacking people for being a troll.
You should really look more closely at your own behavior.
The 7870 LE s an oddball using the Tahiti chipset instead of the more popular and well supported Pitcairn chipset. Bugzilla: Tahiti LE: GFX block is not functional, CP is okay
It seems, some people got it working, but if it were mine I would just junk that 2012 card. If you want something really minimal, HD 6450 is perfectly servicable, and fanless. If you want something powerful but cheap, RX 400 series or RX 500.
You do realize that suggestion is even less palatable, right? Especially a 6450. Damn, that's suggesting I downgrade.
That's a little offensive. I'd rather stick with VirtualBox Linux than that.
That particular card is, unfortunately, a bit of an orphan. It happens.
And yet it still works in Windows 10. I believe it worked back in the 2013-ish time frame when the aforementioned ATI drivers were around. But...promises broken.
You may want to examine your own approach.
Wow, you have attitude issues. Bye.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Even if valve dropped their rate the publishers would just retain the saving. Just look at the prices of games on uplay and rockstar for example. On the publisher's own webstore where they dont have to pay 30% to valve, the prices are the same.
On my last AMD/ATI computer the graphics worked for a couple of years and then AMD dropped all support to chase something shinier and I was thereafter stuck on open source drivers with no hardware acceleration. Hardware vendors can be nasty like that. The only reason it doesn't affect you on Windows is that you keep on running your old version of Windows until you replace the PC whereas you keep your Linux up to date.
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I usually buy Nvidia cards and their official drivers for Linux work well. When I bought an ATI card it took me a while to find out their official drivers aren't very good and you're better off with the open source drivers.
You don't have to run old versions of Windows, you can just use old graphics cards. The only time I've ever seen that not work was really old dual asic cards, where windows nt didn't support the underlying tech so one of the high end ati cards got dropped at the windows 98/2000 transition.
You can still use drivers from 2005 in windows 10, because Microsoft doesn't keep changing the kernel driver API for no reason. Why can't people figure out a stable api and xorg interface? It's nuts
As I remember it, OS/2 was better windows than windows.
Or at least, it was better dos than dos; developing dos software under os/2 was great, because when you messed up, you didn't need to reboot the whole machine.
Wine (and PlayOnLinux alongside it) really have made huge progress in the last decade. It should be trivial for Steam to provide 'bottling' scripts at this stage.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
god bless gaben!
Yes, I have issues with your attittude, and I've specifically identified them so you can review your conduct and examine them for reference on improving your behavior.
Think of it as a bug report. Now try reconsidering your responses.
That surprises me. Takes forever to configure games to properly recognise mine in Windows.
On my last AMD/ATI computer the graphics worked for a couple of years and then AMD dropped all support to chase something shinier and I was thereafter stuck on open source drivers with no hardware acceleration. Hardware vendors can be nasty like that.
And yet that was why I was told "open source" was so great since I would not be beholden to proprietary drivers.
Yet here I am getting hit by it, and by yet another Linux twerp yelling at me to buy new hardware to deal with a software issue. Who probably won't even recognize their attitude problem either.
I'll grant you haven't been hostile yourself, but you're just...mistaken.
The only reason it doesn't affect you on Windows is that you keep on running your old version of Windows until you replace the PC whereas you keep your Linux up to date.
And yet I'm running the latest Windows rather than the one that came with the machine. I believe the other Anonymous Coward is offering a more correct assessment than yours.
Linux, or rather the people at X, changed something and I am apparently still left hanging.
WAAAA Windows has made me so stupid I dont even know how to use my own computer OR google!! WAAA.
Thats what you look like right now. Learn to use your hardware or turn your "nerd" card in at the door.
Do you realize how condescending you sound? That's never gonna change anyone. It's only going to inflame the situation.
If your desktop environment uses the GTK+ library, an application using Wine is no less "native" than an application using Qt.
But then you're not only paying to license an additional operating system every few years, as PixetaledPikachu pointed out, but also paying for more RAM in your PC in order to hold two operating systems at once while a game or Windows Update is running. Recall that DRAM prices have trended upward at times, doubling over the course of 2017. You're also starting the Windows VM in a cron job so that Windows can check for security updates without having to do so during your game.
Or you could just stop buying stupid gimmicks. VR is the modern lightgun.
And some people love their Duck Hunt so much that they cook up homemade solutions involving a Wii Remote, an Arduino MCU kit, and a Raspberry Pi single-board computer to force a Zapper to work with a modern TV. See "Tricking Duck Hunt to See A Modern LCD TV as CRT" by Jenny List.
You are confusing the steam client application as being part of the OS, but it is just an application program.
From the point of view of Linux proper, which is a kernel, your desktop environment is an application program. X.Org X11 is an application program. Even sysvinit or systemd is an application program. For the purpose of discussion, where do you draw a line between userspace system software and what a user would think of as an application?
It could be because last time X11/Linux users heard of the "Unity" brand, it was Ubuntu 11.10 forcing GNOME 2 users to switch to the similarly named yet unrelated Un(usabil)ity desktop environment, or Ubuntu 18.04 finally dispensing with it after Canonical realized that users had fled to MATE, Cinnamon, or Xfce.
The 7870 LE s an oddball using the Tahiti chipset instead of the more popular and well supported Pitcairn chipset.
Let me try to rephrase my understanding of the AC's point: The mere fact that poorly supported oddballs exist tarnishes the Radeon brand as a whole. It's like Intel GMA 500 being the oddball for the otherwise general advice prior to Sandy/Ivy Bridge of "so long as all you need is OpenGL 1.x, Intel GMA works well under Linux."
Linux users are already running windows steam on linux using wine.
"When I bought an ATI card", so twelve years ago you had an issue with your video drivers under Linux. Got it.
Well, yes, the DirectX pieces and parts are mapped to equivalent pieces and parts of SDL (now SDL2) libraries. I think it sands for Simple DirectMedia Layer, and has been around since the early 2000s at least. I would have gone with Best Direct Supplementary MediaLayer libraries.
It seems to me that if you're enough of a serious gamer to spend hundreds of dollars on a new video card every year, then the cost of Windows is a non-issue. And you're probably more interested in having a game "just work" than fiddling around with various configuration settings to make it work on an OS other than the one said game has been designed for.
Someone show me a Venn diagram - the intersection's gotta be a tiny area. Valve must employ some people who *really* have an anti-Microsoft hard-on to spend resources trying to cater to that market.
Sorry but the days of me rebooting to go into another OS are over. Long ago.
If I can't virtualise you, or I can't emulate you, then I'm not going to reboot into you. For a start it's a pain-in-the-arse and needs all kinds of work to stay like that through Windows kernel updates etc. I tired of fighting stuff like that back in the days of Windows not recognising EXT2 partitions.
Nowadays, virtualisation is here. If I want to run games at the extreme edge of my computer's abilities, I'd run Windows as the base OS and virtualise whatever else I need on top of it. Truth is, I don't need to bother. A virtualised GPU of any decent spec will play every Steam game on my account (over 1000) to my satisfaction.
Anything old enough to emulate / WINE will certainly work so much better in a virtualised environment with GPU passthrough.
Reboots just shouldn't be happening nowadays. Especially not just to play a game.
Sorry, but my machine reboots in precisely two instances - when the battery fails and it doesn't get a chance to shutdown (it's an old machine, it really needs a new battery), and when I genuinely think there's a valid reason that an installation of new software would require a reboot (e.g. VMWare hypervisor upgrades).
Anything else, I'm not going to reboot for. Certainly not a game. Your game doesn't work in a VM environment or on my platform? Shame. Maybe I'll buy it in a few years time when you wake up.
Hell, I tried once and I ran the latest version of MacOS in a VM with a spec equivalent to a Mac allocated to it, and it ran SMOOTHER than a damn Mac, while my Windows and Linux stuff was all in the background on the same processors.
When will we have a 64-bit client? Steam is right now the only 32-bit program I have running on my Linux system. It's annoying having to install a bing bunch of libraries for just one program.
Maybe Valve could fix Issue #1040 from 2013 once and for all (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/1040). The client wants to manage all aspects of the window instead of letting the window manager do it. The practical result is that the Steam client fights with the window manager and semi-unpredictably makes itself unusable or infuriating. There's really no excuse for this.
Do you realize how condescending you sound? That's never gonna change anyone. It's only going to inflame the situation.
Yes, that's the point I was making, their attitude was simply unconvincing, and merely inflaming the situation. That's why I have a problem with it.
Or perhaps you might want me to try another approach on my own? Fine, try this:
Do you realize how condescending you sound? That's never gonna change anyone. It's only going to inflame the situation.
Did you ever think to ask that of HighDude702 who posted this, an hour before you:
WAAAA Windows has made me so stupid I dont even know how to use my own computer OR google!! WAAA.
Thats what you look like right now. Learn to use your hardware or turn your "nerd" card in at the door.
Or did you look at all the posts by Tough Love deriding my complaints as trolling? He was quite frequently slinging that word around. I'd quote those, but you can find them yourself. That isn't even getting into his blather about installing the firmware, as if I missed that obvious step, and suddenly he had a miracle solution.
So yes, I think I do have reasons to look at them with disdain, because you know what I'm complaining about? The attitude they presented. You don't seem to have noticed their behavior at all.
Why is that? Why did you choose to reply to me, and not offer one word of criticism towards them? Did you think you would change anyone, or did you not realize you are simply inflaming the situation further with your own chosen responses?
At least I admit I do look upon down you, and these others with the contempt I think you deserve due to your own actions.
Change your own approach first. Or get others to change theirs. Then maybe I won't be so critical of them and you for ignoring them.
Otherwise? Yes, I was trying to burn off his fires, like a firefighter sending a blaze to counter another one. I tried being gentle. All I got was a tantrum. Followed by your own patronizing condescension.
At least somebody like tepples tried a more neutral approach, you should have adopted that approach.
I totally clicked on the little box to load the nonfree drivers like it asked, and it didn't work.
For anybody else who got stuck with a 7870 LE GPU (really a 7900 series chipset) you need the firmware, but the (proprietary, obsolete) fglrx driver is known not to support this GPUt. Some people got it to work with radeon driver, not sure about the amdgpu driver. But really, don't bother, just upgrade to a better card. RX 480 is a nice cheapo upgrade, 580 is fine, both still highly respectable GPUs.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I see, the advice is to just replace my working video card to get Linux to work adequately. That's not a pretty solution.
It's prettier than you. And of course you know that this card is also a PITA on Windows. If you want to keep fiddling with it then suit yourself, but quit whining about it, thanks bye.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I haven't had any problems with my graphics card. Well, except the time I accidentally uninstalled the USB drivers, but fortunately the use of Remote Desktop worked around that.
I get it though, you find yourself forced to confront the reality of my problem, after making numerous hostile remarks, which leads you to come up with excuses for why your proffered solution is an acceptable burden to impose on me.
No, thank you, I'd rather you spare me from well, you.
You must have never worked in tech support. You're lucky if you get a brand.
You must have never worked in tech support. You're lucky if you get a brand.
Indeed, a lot of people don't understand computers enough to answer what to others might seem basic and obvious questions.