Gaming in Linux has basically undergone a revolution in the last 18 months. It's now possible to pretty much play any game under the sun using Proton (Valve's homebrew Wine + DXVK) or Lutris (Wine manager and installation script repository).
The only trouble is games with anti-cheat, which rules out a lot of online games including Fortnite, PUBG and others.
You do realise that Proton and similar technologies decrease the incentive for developers to port their game to Linux?
Why bother porting it when you can count on someone fixing it for you.
As for playing any game under the sun. No it doesn't. A lot of things fail and don't work quite right. Also a lot of mods don't work which is half the reason to play games on PC.
There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games...
The only practical way to break that vicious circle was the emulation option. Linux gamers play on emulation, but appreciate native ports and form the (initial) buyer pool for Linux games.
So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone.
> There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games...
There isn't much of a gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number of people who like to play PC games and really care about Open Source I would wager isn't very many.
> So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone.
Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots. Some people have spoken about some GPU pass-through nonsense with a VMWare which just seems like a faff.
It just easier to buy a drive, slap Windows on it and Steam and be done with it. Until it is easier and more reliable with my whole catalogue I will be sticking with Windows.
>There isn't much of a [Linux] gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number...
It doesn't surprise me at all. That number would have been zero without emulation like wine/Proton though.
> Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots.
As for myself, I don't play a lot, but a Linux version (native or emulated) plays a big role in deciding which games to buy when I do. It's not due to 'Open Source' reasons though.
Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly.
> Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly.
It is odd. I run Windows at work and the machine rarely gets rebooted. No problems what-so-ever. I run a Windows at home and in my Office (I do a lot of SQL SERVER and .NET dev), I rarely have crashes (once or twice a year). I work in a very large office with many other developers and the machines run fine for years on end.
Yet when someone is complaining about Windows on the internet and they like Linux it always has thousands of updates and they need to reinstall the whole OS to play one game. Odd how that comes about. I don't know quite how people manage it. Yet I use the same windows installation for half a decade with almost no problems. It almost sounds like it is operator error.
I run Windows at $WORK too, and it runs fine (there were minor issues which would probably have been worse on Linux). Also much of my work is with the MS stack, which is pretty fine too.
It's just I have little use for it at home, so I run and upgrade it rarely. It turns out upgrading from the nearly oldest Windows 10 build to the latest (at the time) crashed the upgrade process on my setup. This is hardly a regular process - I am sure 99% of people upgrade more regularly, and do not skip as many builds.
It's a cycle too, I guess. The less I use Windows the more upgrades the system accurres which makes me dread turning it on more....
> It doesn't surprise me at all. That number would have been zero without emulation like wine/Proton though.
No it wouldn't - there would still be people who like playing games and use Linux even if they couldn't play those games under Linux. Proton doesn't add anything to that.
These people would have had to make the effort to get another system - Windows or a console, at which point most of them would have little reason to bother with Linux gaming.
Under SteamPlay, any game played using proton counts as a Linux sale. Therefore from a developer point of view Linux sales are getting more visibility and it becomes more attractive (or more justifiable) to invest in Linux development and maintenance.
It like you didn't read my comment. If I could count on customers or Valve just fixing it with a wrapper for me, why bother making a Linux version at all? You wouldn't.
I read your comment. I just think that a large number of Linux sales is seen as a large 'pie'. I can't imagine that if there are 20-30% Linux sales that many will be thinking "Well most of those are Proton, we don't have to do anything to keep support up there!". They will be thinking "20-30% of our sales are Linux and we're beholden to the tech debt of one of Valve's vanity projects and the effort of one volunteer who has just burned out and put his project into maintenance mode? We need to take control! We need official Linux support".
Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths. I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem.
> I read your comment. I just think that a large number of Linux sales is seen as a large 'pie'. I can't imagine that if there are 20-30% Linux sales that many will be thinking "Well most of those are Proton, we don't have to do anything to keep support up there!". They will be thinking "20-30% of our sales are Linux and we're beholden to the tech debt of one of Valve's vanity projects and the effort of one volunteer who has just burned out and put his project into maintenance mode? We need to take control! We need official Linux support".
But there isn't 20%-30% of the sales are Linux. It is a literally a 1%. It is very niche.
> Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths.
I am sorry that basic facts make you angry, your feelings are your own responsibility. I've been using Linux now for about 20 years. There was Cedega before proton (remember them?) . While the desktop situation is now okay e.g. I can normally get something serviceable without the headaches of the past. Generally everything is still a mess. Jaron Lanier in his book "You are not a gadget" explains why this will always be the case. Open source anything is very much like herding cats.
> I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem.
There no evidence that there is a large player base for this Linux first platform. Many companies have tried. A lot of Linux users in the past used (look at older phpBB forums such as JustLinux and LinuxForums) that constantly to boast about "not paying for software".
> I've been using Linux now for about 20 years. There was Cedega before proton (remember them?) . While the desktop situation is now okay e.g. I can normally get something serviceable without the headaches of the past. Generally everything is still a mess. Jaron Lanier in his book "You are not a gadget" explains why this will always be the case. Open source anything is very much like herding cats.
Sure, I can get behind this. I do, however, think that you're underestimating how much bad will Microsoft is building with its userbase these days. Sure, I don't think we're headed for 20-30%, but I do think there is a higher proportion of tech savvy users who, all else being equal (granted, big if), would prefer something like Linux that they will have control over. MS have pulled some amazingly ballsy moves with their latest iterations that have absolutely not been present in previous incarnations. Forced updates, ads, gaslighting Cortana setting, re-appearing icons, mandatory new apps, telemetry, forced Windows accounts, Candy Crush ads, lock screen ads - the list continues. What's more is that previous frustrations (blue screen of death) were a limit of the technology. All of the aforementioned are deliberate and arguably cynical decisions from MS. This makes a certain percentage of the population angry, and while the main playerbase is made up of those who are willing to make a compromise, if we make the compromise more attractive then you WILL see higher users. This time is different.
>There no evidence that there is a large player base for this Linux first platform. Many companies have tried. A lot of Linux users in the past used (look at older phpBB forums such as JustLinux and LinuxForums) that constantly to boast about "not paying for software".
Apart from the countless reports being made to ProtonDB? Or the 120k subscribers to the Linux_gaming subreddit? Or the increasing Linux Steam Survey stats? There is evidence.
>But there isn't 20%-30% of the sales are Linux. It is a literally a 1%. It is very niche.
It's like you didn't read my comment.
>I am sorry that basic facts make you angry, your feelings are your own responsibility.
> I do, however, think that you're underestimating how much bad will Microsoft is building with its userbase these days. Sure, I don't think we're headed for 20-30%, but I do think there is a higher proportion of tech savvy users who, all else being equal (granted, big if), would prefer something like Linux that they will have control over. MS have pulled some amazingly ballsy moves with their latest iterations that have absolutely not been present in previous incarnations. Forced updates, ads, gaslighting Cortana setting, re-appearing icons, mandatory new apps, telemetry, forced Windows accounts, Candy Crush ads, lock screen ads - the list continues. What's more is that previous frustrations (blue screen of death) were a limit of the technology. All of the aforementioned are deliberate and arguably cynical decisions from MS. This makes a certain percentage of the population angry, and while the main playerbase is made up of those who are willing to make a compromise, if we make the compromise more attractive then you WILL see higher users. This time is different.
While I agree that is all garbage a lot of it is more of a minor annoyance rather and almost all of it can
> Apart from the countless reports being made to ProtonDB? Or the 120k subscribers to the Linux_gaming subreddit? Or the increasing Linux Steam Survey stats? There is evidence.
120k vs how many PC gamers? Doing a cursory search put the number near about 1 billion. There is at least about 2 orders of magnitude between the two.
Whether I am one or not doesn't change the fact that it is up to you whether it upsets you. I haven't gone out of my way to upset anyone. I've just argued my point.
>While I agree that is all garbage a lot of it is more of a minor annoyance rather and almost all of it can [be solved with minor config/tweaking?]
It builds. It's the sort of negligence that leads to bubbles bursting or coup d'etats. Or mass migrations from Zynga games. It just needs for the alternative to be viable.
>120k vs how many PC gamers? Doing a cursory search put the number near about 1 billion. There is at least about 2 orders of magnitude between the two.
PC gaming has been viable for 30 years. Linux gaming for 18 months and it still missing some key titles. If we get Fortnite and PUBG, we will have more.
>Whether I am one or not doesn't change the fact that it is up to you whether it upsets you. I haven't gone out of my way to upset anyone. I've just argued my point.
True. I do think you are someone who takes great pride in their arguments, the infallibility of their logic and drawing on what is quite clearly a great breadth of both personal and professional experience, however I feel that this is somewhat undermined by your rhetoric, your tone and your phrasing. Not terrible in and of themselves, but I think it has lead to blind spots that has meant this encounter has taken the path it has.
If the game works without problems and is performant I don't particularly care if it's native or Wine.
It would be nice if more games shipped in some type of officially-supported wrapper, but that's basically where Valve is going anyway with Proton. (I just wish it wasn't tied to Steam, because I'm the one person who dislikes using Steam.)
This is different than for native applications, where the UI inconsistency Wine introduces can be quite annoying.
Guess not