I think Proton is the smartest thing Valve has ever done. Thanks to that, Steam is going to get about 90% of all the Windows gamers switching over to Linux.
I so very much hope that the Linux gaming effect increases. Not only for gaming, but for the productivity world. If development of these ‘compatibility layers’ (Wikipedia) like Proton, Wine improves and maybe win-native software (thinking of CAD in particular) can be made working reliably on Linux using these packages, one or the other big player might adapt. That would be a much cheaper way of expanding the software’s range than developing and maintaining a native Linux port…
Looks like GoL has a plot over time. Linux adoption is starting to hockey stick, definitely above linear growth, this is getting exciting! I would guess, if it hits somewhere around 5-10% and keeps this hockey stick shape, we’ll really start to see the game industry justify giving it more attention.
This will come with both good and bad, I expect it’s only a matter of time before some game tries a native kernel level anti-cheat, aka root kit, on Linux.
One of my old boxes is still win7. I’m never upgrading it and I keep it as a media thingo. I have an xp box in the garage somewhere, but I may have cannibalized the parts at some point. I’m pretty sure it works.
He actually pulled together stats for it all, and it was 5.8% sales making 38% of the big reports, which tended to be high quality.
So from his experience as an independent game dev, he said it was worth it just for the QA you get out of it.
I think a lot of the libraries and tooling being updated to be more platform agnostic helps too. It’s not “press button to support Linux”, but it’s getting a lot easier than needing to rewrite your engine for every platform.
And that’s the most naïve way of looking at it. With more data you may be able to see if Linux users favour certain genres of games over others, so the number may be a lot higher than 2% for your game in particular.
I’m surprised Arch is that high compared to other distros.
Also interesting that people are actually switching to windows 11, everyone I know is staying on win10 as long as possible because they’re more used to the interface.
One of the things that got me to change my gaming desktop from Mint to Arch was the fact that you get the cutting-edge version of everything; kernel and amdgpu being the most important, but also getting the latest version of Lutris and things is nice too. Brought me from “usually about 50 fps outdoors in Elden Ring” to “usually about 60 fps” on the same machine.
Makes sense for a gaming machine to only include the services you actually want, which Arch enables. Supports my hardware better too - my audio gear works perfectly in Pipewire but is ropey in ALSA, so rather than “install Mint -> install Pipewire -> remove ALSA -> hope ALSA is gone”, the sequence is “install Arch -> install Pipewire”, which make more sense.
Other cutting-edge rolling release distros are available, of course, but once you learn Arch, it makes a lot of sense for gaming.
AUR is reposnsible for the vast majority of -Syu into softbricks, and is little better than downloading random binaries (because you literally are most of the time)
That’s what timeshift and btrfs is for! Really though it takes like ten seconds to roll back and each snapshot only takes like 40mb. There’s a pacman hook to take a snapshot before updating.
AUR is just incredibly convenient for me. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to track anything down.
Due to the optimizations Windows 8.1 is my favorite Windows version. When I compared it to Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon on my old (now dead) laptop, it performed slightly faster. It also somehow beat Windows XP which is what that thing was made for. Although a part of that could have been that half of the drivers only worked in XP, so it had more to load.
Maybe if they properly called it Windows 9, it would have caught on. It was definitely different enough from 8.
Maybe if they properly called it Windows 9, it would have caught on.
“Windows 9” was a no-go due to lazy programmers. Could have gone with “Windows Nine” though, which would have brought the naming in line with “Xbox One”
Yup. Boot time and loading of system apps. 8.1 was basically instant while XP and Mint had slight delay. Not a big deal though, just something interesting for being Windows. After all, it was made for tablets.
I also put Windows 11 on it despite being unsupported. That was slower, but still OK-ish with SSD. Definitely nowhere near Linux Mint though. The background processes were just killing the CPU. Thankfully, thanks to being made in 2007 the cooler could easily take 100% CPU usage. However, it would hover around just 6% with network disconnected. Hmmm…
The CPU was Core 2 Duo T7500 upgraded from T7100. I got it on AliExpress for €1. It seems some people were using them for… making keychains? Anyway, they were sold as functional.
I wish laptop CPUs and GPUs were still upgradable. The GPU was GeForce 8600M.
I look at this and wonder
Why gog galaxy and epic client were ported to macos and linux users still didn’t get native game binaries from epic?
Edit:
I didn’t realize comments are formatted in markdown
I think Proton is the smartest thing Valve has ever done. Thanks to that, Steam is going to get about 90% of all the Windows gamers switching over to Linux.
I so very much hope that the Linux gaming effect increases. Not only for gaming, but for the productivity world. If development of these ‘compatibility layers’ (Wikipedia) like Proton, Wine improves and maybe win-native software (thinking of CAD in particular) can be made working reliably on Linux using these packages, one or the other big player might adapt. That would be a much cheaper way of expanding the software’s range than developing and maintaining a native Linux port…
… and maybe I am too naive.
noice
Looks like GoL has a plot over time. Linux adoption is starting to hockey stick, definitely above linear growth, this is getting exciting! I would guess, if it hits somewhere around 5-10% and keeps this hockey stick shape, we’ll really start to see the game industry justify giving it more attention.
This will come with both good and bad, I expect it’s only a matter of time before some game tries a native kernel level anti-cheat, aka root kit, on Linux.
Thanks for pointing that out! I made it into a shitty meme over at !linuxmemes@lemmy.world
https://feddit.nl/post/16112837
Impressed by all the folks on Win7 and 8.
Also surprised to see double the MacOS users
One of my old boxes is still win7. I’m never upgrading it and I keep it as a media thingo. I have an xp box in the garage somewhere, but I may have cannibalized the parts at some point. I’m pretty sure it works.
Mpd.
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It seems comedic but I would imagine when one in 50 of your users falls into a certain cohort you start to consider them in your designs.
There were some reports from game devs who said that the big reports from Linux users was worth it just for that.
https://playingtux.com/articles/developers-dv-rings-saturn-very-satisfied-bug-reports-linux-users?lang=en
He actually pulled together stats for it all, and it was 5.8% sales making 38% of the big reports, which tended to be high quality.
So from his experience as an independent game dev, he said it was worth it just for the QA you get out of it.
I think a lot of the libraries and tooling being updated to be more platform agnostic helps too. It’s not “press button to support Linux”, but it’s getting a lot easier than needing to rewrite your engine for every platform.
English speaking it’s a solid 5% now, so I’d say it’s one in twenty.
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And that’s the most naïve way of looking at it. With more data you may be able to see if Linux users favour certain genres of games over others, so the number may be a lot higher than 2% for your game in particular.
A lot of that is probably steam decks
Essentially Arch Linux graph minus something.
We. Love. To. See. It.
We can push for 5% I can feel it!
I’m surprised Arch is that high compared to other distros.
Also interesting that people are actually switching to windows 11, everyone I know is staying on win10 as long as possible because they’re more used to the interface.
SteamOS is Arch-based. Could be that.
One of the things that got me to change my gaming desktop from Mint to Arch was the fact that you get the cutting-edge version of everything; kernel and amdgpu being the most important, but also getting the latest version of Lutris and things is nice too. Brought me from “usually about 50 fps outdoors in Elden Ring” to “usually about 60 fps” on the same machine.
Makes sense for a gaming machine to only include the services you actually want, which Arch enables. Supports my hardware better too - my audio gear works perfectly in Pipewire but is ropey in ALSA, so rather than “install Mint -> install Pipewire -> remove ALSA -> hope ALSA is gone”, the sequence is “install Arch -> install Pipewire”, which make more sense.
Other cutting-edge rolling release distros are available, of course, but once you learn Arch, it makes a lot of sense for gaming.
Don’t forget the AUR. It’s so much easier to use yay than it is to go to GitHub to manually check for updates/download/install a deb or rpm file.
AUR is reposnsible for the vast majority of -Syu into softbricks, and is little better than downloading random binaries (because you literally are most of the time)
That’s what timeshift and btrfs is for! Really though it takes like ten seconds to roll back and each snapshot only takes like 40mb. There’s a pacman hook to take a snapshot before updating.
AUR is just incredibly convenient for me. I don’t have to think about it, I don’t have to track anything down.
BTW: ALSA is never gone. It’s the kernel sound driver. And Pipewire is more or less just a helper. But underneath it all it’s still ALSA.
I’m doing my part.
There is one dude with a Windows 8 laptop that turns it on once per month just to take this survey.
*8.1
Due to the optimizations Windows 8.1 is my favorite Windows version. When I compared it to Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon on my old (now dead) laptop, it performed slightly faster. It also somehow beat Windows XP which is what that thing was made for. Although a part of that could have been that half of the drivers only worked in XP, so it had more to load.
Maybe if they properly called it Windows 9, it would have caught on. It was definitely different enough from 8.
“Windows 9” was a no-go due to lazy programmers. Could have gone with “Windows Nine” though, which would have brought the naming in line with “Xbox One”
What does “perform slightly faster” mean? Boot time? App loading? CPU perf?
Yup. Boot time and loading of system apps. 8.1 was basically instant while XP and Mint had slight delay. Not a big deal though, just something interesting for being Windows. After all, it was made for tablets.
I also put Windows 11 on it despite being unsupported. That was slower, but still OK-ish with SSD. Definitely nowhere near Linux Mint though. The background processes were just killing the CPU. Thankfully, thanks to being made in 2007 the cooler could easily take 100% CPU usage. However, it would hover around just 6% with network disconnected. Hmmm…
The CPU was Core 2 Duo T7500 upgraded from T7100. I got it on AliExpress for €1. It seems some people were using them for… making keychains? Anyway, they were sold as functional.
I wish laptop CPUs and GPUs were still upgradable. The GPU was GeForce 8600M.