And even if linux desktops do have a higher market share than mac, I would think Mac users in general will probably have a higher 'disposable income' to spend on stuff like Elite.
ELITE on LINUX Please.
- Thread starter ShogunToyo
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And even if linux desktops do have a higher market share than mac, I would think Mac users in general will probably have a higher 'disposable income' to spend on stuff like Elite.
Right now, Gartner are putting linux at less than 2% market share on the Desktop.
It is *much* higher if Android is taken into account.
I run windows for one purpose and one purpose only, the reader can figure that one out. But I think the big problem is not porting the games to the platform, it is the ancillary software that goes along with it. Track IR, ShadowPlay for the video casters, teamspeak (yes I know TS has a linux client, so does mumble for that matter, but the experience with them on linux is not as seamless as it is on Windows), joystick drivers and so on.
Similarly to Dash above, I suspect that Linux ports of most games will be dependent on a standard, consistent platform to deliver them on, because that is what is missing right now.
Right now, there are way too many potential linux platforms that are derivatives of another, that is in turn a derivative of yet another platform, trying to code for such a moving target in the kernel would be nothing short of Lovecraftian horror for the devs.
For those that might care a shortlist of issues would be:
Which framebuffer to target? Kernel Frame Buffer / X11 / Wayland / Mir!?
Which GFX target? OpenGL / DriectX via WINE or similar?
Which toolkit to target? QT / GTK / E / if they even went with a standard toolkit that is.
Which Platform to target Ubuntu derivatives / Canonical Ubuntu / Other Debian derivatives (Including SteamOS) / Debian / CentOS / Fedora / this list is huge
I would suggest to those that *really* want to see a Linux port to throw their hard earned expendable income behind SteamOS and start buying Linux games in droves on that platform, even the less well supported ones. To my mind, it is only by demonstrating that there is a market, that we can create a market.
Valve are aiming to standardize a platform for game production in the Linux space with SteamOS and that would be a good platform to target as a user community, because with a vocal community (that in this case spends cash) our influence over any game developer for a port improves.
I could easily offer more than 2p on this topic, but now I have to go and put my money where my mouth is and install SteamOS.....
It is *much* higher if Android is taken into account.
I run windows for one purpose and one purpose only, the reader can figure that one out. But I think the big problem is not porting the games to the platform, it is the ancillary software that goes along with it. Track IR, ShadowPlay for the video casters, teamspeak (yes I know TS has a linux client, so does mumble for that matter, but the experience with them on linux is not as seamless as it is on Windows), joystick drivers and so on.
Similarly to Dash above, I suspect that Linux ports of most games will be dependent on a standard, consistent platform to deliver them on, because that is what is missing right now.
Right now, there are way too many potential linux platforms that are derivatives of another, that is in turn a derivative of yet another platform, trying to code for such a moving target in the kernel would be nothing short of Lovecraftian horror for the devs.
For those that might care a shortlist of issues would be:
Which framebuffer to target? Kernel Frame Buffer / X11 / Wayland / Mir!?
Which GFX target? OpenGL / DriectX via WINE or similar?
Which toolkit to target? QT / GTK / E / if they even went with a standard toolkit that is.
Which Platform to target Ubuntu derivatives / Canonical Ubuntu / Other Debian derivatives (Including SteamOS) / Debian / CentOS / Fedora / this list is huge
I would suggest to those that *really* want to see a Linux port to throw their hard earned expendable income behind SteamOS and start buying Linux games in droves on that platform, even the less well supported ones. To my mind, it is only by demonstrating that there is a market, that we can create a market.
Valve are aiming to standardize a platform for game production in the Linux space with SteamOS and that would be a good platform to target as a user community, because with a vocal community (that in this case spends cash) our influence over any game developer for a port improves.
I could easily offer more than 2p on this topic, but now I have to go and put my money where my mouth is and install SteamOS.....
I will add my support to this thread by posting, but I think I have mostly said everything I have to say about it in this thread:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2920
A lot of good stuff there actually.
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2920
A lot of good stuff there actually.
Not just how many libraries, but how many versions of those libraries. For some reasons, open source programmers are very fond of changing APIs between versions just because.
1. X11. Nobody uses Wayland or Mir yet (they're both experimental), and the framebuffer is not meant for user access.
2. OpenGL. Their engine already supports OpenGL (since it works on Mac.)
3. They don't use a toolkit anyway.
4. Ubuntu 12.04. That's what Steam's Linux runtime emulates. If your game works on Ubuntu 12.04, it'll almost definitely work on Steam on any Linux distribution, and if it doesn't, it'll be noticed (and possibly fixed) by the community.
yeah.... have you considered wading through https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2920 ??
I've moved my position some since that post and think that the community should rally around Steam, maybe even find a sensible way to drop it into a container, so we can be a little more distro agnostic to the end user.
I tried asking for ideas about how we could form a community focused on popularising gaming on Linux, which didn't get a particularly positive response, I'd welcome any ideas you have in that direction.
but back to the post you replied to;
1. I'm using Wayland on the desktop daily for my job, it is almost stable in my experience, but it still seems to freak out on the compatibility with older X11 apps, I'd say closer to a beta than an experiment at this point.
2. Vulkan (yeah, superset of OpenGL, I know) appears to be the GFX code that people are expecting to see targeted on Linux (nVidia just added Vulkan to their Windows drivers too).
3. The launcher will likely use a toolkit, but on further reflection, it is irrelevant, as you suggest.
4. So we're kind of agreeing (now that we're some distance from my original post) but rather than say "Ubuntu Y.m" we are saying, Steam Linux Runtime (which I'll have to go read about and understand how they make that work).
The other thread has some interesting discussion about the risks of Steam becoming a bit of a monopoly on Linux that is worth a read.
o7
I've moved my position some since that post and think that the community should rally around Steam, maybe even find a sensible way to drop it into a container, so we can be a little more distro agnostic to the end user.
I tried asking for ideas about how we could form a community focused on popularising gaming on Linux, which didn't get a particularly positive response, I'd welcome any ideas you have in that direction.
but back to the post you replied to;
1. I'm using Wayland on the desktop daily for my job, it is almost stable in my experience, but it still seems to freak out on the compatibility with older X11 apps, I'd say closer to a beta than an experiment at this point.
2. Vulkan (yeah, superset of OpenGL, I know) appears to be the GFX code that people are expecting to see targeted on Linux (nVidia just added Vulkan to their Windows drivers too).
3. The launcher will likely use a toolkit, but on further reflection, it is irrelevant, as you suggest.
4. So we're kind of agreeing (now that we're some distance from my original post) but rather than say "Ubuntu Y.m" we are saying, Steam Linux Runtime (which I'll have to go read about and understand how they make that work).
The other thread has some interesting discussion about the risks of Steam becoming a bit of a monopoly on Linux that is worth a read.
o7
Not after paying for the Mac, they don't.
And in any case, I resent the implication that Linux users are jobless hippies. It has been a hobby OS for a long time, but usually for people who also have machines running other things too, or who just don't want to give money to the likes of Apple or Microsoft.
Macs use a clone of FreeBSD, not Linux. There are similarities, but it's not the same.
Speculation: Doesn't the PS/4 run a form of Linux?
OSX is based on XNU, not FreeBSD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU
PS4 System OS is ultimately derived from FreeBSD ;-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software
I don't know how close to the kernel the Cobra Engine sits, so I wouldn't like to start making statements on whether or not these differences truly matter to any porting effort, but with that said, I suspect it is more about how to address the GFX capabilities of a machine than the underlying kernel.
The Hobby OS tag that is still attached to Linux makes me giggle every time I see it (and I know you are not promoting that view), but for those that think it is still just that; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_adopters
o7
I've always considered Linux to be an engineers OS rather than a "hobby". The folks I know who run it at home have data centers, or at least dedicated server rooms, at work. It's not easy to learn and you need a decent level of computing knowledge to run it effectively. That keeps it out of the hands of the "normal" user. The umpteen different flavours and distros don't help popularity either. I'd love to see a Linux version, but if a distro is chosen the majority will howl that it's the wrong choice, that their distro is better, etc. Would be a tough hill to climb.
PS4 Linux - Yes it does exist. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/04/full_linuxonps4_hits_github/
Mostly what I meant, though there are distros that are pretty easy to set up as well as being powerful. It's no longer out of reach of the masses and hasn't been for a few years now.
Quite right it is not but... yes there always has to at least one. To the average user of a computer Windows is what they know, it has icons and they can be pressed to do stuff - Their phone is the same - its simple.
Linux is far from simple - still. To those of you who think otherwise take your current distro of the month to a friends house and get them to install it and set up the drivers for their machine - you must not help in any way... Oh whats that, your friend said no hes happy with what hes got? That's part of the problem, Linux came to the desktop far to late to grab a decent slice of the pie and it is now relegated to running servers and being used by a very small subset of business's to run their companies.
Personally the OS I use is decided by the software I want to run, never does the OS dictate or limit that option.
The point is that you really cannot assess that. In many cases, sales are tracked (Linux is free). In other cases, website usage is tracked. Linux users are typically more advanced computer geeks than Windows/ Mac users and know how to use anti-tracking plugins in their browsers. As a consequence, you see anything between 1% (too low IMHO) to more than 5%.
And don't forget Steam machines. One release/ version could handle Steam OS, Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian. At which point, other distros are a small fraction and typicality still have tools to install .deb files.
I am one of the guys that only fire Windows up for a few games. However, I am going to change that as well in the near future and fiddle around with running Windows in a virtual machine with GPU-card pass-through. Which is rather an involved setup and requires very specific hardware, unfortunately.
Largely outdated and incorrect information here:
- Only a small number of distros really matter for desktop usage (and many of the remaining ones have tools to install binaries for these platforms), if you support SteamOS you have Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Debian support as well.
- Many studios (i.e. Larian for their excellent Linux version of Divinity Original Sin Enhanced Edition) will only support the official proprietary drivers for NVidia and AMD (Intel has official driver support in the Linux kernel), which neatly takes the open source drivers out of the support equation
- Linux drivers may have "sucked" ten years ago, but that is no longer true. The proprietary Nvidia drivers performs just as well as the Windows driver. AMD I cannot speak for (but have heard some good news recently), Intel supports the Linux kernel driver.
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They also typically do not have the attention span for a game like Elite.
Seriously, you still believe that people use Linux desktops just for the few bucks it saves? Think again.
Use Steam's HW & SW survey pages http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey if you're concerned about website usage tracking being blocked by users (I hardly think this would account for a 1% to 5% increase though).
That said I would love SteamOS to become a success...
Just plug a current Linux Mint USB key or DVD into any computer. 95% of all machines will run right out of the box with all hardware supported.
Windows 7 install on my high-powered modern computer took more than 3 hours (all updates, drivers and basic software tools) and would not have been easily done by a non-technical person (network card not supported by stock Windows 7) with about a dozen reboots. Linux Mint install took 35 minutes, with two reboots.
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I may have missed something or Steam might show me something different, but I see no information regarding Linux on that page...
Probably because the vast majority of potential buyers using GNU/Linux plays on MS Windows, so it would be a total waste of money for FD (and of time for the player base waiting for a lot of things rather than yet another useless port). I've been using Debian on my main computer since 2003 and I do all my gaming on my MS Windows gaming rig. I suggest you do the same.
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Click Os version it open to see all os used by steam users. 0,85% of steam users have linux.