Yeah but we like to make 'fun of the horse' for not drinking the water, like we don't have problems drinking that Nvidia or AMD kool-aid.
What time scale are we talking? Linux could take over as the main gaming platform, but not right now.
There are a few things that still need improved but generally I do 90% of my gaming on Linux, I couldn't say that this time last year.
Once the last few games move away from their old engines, assuming they use multi-platform engines its not hard to make games for multiple platforms.
Theres actually only two companies that don't have linux games that I play, bethesda, and blizzard. Bethesda are stuck on old engines as far as I can tell and are in it for money not games, and blizzard are blizzard.
Got to remember as well, microsoft have a good thing going for them, most PCs are marketed for windows and come with windows (not sure how thats not anti-competitive, seems people think PCs only run windows so theres no competition) so long as that continues windows will always have the edge, and microsoft will never let that go.
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I don't make fun of horses directly. Though I might anonymize their quotes about water that's wrong.
I don't think it was a failure. "Steam machines" arent a big thing, but everything that came out of it has been pretty great, for a first iteration on something that was never going to take off, it did reasonably well. Mind you they could have done better, Valve is pretty inconsistent with what they do.
What if you could configure GPU Passthrough as easily as you install a new game in Windows?
It hasn't been done yet, probably because the people who would do it are playing games in VMs instead, but there is really no reason why the process of configuring GPU passthrough couldn't be done by a GUI Wizard that just asks the user to select which hardware to pass to the guest OS(es), then sets all the parameters in /etc/default/grub, blacklists modules & assigns them to pci-stub or vfio and so on.
I think the VM & passthrough workaround has limited appeal, and it's not for folks who are gaming everyday, it's for folks who use their computers primarily for things other than gaming, kinda want to play some games too, but not enough to shutdown our primary computing environment to do it - less hardcore about gaming than computing.
IMO, Linux taking over as the gaming OS will mean gaming on Linux, not on any other OS via Linux & a VM. I see that happening soon, as GPUs continue to get smaller and need fewer Watts so that the hardware differences between consoles and PCs vanish. Then any console that isn't at least able to run Steam will be at a disadvantage so they will all do that, all the publishers will port to Linux including Bethesda, and even if the console manufacturers all make their own Linux or BSD distributions with some "secret sauce" from their branding departments, we will all be gaming on Unix.
The last 1%-5% to be ported won't be AAA titles, they will be very old games from publishers that no longer exist, with copyright holders in dispute, etc.
Thats one thing to keep in mind, you cant really count old games in this, its like saying electric wont take over because of all the old gas cars cant be run on electric.
In saying that, old games are being ported to Linux. Someone is seeing the benefit otherwise it would never be done.
Yeah, but the cheap cars are gas. People just want a cheap point a to point b machine. I don't know a single person wealthy enough or with good enough credit to purchase a "cheap" new car.
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If Wayland/Mir and AMD drivers ever mature to a quality and performance level then it will sure get allot more attention. Atm if you want high end gaming on Linux you kinda need NVIDIA hardware and X.org backend.
Not sure how long its going to take for Wayland/Mir and AMD to catch up, they certainly are trying but for all we know it could be another 10-20years of patching before its considering DAMN good in comparison to Windows simplicity/performance.
Take off is a a stretch, a few companies made steam machines.. But how many actually went out to buy them? The controller was bad, to the point where it prompted OEMs to ship Xbox controllers, and it didn't do anything better than a console besides graphics..
The Steam Machines are a niche market that didn't need to exist.. Just install your preferred distro, install steam, and make sure it launches Big Picture Mode by Default. Boom steam machine..
Even an X11 replacement won't do much, Linux would still have no standard API, ABI or standard Libraries.
OpenGL and Vulkan is the standard.
I mean stuff like OSS, ALSA, Pulse, QT, GTK? What Libraries are developers going to assume is installed and where are they're going to assume it's located? (It can vary depending on the distro distros) What about binary compatibility? Will my 8.04 Deb work with 16.04 like my programs that were designed to work on Vista will still run on Windows 10?
That's the kind of standardization I'm talking about, shit that makes it easier for developers to develop and users to use.
I don't think Linux can take over on the desktop until Linux is as easy as Windows for the mainstream user. Even if the API's allow gamers to thrive on linux, I don't think the majority will switch for a long time and they only will when it is as stupid easy as windows is.
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I agree, i think it mainly depends on the succes of Vulkan.
Since Vulkan will be cross platform, it might make it allot easier for game developers to back port their games to Linux,
which would mean that they will end up with a wider target market.
The only thing that Linux realy needs is a good api that Vulkan basicly is or can be.
And a good set of drivers and support from both Nvidia and AMD.
Nvidia showed Doom 4 running on Vulkan, and the performance was realy impressive.
This makes me think that Nvidia might be very interested in the development of the Vulkan api.
And that could exaly be very interesting for the chances of Linux to be become a viable alternate to Windows as a gaming OS.
Nvidia has some influence at some of the bigger AAA game developers afterall.
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I agree, but I'm assuming the success of Vulkan. It's only a question of time.
All that is installed by default on almost every distro. So developers can use whatever they find easiest. But its generally accepted that Pulse works best for games (audio). Having choice doesn't automatically mean its harder.
No, it's linux just isn't user friendly enough....it's a pain to install drivers on (AMD). When i goes wrong it takes a degree in computer science to sort out....
Until everything is one click install like windows, and never needing to use terminal to do anything, it will never be a mainstream gaming platform....
It can have all the performance in the world, but if the masses don't find it as user friendly as windows, it doesn't stand a chance of being mainstream.
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I partially disagree with this. Linux does need Vulkan to succeed, but I think just the general day to day use of the operation system is what will limit Linux's growth as a platform for gamers. Running and installing programs that aren't games, drivers, and such. When all of that is as easy as windows, and Vulkan gets the games to Linux, then I think it has a chance.
outside of well known applications like photoshop im fairly convinced installing software on Linux is faster, safer and easier.
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Well it is as easy already...Its linux distros that pioneered the app store on desktop that Win10 added. To do what you do in Win on Linux is as easy. faster and safer already when in comes to install native applications. It is just that you can do even more if you take the time. Again do not confuse easiness with familiarity.
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