SteamOS is still alive with a new Beta, although it's a rather uninteresting one

Quoting: jens

Quoting: liamdaweEven so, the titles Feral have ported this year have been pretty incredible for us.

Yeah, this goes without saying. I'm very grateful that Feral is still on board with Linux, considering how difficult Linux can be as platform and community.

Yeah. It's probably because the gaming industry neglected Linux for so many years that it turned us into insatiable gaming hungry monsters. At the second the feeding slows down it feels like apocalypse...

More! More! More! :)


Last edited by Mohandevir on 10 November 2017 at 8:33 pm UTC

MOAAAAAR!!! :D :P

I expect SteamOS gaming to be very much a "Falcon Punch"

As the toolchain gets really polished development will boom. Mesa, Wine, CLANG, Vulkan, AMD DC, etc...

I just want a zero bullshit linux gaming console.

Quoting: wojtek88

Quoting: dannielloSo... Good luck for Windows 10S - Metro only system where Steam cannot be installed. It could be "wake up" signal for Valve...

That's exactly what I wish for - but I guess Microsoft is not that stupid - they learned their lesson and Windows 10S will be only for schools, public services and for poor regions of world. Rest will have normal version of their system, and this will make both Microsoft and Valve happy with situation as it is, and there won't be new push for Steam machines...

Not entirely true. Microsoft Surface Laptop is Microsoft "answer" to Apple MacBook Air - very expensive laptop for "trendy" people. And Surface Laptop is sold with... Windows 10S by default! Yes, update to Pro version is free - but in couple years ahead - version Pro will be set to "obsolete state" or "Professionals/Developer" edition. The same is with Adobe now - they replaced Adobe Lightroom with iOS/Android shit and "real" Lightroom rebranded as "Lightroom Classic" (so it suggests that it is obsolete).

Microsoft is "clever". They will not "kill" win32 immediately. They will wait. More and more Steam AAA games are already in Metro AppStore: Call of Duty, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, Tomb Raider... Every ~6 months Win10 users have forced to update Windows to newer version (with some silly name) - every time there are some "issues" after update like IE12/Edge again as default browser and not working "third party" applications. Of course problems mostly concern win32 apps installed outside Windows AppStore...

Microsoft is "softly" teaching users that their closed and proprietary AppStore is "the best way" to install software. Also Microsoft is preparing Windows MR headsets [cheaper VR]. Probably they will be working with Metro AppStore plus SteamVR, but not in opposite direction. I mean games designed for Windows MR will be Metro exclusives - the same like it is now with Facebook Oculus exclusives.

I do not know why Valve is so "calm" about it. Maybe they have some financial issues? Definitely they invested too much in VR market that still is unprofitable niche (on PC at least). HTC Vive in fact has been mostly developed by Valve - probably it took a lot of cash... So in summary there are two big failures in Valve hardware division: Steam Machines and VR (but the second maybe in couple years will bring some profits).

I had not been paying attention to developments in Windows land. That does not sound that good for Valve; they may want to sit up and take notice.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI had not been paying attention to developments in Windows land. That does not sound that good for Valve; they may want to sit up and take notice.

Yes, Microsoft continue to slowly boil their captive frogs with the 6 monthly updates. They're playing the long game as described by @danniello after their attempt to strong-arm metro and the store/UWP/Windows Phone failed.

With regard to Linux as a whole growing, the OS tracking stats show that it is continually steadily growing. I think Linux gaming is also still growing and improving, I wouldn't say it has stagnated. Feral had an absolutely stellar year last year that set the bar very high and I think they've done an awesome job supporting our community again this year. Companies like Aspyr and Paradox also continued their strong support for Linux, plenty of other developers too, just a few years ago you could pretty much kind of keep a track in general of what was releasing on Linux, now there's far too much to keep a track of - if you look at the "New Releases" in Steam and sort by date there are tons of new games being released for Linux all the time.

I'm very glad Valve still developing steamos tho I use ubuntu myself lol...
Also with the ongoing Aspyr sale on Steam... damn you Kotick for putting COD only on mac and not linux. I don't like shooters but I would have bought COD on linux. Just for laughs...

Quoting: MintedGamer

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI had not been paying attention to developments in Windows land. That does not sound that good for Valve; they may want to sit up and take notice.

Yes, Microsoft continue to slowly boil their captive frogs with the 6 monthly updates. They're playing the long game as described by @danniello after their attempt to strong-arm metro and the store/UWP/Windows Phone failed.

With regard to Linux as a whole growing, the OS tracking stats show that it is continually steadily growing.

Well, I guess . . . but it's like, for the last few months a number of sites have shown significant growth. And back I dunno, like 10 years ago for a while there was significant growth, back when we started from zero and edged up to the 1.5 percent-ish range. But in between, well, yeah, probably Linux was growing, sorta, but it's been like up a tick here, down a tick there, and if you graph it . . . OK, maybe this thing has a tiny slope up but if we kept on "growing" at this rate Linux would be a significant desktop platform around the time everyone's moved to doing their computing by telepathy. Linux was certainly improving through that whole time, but desktop growth was pretty flat. So I'm certainly happy that it seems to be speeding up, plus on top of the actual Linux growth, Chromebooks seem to be carving out a little space. Some say Chromebooks are Linux, some say they ain't, but in terms of platforms being supported by hardware vendors and whatnot they sort of stand or fall together whether they're "actually" the same thing or not. So for some purposes I think it's certainly legit to add Chromebook uptake to Linux growth when you're figuring effective Linux size and impact as a platform. What with one thing and another, I think Linux-(ish) desktop growth is looking a lot more growth-y than it has for quite a while, and I really hope it keeps up. Still don't know why, though--maybe it's just that some key improvement levels have been quietly reached, where little pain points (like "no games" ) that kept people from switching just aren't there any more.

(On Chromebooks and Linux gaming--if I were Google, I would definitely make sure Vulkan ran on Chromebooks so in the end I could make the little buggers run Android games. They're not much of a computer for full scale PC games, but should run phone stuff fine, and in general surely the mid-term plan for Google on Chromebooks has to involve letting users run Android stuff so they can buy anything in the app store. I've seen the Android point made a few times. If they do it, then that's one more platform using Vulkan, and probably a growing platform because Chromebooks are doing OK already and Android integration would make them more useful so they'd probably grow faster.)


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 12 November 2017 at 8:39 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: MintedGamer

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI had not been paying attention to developments in Windows land. That does not sound that good for Valve; they may want to sit up and take notice.

Yes, Microsoft continue to slowly boil their captive frogs with the 6 monthly updates. They're playing the long game as described by @danniello after their attempt to strong-arm metro and the store/UWP/Windows Phone failed.

With regard to Linux as a whole growing, the OS tracking stats show that it is continually steadily growing.

Well, I guess . . . but it's like, for the last few months a number of sites have shown significant growth. And back I dunno, like 10 years ago for a while there was significant growth, back when we started from zero and edged up to the 1.5 percent-ish range. But in between, well, yeah, probably Linux was growing, sorta, but it's been like up a tick here, down a tick there, and if you graph it . . . OK, maybe this thing has a tiny slope up but if we kept on "growing" at this rate Linux would be a significant desktop platform around the time everyone's moved to doing their computing by telepathy. Linux was certainly improving through that whole time, but desktop growth was pretty flat. So I'm certainly happy that it seems to be speeding up, plus on top of the actual Linux growth, Chromebooks seem to be carving out a little space. Some say Chromebooks are Linux, some say they ain't, but in terms of platforms being supported by hardware vendors and whatnot they sort of stand or fall together whether they're "actually" the same thing or not. So for some purposes I think it's certainly legit to add Chromebook uptake to Linux growth when you're figuring effective Linux size and impact as a platform. What with one thing and another, I think Linux-(ish) desktop growth is looking a lot more growth-y than it has for quite a while, and I really hope it keeps up. Still don't know why, though--maybe it's just that some key improvement levels have been quietly reached, where little pain points (like "no games") that kept people from switching just aren't there any more.

(On Chromebooks and Linux gaming--if I were Google, I would definitely make sure Vulkan ran on Chromebooks so in the end I could make the little buggers run Android games. They're not much of a computer for full scale PC games, but should run phone stuff fine, and in general surely the mid-term plan for Google on Chromebooks has to involve letting users run Android stuff so they can buy anything in the app store. I've seen the Android point made a few times. If they do it, then that's one more platform using Vulkan, and probably a growing platform because Chromebooks are doing OK already and Android integration would make them more useful so they'd probably grow faster.)

That's very true, the growth is very slow compared with the overall desktop marketshare. I can't see how it could significantly change without some serious marketing or another major cock-up from Microsoft (like Vista and Windows 8) or some other big catalyst. Despite how malware-prone Windows is, people still use it en-mass. I think that most people will just use the OS the PC is shipped with, so its a difficult market to break into.

Chromebooks do seem to be quite popular, I'm not sure if the OS supports Vulkan but many of the chipsets in the Chromebooks definitely do, and there are drivers already available, plus Android supports Vulkan so theoretically I imagine it should be straightforward for Google to support Vulkan on ChromeOS if they don't already. I do think that's one of the things that would help gaming on Linux, if the development costs reduce to make it very simple and low cost to support Linux platforms, the larger developers and publishers will have to seriously consider it as another revenue stream at some point. Like you say, I just wonder if/when that tipping point will come.

I just thought about something I don't think anyone thought before. Valve had all the creative freedom over the look and feel of the Steam Machine cases. Why the hell not a single one of them looks like it was steam powered? Literally. No steampunk theme?? No valves and glowing crystals sticking out?? No deluxe version with a mist producing atomizer, cogs and pistons?? WHY...?


Last edited by cprn on 23 November 2017 at 7:06 pm UTC