Valve has boosted their Linux ranks by hiring another developer to work on open source graphics

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: ShmerlWhat's the problem with strong FOSS competition?

In this case it reduces incentive for companies to natively support Linux.

Pumping as much cash into Linux supporting companies as possible is a big goal for Linux Gamers as cash is king.

I wouldn't argue with that, i.e. the fact that wrappers can have a chilling effect on making native ports. But that applies to all wrappers. By this logic you should see a problem with Feral too, since companies that use Feral's work cut costs and avoid proper native ports, using a wrapper instead. It's just cheaper for them. And on the other hand, if you are OK with some wrappers already, then you should be OK with all of them.

And see above, about what practical benefits Wine has in contrast with closed wrappers. Also, we as Linux users should support FOSS more, at least I'd expect that.


Last edited by Shmerl on 9 February 2018 at 1:59 am UTC

If the MacOS gaming scene still exist is, I'm sure the Linux one will remain.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: ShmerlWhat's the problem with strong FOSS competition?

In this case it reduces incentive for companies to natively support Linux.

Pumping as much cash into Linux supporting companies as possible is a big goal for Linux Gamers as cash is king.

I wouldn't argue with that, i.e. the fact that wrappers can have a chilling effect on making native ports. But that applies to all wrappers. By this logic you should see a problem with Feral too, since companies that use Feral's work cut costs and avoid proper native ports, using a wrapper instead. It's just cheaper for them. And on the other hand, if you are OK with some wrappers already, then you should be OK with all of them.

And see above, about what practical benefits Wine has in contrast with closed wrappers. Also, we as Linux users should support FOSS more, at least I'd expect that.

It's the principle behind my point that you missed. The principle is that developers and publishers who do Linux versions should get as much profit as we can give them if we want to show that we are a worthy pursuit.

The Linux market should be a lake full of gold just waiting for devs to come and tap.

Nothing wrong with gaming on wine it's just that it creates 0 incentive to produce a Linux port if the market will just buy your Windows version and 100% of the support is up to wine instead of the publisher or porter to follow through on.

It's simple stuff.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 9 February 2018 at 6:07 am UTC

Quoting: ElectricPrismIt's the principle behind my point that you missed. The principle is that developers and publishers who do Linux versions should get as much profit as we can give them if we want to show that we are a worthy pursuit.

But they aren't making Linux versions. Feral wraps it for them. That's not native Linux gaming any more than using Wine is. And as above since Feral make it, they tell you with what and where to use their wrapper. Wine developers don't tell you that, you can use it with anything you want. In this sense I see Feral's option as clearly worse one, since it limits you. And since I can't even give Feral any profit (they avoid releasing DRM-free games), it's all becoming completely theoretical, unlike Wine which I can use here and now.

I think we're talking about different things, no problem expanding on the topics you prefer, like I said nothing against wine -- hell I'll probably even use it for a select few games I want to make bottles for.

I think I'll call them all "Classics" though as I have a habit of referring to anything as Classic that requires a old emulator, runtime, or layer to make it work.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 9 February 2018 at 6:22 am UTC

Celebrating again a company giving some efforts back to free and libre projects does not change anything. In fact it is the same "whitewashing" Google is doing, but hey ... it's all about proprietary software here and only sometimes about free / libre software!

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: ShmerlWhat's the problem with strong FOSS competition?

In this case it reduces incentive for companies to natively support Linux.

Pumping as much cash into Linux supporting companies as possible is a big goal for Linux Gamers as cash is king.

I wouldn't argue with that, i.e. the fact that wrappers can have a chilling effect on making native ports. But that applies to all wrappers. By this logic you should see a problem with Feral too, since companies that use Feral's work cut costs and avoid proper native ports, using a wrapper instead. It's just cheaper for them. And on the other hand, if you are OK with some wrappers already, then you should be OK with all of them.

And see above, about what practical benefits Wine has in contrast with closed wrappers.

This is not a technical issues, I see your point in an ideal world where no money is involved. But unfortunately it's all _just_ about money. Developers and publishers need to feel that money can be earned when releasing for Linux. How should that work when Linux users would just buy the windows version anyway?

Lets say wine would aim for perfect support for Rise of the Tomb Raider. Lots of people would then buy the windows version and that in turn would mean a financial disaster for Feral once they release their version. It would be the end of all AAA gaming on Linux when even Feral can't earn money with Linux.

Quoting: ShmerlAlso, we as Linux users should support FOSS more, at least I'd expect that.

Here we disagree, I prefer to support Linux as Operation System, that includes everything that would attract more users. Non-FOSS software is part of that. Restricting everything to FOSS will never reach the masses. You will need Steam, Netflix, Spotify and the likes if you want people to step over from other OS's. Remember, all non-technical people are usually only interested in having a nice GUI and getting access to their content (pim, documents, games, music, video etc.).

Just to add for clarity: I'm not against wine. I don't use it for games, just for two other applications and I'm grateful that it works. I do however use dosbox for some older games, which is more or less the same as using wine for older games. I just don't want wine to be a competitor to the already very few gaming studios and publishers that took the risk to invest into the Linux market.


Last edited by jens on 9 February 2018 at 8:24 am UTC

Quoting: rafaelcgs10If Valve officially supported Wine by contributing with development and allowing to launch Windows games directly from Steam client, that would help to bring Windows gamers to Linux. I will never officially get all Windows games, so Wine is worth it.

The big problem there is that the publishers would have to agree to allowing their Win game(s) to be released with a Wine bottle. That is just as much a hard sell as getting them to release ports, native or not, even if they're not themselves assuming all the risk. Wine can be enough of a problem to work with and configure for the inexperienced without an even more clueless support staff trying to help.
Also currently such bottles would require including Steam itself in the bottle or else a Steam stub* of some kind, because software under Wine is not reliably able, last I checked and by design, to detect that it's under Wine nor any non-Wine software also running on the system (like say Linux Steam). Neither case would be tenable for various reasons to some the parties involved.


*Here I mean a stub in the sense of a truncated version that doesn't provide any UI but provides the standard back end functionality (cf. [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test_stub"]Test stub on Wikipedia[/url])

Quoting: throghCelebrating again a company giving some efforts back to free and libre projects does not change anything. In fact it is the same "whitewashing" Google is doing, but hey ... it's all about proprietary software here and only sometimes about free / libre software!

Fortunately Linux has more to offer than just free software.

I hope that Valve continues developing steamos under the radar. What we don't need right now is a public competitor for Windows 10S. Without competitors, Microsoft will only shoot itself in the foot like it did with IE. Of course the penalty and work needed to comply was very small, and Microsoft could hold on to monopolizing the browser "market" long enough to wipe out substantial part of the "competition".
So if we want to get the market healthy, we should refrain -for now- posing steamos as a viable alternative. We as users can though, but Valve shouldn't promote it as that (for now).