Valve continue working behind the scenes for Linux gaming with 'Gamescope'

I wish Wayland and NVIDIA got along, but they don't really.

I like the idea of wayland even tho its still too early, apparently it could allow freesync to work on multi monitor setups and also within windows (on freesync screens). That would almost put it on par with windows freesync flexibility.

QuoteIt seems that they're going with Vulkan and Wayland

Newbie question: I know Linux games today relies on X.org and xWayland doesn't have hw acceleration, but what about games running with wine/proton? Can they use hw acceleration once wine start to use wayland?

QuotexWayland doesn't have hw acceleration

Wat?

XWayland generally does work with native games and wine, but there are a ton of issues, especially related to the Vulkan WSI, so you sometimes get weird performance, Vsync may or may not be broken, etc.


Last edited by YoRHa-2B on 15 January 2020 at 11:20 am UTC

I still think all of this is leading up to a second attempt at Steam Machines, except this time with Valve also being the hardware provider.

Always nice to see some well-written documentation /s.

Still, always nice seeing some investment into Wayland, it is the superior tech.

Could it mean that it might get included in the Steam Desktop client as a "DE" for any supported distro? That would be really awesome!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this. I'm a steamos-compositor fan. I still use it to this day, on top of Ubuntu.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 15 January 2020 at 1:42 pm UTC

Always good news from Valve. But one thing I miss from them is the business thing. Yes, they are great and they do a great Linux support, But I still think they don't treat Linux as a serious business platform. They could talk more to other companies to bring more games to Linux, make some exclusive content for Steam OS and offering some real advantages for Steam OS users. What about give developers a better revenue to port games to Steam OS? I just can not understand how a company like Valve is not doing things like these to help their own official platform.


Last edited by gustavoyaraujo on 15 January 2020 at 1:40 pm UTC

Valve seem quite prophetic in their launch of SteamOS as the basis for line of console-like gaming PCs (aka "Steam Machines"). With the upcoming console generation looking less like their toy-like forebears and more like their PC competition, Valve is no longer the only company to see the storm clouds brewing for the PC gaming market

Intel has announced the Ghost Canyon NUC, which uses a modular approach to building a mini-gaming PC, something Razer already appears to be ready to use as the basis for their Tomahawk gaming PC..

There's already third party support for Intel's idea, too. Cooler Master has introduced their own case for the new gaming NUCs, and Asus has unveiled a mini RTX 2070 2070 "specifically designed" for Intel's new tiny, gaming rig.


Last edited by Nanobang on 15 January 2020 at 1:45 pm UTC

Quoting: YoRHa-2BWat?

XWayland generally does work with native games and wine, but there are a ton of issues, especially related to the Vulkan WSI, so you sometimes get weird performance, Vsync may or may not be broken, etc.

Good to know, I've read somewhere that one of the problems with wayland and games is the lack of hw acceleration with xwayland, so the performance would be terrible

But of course, I'm far from being an expert in this subject

Any news on multithreaded input support in Wayland yet? About the most annoying thing (for me) in modest systems (I still have and use a netbook, for simple tasks) and Xorg is deffinitely faster in such scenarios, particularily input-wise than Wayland, and reading about these issue, seems it stems from the fact that Xorg has at least the mouse input in a different thread than the window-drawing, and it does show especially under load. Good thing Valve are getting behind further wayland refinement and pushing it forward.

Quoting: rustybroomhandleI still think all of this is leading up to a second attempt at Steam Machines, except this time with Valve also being the hardware provider.

I dont think they are silly enough to be a hardware provider i think they will go for the licence model again but how many takers there will be after the first attempt bombed.

Great to see bigger focus on Wayland. And if anyone worries about Nvidia - simply ditch it. They'll never play along with Linux ecosystem properly. May be in the future things will improve, when Nouveau will be unblocked and will replace the blob kernel driver.

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: rustybroomhandleI still think all of this is leading up to a second attempt at Steam Machines, except this time with Valve also being the hardware provider.

I dont think they are silly enough to be a hardware provider i think they will go for the licence model again but how many takers there will be after the first attempt bombed.

Personnally, I doubt that we'll ever see another wave of Steam Machines, if they don't intend to go "the silly way". All these tweaks are probably Steam Cloud Gaming oriented (you know, Steam Linux streaming servers) and the desktop user might gain new features because there is no reason to not let them (Steam in-home streaming and the diy sofa gamers).

I would be the happiest guy to be proven wrong.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 15 January 2020 at 3:44 pm UTC

Quoting: ThetargosAny news on multithreaded input support in Wayland yet? About the most annoying thing (for me) in modest systems (I still have and use a netbook, for simple tasks) and Xorg is deffinitely faster in such scenarios, particularily input-wise than Wayland, and reading about these issue, seems it stems from the fact that Xorg has at least the mouse input in a different thread than the window-drawing, and it does show especially under load. Good thing Valve are getting behind further wayland refinement and pushing it forward.

Wayland is a protocol. Multithreading has nothing to do with it. It's up to the compositor to use it. I.e. a proper compositor can be multithreaded, use Vulkan and etc.

I.e. some compositors could indeed be bad. It doesn't mean Wayland is, or all of them are.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 January 2020 at 5:03 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestReally good news that Valve invests in Wayland now!

I hope they'll put some effort into speeding up support for adaptive sync and other Wayland based gaming scenarios that aren't supported yet.

#ValveRules

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: ThetargosAny news on multithreaded input support in Wayland yet? About the most annoying thing (for me) in modest systems (I still have and use a netbook, for simple tasks) and Xorg is deffinitely faster in such scenarios, particularily input-wise than Wayland, and reading about these issue, seems it stems from the fact that Xorg has at least the mouse input in a different thread than the window-drawing, and it does show especially under load. Good thing Valve are getting behind further wayland refinement and pushing it forward.

Wayland is a protocol. Multithreading has nothing to do with it. It's up to the compositor to use it. I.e. a proper compositor can be multithreaded, use Vulkan and etc.

I.e. some compositors could indeed be bad. It doesn't mean Wayland is, or all of them are.

Indeed, alas (AFAIK) you cannot use say Weston with Xorg. My experience is rather limited with it as I have only used Weston and did notice that under load, mouse input is rather sluggish, which is not the case with Xorg, albeit in a rather weak netvook sporting an Atom N270 with GMA915 graphics, which speaks volumes in terms of modern [E]GL feature support, but which runs just fine Xorg with composition either through WM (XFCEWin/Sawfish) or even GL accelerated Compiz.

Edit, typos, darn phone keypad.


Last edited by Thetargos on 15 January 2020 at 11:23 pm UTC

Quoting: BielFPs

Quoting: YoRHa-2BWat?

XWayland generally does work with native games and wine, but there are a ton of issues, especially related to the Vulkan WSI, so you sometimes get weird performance, Vsync may or may not be broken, etc.

Good to know, I've read somewhere that one of the problems with wayland and games is the lack of hw acceleration with xwayland, so the performance would be terrible

But of course, I'm far from being an expert in this subject

Nvidia doesn't support XWayland yet, so HW acceleration is disabled if you have an Nvidia card (applications do run, but on the CPU and with abysmal performance). It works fine on Intel and AMD though (minus the problems mentioned by YoRHa-2B).

Quoting: GrabbyNvidia doesn't support XWayland yet, so HW acceleration is disabled if you have an Nvidia card (applications do run, but on the CPU and with abysmal performance). It works fine on Intel and AMD though

So only Nvidia then, nice :) thank you for the information.

I wish Cinnamon had support for wayland

Quoting: Mohandevir

Quoting: Whitewolfe80

Quoting: rustybroomhandleI still think all of this is leading up to a second attempt at Steam Machines, except this time with Valve also being the hardware provider.

I dont think they are silly enough to be a hardware provider i think they will go for the licence model again but how many takers there will be after the first attempt bombed.

Personnally, I doubt that we'll ever see another wave of Steam Machines, if they don't intend to go "the silly way". All these tweaks are probably Steam Cloud Gaming oriented (you know, Steam Linux streaming servers) and the desktop user might gain new features because there is no reason to not let them (Steam in-home streaming and the diy sofa gamers).

I would be the happiest guy to be proven wrong.

Well i could of gone with retarded financially irresposible dumb fuck decision but i thought silly covered it theres a reason sega arent in the console business anymore and even nintendo had to be bailed out of going bankrupt after the diaster that was wii u. Granted it was never in real danger because of the amount capital the shareholders have but still. MS looses money on every xbox 1 sold still Sony i think break even now on every ps4 they all attempt to recoup the money in game sales. Wheres the problem steam has games i hear you say yes it does third party games that you can buy on epic store or gog the valve exclusives tap died out a long time ago.

So valve "console" a stupid idea a licenced product is more likely if they came back but like i said if you were third party licence manager and you saw hot fast valve dropped advertising the steam machines would you even be vaguely interested.