I'm sure this will excite some of our readers who are fans of game streaming: NVIDIA has added the ability to play GeForce NOW game streaming via the browser.
Currently, it's limited to ChromeOS and Chromebooks as per their announcement. However, you can easily get around that because of how stupidly flawed browser agent strings are. Spoofing it is easy, although it only works in Chrome and not Firefox from my own testing. Just grab a User Agent Switcher plugin (like this), then add this as an option:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 13099.85.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/84.0.4147.110 Safari/537.36
That allows NVIDIA GeForce NOW to run on desktop Linux, simply in a Chrome browser. Just like Google Stadia has been able to since release. Here's a video of it in action on my Linux desktop:
Direct Link
Well, how about that? Another barrier broken down for Linux gaming fans. Surprisingly it did actually work really well. Input was responsive and the picture quality was really good.
NVIDIA GeForce NOW is quite different to Stadia, in that it uses games you have in your library across Steam, Origin, Ubisoft, Epic Games and more. However, if you wish to play past 1 hour, you have to pay a monthly subscription. The integration also feels far weaker than Stadia, which is a proper platform. On GeForce NOW, it's clearly Windows machines in the cloud to the point of hearing the Windows 10 ping sound when you click around as it doesn't let you. Stadia feels much tighter as a system and platform but GeForce NOW has the big benefit of games being available locally on your system as you "own" them as well as streaming them which Stadia does not, Stadia can only stream the games.
Obviously, at this point NVIDIA are not supporting the Linux desktop with GeForce NOW in any way and it could break any time - so keep that in mind. A mod on the community GFN Reddit did indicate this looks like the direction NVIDIA are going (having it in the browser), to open it up to more. Options are good for everyone though of course and we're just here to bring the tips.
You can try it on play.geforcenow.com.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: elmapulactually steam will count the sale as an linux sale, if you play it on protonMeans nothing. British people have a proverb starting with "If it flies like a duck…" :)
All most developers care about is whether a user purchases their product or not. And in Proton's case, a user purchases their Windows product, so it is for all intents and purposes (s)he is a Windows user. How (s)he will play the game afterwards is of no importance. Yes, some developers are willing to "support" Proton™. While others are more than happy to mock "Linux gamers" on Twitter or in interviews. As I've said, it all comes down to the person responsible. What would happen it Proton™ did not exist? Maybe that kind developer that "supports" it would make a native version instead? Who knows?
Quoting: elmapulwrong, you DO pay another licence.Hm… This has some weight. Now, this is a valid point. Sort of "Windows tax" included into GFN subscription fee.
it may be cheaper because nvidia buy in a lot with a bunch of licences, but you're still paying.
nvidia cant make unlimited copies of an software and distribute it just because you're streaming it from an vm running in their servers, instead of using it yourself.
Yes, in this case, unless you opt for free trial, you support Windows to a small degree. But again, this also goes for pre-installed Windows on notebooks. I'd say, a minor evil for a Greater Good.
Quoting: elmapulthey ARE payig microsoft for each user, either an rent of an windows licence or an entire licence, but they are.
Exactly the point. MS is getting paid, it's not even a question. Also, I'd expect it's not a regular Windows license fee, but some server type one which would be higher.
Last edited by Shmerl on 18 August 2020 at 8:54 pm UTC
Quoting: mylkawhy are they doing this? just make it available in browser for everyone and dump the clientSmall steps, small steps.
It was stated in the article that getting everything to work in a browser is the plan. nVivida probably wants to localize and eliminate problems in a more controlled environment before broadening the support.
Quoting: Alm888Maybe that kind developer that "supports" it would make a native version instead? Who knows?well, we got less native AAA games after valve anounced proton, but on the other hand, we can play more stuff thanks to proton.
i dont know if the developers were going to drop support for linux anyway or proton was the issue.
Quoting: Alm888. But again, this also goes for pre-installed Windows on notebooks.yes, but we were comparing proton to gfn, not proton to oem windows...
Quoting: elmapuli dont know if the developers were going to drop support for linux anyway or proton was the issue.Agreed, guessing "What Have been if…" is a mug's game.
Quoting: elmapulyes, but we were comparing proton to gfn, not proton to oem windows...Correct. And that is a downside.
On the plus side, though, GFN provides support for some games that are not (and will likely never be) available trough Proton™, like Fortnite® and all "anticheat" games.
So, overall GFN is net-positive for Linux.
Last edited by Alm888 on 18 August 2020 at 9:41 pm UTC
Quoting: Alm888Quoting: elmapuli dont know if the developers were going to drop support for linux anyway or proton was the issue.Agreed, guessing "What Have been if…" is a mug's game.
Quoting: elmapulyes, but we were comparing proton to gfn, not proton to oem windows...Correct. And that is a downside.
On the plus side, though, GFN provides support for some games that are not (and will likely never be) available trough Proton™, like Fortnite® and all "anticheat" games.
So, overall GFN is net-positive for Linux.
cloud gaming in general has some issues like:
being an perfect DRM (if the game is cloud exclusive)
killing video game preservation (if the game is exclusive to the cloud and the game/service is discontinued)
those are serious issues, but on the flip side, we can find the perfect anti cheat system, without putting backdoors in the players machines.
Quoting: Alm888Quoting: elmapulactually steam will count the sale as an linux sale, if you play it on protonMeans nothing. British people have a proverb starting with "If it flies like a duck…" :)
All most developers care about is whether a user purchases their product or not. And in Proton's case, a user purchases their Windows product, so it is for all intents and purposes (s)he is a Windows user. How (s)he will play the game afterwards is of no importance. Yes, some developers are willing to "support" Proton™. While others are more than happy to mock "Linux gamers" on Twitter or in interviews. As I've said, it all comes down to the person responsible. What would happen it Proton™ did not exist? Maybe that kind developer that "supports" it would make a native version instead? Who knows?
Then it is the developers fault for wrongly evaluating market data. Right now, it doesn't matter to the devs because it is such a small percentage that it doesn't make sense financially to care about the 0.05% market which plays their game using Proton. But imagine if it was something like 20%. Would the developer take this into consideration when developing their new game? Dumb developer won't. Smart developer surely will. They would make sure their next game works on Proton as well. Or they might even decide to develop a Linux native version because of this data.
Of course, that is hypothetical scenario, which is far from the current situation. But that doesn't make me responsible for a developer wrongly evaluating me as Windows user, just because I play their game using a compatibility layer, when they clearly have access to this data.
Here is a list of games to consider. There are a few "Native Linux" games that work well and are listed. Those and can be ignored and played bare-metal.
The GFN in Wine on Lutris has also had big improvement in bandwidth utilization and steam sync is fixed.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hj0n6WiYMbXOq6TlFRmxvcDque5SZN7CDKyZ-pm7gRk/edit#gid=0
If anything is missing on the list, please help us get it added.
Last edited by Xaero_Vincent on 19 August 2020 at 2:17 am UTC
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