Despite Luna originally using Windows for Amazon's game streaming service, it appears they may be moving over to Linux and they're looking to hire people to work on Proton / Wine and give back to open source.
Hold up. Don't know what Proton is? It's part of Valve's Steam Play, be sure to check out our full guide.
Across a few job adverts (#1, #2, #3), they mention how the roles involve "working with Proton - a compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux using Wine" and that they are "committed to working with the open source community around Proton. This role will commit code to open source projects such as Proton and Wine in pursuit of running games in a stable and performant manner".
Regardless of your thoughts on cloud gaming, this is still pretty great news for Proton and Wine that might see more people work on it and improve it further to get Windows games running even better on Linux!
Amazon give a little more detail on the roles that you can expect to "solve hard technical problems in Linux graphics stack, starting from Linux Kernel to graphics libraries" and work with "DirectX, Vulkan, DXVK, and OpenGL" and of course "dive deep into graphics performance issues and provide solutions that enable Windows games run on Linux, and make contributions to open source Wine/Proton".
Perhaps with Amazon working directly with Linux and Wine / Proton, they might even officially support playing Luna on Linux, whereas last we saw it threw up a box to say it's not supported. Would be thoroughly odd to go through all this, and still not even support playing it on Linux since it just uses a browser.
Luna is what a lot of what people hoped / thought Stadia would be initially, with subscription based to access a growing library of games, rather than Stadia being a store with an optional subscription part. It will be interesting to see how Luna progresses once it's out of Early Access and expands from being only for the US right now.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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QuoteLuna is what a lot of what people hoped / thought Stadia would be initially, with in subscription based to access a growing library of games, rather than Stadia being a store with an optional subscription part.
Strange. Stadia itself looks good. It's just that Google has fallen into the same trap as everyone else - no one wants to give up their Steam library.
Actually, I'm waiting for Valve to launch its own streaming service on its servers. You don't need to be a predictor to understand that Steam streaming is Valve's next project after the release of Steam Deck.
That's why they invest in Linux/Proton. And SteamOS will be the core of the service.
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Quoting: mphuZActually, I'm waiting for Valve to launch its own streaming service on its servers. You don't need to be a predictor to understand that Steam streaming is Valve's next project after the release of Steam Deck.I made a prediction / hope on a Valve streaming service back in 2018.
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Quoting: Liam DaweI made a prediction / hope on a Valve streaming service back in 2018.
Sure. After all, streaming is the future.
New players like Google and Amazon have already entered here. Microsoft is also pulling up.
If Valve doesn't launch its streaming service in the next year or two, they may lose everything. And no Linux will save them. That's why I'm a little scared for Valve. I hope Gabe and Co know what they are doing and will not miss the moment.
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Quoting: mphuZQuoting: Liam DaweI made a prediction / hope on a Valve streaming service back in 2018.
Sure. After all, streaming is the future.
New players like Google and Amazon have already entered here. Microsoft is also pulling up.
If Valve doesn't launch its streaming service in the next year or two, they may lose everything. And no Linux will save them. That's why I'm a little scared for Valve. I hope Gabe and Co know what they are doing and will not miss the moment.
I have no doubt they're thinking of something and have been steadily building the foundations. Whatever they build, it should capitalize on the users exisiting catalogue and work with 99,5% of it (where steam machines 1.0 failed).
You can already stream your Steam games from one device into the other. And with Nvidia Geforce NOW or Shadow you can already play a sizeable portion of your catalogue, even if your hardware could not.
I would hope, that if needed, they could lauch something by the time of a Steam Deck 2nd gen (with a cheaper stream only device tier). They also mentioned various other steam hardware/different takes on the deck on the horizon, and are also heavily invested on VR.
So I'm not currently scared, as they seem to be covering a lot of fronts.
(VR, streaming, coop, chromebooks). Hopefully their proton/wine efforts also go into Box86 then they would also be covered if all world goes ARM)But it is nice to see other players' also benefiting/contributing to the wine/proton ecossystem.
EDIT: Added Box86 paragraph.
Last edited by nullzero on 15 December 2021 at 12:37 pm UTC
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Quoting: mphuZQuoting: Liam DaweI made a prediction / hope on a Valve streaming service back in 2018.
Sure. After all, streaming is the future.
New players like Google and Amazon have already entered here. Microsoft is also pulling up.
If Valve doesn't launch its streaming service in the next year or two, they may lose everything. And no Linux will save them. That's why I'm a little scared for Valve. I hope Gabe and Co know what they are doing and will not miss the moment.
Is it the future though? Some years ago I would have agreed but now I am not so sure.
My point is graphical performance is growing faster than game graphical requirements to the point of having a laptop SoC capaple of running every non-VR game through an emulation layer at 720p (Of course, I am taking of the Steam Deck). So, right now it would be arguable the need of a streaming service hardware-wise (even less in the near feature). And given steam prices I think it is actually cheaper to buy the games than to pay a monthly fee even if you have access to all games (which you don't). With almost all of videogames with 10+h of content, (a lot with 30h and a lot of replayability) you are not going to play a lot of them per month as you would with movies on Netflix.
But you could say:
1) I want VR!: well, the smallest lag in VR can make you throw up so I do not think streaming solutions are there yet.
2) I want to play 4k!: That's what FSR and DLSS are for. It makes more sense to use these technologies than to spend hundreds of euros in a beefed up graphic card when your old laptop can manage almost the same quality with the same performance.
I have been thinking about this for a time now and I wanted to share to see what you people hought about it.
TL;DR: At this rate in the near future every laptop will be able to play any game and upscale it to any desired resolution so the biggest boon for streaming services would be irrelevant. Also, steam is cheap. Any thoughts?
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QuotePerhaps with Amazon working directly with Linux and Wine / Proton, they might even officially support playing Luna on Linux, whereas last we saw it threw up a box to say it's not supported. Would be thoroughly odd to go through all this, and still not even support playing it on Linux since it just uses a browser.
But you're not thinking like a manager! If you did, it would make perfect sense! (Oh, please don't start thinking like a manager.
)
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Quoting: elgatil...But this is why streaming is the future. It is more expensive than owning and it provides a lot of content. The moment that people are willing to accept a streaming solution publishers will no longer offer an option to own _because_ it's more expensive to stream. They want that extra money and they know that people are willing to make the trade if the streaming service works well enough (due to the success of streaming services like Netflix over ownership services like Vudu).
And given steam prices I think it is actually cheaper to buy the games than to pay a monthly fee even if you have access to all games (which you don't). With almost all of videogames with 10+h of content, (a lot with 30h and a lot of replayability) you are not going to play a lot of them per month as you would with movies on Netflix.
...
Last edited by compholio on 15 December 2021 at 1:49 pm UTC
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As much as I dislike Amazon and their ventures into streaming, can I just say how much I love how Valve seems to have turned the industry into seeing Linux as the obvious future platform and Windows as something that needs a legacy support system?
Game companies haven't quite jumped ship yet, but the trend looks pretty clear at this point.
Game companies haven't quite jumped ship yet, but the trend looks pretty clear at this point.
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Mohandevir Dec 15, 2021
Who knows? Amazon may decide to build it's own "Luna Deck"? 
Edit: Or to support the Steam Deck with Luna?
Last edited by Mohandevir on 15 December 2021 at 2:15 pm UTC
Edit: Or to support the Steam Deck with Luna?
Last edited by Mohandevir on 15 December 2021 at 2:15 pm UTC
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Quoting: elgatilIs [streaming] the future though? Some years ago I would have agreed but now I am not so sure.
My point is graphical performance is growing faster than game graphical requirements to the point of having a laptop SoC capaple of running every non-VR game through an emulation layer at 720p (Of course, I am taking of the Steam Deck). So, right now it would be arguable the need of a streaming service hardware-wise (even less in the near feature).
Interesting take. Will Bandwidth grow faster than processing power in the future? Time will tell, but I wouldn't bet on it. Especially given that latency is incompressible due to the speed of light, and VR requires low latency.
I wonder the same about energy costs. Both computing and transmission cost will become progressively lower. However it's easier to upgrade computing to 8K than it is for transmission equipment, unless you have dark fiber everywhere.
Some game can probably move to streaming, but others will definitely require local compute power (embedded, or close to a datacenter).
We can also expect hybrids, where some physics calculations are performed in datacenters, for instance. I think something like this exists already on consoles, probably with battlefield.
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