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News I'm sure many Linux fans will be happy to see — Valve sent over a Steam Deck to the developer of Lutris, the free and open source game manager.

One of the most popular applications for gaming on Linux, Lutris can help you manage games across various different sources including Humble Bundle, GOG, Steam, Epic Games, EA Origin, Ubisoft, Emulators and more. Currently though, getting it working on Steam Deck properly would involve using developer mode as it doesn't have a proper Flatpak package available from Flathub (the current one is not official and doesn't work well).

Having a Steam Deck to hand should help further development on the Flatpak, as well as hooking up anything special needed for the Steam Deck specifically.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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elmapul Mar 15, 2022
Quoting: Nociferthere is ZERO investment in the platform
they are in financial trouble afaik, but other than that, this make me think:
canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.
what valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?
Nocifer Mar 15, 2022
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: Nociferthere is ZERO investment in the platform
canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, [then went and made all the wrong moves like developing software behind closed doors (Canonical was GNOME before GNOME was GNOME) and with CLAs forced on the contributors, trying to force their own solutions onto the community instead of using their resources to help the development of established open source technologies (e.g. Wayland & Flatpak), refusing to cooperate with the other big Linux companies/entities, forming rivalries and behaving like a douchebag, making agreements and contracts with the Devil (Mocrosoft) to monetize Ubuntu, trying to manhandle the Linux userspace by pushing the Canonical-controlled Snaps as if they owned Linux], failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.

FTFY :)

Quoting: elmapulwhat valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?

Alright, I'll freely admit that I only read the first part of your comment before hitting that quote button. So yeah, turns out I pretty much agree with you :P
TheRiddick Mar 15, 2022
Stopped using Lutris since every time I enabled Mangohud it would hard lock my system up. Happened between MULTIPLE ARCH OS installs. Using Bottles atm, its full of jank but doesn't lock my system up with mangohud....
elmapul Mar 15, 2022
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: Nociferthere is ZERO investment in the platform
they are in financial trouble afaik, but other than that, this make me think:
canonical had tons of money, they bet a lot on linux desktop, failed and came to the conclusion (i guess) that gnu/linux will never be popular among the general public.
what valve is doing is proving they wrong, i think canonical might have had a chance with an different strategy.
no reinventing the whell with mir, but contributing to wayland instead, no snaps, go flatpaks/appimages.
make some product for the broader audience (eg: something multiplatform) not just linux/ubuntu users, something like an music store, movie store, game/software store, something like steam where people can use the service on any operating system they want, then use such store to promote linux as valve is doing , maybe with an custom hardware with an experience dedicated to such niche audience, like nintendo did with Wii, DS, valve is doing with Steam deck, apple did with iphone, or black magic do with davinci resolve+custom hardware.

make some partnership with i dont know, wacom or something, create an user experience for designers who want to use gimp in an seemless experience, or some niche like that.

what do you guys think?

I think that would indeed be a good idea - improvements to the GIMP, get it running nicely on wacom hardware (or the many clones that exist), make sure colour calibration and correction is handled properly, and tie it into where the art is going. That means maybe trying to make it work more seamlessly with Blender, for example, or plugins to directly export to Godot, Unity3D, Unreal Engine, etc.

I would definitely like to see improvements in developing games on GNU/Linux, and I think the potential is there for a distro flavour centered around that. All the tools exist, and the entire OS is well suited as a full development environment, so my opinion is that if a distro was tweaked to be out-of-the-box setup as a development platform (with accompanying support of course) then it might start to be appealing.

For example, setup that ties an editor (probably vscode, seems popular enough) into a gitlab or github account, helps to configure any ssh keys required, comes pre-installed with Blender, the GIMP, perhaps Ardour for audio mixing. Bundle in a setup for using Godot, along with some samples, and of course all the necessary development libraries, compilers, etc. Project management that ties all the assets together in a meaningful way and allows backups to be created. Maybe look into tying in some collaborative work (at the very least the ability to remote screen share with others). Anything to make it a seamless experience to setup and develop games on GNU/Linux, not just run games on GNU/Linux.

audio seems to be our weakes point/link in that chain.
we need the industry standard tools ported too, otherwise no musician will migrate and game development involve a lot of things including music.
i think wwise is already ported?
tpau Mar 16, 2022
Maybe he just received his purchase? :)
Valve will also send me a unit that I ordered,eventually.
Eike Mar 16, 2022
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Quoting: tpauMaybe he just received his purchase? :)
Valve will also send me a unit that I ordered,eventually.

He's saying they sent it "...to help the development of Lutris" though.
legluondunet Mar 17, 2022
Quoting: TheRiddickStopped using Lutris since every time I enabled Mangohud it would hard lock my system up. Happened between MULTIPLE ARCH OS installs. Using Bottles atm, its full of jank but doesn't lock my system up with mangohud....

Or just stop using Mangohud as it is not very essential to play games?
tuubi Mar 17, 2022
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Quoting: legluondunet
Quoting: TheRiddickStopped using Lutris since every time I enabled Mangohud it would hard lock my system up. Happened between MULTIPLE ARCH OS installs. Using Bottles atm, its full of jank but doesn't lock my system up with mangohud....

Or just stop using Mangohud as it is not very essential to play games?

Lutris doesn't seem to give me any trouble with MangoHud. I've used it for adaptive vsync with several games from Itch, GOG and Steam, configured so that the HUD is not visible unless I hit a key combo. And I don't actually hit that combo unless I'm trying to troubleshoot performance problems (so almost never). I find even a simple FPS counter way too distracting to have on screen when I'm trying to enjoy a game.
denyasis Mar 19, 2022
Quoting: GuestWhat's Valve's endgame here?

Money. And cooperate dominance, which gets more money.
By getting more people hooked into the Valve ecosystem, you make more money. Now they can charge at every step, from hardware purchase to every software purchase. Having access to other stores doesn't matter to them. They are betting it will lower the psychological cost of entry (bring all your games with you!) and that the default-store (Steam) will outcompete the others and generate more revenue. All on a device you already paid Valve to have.

It's nothing new and fairly typical for large cooperations. Expand by monetizing the whole experience. I think there's a proper name for it, but it's escaping me.
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