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Looks like Linux is truly becoming a gaming platform for the masses now, as AYANEO are throwing their hat in the ring with AYANEO OS on their hardware with the AYANEO AIR. While their new IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign focuses on it being a Windows handheld, they're also developing their own full Linux distribution for their hardware which will be available to download "in the future".

So that's the Steam Deck with SteamOS, GPD looking at SteamOS, OneXPlayer also planning SteamOS and now AYANEO too. Seems like AYANEO OS will go a lot further than SteamOS in some ways though, with built-in ways of finding games across different stores you own. They said it directly supports the Linux version of Steam and they talked about running both Native Linux games and Windows games through Proton too along with other stores and they sound extremely positive about the Linux experience here.

Not only that, it will also have integrations for retro emulation too. A special app store was talked about to download other applications like Spotify, OBS, Firefox, Discord and plenty more (much like SteamOS has access to Flathub).

You can see them talk about it in the below video at around 1:46:30:

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Definitely didn't imagine any of this happening a year ago, did you?

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CatKiller Jul 15, 2022
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Quoting: GroganI'd put money on the next version of DirectX not being easy to translate into our APIs, too.

That can't really happen. Mantle is the paradigm now, with Vulkan, DX12, and Metal all being based on it. We're really good at translating DX12 to Vulkan. Or they could look backwards, and have something that's like the earlier versions of DirectX. We're really good at translating earlier versions of DirectX to Vulkan. If they tried to use something so completely different to either that it would be a headache then developers aren't going to switch to it either: they'll just use Vulkan instead... and we'd probably get really good at translating whatever it was to Vulkan, anyway.
Purple Library Guy Jul 15, 2022
Quoting: GuestA Chinese hand-held running BeijingOS? No thank you!
Really? That's your problem? That they're Chinese?!
Better get used to it, the Chinese make most of the world's hardware.
. . . You do realize that with over a billion people, it's on average unlikely that any given product made by a company in China has code written personally by Xi Jinping, right?
TheRiddick Jul 16, 2022
They also get parts made in Taiwan. But really if they did something bad with their OS version it be extremely easy to spot it unlike in Windows where backdoor malware can remain easily hidden.
elmapul Jul 16, 2022
Quoting: Mountain ManWhat an interesting development. I can see why Linux/SteamOS would be attractive to developers of handheld gaming devices because, first of all, Windows is not at all well suited for low-powered, portable hardware, and second, Linux/SteamOS is free, so no "corporate tax" to ship a device with a pre-installed operating system. And with Proton, Windows gamers will not have to give up a large chunk of their Steam library, and what games they do have to give up will be considered an acceptable trade-off because handheld gaming is almost thought of as a different genre, and people naturally do not expect to be able to play every game they can play on their desktop.

not to mention, they can make their own store on it, and use the fact that many stores dont support linux as an double edge sword that the blades cure instead of harm:
if companies like epic, gog, ubisoft refuse to port their launchers, then its good for then, because they will face less competition for users of those devices.
on the other hand if those companies port their launchers and support linux, their devices get more appealing!
setzer22 Jul 16, 2022
Quoting: GroganI'd put money on the next version of DirectX not being easy to translate into our APIs, too.

GPUs have evolved to become more general-purpose over the years, and the current generation of APIs (Vulkan, Metal, DX12) all work under that premise and introduce very similar concepts.

If Microsoft made a very different API today it wouldn't only be moving away from Vulkan, it would be moving away from modern GPU architecture, and that's unlikely to happen.

What I'd be more worried about is companies like Nvidia introducing proprietary extensions that are gated off in their Linux drivers, and that is already happening today.


Last edited by setzer22 on 16 July 2022 at 6:17 am UTC
elmapul Jul 16, 2022
Quoting: GroganI'd put money on the next version of DirectX not being easy to translate into our APIs, too.
they cant do that, because the apis are geting closer to how the hardware work internally, an drastic change in api would mean that the performance will suffer and developers will simply stick to older versions of dx.

what they can do and already are doing is investing in hardware, for example, an fast storage/expansion card that they made for xbox and also work on windows-pc
https://www.xbox.com/en-US/accessories/hard-drives/seagate-expansion-card
mr-victory Jul 16, 2022
I need to download this. NOW. I want to mess up with Aya Neo OS just like how I did with SteamOS 3.
Unfortunately I am limited on data now :(
tfk Jul 16, 2022
So its not only Valve who is fed up with Windows. A world wide phenomenon. Fascinating!
wit_as_a_riddle Jul 16, 2022
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: wit_as_a_riddleThe power of FOSS software, improvise, adapt, overcome! 🤣
Was that, by any chance, a reference to an old Monty Python sketch involving John Cleese dressed as a bank robber?

I am a Monty Python fan but sadly no, just the Bear Grylls meme.
ShabbyX Jul 17, 2022
Quoting: setzer22What I'd be more worried about is companies like Nvidia introducing proprietary extensions that are gated off in their Linux drivers, and that is already happening today.

What extension are you thinking about? Nvidia is actually doing an amazing job of supporting every extension that makes sense on Linux (and windows for that matter) as much as possible. And they are usually the first to ship any extension, often times even on the day the extension is released.

I do recall one extension was released on windows only, something about memory pages, and I'd bet it's more to do with Linux not supporting the exact usecase more than anything.
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