Quoting: AsciiWolfSadly, the HDR support itself is still in a pretty rough shape on Linux.

(For more information see the Wayland color management protocol ticket - that is required for full HDR with metadata support - and the GNOME Mutter HDR support one. Not sure about the HDR support state in KDE though.)

On the other hand, it surely can't be that much longer until this protocol is merged. Any takers for before the end of this year?

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Interesting to see Pop!_OS break into the rankings given its presence has been diminishing on ProtonDB over the years: https://boilingsteam.com/distros-used-for-gaming-ubuntu-recovers-a-little-pop-os-sinks-further-down/

Quoting: Pikolo`Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit` is probably the snap version of Steam - is the the default packaging on Ubuntu 24.04?
Ah, Ubuntu changed the default package type found in software centre to be snap, and Steam snap is out of beta.

The Steam Snap came out of beta for 23.10, I believe. The new 24.04 LTS came out at the end of April, so a lot of people upgraded (hence the 1.37% decrease in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS). The other 1% of the "Ubuntu Core" stat must have been people who were already using the Steam Snap, possibly those upgrading to every point release.

Which is not a good thing, because apparently the Steam Snap is rife with issues. In principle I like the idea but I wish Snaps were more distribution-agnostic. My understanding is they have root privileges on distributions without AppArmor like Fedora (which uses SELinux).

---

A few more months and Linux will have double the market share of macOS on Steam. Won't that be something?

Though it remains to be seen how many macOS users are running Steam through Wine/CrossOver/Whiskey and being counted as Windows users.

Also, why are some stats at 106% or even 112%?

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If I weren't already disenchanted by Kickstarter campaigns, this two-punch cancellation by Nightdive followed by this studio would have done it.

Quoting: dpanterAnother one huh... yeesh. And no comment on Steam Deck or Proton either?

I imagine the developer is loathe to make any further promises they can't keep, such as even hinting the game might work in Proton. I'm sure most Linux users can figure that out themselves, anyway.

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QuoteThat leads me to the elephant in the room though: anti-cheat. What a pain in the ass it is. Various developers still have not enabled support via Easy Anti-Cheat and BattlEye including Rust, PUBG, Rainbow Six: Siege, Destiny 2 and more.

I'd love to be this optimistic (they haven't enabled it yet), but several developers on that list have straight up refused to enable support because they believe anti-cheat isn't effective on Linux. For example, Ubisoft, in no uncertain terms, refused to enable support for Linux last week:

QuoteWe've seen your requests for Rainbow Six Siege to be supported on Linux. Our primary concern is the protection of the players' experience. We want to ensure a safe space for all players. Unfortunately, at the moment, Linux is an open door for cheaters. That being said, rest assured that it is on the R6S team's radar to make Siege available on as many systems as we can in the future.

Which brings me to...

QuoteWhat have you been playing recently that you think is worth mentioning?

I've been booting into Windows to play Rainbow Six: Siege. That's about the only game I've been playing for the past month or so. Although, I did play Left 4 Dead 2 and Deep Rock Galactic with another friend this month for a few hours, and those games were still good fun. I need to remind myself to install the Proton version of Left 4 Dead 2, though, because the native version crashed 5 times.

I haven't even had time to play visual novels lately with all the stuff I've been doing, which brings me to...

Quoting: Mountain ManThe only thing that bothers me is that Linux gaming is essentially synonymous with Steam. I was really hoping that other developers would be inspired by Valve to support Linux directly, but it has been left to Valve to do all the heavy lifting, and as much as I appreciate what they have done for Linux gaming, it makes me nervous having all the eggs in one basket, as the saying goes.

I can understand the sentiment. On the other hand, Valve has done nothing for over 90% of the Japanese visual novels not available on Steam. I can't get support from Valve or the developer for those games. And those games are the ones I play the most, in a normal month. I still need to coax many of these games into playing with Winetricks. So, nothing much has changed for me.

Nonetheless, it would be great for everybody if more big developers took the plunge even with something basic, like testing the game with Proton before pushing every update out so they don't end up on GOL with a headline like, "[GAME] is broken on Proton again with the new update". Support from the developer is rarely great even for native ports, though, so nothing much has changed there...

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This looks pretty cool.

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Quoting: Pengling

Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut the situation is not immutable. Linux's share on Steam has been growing, largely thanks to the Steam Deck--but the Linux share on the desktop in general seems to have been growing significantly faster the last year or two; we're apparently up to about 4%. I think something like this could add a couple of percentage points.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I reckon you're right. It's just infuriating to always see people saying "I don't like this!" only to then continue to use the offending products, in spite of the existence of alternatives that will suit a huge amount of people just fine and relieve them of that stress. (Life's too short, why would you put yourself through it?)

It's like becoming a Canadian. That would go against our freedoms.

I might be misremembering something I heard a long time ago...

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Quoting: WorMzy

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualMost macOS users are using CrossOver or Whisky, I gather.

I suppose if I were a MacOS user I, too, might be driven to Whisky.

I have to use a Mac for work, and it mostly drives me to rum and homebrew mead..

It's not like being on Linux discounts the option of rum either.

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Quoting: elmapulthe issue is that dont benefit anyone.
an linux version will earn about 4% of the income for the game, and they either will spend more than that, or have to quit supporting windows sooner to keep their promisse of treating every platform equally.

only platform owners care about an specific platform ecosystem, nintendo do with their consoles, microsoft with windows and xbox, and now valve with linux, the main difference is that valve isnt the only linux provider but they have nothing to lose with it growing even if its not their distro, they have everything to lose with microsoft gaining ground on the other hand.

I don't know whether this analysis is still very accurate, but Linux customers can represent significant revenue if you do it in the right way: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/The-state-of-Mac-and-Linux-gaming

Regardless, the point I was making was that having a stretch goal for "we'll make it work on Linux!" is not a selling point anymore. Back when all we could do was beg for a port, we'd be grateful if the developer did anything at all. Linux customers have higher standards now that most of these Kickstarter campaigns will fall short of. Proton has become so good and the bar is now so high that only a vanishingly small subset of developers have created a Linux version that beats Proton because it's hard. And they're almost all indie games, like Factorio. The fact is you get better support with Proton than most native games today, it will work better for longer, and you'll always receive updates at the same cadence as Windows customers.

The feature that killed OS/2 is the feature that set Linux gamers free.

What a world.

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Quoting: LoudTechieWhat mcirosoft didn't disclose with their TPM requirement is that breaking bitlocker of the TPM they required at first(hardware based) is so easy that a teacher suggested it as a project in my first year of embedded software engineering. This is the relevant trick..
Doesn't work for fTPM, but that only got allowed when it turned out that gamers with game pcs can be very loud.

Huh. That's pretty interesting. I guess the real professionals might have a suitcase full of these pogo pin sniffers for common laptop models, ready to disassemble the laptop at a moment's notice.

My desktop computer from 2017 has fTPM. Let me check if my Dell business laptop from 2022, which came with Windows 11, has fTPM.

<Rebooting>...

Edit:I have no clue. It doesn't tell me in the BIOS whether I have a fTPM, it just has the option to enable Secure Boot.

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I believe this feature requires an NPU chip. That might be a requirement for OEMs to have a Windows 11 certified computer now; I'm not sure.

QuoteWhat happens if someone else gets access to your device? Lost, stolen, sold (and you forgot to wipe) and so on. If you get hacked, they'll end up seeing everything, it's another major attack point. Yeah great it's stored on your device, but people and companies get broken open all the time, malicious orgs will have a real party with your data. There's plenty of other times people may end up with access to your device to think about, I'm not going to list them all of course.

This is why it's a good thing Microsoft made TPM a requirement and enabled Bitlocker by default, meaning all Windows 11 computers will be securely encrypted with Bitlocker. Even if your computer gets stolen, the hacker still needs to crack the password.

What's more concerning is malware, as once they have administrative access, the attacker will have easy access to all of your data. Stuff you wouldn't have even thought was sensitive or important.

QuoteOh wow, that sure sounds good for your privacy doesn't it. But don't worry it "does not take snapshots of certain kinds of content, including InPrivate web browsing sessions in Microsoft Edge" and "material protected with digital rights management (DRM)" is also protected. We can't have Netflix or Disney getting annoyed with it taking a shot of that movie you watched, nope.

Microsoft would need to circumvent their own API that makes it impossible for the user to take screenshots of Netflix or Disney+. But, yeah, putting those two things together really does tell you who matters most to Microsoft.

QuoteBut, how far do we trust data being fed into a black-box AI that no one can really see what it's doing huh?

Exactly zero.

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