Quoting: ColomboIt still lacks tons of content, especially in the midgame. There isn't really that much to do, only useless clicking when you are trying to manage stuff, that should have been automated in the first place.

Part of the problem is the insistence on "pure" real time. I wish there was a sort of "skip time to the next alert" button.

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Quoting: Duckeenie

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: manus76Why has this thread turned into 'Apple is an evil corporation' diatribe? I thought it was about Linux gaming and I can't recall seeing anyone putting a gun to people's heads, forcing them to buy an Apple product (or Microsoft's for that matter). At least not where I live.

Lots of bad things happen in this world without anyone putting a gun to anyone's head. People's children starve in the streets without anyone having put a gun to anyone's head. Nestle executives conspired to have third world babies die of disease without putting guns to anyone's head. The idea that if something happens subtly it didn't really happen is pernicious and helps a lot of people get away with a lot of really bad stuff.

Of course those things are true but why not use the technology industry as an example. Too contentious? Anybody here willing to boycott cobalt or graphite in the interest of saving lives? Who here REALLY wants to live with the consequences of making a stand against corporate abuse of human rights? The point is, many people seem to take on causes for no other reason than to facilitate their need to compete. Hence the constant stream of Microsoft and Apple comments on Linux forums.

Sure, if we weren't Linux users, or if Microsoft and Apple weren't making it more difficult to be Linux users, we doubtless wouldn't criticize them as much for being evil. Does that make it unfair to tell the truth about them? Linux is perhaps unusual in not being evil. Does that make it dirty pool to point out the difference? Really, we shouldn't point out that other people are doing lots of stuff to fuck everything up, because it might be rude and although it's true it might be to our advantage and perish the thought we take our own side? Whaaaa??? So, if someone's in a fight with you, do you tie both hands behind your back and offer up your chin, you know, just to be polite?

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

Because Apple is one of the worst cases of lock-in proponents. Metal is the example here. You apparently agree. If you don't understand why it deserves criticism, then I guess you think damage to the industry progress is good and falls into "do what you can to earn money". That's not the first time someone tries to justify such crooked practice.

And if you just don't get why Apple is criticized, and not other lock-in proponents like MS, Sony and etc. it's because the conversation was about Apple above. Of course all of them deserve this criticism.

Part of it is also that typically in Linux circles nobody goes around trying to say Microsoft is actually OK and their lock-in was never intended to conspire against anybody and etc., because we all know better. So it doesn't come up. If someone were to make such a fatuous argument, it would certainly be disputed vociferously.

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Quoting: manus76Desktop-Gamingwise Apple plays almost no role in the big scheme of things - who buys a Mac to play games anyway? Also 'Redundant backends'? If it brings money it's not, from programmers' perspective, redundant I guess. Another point: there are examples of developers successfully supporting multiple backends (e.g.Serious Sam/The Talos Priniciple off the top of my head) without all that much trouble it seems.
So: is that all, as you write, 'consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs'? Or maybe some teams are not competent enough? Work on other projects?

It doesn't matter what they buy it for, it matters what they spend money on once they buy it. People buy phones to make calls and do messages and take pictures, but I would swear there is a mobile game market of some sort. Mac is a significant part of the desktop gaming market, whatever the Mac users buying those games "bought it for". If we think of Linux as mattering at all (and after all, about a quarter of games currently come to Linux), then clearly Mac matters at least three times as much. Which means if we both used the same thing, that matters four times as much as if just Linux uses it.

Meanwhile, no doubt some teams are not "competent enough" (or, not competent enough at that particular skill). And your point is? This actually demonstrates that it's a problem. If we want all the games, that would include games built by people who are better at game mechanics than at graphics backends. If your argument is that it doesn't matter because it would be OK if all developers were perfect, that only counts as an argument if you live in an alternate universe with perfect people . . . where it wouldn't come up because perfect people wouldn't do lockin.

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Quoting: De1m0s

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: De1m0sTo become a real alternative to windows, there must change a lot of things in linux.
I'm linux-user since 2 years, and i'm still wondering some times, how software is released. Often, you can't simpy download anything and install; no, you should compile that dumb shit before you can install and use it. This is something, you can't sell to any "normal"-pc-user, and this is something, that let other people say, linux is for freaks only.

Just to amplify a bit on what others are saying, every Linux distribution with pretensions to user friendliness has a little graphical application called "Software manager" or something which will install anything in the distribution's repository. And if yours has no such pretensions, you can generally install "Synaptic" which does more or less the same thing. So you don't even need to learn to use the package management (like apt or rpm or whatever), you just browse around the categories or type the name of something you want, then click on a button saying "install" and the thingie installs. Windows is way harder. Don't really know the Mac situation.

It's not that easy. Many things aren't available over the software manager.
I'm a "new" linux user; used windows since Win95. I really like linux.

The story so far (my linux-problems at the moment):
i like playing games, like all of us. We weren't here if we don't.
But, my xbox360 controller does not work with newest games. This circumstance is known well, but hard to explain to all the "normal"-pc-users. They want to plug in that thing, and play.
So, after lots of fails, i decided to try the "koku-xinput". But this is only available as source code you have to compile. So, i downloaded and tried to compile. Nothing, cmake is not installed. So i installed cmake. Second try: error-message, some kind of SDL2 library missing. Opened the software-manager, type in "SDL2", an get about 20 results. ?? Which one do i need?? Get the first one. Press "install", and got a message, that a lot of libs will be removed, if i install that library. This was the part, where i gave up.

And this is the part, where i can understand, that for this time now, linux is not for the common people.

Ah, well, fair enough. I don't experience this sort of thing since the games I play are basically all keyboard-mouse. I don't actually own a controller. Sooo, basically, it's been a long time since I needed to install anything except via the software manager or Steam. And let me tell you, that's such a luxury; I remember dual booting early Mandrake linux alongside Windows 98 and not being able to tell which was more aggravating, the linux for install-and-dependency hell or the Windows for just turning weird and crapping out and needing to be reinstalled and suchlike BS.
But if I did have to go through what you're dealing with, I would surely be annoyed.
(Edited to add: Wait, Tuubi says this is a Wine thing? I retract my position. Yeah, of course lots of stuff doesn't work on Wine. It's, like, not Linux software--it still amazes me that anything works on Wine. Pleurez moi une riviere. I have a couple things (gifts and stuff) that don't work on Wine. I'm waiting for the day when, one day, they do work on Wine, at which point I will play them. The availability of in-progress stuff that clever power-users can get to work is a feature; if Wine was closed source software, which is what a Windows equivalent would be, you'd just be waiting until it was released like everyone else)

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Quoting: De1m0sTo become a real alternative to windows, there must change a lot of things in linux.
I'm linux-user since 2 years, and i'm still wondering some times, how software is released. Often, you can't simpy download anything and install; no, you should compile that dumb shit before you can install and use it. This is something, you can't sell to any "normal"-pc-user, and this is something, that let other people say, linux is for freaks only.

Just to amplify a bit on what others are saying, every Linux distribution with pretensions to user friendliness has a little graphical application called "Software manager" or something which will install anything in the distribution's repository. And if yours has no such pretensions, you can generally install "Synaptic" which does more or less the same thing. So you don't even need to learn to use the package management (like apt or rpm or whatever), you just browse around the categories or type the name of something you want, then click on a button saying "install" and the thingie installs. Windows is way harder. Don't really know the Mac situation.

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Quoting: stretch611I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords

And I welcome being your new robotic overlord.

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Quoting: Jan

Quoting: ShmerlConsider other cases (besides graphics). Apple didn't join Alliance for Open Media (while even MS did). Apple refused to support WebRTC in desktop Safari, they refused to support MSE, trying to sabotage adoption of DASH, and so on and so forth. The bottom line, they are the most notorious lock-in jerks around and they are causing a lot of damage to the industry because of that.

What about CUPS, WebKit, Swift, Darwin, OpenCL/Grand Central, Bonjour/Zeroconf, USB-C/Thunderbolt, FireWire, embracing of HTML5 instead of Flash, etc.?

I have the impression certain people like to cherry pick a lot just to find another reason to bash 'Evil Apple' instead of focusing on the real reasons why Linux adaption in gaming and on the desktop in general is lacking.

Apple is not preventing Linux from succeeding.

The lack of software people actually want and use on a daily basis (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office) and no flagship hardware/software company with an attractive Linux-specific product is more important than anything coming out of Cupertino.

Your last paragraph is almost certainly true. But it does not actually counter anything anyone else is saying. If I have chickenpox and cancer, it is the cancer that is killing me--but it doesn't mean the chickenpox isn't there, or that it's wrong of me to ever complain about the chickenpox.

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Quoting: manus76Why has this thread turned into 'Apple is an evil corporation' diatribe? I thought it was about Linux gaming and I can't recall seeing anyone putting a gun to people's heads, forcing them to buy an Apple product (or Microsoft's for that matter). At least not where I live.

Lots of bad things happen in this world without anyone putting a gun to anyone's head. People's children starve in the streets without anyone having put a gun to anyone's head. Nestle executives conspired to have third world babies die of disease without putting guns to anyone's head. The idea that if something happens subtly it didn't really happen is pernicious and helps a lot of people get away with a lot of really bad stuff.

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A lot of this discussion has revolved around whether the amount and type of games now available on Linux is enough to drive adoption. And a lot of it seems rather simplistic to me. Everyone's talking as if there is one guy who buys all the computers and if you meet his conditions, all the sales could be Linux, but if you don't, we're stuck where we are. But that's not how the world is. There are people currently running Windows or Mac who play no games or just solitaire/minesweeper, there are people who play a few games casually but really only need a few to keep them happy, there are people who play games moderately, there are "hard core gamers". And there are a whole lot of other sorts of needs that have similar dimensions--photography, CAD, accounting, whatever.

For "hard core gamers", by most definitions, Linux is not a good platform right now. Workable, but unless you had some other overriding reason you'd pick something else, like Windows. Many of us here do have other overriding reasons, so we're here anyway, but it has to be faced: If you're the kind of person who really, really wants to have all the big name games, Linux is not your ideal platform.

But most computer users aren't hard core gamers. Most fall into one of the other categories. Now just a few years ago, Linux was pretty much only a satisfying platform for people who basically didn't game at all, who didn't even think they might want to game at all. This is a fairly restricted group, although already bigger than 2%. But now? Now, Linux is a satisfying platform for everyone up to and including moderate (or even, heavy but iconoclastic) gamers. This is a much less restricted group, certainly the majority of computer users.

Now, Linux overall as a desktop isn't going to be satisfactory for person X unless all their needs are met on Linux as well as on other platforms--or at least, unless any restrictions are minor and at least balanced by corresponding bonuses. Right now I would say Linux as a desktop in itself, or rather as a collection of desktop options, is on balance fundamentally better than any other desktop platform. It is as or more user friendly, more powerful, gives the user more control, less adware and spyware and viruses and on and on. There are still some restrictions in various areas, but it's mostly in applications and where once it was "You practically can't do this in Linux" now it's "If you are the niche equivalent of a 'hard core gamer' Linux may not be the best". Again, the number of people involved has shrunk way down. Any given person may have a few different kinds of needs; Linux is only going to be the best for someone if Linux applications meet their demands in all their areas of interest, so if there's 1% need better CAD than Linux has and 2% that want better video editing than Linux (or Windows) have and so on, it could add up to a fair number of people with one blocker or another. But the blockers are now pretty small; overall, the number of people for whom Linux is/would be as good as or better than other desktop operating systems is now quite large--certainly far more than 2%.

So it may not always have been true, but at this point the main restriction on Linux uptake is a matter of marketing, habit, existing corporate relationships and so forth. If you could wave a magic wand and suddenly all the boxen being sold had a user friendly Linux installed instead of Windows 10, hard core gamers would have problems and so would a few other people, but for many it would be an improvement. This was not always the case, and on gaming it has changed hugely in a very short time.

We need market share. Linux should and will continue to improve, but at this point there is no intrinsic reason why many more people couldn't use it than actually do.

(Edited to add: Note that for some niches, Linux is actually equal or superior even for "hard core gamer" equivalents)

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