Boiling Steam

https://boilingsteam.com/ Not the only person writing on it anymore but still one of the main contributors. We talk about Linux gaming and the Steam Deck.

Sure, my recent (gaming) desktop runs exclusively on Guix [0, 1]. I love working in all things lisp. Since those were written I've only continued to get deeper into Guix, and now help maintain nonguix and contribute to Guix. I can't imagine going back, it is just so much more fun and educational (to me). [0] https://boilingsteam.com/how-i-built-my-new-linux-gaming-desktop-in-20… [1] https://boilingsteam.com/i-love-arch-but-gnu-guix-is-my-new-distro/

Thanks for the amazing work you guys are doing! I'm keeping an eye on the progress and it's amazing to see: https://boilingsteam.com/proton-keeps-making-its-way-in-compatibility/

> The growth was well described here: https://boilingsteam.com/linux-gaming-in-2016-the-good-the-bad-and-the… That actually says (if you follow the links to try to find the actual claims): The Linux Market share on Steam is about 1%, Mac is about 4%. They are relatively stable around that. But obviously more people join Steam every day.[1] So... about 1%, using Steam to estimate (not steam hardware though). [1] https://boilingsteam.com/our-fifth-podcast-with-feral-interactive/

I can tell you've never released a popular product on Linux. It's a lottttt more effort than you're implying. To do it well, you need to have Linux as a target from the start of your development, it's not something you can tack on to the end. Linux graphics drivers are very different from Windows (the AMD stack isn't even the same codebase). Linux window managers are... wild. You need to build to an ABI that will be supported across distros, which mostly means the Steam Runtime, which means you need to go learn about and understand that. You can't introduce any platform assumptions ("ehh, I'll just hardcode this path with a backslash... oops"). Once you release, you're talking support for dozens of different distros, different versions of distros, different package managers, different filesystems. I know what you're going to say: "Just support Ubuntu LTS and ignore everyone else". Well, now you've just cut your customer base by at least 75%[1], and your customers on other distros are going to demand support anyway. Do you tell a paying customer to F-off because they're not using a distro with only ~20% of the market? Supporting Linux is hard. So is supporting Windows, but if Windows makes up 98% of your customer base, it's justified. 2%? Ehhhhh. (P.S. I love Linux. See my profile. This is the kind of stuff I deal with every single day.) [1] https://boilingsteam.com/we-dont-game-on-the-same-distros-no-more/

It's a newcomer, but in ProtonDB data CachyOS is now the second most popular distro after Arch: https://boilingsteam.com/now-cachy-os-is-eating-arch-linux-lunch/ Fedora is 4th, Ubuntu is 5th.

Look at the specs of this Orange Pi 6+ board - dedicated 30 TPU NPU. https://boilingsteam.com/orange-pi-6-plus-review/

I'm thinking they considered this strongly, since that's what they did with the steam deck. We don't know price yet, but if it's like the deck they'll be trying to keep it as cheap as possible. The deck supposedly was so off-the-shelf that it re-used a design for another AMD customer, leftover elements and all - https://boilingsteam.com/an-in-depth-look-at-the-steam-deck-apu/ Unless Valve took a big risky bet, the Steam deck is going to be again re-using existing hardware and excess hardware. I'm presuming there are leftover unsold Zen 4 and RDNA 3 dies - and nothing competitive that AMD could offer from Valves perspective, at least when they locked the design some months ago.

Original source: https://boilingsteam.com/windows-games-compatibility-on-linux-is-at-a-…

Discussion of alternatives here: https://boilingsteam.com/poll-trust-in-firefox-mozilla-is-gone/

Steam (via Proton) generally works, though, for those who wish to use it. (Steam+Proton also works with things downloaded from outside of Steam, too, and has for years[0].) Proton itself is open-source[1]. If someone wanted to package up standalone Proton binaries for a Linux distro, then I don't see any particular barriers that would prevent that. On GoG's part, they do provide the ability to just download a game with a web browser (the old-fashioned, DRM-free way). From there, I can manage the games I that own in any way that I choose. Thus, I'm simply not seeing a problem here that needs solved. I already have the freedom to do whatever I want. Which part of this situation is broken, do you suppose, and why does GoG in particular need to fix it? [0]: https://boilingsteam.com/valve-breaks-the-shackles-of-proton/ [1]: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

Debian officially supports RISC-V and is about there[0]. Whereas qemu-user will run e.g. x86 and arm binaries, should you ever need to. This recent review of VisionFive2[1] has a little more info. There they even run popular games via x86 emulation. 0. https://buildd.debian.org/stats/ 1. https://boilingsteam.com/vision-five-2-board-review/

"75% of the Top 100 Most Played Games on Steam Are Playable/Verified on the Steam Deck" https://boilingsteam.com/75-of-the-top-100-most-played-games-on-steam-… (Disclaimer: I work on KDE and worked a small bit on the Deck at some point.)

Your feeling is wrong. Here[1] are all the LSL games as supported on Linux via Proton, they are all playable (yes, even the red/borked one as that's actually Linux native). Most games are usually pretty well supported by Proton[2], for example all the big releases from Playstation games (God of War, Spideman, etc.) have had day 1 support as well as a lot of other big games Cyberpubnk 2077 had day 1 support as well. The main exception being multiplayer games with anticheat is the biggest roadblock right now. Though progress is being made with all the big AC engines (EAC, Battleye, etc.) working in Proton but needs to be enabled by each individual developer. 1. https://www.protondb.com/search?q=Leisure%20Suit%20Larry 2. https://boilingsteam.com/75-of-the-top-100-most-played-games-on-steam-…

Using the Steam Hardware Survey to estimate the number of shipped units is clever. For reference, here's the link to the current hardware survey results, narrowed to only Linux: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey… (click the "Linux Version" line to expand detailed results). We can see that "SteamOS Holo" is at 22.08% of Linux Steam users, up from 7.6% last July (https://boilingsteam.com/steam-deck-full-overview/). If anyone knows of a historic archive of data for the Steam Hardware Survey, it would be interesting to see whether or not the Steam Deck has made a dent in the overall Windows percentage since last year (Windows is still sitting pretty at 96.02%, but that just means there's a lot of room to grow, eh? :P ).

Here’s an interview I did about it: https://boilingsteam.com/porting-roblox-game-to-steam-find-the-cats/ It’s mostly a recreation of the entire game in Unity, not much got reused.

It's a gaming survey with mostly reddit users, so may be skewed. https://boilingsteam.com/which-linux-distro-for-gaming-q2-2021-survey-…

An article about this: https://boilingsteam.com/the-state-of-virtual-reality-on-linux/

You can run external games using Steam's Proton[1]. It's not mentioned in the article so I guess it's not any help? [1] https://boilingsteam.com/valve-breaks-the-shackles-of-proton/ or you could in 2019, anyway

The commonly heard demand is to start working on a common ground, like AMD and Intel seems to be able just fine. What's your proposal? Requiring paid and free-time spending software developer to bent backward and maintain some complex parallel implementation for EGL-Streams just because NVIDIA always want to be a special snowflake? Even seemingly putting in extra effort to be a PITA for all involved and produce as much extra work as just possible to support it. With that in mind really nobody can wonder why NVIDIA market share is continuously getting smaller in Linux systems https://boilingsteam.com/amd-vs-nvidia-are-linux-gamers-switching-yet/

> Experience about reality, how people in the industry think, what those people actually consider as project costs. I trust more the experience of those who actually work on games porting, and explain relevant difficulties they encounter. And no one says it's trivial. On the contrary, they say that rendering is the hardest part, and the most costly one to port. So it's very clear, that lock-in proponents who are against cross platform gaming (MS and Co) are benefiting from this hurdle and strengthen it by pushing their APIs. See: https://boilingsteam.com/icculus-ryan-gordon-tells-us-everything-part-…

Here's a review from the other day. http://boilingsteam.com/one-week-with-brewmaster-steamos/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10105200)

It's on a per-case basis I think. I will call it 'ready' when I can pick up a Linux PC or a Steam Deck off of the shelf with zero fiddling, install and boot up a {Steam, Multiplayer, Non-Steam, comes-with-own-launcher-on-PC} game without any fuss and just play. Proton has made more games playable than ever before, but there are still those that won't run [0]. EAC and Battleye have announced official support for both Linux and WINE, but still many games are unplayable due to anti-cheat not being supported for those particular games [1]. Steam Deck is coming, but is not out yet. The Steam Deck UI and SteamOS 3.0 looks like it will be a better replacement for Steam OS 1-2 and Steam Machines by an order of magnitude, but they aren't there yet [2]. Linux active users on steam are at the highest they've been since the release of proton, but still haven't pushed through 3% (and currently around 1%) [3] So all in all, all the elements are coming together and a LOT of investment is going into it. 2022 will be an exciting year for Gaming on Linux. But it isn't there yet [0] https://protondb.com [1] https://areweanticheatyet.com/ [2] https://boilingsteam.com/steam-deck-developer-kit-impressions/ [3] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Linux-De…