Rosenzweig, known for her Panfrost and Apple M1/M2 GPU driver work is now contracted by Valve to work on graphics driver development! Sounds like great news for Valve's push for Linux gaming.
It's easily anticheat for me; I'd still like to play genshin or paladins but their anticheat either makes it very difficult/risky (bans) or just impossible
Yeah the anticheat issue is very annoying. These games would run great on Linux if devs didn’t implement kernel level anticheat or would enable EAC / BattleEye support for proton. From what I can tell (just reading the docs) it seems extremely easy for devs to enable it. Maybe 1-2 hours of work.
I don’t use SteamOS, but there work for Linux gaming is undeniable. Proton does an excellent job running the majority of games, and the Steam Linux client runs very well.
I'm so torn about valve. It is after all a proprietary platform. I use it since always and have hundreds of games and just know they'll all be gone at some point in the future. No word about making steam client open source, not even talking about something like decentralized proof of ownership etc. (For obvious reasons)
That said: they do incredible work for Linux. Their games have been Linux compatible since ages! And actually play well on Linux. Their client works flawlessly. And what they have done with proton is just flat out incredible. As you say Linux gaming is awesome currently and has not been that exciting for a long time. In short they do awesome work, I'd just wish they were a little bit open sourceier.
There can only be benefits to wider Linux acceptance in gaming, as it stands it's shocking that it isn't already there. Linux imo will never be window's equal in distribution, too many people use windows compared to the various distros. But more people seem to use Linux now than before so there's an untapped market here.
I think the days of the Windows monopoly are already gone - in my (academic) circles at least, I see more OS X/Mac than Windows users.
The OS X dominance is probably less sustainable than the Windows monopoly was, as it depends on one (already abusive) company for both hardware and software. In addition, mobile devices are increasingly taking over, shaking up the entire industry.
To me at least, it seems to be turbulent times where there is absolutely room for changes to happen. Not saying it's going up be the year of the Linux desktop though, that one is getting a bit old.
Has Valve's work on SteamOS so far affected any of the other distros positively in some way? Are the improvements transferable or is it all just for SteamOS?
Very yes. Not only are Steam and Proton usable on distros aside SteamOS, improvements from those regularly flow upstream into Wine, DXVK and also the Linux kernel itself.
Before SteamOS could become a thing Valve made HUGE effort to make Linux useful for gaming. All the games everyone can now easily play on any x86 Linux distribution - that was possible, in a big part, by Valve efforts. Driver improvements, compatibility layers (not just Proton, but also improvements in the upstream wine), etc.
And they do continue the improvements, not just for their own Linux systems.
Almost nothing Valve has worked on is only for SteamOS, other than packaging and distributing SteamOS itself. They’ve upstreamed kernel patches, RADV patches, KDE patches, etc which affects all desktops. Not to mention the open source tools like Gamescope and Fossilize, the latter of which is used automatically on all Linux PCs playing Steam games, and their contributions and funding to Wine and other projects. Even the new Steam big picture UI, which was initially only available on SteamOS, is now broadly available.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Valve is carrying Linux gaming these past few years. It has been a downright renaissance.
@Kaldo@sdx Even though #Valve is maintaining #Proton, which is based on #Wine, I think projects like #DXVK and #GalliumNine would not exist or have come this far if it weren't for Valve.
I think Valve's contribution to the #Linux world is very indirect, but cannot be denied.
@Weazel Most Fediverse software can't do full text search. Instead, it relies on hashtags to make posts findable. When I talk about a specific topic, I always add hashtags so anyone who's interested can find my posts.
On top of what you said about DXVK, Proton improvements go back to wine eventually and Proton itself can be used outside of Steam (there's a Lutris version for example), that's huge, on some games it can be night and day compared to wine-staging.
Valve is doing a fantastic job in making Linux a reliable gaming platform.
I have some vague memory that they started seriously pushing for linux support after microsoft tried to limite steam acces on windows 8 or something like that.
But I can't find any info on that...
Its just sensible. Building their own os would take so much resources that they would have to successfully make a profit on it. Leveraging linux and the open source community allows them to make sure there is an alternative and gives them an os to use on their handheld device or any other they choose to make ensuring they can't be cut out by a monopoly power. And all for pennies really.
I really appreciate that Valve seems to be ethical about the way they're going about this, at least so far. I haven't heard any bad news nor does it raise any "extend embrace extinguish" alarms. Rare for a company these days...
Well, Valve is a privately held company with a management that has a longer term vision than the next quarterly profits, so there's that. Make it public and let the MBAs in and it'll become shit in no time, which I sincerely hope will never happen.
Valve is truly one of the last respected game companies. Sure, they make a lot of money and take a 30% cut from developers on Steam, but because of how satisfied their users are, they keep coming back and keep buying more games, which is a win in the long term. Too many companies think short-term or quarterly while Valve seems to look at the big picture. I give a lot of credit to Gabe for not truly selling out at any point. And if it hasn’t happened by this point, I don’t see it happening in the future. It would have happened by now if so.
yeah 30% is a lot. Like lawyer level but honestly considering some places do even more or have at times and at least its within reason. Barely so but there is precedence. Still would love to see 20, 10 or even 5. 5 is the other end of the spectrum from a third in that its not very reasonable to expect it to be any less and still receive any value at all.
30% isn't a lot. It's market standard. Valve taking 30% and giving you all of their features and support is infinitely bette than giving literally any other company 30%
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