You can do similar with some games on Mac but it’s done through the windows client which is what I assume is being measured - couple that with the comparative difficulty of setting wine+steam up and you have negligible mac usage.
adobe sells some 3d software for linux via steam.
somewhat related, wickedengine runs great on linux too, even though the primary developer only runs windows.
linux gaming is here!
my windows never gets updated because any update could break gaming.
my linux gets updated daily, when something breaks it’s easy to rollback and pin.
MS owns gaming but they can’t seem to get out of their own way in making a respectful OS without ads, forced online accounts and telemetry. It’s kinda embarrassing in the corporate world when people open edge to the default edge home page..
I have a steam deck but my Linux laptop games well.
It's not perfect but it's pretty good and I only use my desktop as a small media server and for games anyway.
Despite them releasing a "open source" driver, Nvidia not actually working properly still seems to be the number one complaint that I see on Linux.
Additionally, if we are comparing the Linux gamer ecosystem to Apple, then also the Apple ecosystem should be taken into account.
Tough I personally stopped dual booting with Windows due to their updates policy.
Sometimes I would not boot into it for months and then unskippable (or I forgot to skips them) updates would ruin that one hour of gaming I might have available...
On Linux everything's just fine. With the added bonus of 90% less cruft from the OS.
For the time being HoloISO seems like a nice alternative, are there any caveats or problems? Are you using an AMD GPU like the Readme says is more likely to work without issues?
Apart from multiplayer games with kernel anti cheat and some games unsupported by Proton, I see no reason to install Windows on my next gaming PC or any other PC of mine. I have a Steam Deck, a Linux laptop and a gaming PC with dual boot.
SteamOS basically is a Linux Desktop. Steam Deck is just a hand-held form-factor PC with built-in Steam Controller, and SteamOS is basically just Valve's custom Arch Linux with KDE Plasma desktop and Steam "Big Picture" mode as "desktop" environments.
> "then so should Apple mobile devices."
No, they shouldn't, because Apple mobile devices don't run Linux, nor Steam.
I can play minecraft at 120hz for hours and hours on battery and it's a great experience.
I chose nvidia when I made the switch to linux probably 8 years ago. At the time AMD had not yet started their open source driver efforts. I haven't had any major complaints besides updates once giving a black screen. During most of that time AMD drivers were making a lot of changes that I didn't want to deal with. I believe they are a good choice now but they certainly did not seem to be then.
As far as steam, I've been using it happily on mint the entire time. It has had a big picture mode for some time. I'm a little baffled by people who seem to be waiting for a steamOS general release to make the switch.
As an aside, I cannot believe how it is impossible to script the base windows install to do updates through the command line on a strict schedule! I ended up having to install some 3rd party powershell package and I still have some annoying limitations around feature updates with it. This should be built in!
Windows has turned into a horrendous flurry of advertisements, internet-based searching you can't turn off, and all kinds of default opt-in telemetry and privacy violations. Microsoft is not to be trusted.
I switched to AMD after the RX480 and haven't looked back. That was 8 years ago, so there hasn't been a good reason to use NVIDIA for a long time.
It's fine if you want to use Mint, but it doesn't make Nvidia a good person here.
Meanwhile, Valve has to emulate Windows and DirectX to make SteamDeck usable for its target market.
Well aside its inherent self-selecting nature, we've see multiple huge swings from China, exploding the margin for error to eclipse half-point swings like this.
I'd love to see a proper census done, or per-region drill-downs. It's too heartbreaking to see headlines like this and next month they're wiped out by internet cafes in China doing a reboot.
> When looking at the Steam Linux breakdown, the SteamOS Holo that powers the Steam Deck is now accounting for around 42% of all Linux gamers on Steam.
Doesn't seem unexpected at all?
Has this not been a truism for at least a couple of decades now?
- Game used to be Mac playable, but isn't because of 32-bit
- Game doesn't have a Mac version at all
Valve's work on the Steam Deck shows they could fix both problems but why should they do free work for the world's richest corporation?
- Oceanhorn 2's gameplay is strictly inferior to Zelda (because of BotW's popularity, there are more fun options even over TTK)
- I found Oregon Trail patently offensive. It's one thing to be a remake that worse than the original. Lots of games have that problem. It's another when your nostalgia-bait headliner actively drives people away.
Apple's success outside of Arcade (Apple is the largest "gaming" company in terms of money made) appears to be a side-effect of them owning the plaform.
Which difficulties are involved in selecting a Proton version from a dropdown and clicking install?
I only boot windows to play VR. Gaming on linux is easy* compared to the early days. Nobody messes around manually with wine instances anymore, dude; wine/protontricks is a thing. (98% of the time at least).
[*] Easy for the games that run on Proton, which according to ProtonDB is ~70% of the titles on steam (those with silver+ rating).
Edit: I should mention, I swore off AAA gaming years ago, so that likely contributes to my satisfaction with linux gaming. Really, though, nothing of value was lost to me.
I split my time between two places, and game infrequently which means my SFF gaming PC is often still in the box until I need it, at which point Windows updates can waste the time I had for gaming.
Would love a way to use my laptop to keep some Windows VM snapshot up to date. Windows has ruined more gaming sessions than it’s provided for me lately.
I don't think galve trusts apple to do anything different at all - apple maintains much more stringent control of their os and what software can be run on it, and also asks for platform fees.
Valve wants none of that. Apple will develop their own game support and it will be for an apple gaming platform that they'll take 30% for.
(And Windows 8+ is not acceptable, 11 is just even worse than 10.)
That it doesn't exist on macOS?
The point I was making is that the overwhelming number of games on steam are windows only games, the valve semi-supports on linux via proton, which they do not offer on macOS. The net result is anyone jumping through hoops on macOS to use steam+wine is recorded as a windows user, even if there were even remotely meaningful number of such users.
Hence linux steam users matching macOS steam users is an obviously plausible outcome.
Hoping to see more movement on Mac compatibility in the future, but even with the recent game porting tools, I won't be holding my breath. It's sad, these laptops seem like they'd be decent for casual gaming (One of my main computers is a MBP. I use all the OSes.)
Even if you, the reader, are not having issues and have an ASUS gaming laptop, check out G-Helper. It's a huge QoL upgrade. (It's one of those tools that causes people to write the n+1th "I normally hate third party tools but G-helper is actually amazing" etc posts).
For Linux ASUS Gamers, y'all likely already know, but supergfxctl, asusd/asusctl/rog-control-center are your friends!