It‘s been 9 years since Valve rolled out the Steam Linux beta

[h2odragon]

Steam really has done an amazing job making Linux systems viable gaming platforms.

The manner in which they've done so shows a delightful understanding of the "unix philosophy" in so many ways, too.

Last month I was doing hardware changes on our home systems, my daughter's steam install and mine copied to new systems with a quick "tar" and no fuss; which was a very pleasant discovery.

They've rarely if ever (that I've seen) gone to extra effort to introduce warts the user has to deal with. Opening up the new deck hardware to show us how to do so, etc... Good eggs there.

[thioordc]

Yeah I rarely ever “like” a company but Valve has done so much it’s honestly amazing. The 30% they take is soooo worth it for developers who don’t have natural Linux support.

[arendtio]

This past week, I witness Steam/Proton making it possible to play Age of Empires 4 just 4 days after its official release (and 2 of those days were Saturday and Sunday).

That is just awesome.

[mAritz]

To be fair the public stress test beta already showed some problems that needed to be fixed and people started working on it back then.

But the point still stands, for big titles you don't have to wait long for Proton support nowadays.

[capableweb]

A bit off topic, but what you think of the game itself? Big AoE 2 fan here, and a bit on the edge if I should try it or not.

[DeathArrow]

>Steam on Linux after opening up access to everyone was seeing around a ~2% marketshare prior to falling with the setbacks in Linux gaming. But ever since Steam Play (Proton) was introduced in 2018, it's begun rebounding. This past month it set a new multi-year high with a 1.13% marketshare for Steam on Linux after surpassing the 1.0% mark this summer.

From 1% to 1.13%. Isn't it glorious?

[MattPalmer1086]

Since Linux only has between 1-2% market share of desktop operating systems in total, that 0.13% increase is a reasonable proportion of the Linux users out there. So not too bad I'd say.

[indymike]

You have to start somewhere.

[oblak]

Valve has proven to me that a wildly profitable company's interests can very much aligned with my own. Guess I should be thanking MS for prompting this amazing development.

Part of me can't wait for the winter to come so that I can start using my Index again without feeling like I am wasting my time at home instead of enjoying a nice day outside.

[rjzzleep]

Now if only AMD didn't treat ROCm as an afterthought the graghics card landscape could see an interesting shift. Steamdeck with ML capabilities wolud be pretty cool.

[mazone]

Play only on linux since the last year or so and got away from the dedicated windows machine i had to have for only gaming. I had some bugs in the beginning but with recent versions of proton it feels a lot more stable. I don't have any bugs anymore in any games and don't notice any slowdowns or degraded performance. It is quite amazing.

[thrower123]

I think it is incredible that after all these years the best target for Linux gaming is still a Windows compatibility shim.

[squarefoot]

The Windows user base is too large, and the cost of maintaining two versions is too costly for most publishers to even think of making two versions. They instead learned how to write Windows games that can be easily run under Linux with no or minimum effort. Once a significant number of people will transition to Linux because they have enough apps/games that do what they want under Linux, and the gain in stability, privacy and cost is worth the migration, major games being written only for Linux may become a reality. Although this would require many years, Microsoft has been well aware for a long time, and it's the main reason they already aimed at taking control of Linux before it was too late (WSL, VS Code, Edge for Linux, etc), and it's very likely we'll see a Microsoft branded free only as in beer Linux distribution soon. Unfortunately, I'm 100% sure they will succeed.

[no_time]

You would be writing linux-to-linux compatibility shims instead. Desktop linux is forever stuck in the "move fast and break things" mindset that just isn't compatible with the release-and-forget style of proprietary software.

[alex_smart]

Why wouldn't it be? What were you hoping would happen?

[deng]

Yes, that's why you still have these 'ubuntu_12' folders in the Steam installation, since they have never updated this in the past 9 years. So in reality, native Linux development has pretty much failed, and they have put all their money on Proton. That is probably the right decision from a business perspective, but it's pretty much a defeat nonetheless.

[edflsafoiewq]

What's wrong with it? Having the Windows APIs turn into a portable abstraction layer is certainly amusing, but having wine sitting underneath the program is really nice (essentially for the same reason a VM is). For one thing, winedevs are way better at linux support than random gamedevs.

[hn8788]

I think it was Supergiant Games who said that because Proton is good enough, they're don't plan to provide native Linux versions of their games in the future.

[Rebelgecko]

At least we're past the days where the Steam installer would rm -rf your home directory

[999900000999]

Personally I'd rather have all software like this.

Have platform agnostic code, or let it prefer windows. If your compatibility layer is so good I don't care.

Better than what we have now where tons of applications don't run on Linux or Mac OS.

[superkuh]

Not so much failed as it was never a real thing in the first place. Valve supported steam machines and linux gaming so they could fend off Microsoft's attempts to monopolize all gaming with proprietary executable formats like in the windows store. Every time MS starts this up again Valve will wave around the linux/steam machine flag until it stops and then they go back to not caring about linux.

[MaxGanzII]

Steam is a trap though, no?

You buy software, but if you leave, you lose it all.

Is that correct? there's no way to retain what you've bought?

[pengaru]

Valve/Steam does not require games distributed through its platform to use their SDK/DRM in any way. It's up to the individual game developers if they set such a Steam a trap.

Valve doesn't even give an outright monetary incentive to do it. i.e. Valve's 30% cut doesn't turn into 10% if you link in Steamworks.

Though one could argue there's an indirect monetary incentive created by locking away all the platform/social features behind a wall accessed through their proprietary library. But last I checked the DRM aspects of that library could be ignored while using the rest of the platform. It does automatically stay updated though, so they could turn Evil and force DRM @ initialization if they wanted, hypothetically speaking.

[messe]

It depends. Some games are DRM free, and those can be backed up and kept wherever you wish. I can copy my Kerbal Space Program directory anywhere, for example, and it works fine. I use this to have several differently modded installs.

[dartharva]

You can absolutely retain what you've bought: all content is saved in the steam/steamapps/common folder. If you want you can rip those files out and run them separately with cracks or Steam emulators like Goldberg, but the supporting infrastructure and dependencies for games (like multiplayer services, matchmaking, official support) will be lost. Many games prefer to rely on Steam's platform and support for core features by their own design.

[slightwinder]

There are DRM-free games on steam, but how many people maintain backups of their games? And this is not limited to steam. Most distribution these days on PC is digital, and even consoles moved there. If you lose your account for whatever reason, you will lose them all. Same problem with other content (video, audio, etc.). As long as there is no law protecting the customers from those things, it will remain a problem.

[mdoms]

What you're saying is absolutely true, not sure why people are trying to bury your comment.

[alex_duf]

Not if you want to use your software outside of steam, no.

[vadfa]

Yes, it's like netflix/etc in that regard.

[LeoPanthera]

Steam is not a subscription service so I'm not sure what you mean by "leave".

[EamonnMR]

Something I always told myself I'd get around to. I've been meaning to set up Ubuntu on my desktop so I can use it for development, anyone have a good tutorial for setting up steam/proton?

[mazone]

You basically just install steam from within your linux distributions package manager. I use and recommend some arch based distro but for Ubuntu it should be apt-get or some gui tool like synaptic.

After you installed steam it will probably just work. You might need to go into settings -> steam play and enable proton. that's it.

[smoldesu]

It's basically set-and-forget. Just download Steam from your preferred package manager, and all of the verified Proton titles should be playable without manual intervention. If you want to open up Proton to all your Windows games, you have to enable it in Settings > Steam Play. ProtonDB is your best friend, but besides that it's fairly easy to get up and running. Props to Valve for removing the friction, here!

[assbuttbuttass]

Between lutris and steam I don't even run Windows anymore.

[pjmlp]

A whooping 1% in 9 years, great achievement.

[DeathArrow]

In 891 years, Linux gaming will reach 100%. :)