Very exciting times for Linux gaming this year.
With next quarter's Intel Broadwell chipset - which incidentally runs off official open source drivers on Linux [1] [2] - we should have a pretty awesome Steam experience on Linux. As the Intel dude puts it :
* Intel’s Ben Widawsky, who works on Intel’s Linux graphics driver efforts, says that “Broadwell graphics bring some of the biggest changes we’ve seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU… [the changes] dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes.”*
Pretty the much the only reason I'm putting off buying a laptop right now.
I actually installed steam yesterday (for the first time, I'm not a gamer) to see the available games for Linux.
I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few that looked okay. So I bought a couple. None worked -- mysterious launch errors, etc. No luck after a couple hours of debugging.
DISAPPOINTED!
I seriously question how many people actually run on Linux vs. login and browse the store? That said, I'm sure the experience will improve and it's great to see Linux as a growing platform for games!
Steam on Linux works perfectly to me. I have also used Steam with Wine for games that won't otherwise work on Linux. The experience with Steam + Wine is uneven; some games works perfectly and others don't; but Steam on Linux works fine for me.
I'm replying to myself to provide a bit more context for those asking questions about the games I was trying.
I'm very capable of debugging library and video driver problems. In this case, it seemed to be actual game-internal issues from a recent update. The specific game was built on the Unity platform, and they seemed to have resolved the issues for Mac and Windows but not yet Linux. I'm not annoyed at Steam or the developer (it's reasonable that Linux issues aren't their priority if it's only a tiny portion of users).
My intent was not to say that Steam on Linux is generally broken, just to share my own mildly-amusing experience. :)
On a positive note -- after the initial frustration, I eventually bought Counterstrike and it worked great. I think it's amazing that Steam supports Linux at all, so I wasn't really upset when things didn't work perfectly. I was happy to risk throwing good money after bad, I'm sure I'll be able to play those other games some day.
Of the two hundred or so games I bought on humble bundles and so forth, I've tried a few dozen of the games I've bought (haven't had time to try them all), and with the exception of two Early Access games, they work just fine.
I had the same experience on Windows and OS X. I feel like playing russian roulette when buying games on steam. Some games run flawlessly and some won't even start.
I guess the problem lies rather with games themselves (short deadlines, product must ship before christmas, a gazillion of possible hardware configs, no time to test) than with steam.
Using Xubuntu (and xmonad (though they aren't taking full advantage of wm hints)) I haven't had any problems with games. I have a laptop with a radeon driver as well as a laptop with an nvidia driver.
I run Steam on my Series 9. I basically installed it just to run Monaco (OT - AWESOME game!) and Team Fortress 2. Both run just fine for me. I do wish X-Com was available under Linux though.
Out of the table, it seems 0.85 percent run some flavor of Ubuntu. That leaves the other 1.00 percent running some other flavor. I've got it running on Debian GNU/Linux (Testing) and play TF2 and CS:S from time to time. I even picked up CS:GO during one of their mega sales for five bucks or so in the hope that they eventually port it over to Linux.
I'm running it on Fedora 20. Haven't tried any of the really complicated games yet, but just bought some new ones during the sale, so will know soon what's up.
As a data point: I wouldn't have bought anything during the sale, had they not had so many games that work with Linux. I reboot into Windows so rarely that it seems like an ordeal to do just for a game. Likewise, I'm considering canceling my Netflix account because I haven't used it in two or three months...don't want to reboot, and Amazon Prime videos work fine under Linux.
This percentage is huge since its fairly new and not all games are ported yet. When you think about this, majority of gamers were already rocking a windows dual boot or separate machine for gaming. This is 1.85% of the user base who switched over to Linux even though not all games were available to them yet.
This is not true at all. Most gamers aren't rocking dual-boots, and most gamers are still comfortably running with just a single Windows install of various flavors.
For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.
But at the same time, it may be just a temporarily boost from all the Linux coverage. I myself tested it recently and abandoned it fast, and will not probably try again for a long time as long as almost none of my games are playable in Linux.
This is great! To me it's surprisingly high. I think this will be a slow process, because spending a day to backup & reinstall your OS is not a fun process. When I have time to game, I just want to turn my computer on and start gaming. I support gaming on Linux, and honestly even I've been too lazy to setup Linux on my gaming machine.
I think the shift will happen as people upgrade their computers, or have to reinstall their OS because of malware. I wonder what percentage of these gamers are using a pirated version of Windows, because my anecdotal experience is that anyone who's built a computer has pirated a copy of Windows. When building a computer on a budget, spending an extra $100 on your video card is more ideal than on the OS. So going legitimate and free would be a very attractive option for gamers.
Thanks, that was my initial reaction as well. I'd have expected it to be a few enthusiasts, maybe something like 50.000 worldwide. 1.85 % of the Steam user base is more than a million players!
You didn't quite explain what you want to say here.
Questions that came to my mind when I read your comment:
- Is the number of Vista/Linux users declining or increasing?
- How long is Steam for Vista/Linux available?
- How many games are available for Vista/Linux?
My expectation is that Vista's falling, while Linux rises in that statistic.
I'd say the fact that Steam is 'new' for Linux and relatively restricted/obscure for now (Ubuntu centric) the percentage isn't too bad.
Given that a lot of games (mostly the oh-so-expensive so-called AAA titles in my experience) are still Windows only or Windows/OS X only, I find the number still quite interesting and not really disappointing.
The Linux desktop will come when Microsoft loses its leverage over hardware manufacturers and they start to preinstall linux and stop putting up barriers to adoption (e.g. remove windows -> lose warranty).
It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.
Vista (at least after the first service pack) is a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (which also dual boots to Ubuntu) and I don't see any reason whatsoever to "upgrade" to W7 or W8.
By the time the year of the Linux desktop arrives, desktop computing will be a relic of the past. The year of linux computing however, is already upon us.
1) The drivers are still crappy. It's getting better but it still needs a lot of work. To simply manage multiple screens or to change resolution requires a restart! Nvidia is still better than AMD drivers.
2) Many games just get the Linux ports to a "working" condition and leave it at that. The games are really buggy. Valve games are top notch and deserve a lot of credit for creating a good experience. Thank you Valve.
3) Ubuntu needs to create a stable platform people can build on. Getting people to use LTS is good but it is still buggy (I have a lot of issues with Unity). Also, LTS software gets stale really quickly - there needs to be a solution for this (without PPAs).
1. Changing resolutions requires a restart for you? Why in the world would that be? Do you use ubuntu? Do you have to save settings with the GUI and then restart?
For instance I run a shell script which does some xrandr commands to make my external desktop work on Xubuntu (same for debian).
2. Agreed
3. LTS means more stable and packages are more tested. Getting newer packages will mean testing less, meaning less stable packages.
I think I better solution is game developers using the newest stable version of dependencies on popular LTS's instead of using newer ones just because. Basically this requires communication between game devs and linux package maintainers for mesa/xorg/nvidia/fglrx.
Intel drivers, lack of horsepower aside, are much better than either nvidia or amd at this point. You do not need to restart X to change resolutions or manage screens, it's just an xrandr command. It works very well.
That said, a lot of games on linux deal extremely poorly with multimon no matter what. They'll usually try to play over all screens with sometimes completely insane geometries.
The open source drivers for my ATI card are pretty good. Performance isn't spectacular but it's acceptable, and I've not run into any serious bugs for years, and I have no trouble changing resolution at all.
I signed up for Steam and installed it on linux, downloaded TF2 only to find that it would not work with Wheezy/my integrated Intel GPU (I didn't investigate beyond some "you don't support GLX_WHATEVER message, it could have been either), then deleted the installation and haven't done anything with it since.
I presumably am not counted in this statistic since I did not do that within the past month, but I wonder how many other people like that are.
Every month Steam asks a random subset of Steam users a hardware survey.
OS choice is a new aspect of the survey. The survey's original intention was to find things like 64bit penetration, number of cores, monitor resolution, internet connection type, and power of GPU. Most of it is automated.
We don't know Valve's exact methodology. I would hope they take a random sample of users who logged in the prior month and send them the survey. If you get selected a window will popup and ask you for permission to run the survey. If you say yes then it gathers your system data. They should only count you as a linux user if you were on linux when you took the survey.
This still leaves room for Valve to cheat in the selection process but otherwise the survey should be meaningful.
Mac users are still very low. I am a Mac user and I play games on my laptop. I hope they can release more games for the Mac platform as well. Although BF4 is not on Steam platform, it'd be nice to have a Mac version.
My boys have used the Steam client on Bodhi Linux for the past 6 months or so - it probably registers as Ubuntu. Half Life, HL2, Portal, Team Fortress all work very well. They also play a lot of Minecraft on those computers (not on Steam obviously).
I took the survey while I was playing DotA2 on Ubuntu, but since taking the survey I no longer use Steam on Linux. The main reasons are that only 4/50 games in my library are available on Linux, and because graphics performance still sucks (Intel HD4400).
I'll try it out again whenever a new game is available or when there's a graphics driver update, but at the moment I'd much rather reboot into Windows than pull my hair out over how bad Linux is for gaming.
I use steam on linux without problems on xubuntu. The problem is my main OS is debian wheezy and mesa is too old. That means I would have to backport libgl1 (iirc) and not fail (like the past 3 times).
I reboot into Xubuntu when I want to game though, and don't have any problems. Well except when I hook up to an external monitor... but I have a hacky xrandr script for that. I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game on linux.
>> I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game on linux.
You mean Debian Linux which is what you're running. Ubuntu runs Steam just fine even with the Unity interface. I can Alt+Enter to go back to the Desktop and do stuff then get back into a game.
I wonder what percent of Steam games run on GNU/Linux. From my experience this is currently a very small value, as most of the games I want/wanted to play are/were not available.
Let's check my library... 82 titles total (not counting the junk/demo/beta entries), 18 of them have declared GNU/Linux support, that's 21%. Way more than I expected (before I started counting I thought it would be somewhere between 5 and 10%), but still almost none of the games I'd play (new ones I haven't played yet or old ones with personally high replay value).
So, it's still WINE and/or dual-boot for gaming. No changes here.
Keep in mind that this only shows how many Linux users run native steam clients. A lot of us also run Steam through Wine so that we can play Windows-only games. It's a buggy experience, but what can you do...
Part of the reason I use linux is that I want control. I like games too, but Steam doesn't give me control. I would prefer Steam didn't manage my games, I want everything separate from each other. Until I can do that, I won't use Steam (I've tried)
It wouldn't surprise me if there's a fundamental difference in thinking between linux vs other users.
It's great that Steam's been providing Linux games, but that's just not enough for me.
I've found they've gotten pretty good. I have a 7970 and a couple of R290 GPUs, as well as whatever ATI GPU is in my laptop (a 6000 series Mobility GPU), they all seem to work fine under Linux. Admittedly, I don't do a lot of gaming, though I just bought a few new games in the winter sale, since they've added so many Linux games (and some of them are freakin' awesome games).
I haven't actually tried any of the really tough games, like Half Life or whatever yet...but, I'm actually super excited about playing Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux on one of the new GPUs. So, we'll see soon enough.
sandGorgon|12 years ago
* Intel’s Ben Widawsky, who works on Intel’s Linux graphics driver efforts, says that “Broadwell graphics bring some of the biggest changes we’ve seen on the execution and memory management side of the GPU… [the changes] dwarf any other silicon iteration during my tenure, and certainly can compete with the likes of the gen3->gen4 changes.”*
Pretty the much the only reason I'm putting off buying a laptop right now.
[1] http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/12/30/1550239/intel-releas... [2] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_bro...
amscanne|12 years ago
I actually installed steam yesterday (for the first time, I'm not a gamer) to see the available games for Linux.
I was pleasantly surprised that there were a few that looked okay. So I bought a couple. None worked -- mysterious launch errors, etc. No luck after a couple hours of debugging.
DISAPPOINTED!
I seriously question how many people actually run on Linux vs. login and browse the store? That said, I'm sure the experience will improve and it's great to see Linux as a growing platform for games!
i80and|12 years ago
1) Missing libraries: Almost always 32-bit/64-bit problems.
2) Missing executable: this is usually fixed sooner or later.
3) Graphics problems: This shouldn't be a problem on NVIDIA systems, and the Intel Mesa drivers are pretty good these days, but it still can occur.
hhm|12 years ago
amscanne|12 years ago
I'm very capable of debugging library and video driver problems. In this case, it seemed to be actual game-internal issues from a recent update. The specific game was built on the Unity platform, and they seemed to have resolved the issues for Mac and Windows but not yet Linux. I'm not annoyed at Steam or the developer (it's reasonable that Linux issues aren't their priority if it's only a tiny portion of users).
My intent was not to say that Steam on Linux is generally broken, just to share my own mildly-amusing experience. :)
On a positive note -- after the initial frustration, I eventually bought Counterstrike and it worked great. I think it's amazing that Steam supports Linux at all, so I wasn't really upset when things didn't work perfectly. I was happy to risk throwing good money after bad, I'm sure I'll be able to play those other games some day.
greyfade|12 years ago
kybernetyk|12 years ago
I had the same experience on Windows and OS X. I feel like playing russian roulette when buying games on steam. Some games run flawlessly and some won't even start.
I guess the problem lies rather with games themselves (short deadlines, product must ship before christmas, a gazillion of possible hardware configs, no time to test) than with steam.
eks|12 years ago
I would expect games wouldn't run as easily on a different distro or on a heavily customized Ubuntu.
The Linux ecosystem is HUGE. I suppose that's why they are making SteamOS, so they can focus on one smaller part of this large landscape.
jebblue|12 years ago
code_duck|12 years ago
So far I've installed and played Half Life, Half Life 2, Amnesia and Don't Starve with zero problems.
codygman|12 years ago
lwhalen|12 years ago
Rampoina|12 years ago
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
dave809|12 years ago
aspensmonster|12 years ago
SwellJoe|12 years ago
As a data point: I wouldn't have bought anything during the sale, had they not had so many games that work with Linux. I reboot into Windows so rarely that it seems like an ordeal to do just for a game. Likewise, I'm considering canceling my Netflix account because I haven't used it in two or three months...don't want to reboot, and Amazon Prime videos work fine under Linux.
droopyEyelids|12 years ago
sontek|12 years ago
er35826|12 years ago
For a personal anecdote: I've been a gamer my entire life, but I didn't start dual-booting (or using two systems) until I decided to get serious with programming and hacking.
maaaats|12 years ago
mh-|12 years ago
no, 1.85% of the user base tried Steam on Linux. we don't know what portion of those adopted it as their primary platform to use Steam.
SeppoErviala|12 years ago
munro|12 years ago
I think the shift will happen as people upgrade their computers, or have to reinstall their OS because of malware. I wonder what percentage of these gamers are using a pirated version of Windows, because my anecdotal experience is that anyone who's built a computer has pirated a copy of Windows. When building a computer on a budget, spending an extra $100 on your video card is more ideal than on the OS. So going legitimate and free would be a very attractive option for gamers.
abrahamsen|12 years ago
gum_ina_package|12 years ago
darklajid|12 years ago
Questions that came to my mind when I read your comment:
- Is the number of Vista/Linux users declining or increasing?
- How long is Steam for Vista/Linux available?
- How many games are available for Vista/Linux?
My expectation is that Vista's falling, while Linux rises in that statistic.
I'd say the fact that Steam is 'new' for Linux and relatively restricted/obscure for now (Ubuntu centric) the percentage isn't too bad.
Given that a lot of games (mostly the oh-so-expensive so-called AAA titles in my experience) are still Windows only or Windows/OS X only, I find the number still quite interesting and not really disappointing.
crdoconnor|12 years ago
It's already better than the windows desktop (xubuntu anyway, not unity, however). The barriers to uptake are no longer technical and haven't been for some years. It's all market + legal now.
shangaslammi|12 years ago
Vista (at least after the first service pack) is a solid OS. I still run it on my gaming PC (which also dual boots to Ubuntu) and I don't see any reason whatsoever to "upgrade" to W7 or W8.
sontek|12 years ago
For my wife, year of the Linux desktop was 2011.
izolate|12 years ago
jebblue|12 years ago
velodrome|12 years ago
1) The drivers are still crappy. It's getting better but it still needs a lot of work. To simply manage multiple screens or to change resolution requires a restart! Nvidia is still better than AMD drivers.
2) Many games just get the Linux ports to a "working" condition and leave it at that. The games are really buggy. Valve games are top notch and deserve a lot of credit for creating a good experience. Thank you Valve.
3) Ubuntu needs to create a stable platform people can build on. Getting people to use LTS is good but it is still buggy (I have a lot of issues with Unity). Also, LTS software gets stale really quickly - there needs to be a solution for this (without PPAs).
codygman|12 years ago
For instance I run a shell script which does some xrandr commands to make my external desktop work on Xubuntu (same for debian).
2. Agreed
3. LTS means more stable and packages are more tested. Getting newer packages will mean testing less, meaning less stable packages.
I think I better solution is game developers using the newest stable version of dependencies on popular LTS's instead of using newer ones just because. Basically this requires communication between game devs and linux package maintainers for mesa/xorg/nvidia/fglrx.
stormbrew|12 years ago
That said, a lot of games on linux deal extremely poorly with multimon no matter what. They'll usually try to play over all screens with sometimes completely insane geometries.
forktheif|12 years ago
Crito|12 years ago
I signed up for Steam and installed it on linux, downloaded TF2 only to find that it would not work with Wheezy/my integrated Intel GPU (I didn't investigate beyond some "you don't support GLX_WHATEVER message, it could have been either), then deleted the installation and haven't done anything with it since.
I presumably am not counted in this statistic since I did not do that within the past month, but I wonder how many other people like that are.
Danieru|12 years ago
OS choice is a new aspect of the survey. The survey's original intention was to find things like 64bit penetration, number of cores, monitor resolution, internet connection type, and power of GPU. Most of it is automated.
We don't know Valve's exact methodology. I would hope they take a random sample of users who logged in the prior month and send them the survey. If you get selected a window will popup and ask you for permission to run the survey. If you say yes then it gathers your system data. They should only count you as a linux user if you were on linux when you took the survey.
This still leaves room for Valve to cheat in the selection process but otherwise the survey should be meaningful.
jordonwii|12 years ago
jebblue|12 years ago
yeukhon|12 years ago
codygman|12 years ago
mbubb|12 years ago
They make very serviceable gaming computers.
wldlyinaccurate|12 years ago
I'll try it out again whenever a new game is available or when there's a graphics driver update, but at the moment I'd much rather reboot into Windows than pull my hair out over how bad Linux is for gaming.
codygman|12 years ago
I reboot into Xubuntu when I want to game though, and don't have any problems. Well except when I hook up to an external monitor... but I have a hacky xrandr script for that. I don't things are quite "there" yet for most people to game on linux.
jebblue|12 years ago
You mean Debian Linux which is what you're running. Ubuntu runs Steam just fine even with the Unity interface. I can Alt+Enter to go back to the Desktop and do stuff then get back into a game.
unknown|12 years ago
[deleted]
Glyptodon|12 years ago
The thing that's always surprised me about Steam for Linux is how close the numbers are to those for Mac users.
drdaeman|12 years ago
Let's check my library... 82 titles total (not counting the junk/demo/beta entries), 18 of them have declared GNU/Linux support, that's 21%. Way more than I expected (before I started counting I thought it would be somewhere between 5 and 10%), but still almost none of the games I'd play (new ones I haven't played yet or old ones with personally high replay value).
So, it's still WINE and/or dual-boot for gaming. No changes here.
philliphaydon|12 years ago
Sandman|12 years ago
Bjuukia|12 years ago
It wouldn't surprise me if there's a fundamental difference in thinking between linux vs other users. It's great that Steam's been providing Linux games, but that's just not enough for me.
frozenport|12 years ago
jibsen|12 years ago
That doesn't mean they are more inclined to buy Steam games of course, but it does seem to indicate they do not mind spending money on games.
ksk|12 years ago
There is definitely a need for a 'third' choice when it comes to desktop gaming platforms, hopefully Linux can take off sometime in the future.
ergo14|12 years ago
gyosko|12 years ago
SwellJoe|12 years ago
I haven't actually tried any of the really tough games, like Half Life or whatever yet...but, I'm actually super excited about playing Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux on one of the new GPUs. So, we'll see soon enough.
Nursie|12 years ago
stephann|12 years ago
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