The state of Linux gaming in the SteamOS era | Hacker News Reader

The state of Linux gaming in the SteamOS era

arstechnica.com

65 pointsAndrewDucker11 comments

One of linux's biggest issues is that linux hasn't been developed with consumers in mind for such a long time.

Thats why I opted to use mint for recording DevCasts: https://www.youtube.com/user/devfactor

other linux distros offer tons of tools for programmers, but are difficult to beginning users or non-programmers to migrate over to.

In order for Linux to really catch on, they need to offer at least a basic level of tools to attract regular (non-coding) consumers.

What kind of tools?

What kind of consumers are you thinking of? Most 'regular consumers' are probably better off with a tablet than with a desktop PC.

When did you last use Linux? 2003?

Linux [distributions] (because the Linux Kernel is fairly agnostic about use-cases) are constantly being developed and redeveloped. KDE5, Unity8+Mir, GNOME3, Cinnamon, MATE, etc... They're all aiming to be easy to use and powerful. They all have some distance to go but so do Windows and OSX.

Then there's the actual consumer-device market that Linux all but owns. Things like Tizen and Android and the dozens of frontends that the existing infrastructure makes super-simple to create a custom interface.

There is constant churn, making Linux more and more user-friendly.

I'm hopeful. The idea of SteamOS disrupting the windows stranglehold on games, and possibly disrupting consoles as well. I personally hate the fact backwards compatibility on consoles is dead. I would love a steambox I could upgrade or buy new every few years, and still play my existing game library without having the clutter of tons of consoles just to play a specific game.

2015: Year of linux on everything except the desktop?

Linux is doing alright on the 'desktop'. Chromebooks, Dell is selling Ubuntu laptops, you can buy Linux preloaded on a variety of hardware in some markets. Raspberry Pi and Pi2s are out there, and apart from Linux desktops, open source is getting to be huge.

The real difference is that nowadays, the 'desktop' doesn't matter. Most new apps are either browser based, or built multi-platform from the start. There's very little you 'need' Windows for today.

With the exception of industrial and enterprise software, which remains a significant chunk.

The problem with the Linux desktop is that the people developing it are completely out of touch with how the average user thinks, and they assume that introducing another opaque monolith daemon to handle an entire subsystem is the only thing stopping all those Windows users from flocking to Fedora in an instant. The result is that they alienate the people who actually care.

Ironically enough, the examples you list (Google and Canonical) are ones that operate outside the general sphere of influence of the desktop developer scene. Canonical in particular is reviled as all hell by the Red Hat subculture.

I'm not familiar with much Industrial software, but i am continuously amazed with the amount of enterprise software available on Linux.

Support can be a little tricky, but it's absolutely out there.

As far as I can tell, Linux still has less than 2% of the desktop market share. Windows Phone has something like 2% of the mobile market share and I think it would be unrealistic to say that platform is doing 'alright.' Adoption matters more than whether it is sort of possible to buy a computer with it preinstalled. Raspberry Pis aren't desktops, either. Though it's possible to use one as a really low powered desktop, that certainly isn't the majority use case. Even if all 5 million Pis sold were used as Linux desktops, that's still tiny in a world with 2 billion desktop computers.

There may be little you 'need' Windows for today, but it is still overwhelmingly the go-to choice for desktop computing. I also think you may be incorrect on your assertion that most new software is either browser based or cross-platform; that may be the case for a lot of the products you're exposed to but I don't think you're considering the vast amount of niche software out there.

Lest I be accused of any bias, I am a happy desktop Linux user.

Kerbal Space Program is 64-bit only on linux, apparently due to a problem with 64-bit unity...

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