Ending Support for macOS and Linux
rocketleague.com
rocketleague.com
This does pose the question on what happens to Linux players who have invested into digital purchases. Online functionality will be disabled so all items will basically be void and the game becomes mostly worthless.
I also wonder if this means that Rocket League will not run on Google Stadia and its competitors, as those platforms mostly run on Linux systems.
All this fracturing means for end users is more rootkit launchers to install and less games for linux users.
Valve even has linux kernel devs around who fix bugs in drivers for gaming hardware.
Steam may have been a monopoly but it was a pretty good one for the end user.
I guess it's not a fair comparison though, since you can't really subscribe to steam. So I regret saying anything.
Has anyone tried that model? "Pay us $30/mo and play whatever you want."
Of course, the games are specific to the publisher or the partnerships the platform has.
All my Windows exclusive games appear side by side with my native Linux games. I no longer have to have wine installed and maintain a separate Windows (in wine) Steam installation.
I'd love to see a technical teardown.
I think this isn’t true.
Although more Linux distros aren’t shipping full x86 images anymore, I don’t think that actually impacts x86 support on AMD64 setups. Some limited amount of x86 packages continue to be provided for running Wine and legacy proprietary software.
macOS is killing the ability to run 32 bit code at all. There’s not much of a true technical reason to do this that I’m aware of, it’s a decision similar to Windows disallowing 16 bit software in 64 bit Windows.
Under Linux AMD64 not only can you run 32 bit software, you can still create 16 bit code segments as well. No vm8086, but it can still be used for emulating old Windows applications.
Some of those might not be the fault of paradox, but Imperator shows that they didn't even test running it on a stock install.
I've had better luck with proton games, they don't always work but once they do I have far less regressions.
Granted, I'm on Slackware64-current, so it's possible I've got newer driver/lib versions than Ubuntu 18.04. I'm also using FOSS drivers exclusively (primarily AMD, though I've played Stellaris on Intel GPUs with decent results, too), so if you're using Nvidia graphics, that might be a factor, too.
Not sure what you meant, but X.Org is an implementaion of X11 so this doesn't make any sense.
Currently on wayland stellaris and EU4 won't start for me, I didn't even know stellaris was broken until now, that was one of the better working ones.
On xorg they will all start but games are offset and sit below the top bar in gnome, The mouse isn't offset so it's completely unplayable. One of them used to work fine in xorg though, not sure which.
It's also been a while but I wasn't able to play CKII or EUIV against friends on Windows due to some clock-time issue. Not sure if that's still a thing, but it led me to use CKII in WINE while doing large multiplayer games.
edit: otherwise, single-player native linux has been solid with CKII, HOI4, and EUIV, including mods. Vicky II did fine in WINE. I'm running new-ish Fedora.
Nov 2018 - Artifact (Collectible card game on Windows/Linux/MacOS)
Apr 2016 - The Lab (Windows only)
Dec 2014 - Left 4 Dead: Survivors (Arcade game?)
Oct 2014 - Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies (Windows only)
2013 - Counter-Strike Online 2 (Windows only)
Heck even their new tentpole title Half-Life: Alyx is Windows only. Those aren't really big Linux credentials to boast about.
I’m 100% not complaining because Proton has enabled me to play a libraries worth of games that were previously unavailable but it’s not exactly a victory Linux. The future might look like devs testing a little bit in Proton as “Linux support.”
While it is an admission Linux gaming was hardly going to take off on its own from a cold start, it allows people to use the platform that makes more sense for them. With the increased capability of Linux+Proton as a platform, its horizons are pushed and it makes more sense for more people.
The only possible downside here is the potential for a developer to neglect Linux support now that people "can just run it in proton", netting Linux users a couple losses of what-would-have-been native ports. However, I believe the increase to the viability of Linux gaming overall makes up for it.
Half-Life Alyx is coming in 2020.
The meme that Valve doesn't make games isn't real.
So sure, Alyx is coming. But before that is a six and a half year gap in major games.
And if you discount CS:GO and Dota 2 as remakes, then you're looking at Portal 2 all the way back in 2011.
Even to hold people over they could have resurrected HL:DM and made it F2P.
All source games work on linux, but the new half life game might be the first exception. Proton works pretty well for other games, but there are hard blockers on some (for ex: the anticheat in pubg)
Is that due to active development effort or is it just chance?
And why should Epic Games or any Game Studio for that matter give a "rat's ass" about Linux Support. Or macOS Support for that matter.
As much as I like macOS, I would have made the same decision if I was in their hat.
Or another question would are there enough Linux customer willing to pay a HIGHER price to sustain the support and development at "break even".
The answer seems to be no for Rocket League.
Yes, I know, chicken and egg - but most games I play don't really work on Linux and are not on Steam anyway. I'm just saying it's a dumb idea to go off usage numbers of Linux steam users. FWIW, I have it installed on a laptop, so if they do some sort of flagging, my account has repeatedly logged in from Linux and started games - just not many and not often.
This is what the AAA publishers/studios think, because mostly they make games just for the money.
They don't really care for their customers and DRM usually doesn't work in Wine and hence 'the game doesn't work'.
The indie game dev crowd, with much less resources, certainly doesn't seem to have any problems (ideological or technical) with Linux releases.
Those indie devs hardly do any support and QA testing at scale.
Many do gamedev just for the sake of the art.
It's just excuses if a $100 million project can't deliver what a couple of people without any real budget can.
But again: they want your money and it is not going to the actual developers and artists. At least, most of it isn't.
Walking the corridors of GDC(E), PAX seldom turns into discussions about OS and 3D APIs, rather business opportunies, publishing contracts, turning ideas into contracts.
Street musicians and art fair artists also do stuff big labels and architure societies don't care about.
Provide Data to suggest otherwise.
Firstly, what do you mean by competitors? I'm pretty sure none of xCloud, Playstation Now, or Nvidia Now use Linux systems.
Secondly, I wouldn't read that far into it. I doubt this has much to do with supporting the Linux API, and more about other burdens of support for Linux desktops, dealing with packaging that can deal with differences in distros, systems, and drivers especially in the context of all the configuration and poor vulkan support. Likely make Linux as a platform not worth supporting. Where Stadia will almost certainly be evaluated separately like a standard game console due to it's (I assume) hardware and api stability. Of course, Stadia may also not be decided worth the burden based on it's player-base, but I am confident it'll be an orthogonal decision.
> Firstly, what do you mean by competitors? I'm pretty sure none of xCloud, Playstation Now, or Nvidia Now use Linux systems. I see no reason why Nvidia wouldn't use Linux where possible. Windows, especially cloud based Windows, has weird and sometimes expensive license charges that any Linux-compatible game does not need. They're likely still going to run Windows VMs out of necessity, though. I don't know the game streaming market well but with the groundwork Valve laid down for SteamOS support, I can see Stadia competitors choosing to use Linux as a cost-saving measurement. Still Google is quite some party to ignore.
Aside from dropping generic Linux support (which, of course, has an infinite amount of configuration options, especially when you encounter Arch and Gentoo users) they're also dropping SteamOS support. SteamOS (Debian with a layer of Valve software) deals with basically all issues you might have with libraries and versions for you.
This sounds like a choice based on economics (cost of testing Linux packaging vs income from Linux users) but if I were a Steam box user, I'd want the money I've invested into the game back. Based on the laws in my country, I'd say the product will be mostly broken (the main component, online play, will be intentionally disabled) which might be reason to terminate the purchase agreement (i.e. trade the product back for money as its manufacturer will not fix the shortcomings introduced). They'll likely fight tooth and nail to prevent this but one big lawsuit and the cost of maintaining limited Linux support would likely outweigh the cost of killing it after selling the game with Linux compatibility.
"Differences in distros" is easy to fix: only target one distro (e.g. Ubuntu), and let users of other distros figure it out on their own. This has worked well for Steam's Linux ecosystem.
Dealing with "systems and drivers" is the exact same problem as exists on Windows.
I'll give you that regarding drivers, except the Windows market is significant enough to make the economics work out more favorably.
They're the new Nvidia of the Linux world.
Hopefully a more crossplatform anticheat tool is available..
Oh yeah, 7 Days to Die also uses EAC on Linux.
Cost of the game, 12 DLC packs, and 3 season passes just gone. 388 hours over 12 months to build skills I will never use again. And just as many hours watching others play.
Rocket League was the one and only game I decided to break my no-centralized-or-DRM-protected-games rule for because it is an absolutely beautiful, pure-sport game.
Psyonix made a fantastic game, Epic will destroy it. I knew how bad they were but really hoped they were just going to take this piece of art, not fuck with it, and just profit.
The money I've spent on the game as a Linux user is easily measurable, but what about the, no less than 10, people I've inspired to buy the game and the people they in-turn inspired to buy the game? What about the toys my 3 year old wants because he sees me playing the game? What about when it would have been time for him to get a copy? What about all the friends he was going to inspire to get a copy? All because of a single Linux user that went against his own ideals hoping not to get fucked just this one time.
I would imagine the staffing costs to keep Linux and macOS versions of the game running are more than $800/week.
First they took some fun, casual games (alternate modes) and made them competitive. The competition isn't the worst, but doing this removed the ability to rematch. Since the games weren't as popular, you'd often find a really great group where both teams were fairly balanced and rematch a dozen times.
This was fun.
They took that away along with the 'Labs', which were alternate arenas. Some went into Rumble (Rocket League with fun tools), but it just wasn't as fun.
With the recent move away from keys, they totally borked their item system. Suddenly near worthless items would cost the user $8. They may have adjusted this, but I've all but stepped away.
It's a shame to see the game slowly go downhill. They had a perfect balance a few years ago that allowed casual and competitive people to enjoy the game. Combine this with the eSports, and everything should have cruised along nicely.
I am so glad I haven't bought anything on the Epic Store. I did buy this game on Steam, before the studio was bought by Epic.
Tim Sweeney was right with GabeN complaining about Microsoft; saying Linux was a 'get out of jail free' card. Now he is establishing his own monopoly that is dependent on Microsoft's monopoly on Windows.
Some games do move forward to 64-bit but it will certainly require several years for the Mac game market (such as it is) to recover even to the point it had reached.
I have 118 games in my library, 17 of which are Windows-only. Only 25 of the remaining 101 MacOS-compatible games survived the 64-bit upgrade.
Edit: thinking about it a little more though, this has been the situation for many many months, but I only realized over the weekend how bad it was because I've moved almost all of my gaming to my Nintendo Switch. (I only happened to return to Steam because I wanted to play A Short Hike.)
Plenty of FUD in that UI.
Also, Snow Leopard may have been the last version to support 32 bit processors, but I don't think support for 32 bit apps was deprecated that long ago? Certainly, Apple themselves was still releasing 32bit software back then—if you have a copy of iWork '09 (which got updated as late as 2012), it's 32 bit.
And while you're right it was deprecated immediately, I do recall universal binaries were soft and then hard deprecated some years ago but I could tell you the exact date. I know there's a lot of vintage software that would never be updated, but like, a good chunk of stuff seems to have been new development or continued support.
For non-games, a lot of the Mac software that was still 32 bit was using Carbon, which doesn't have a 64 bit variant. Carbon is old as heck, but if you're using it, there's no upgrade path other than a complete rewrite. That may or may not be worthwhile versus EOL'ing the software.
(As a complete tangent, I recently learned that Apple did once promise a 64 bit version of Carbon. The library was present in the developer preview of Leopard, and many devs began building with it. But then it was gone in Leopard's final release, and Apple never mentioned it again.)
You will never see Sony release a PS4 update that drops support for 2013-era PS4 games, at least not purposefully. If they did, people would be very mad.
I did saw Sony drop the almost unused GL ES support on the PS 2.
For example, one thing I noticed on the iOS side (when it went from 32-bit to 64-bit) is that pixel position rounding changed so you would see things like random one-pixel gaps where textures were previously adjacent, etc. These things add up, and a company might decide an older title is not worth fixing.
On the Mac side, the entire damned UI library was thrown out (Carbon), and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if games had been relying on it. That is a huge thing to just redo, and again I would not blame any game company for not bothering to spend the resources.
Lightroom 6 is the last standalone version that doesn't require subscriptions. It won't run on Catalina and has no good substitute on MacOS (I know about http://darktable.org/ but it is not performant or Mac-like on MacOS).
I doubt that Epic would have bothered targeting Metal in UE4 if it were macOS only. With it, building games for Macintosh for a great deal of developers is fairly trivial. Unity also targets Metal, as far as I am aware.
It sucks because I feel like gaming on the Mac was actually quite nice for a bit. With Steam/Source running on Mac you actually had a good run where you could play a lot of great games. I remember being so excited to play TF2 on the Mac.
The only games worth developing on the Mac are the 99¢ style iOS games. Anything else just isn't worth it, as developers have been burned too many times now. Just a matter of time before Apple makes it mandatory to use some technology or drops support for something that's currently required and everything has to be updated.
It's back to running games in a VM for me. Not the worst thing, really.
The biggest difficulty I experience with gaming on Linux is Nvidia and their atrocious drivers. Getting games to run isn't very hard these days as long as you can manage to get your GPU to render an image.
I should've bought AMD...
Not according to [this reddit user's analysis](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/dgvmkk/crazy_...).
LOL. Even otherwise, without factoring in the percentage of operating expenses devoted to supporting Linux, trying to calculate profit numbers is meaningless.
For Mac - Apple has to make gaming a bigger priority, and that's clearly not going to happen. A ~$1000 upgradable Apple machine with a powerful graphics card that can run the latest games is a pipe dream.
For Linux - It's the same problem as building any software for Linux that caters to the non-server non-developer segment. There just isn't enough of a business justification.
Most AAA games are designed with the trash hardware of consoles in mind, so laptops with more powerful GPUs handle them just fine. Apple's desktop offerings are abominable in terms of value and sticker price, but they pretty much own the non-Walmart-quality laptop market...
Once it's on there, you don't really have to worry about constant breaking changes from the operating system changing its audio subsystem or weird graphics drivers.
Is this isolated? Do I have any rational reason to sweat this as foreshadowing of Epic dropping those as UE4 platforms?
Eliminate bugs, make releasing for PC and any console you want easy.
Linux shouldn't really be a special support case, it only becomes one when silly assumptions are made.
Just building websites that work on different devices if the site is non-trivial i.e. SVG, WebGL etc the cost up because each platform you have to duplicate the QA phase. This week I spent 4 days tracking down an iOS bug in a WebForm. The company had to pay me 4 days worth of work, half of that was reproducing the bug reliably.
People make out this stuff is easy. It isn't and I am sorry but Linux users on Steam is like 1 or 2% the last time I checked. It just isn't worth the effort for most developers.
It's nice to think that shipping a bunch of stacked hacks and making some money to then just get closed down/bought/retargeted is the 'happy flow' but unless you don't know any better you may want to diversify and find a job or project that has actual quality as a standard. I know that in late-stage capitalism with minmaxing in the mix that is hard to find in some countries, but it exists plenty if you go look for it.
Like Vulkan? Doesn't run on macOS.
I also don't understand how long-term maintenance can be a factor when games don't run correctly on launch day. I would appreciate an explanation for this as well.
Still bs for an existing game with platform support from unreal though.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
If that works, then what do those developers on the other 'stores' do that makes it so hard? Almost all games are effectively assets + scripts executed by a portable runtime. The only reason you might get in to trouble using that portable runtime effectively is when you start hacking on that level and reducing the portability to a point where it no longer works. That's a choice, not an inevitability. As a bonus (like posted earlier); in software engineering you get to discover a lot of issues by writing abstractions (to support portability) that you otherwise wouldn't be able to catch ahead of time. And no, day-1 patches are not the solution, they are the symptom of the problem.
And he'll Id argue that Linux users are less likely to contact support duo to requiring some amount of knowledge of their system
I remember how frustrating it was in the late 90s being a desktop non-Windows user or non-Netscape user. We seem to be rapidly heading back to those bad days. Yet there’s no evil empire like Microsoft dominating the computing world and crushing cross-platform anymore like they did back then. It’s just kind of happening and it’s sad.
Seems pretty obvious that cross-plat is winning. Especially once you consider the most ubiquitous cross-plat vehicle of all: the browser. It's also the only platform with a built-in ad-blocker and development console, thus the most open and end-user-friendly.
Any idea which specific technologies they are referring to?
The deprecation of OpenGL on MacOS is another barrier for that platform - you either have to buy GL-on-Metal middleware from someone or write a new Metal renderer. If the % of customers on Mac is small enough I can understand just opting to drop that platform.
Hard to say re:Linux, though. Maybe they get more customer service burden out of maintaining Linux support than they do revenue. It's common to hear that from indie game developers, though some developers say the opposite.
EDIT: Also just occurred to me that Valve's ongoing Proton efforts have resulted in Windows Rocket League working okay on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950 As a result the devs may have decided it's better to just leave Linux to third parties. Some of the reviews claim Windows-via-Proton is faster than the official Linux port!
It'll work for a while, probably, but there's no way to know how long and if/when you risk an account wide ban.
The epic games store.
The mac support may have been removed due to Apple not supporting 32bit apps (and the expected return verse cost of going 64bit)
Without D9VK, specifically, the average FPS is around 145. Be sure to use the above, if you're playing with Proton!
* Plethora of mechanics and combinations possible, make it impossible for two games to ever be the same.
* Steep learning curve but very rewarding
I am fairly sure it will stay around at least for 3-4 more years (given the current popularity and player base).
Guess not
The only trouble is games with anti-cheat, which rules out a lot of online games including Fortnite, PUBG and others.
Why bother porting it when you can count on someone fixing it for you.
As for playing any game under the sun. No it doesn't. A lot of things fail and don't work quite right. Also a lot of mods don't work which is half the reason to play games on PC.
There would be little incentive to port games to Linux without an existing gamer pool which can buy them, and there would be no gamer pool without an initial range of games...
The only practical way to break that vicious circle was the emulation option. Linux gamers play on emulation, but appreciate native ports and form the (initial) buyer pool for Linux games.
So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone.
There isn't much of a gamer pool anyway. This may surprise you the number of people who like to play PC games and really care about Open Source I would wager isn't very many.
> So Proton and co are the only reason there's any viable Linux gaming at all. Without Proton, every Linux gamer would have had a Windows install and play with that alone.
Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots. Some people have spoken about some GPU pass-through nonsense with a VMWare which just seems like a faff.
It just easier to buy a drive, slap Windows on it and Steam and be done with it. Until it is easier and more reliable with my whole catalogue I will be sticking with Windows.
It doesn't surprise me at all. That number would have been zero without emulation like wine/Proton though.
> Anyone I know who plays games and uses Linux Dual boots.
As for myself, I don't play a lot, but a Linux version (native or emulated) plays a big role in deciding which games to buy when I do. It's not due to 'Open Source' reasons though.
Dual boot is too much of a mess for me, I have a separate Windows laptop which I barely use otherwise (it does have a few Windows-only games), it's a bit of an hassle too. I don't feel like booting it and discovering it needs to install 10000 updates. I have already had to reinstall Windows 10 once so I can run a game (the game didn't support the old Windows 10 build, and the in-place upgrade crashed). It's much easier when I can just take a break and run a game on the same Linux system I use regularly.
It is odd. I run Windows at work and the machine rarely gets rebooted. No problems what-so-ever. I run a Windows at home and in my Office (I do a lot of SQL SERVER and .NET dev), I rarely have crashes (once or twice a year). I work in a very large office with many other developers and the machines run fine for years on end.
Yet when someone is complaining about Windows on the internet and they like Linux it always has thousands of updates and they need to reinstall the whole OS to play one game. Odd how that comes about. I don't know quite how people manage it. Yet I use the same windows installation for half a decade with almost no problems. It almost sounds like it is operator error.
It's just I have little use for it at home, so I run and upgrade it rarely. It turns out upgrading from the nearly oldest Windows 10 build to the latest (at the time) crashed the upgrade process on my setup. This is hardly a regular process - I am sure 99% of people upgrade more regularly, and do not skip as many builds.
It's a cycle too, I guess. The less I use Windows the more upgrades the system accurres which makes me dread turning it on more....
No it wouldn't - there would still be people who like playing games and use Linux even if they couldn't play those games under Linux. Proton doesn't add anything to that.
Ah, Windows gaming only took off after WinG got introduced, until then games were mostly targeting MS-DOS.
Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths. I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem.
But there isn't 20%-30% of the sales are Linux. It is a literally a 1%. It is very niche.
> Comments like yours make me angry. Your whole attitude makes me angry. You're extremely offhand and dismissive of all possible Linux paths.
I am sorry that basic facts make you angry, your feelings are your own responsibility. I've been using Linux now for about 20 years. There was Cedega before proton (remember them?) . While the desktop situation is now okay e.g. I can normally get something serviceable without the headaches of the past. Generally everything is still a mess. Jaron Lanier in his book "You are not a gadget" explains why this will always be the case. Open source anything is very much like herding cats.
> I would accept that a 1% market share isn't an attractive proposition at the current time, that's a fair comment. I would accept that for the time being if Proton is filling a gap that developers currently aren't interested in or can't justify, but I absolutely refuse to accept that a larger player base who are willing to pay for a Linux first platform are going to be blithely brushed aside as not the developer's problem.
There no evidence that there is a large player base for this Linux first platform. Many companies have tried. A lot of Linux users in the past used (look at older phpBB forums such as JustLinux and LinuxForums) that constantly to boast about "not paying for software".
Sure, I can get behind this. I do, however, think that you're underestimating how much bad will Microsoft is building with its userbase these days. Sure, I don't think we're headed for 20-30%, but I do think there is a higher proportion of tech savvy users who, all else being equal (granted, big if), would prefer something like Linux that they will have control over. MS have pulled some amazingly ballsy moves with their latest iterations that have absolutely not been present in previous incarnations. Forced updates, ads, gaslighting Cortana setting, re-appearing icons, mandatory new apps, telemetry, forced Windows accounts, Candy Crush ads, lock screen ads - the list continues. What's more is that previous frustrations (blue screen of death) were a limit of the technology. All of the aforementioned are deliberate and arguably cynical decisions from MS. This makes a certain percentage of the population angry, and while the main playerbase is made up of those who are willing to make a compromise, if we make the compromise more attractive then you WILL see higher users. This time is different.
>There no evidence that there is a large player base for this Linux first platform. Many companies have tried. A lot of Linux users in the past used (look at older phpBB forums such as JustLinux and LinuxForums) that constantly to boast about "not paying for software".
Apart from the countless reports being made to ProtonDB? Or the 120k subscribers to the Linux_gaming subreddit? Or the increasing Linux Steam Survey stats? There is evidence.
>But there isn't 20%-30% of the sales are Linux. It is a literally a 1%. It is very niche.
It's like you didn't read my comment.
>I am sorry that basic facts make you angry, your feelings are your own responsibility.
While I agree that is all garbage a lot of it is more of a minor annoyance rather and almost all of it can
> Apart from the countless reports being made to ProtonDB? Or the 120k subscribers to the Linux_gaming subreddit? Or the increasing Linux Steam Survey stats? There is evidence.
120k vs how many PC gamers? Doing a cursory search put the number near about 1 billion. There is at least about 2 orders of magnitude between the two.
> https://youtu.be/18y6vteoaQY?t=104
Whether I am one or not doesn't change the fact that it is up to you whether it upsets you. I haven't gone out of my way to upset anyone. I've just argued my point.
It builds. It's the sort of negligence that leads to bubbles bursting or coup d'etats. Or mass migrations from Zynga games. It just needs for the alternative to be viable.
>120k vs how many PC gamers? Doing a cursory search put the number near about 1 billion. There is at least about 2 orders of magnitude between the two.
PC gaming has been viable for 30 years. Linux gaming for 18 months and it still missing some key titles. If we get Fortnite and PUBG, we will have more.
>Whether I am one or not doesn't change the fact that it is up to you whether it upsets you. I haven't gone out of my way to upset anyone. I've just argued my point.
True. I do think you are someone who takes great pride in their arguments, the infallibility of their logic and drawing on what is quite clearly a great breadth of both personal and professional experience, however I feel that this is somewhat undermined by your rhetoric, your tone and your phrasing. Not terrible in and of themselves, but I think it has lead to blind spots that has meant this encounter has taken the path it has.
It would be nice if more games shipped in some type of officially-supported wrapper, but that's basically where Valve is going anyway with Proton. (I just wish it wasn't tied to Steam, because I'm the one person who dislikes using Steam.)
This is different than for native applications, where the UI inconsistency Wine introduces can be quite annoying.
There are games that are native and run fantastically on Linux. But they were always the exception.
I can run the original Quake and DOOM on Windows 10 without any problems. A friend of mine like playing GTA 3, it didn't work properly with Windows 8.1. In an update this incompatibility (I forget the exact reason why) was fixed.
That just doesn't really happen with Linux.
Intel drivers have been historically always much better in DirectX as in OpenGL, where they even used to lie about their available GL capabilities.
AMD, since they dropped my card from their FOSS drivers, I don't have much fate on their FOSS love.
A lot of gamers i know have switched to using WSL for development (unless they have political objections).
I think it will be more likely in the future that Linux gamers be asked to become WSL Gamers
In fact, WSL works so well (including Docker and Kubernetes stuff), that i have a strong suspicion that Microsoft sales staff have been leashed pretty deliberately for optics reasons.
That said, I'm in the process of building a new primary machine and it's going to be WSL because I want to have it all: functional SteamVR, titles that work by default instead of pleasant surprise, not having to accept whatever monopoly-building bully-tactics Apple decides to force down the pipe...
I know that, at least in Wall Street terms, Apple is now a lifestyle fashion accessory manufacturer that only supports Macs and OS X because they feel generous, but it still makes me really sad. They clearly don't want to play ball with the mainstream gaming world, that's for sure. And "Tim Apple" believes that AR is more important than VR, so I don't anticipate the VR front getting any love period.
And so I fold my hand. I used to feel like using Mac OS or Ubuntu was a legitimate power move and not just a political act, but these days the only people who deliberately choose Apple or Linux as a daily-drive OS are just masochists when WSL is so well implemented. If the Windows kernel ended up being the best Linux infrastructure, there's a dark joke in there somewhere.
As proven by Mac OS X adoption by GNU/Linux refugees, at the end of the day what a large majority cares about is a POSIX shell and related POSIX C APIs.
Three decades later, it is easier to just provide WSL environment than POSIX source code compatibility, and WSL2 distribution is the one taking the desktops.
Another option is to run Windows on top of Linux. But it currently also has some drawbacks.
https://medium.com/swlh/wsl-2-docker-edge-tech-preview-nativ...
It has full Docker Edge support now and CUDA support is upcoming.
I'm genuinely impressed by WSL2
WinNT Kernel and Linux Kernel are running on top of Hypervisor platform side-by-side .... not one-in-the-other.
Develop once, debug everywhere.