ROG Xbox Ally runs better on Linux than Windows it ships with | Hacker News Reader

ROG Xbox Ally runs better on Linux than Windows it ships with

tomshardware.com

155 pointsjrepinc200 comments

I know this is extreme, but people buying these Xbox handhelds over a Steam Deck are directly harming the future of gaming on PC. It's time that the PC gaming ecosystem breaks free from its dependency on Windows. Proton and SteamOS, combined with the unpopular mess that is Windows 11 is the perfect opportunity to do so.

The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code. Once users are locked in, expect service fees to sharply rise just to use Windows. People should not fall for it. Leave Windows for crusty corporations that love their office 365 employee spy platform.

I completely agree. I pre-ordered the Steam Deck without knowing if I would actually use it, telling myself that at least I was supporting gaming on SteamOS by providing financial support. I boycott all Windows-based alternatives, even if they are better, because I refuse to use a product sold with Windows.

I love my Steam Deck, but it is really frustrating how many of the games i regularly play can't be played on it - Madden, EA FC, PUBG, all won't run even though the hardware is plenty to play them. The limitations of anti cheat on Linux might be insurmountable

Competitive online gaming is the least strong part of the steam deck. But on the flip side it’s way better for local multi player. You can pack it in your bag with some controllers and plug it in to a friends TV easily.

Very few games bother with local multiplayer anymore

The relative number of games that do this is small, but the absolute number is growing all the time.

Idk about that. The selection is pretty huge. Sonic racing just came out with 4 player local multi player, stardew valley has it, the majority of Nintendo games. Almost the majority of games designed for a TV and controller have local multiplayer. And there’s software you can use to split screen most games which don’t have it by just running two instances of the game.

Nintendo games generally have it but not so much the actual major console games. I believe the last local multiplayer fps on xbox platform was halo mcc for example.

I love the idea of my Steam Deck, but most steam games just aren't make for tiny 720 screens. I'm an old man now, I can't read tiny fonts.

Also, the face buttons are just to far to the right. My thumb will begin aching after 15 mins or so. Other controllers are far more comfortable.

To be honest. I like my Playdate more than my Steam Deck.

Always good to see the playdate mentioned favorably. Excuse me while I try to get higher on the leaderboards for M03k.

I'm 33 on the leader-board for Hyper Meteor!

Same here - I did consider buying a steam deck, then after experimenting with GeForce now on a small screen realized that pc game designers assumed larger screens. This is ok, but this makes many games unplayable on a small screen unless you have some kind of cyber vision. So no steam deck, even though every now and then I want to buy one.

I use Xreal One Pro's when I play. It is like playing with a giant screen.

Thanks to the Steam Deck efforts, gaming on Linux in general has improved massively in the last few years.

Most games 'Just Work' these days on my Linux desktop.

I use cinema glassses (rayneo S3). absolute game changer. I can play games on massive virtual screen in 1080p. and best of all, it fits in the bag alongside my steamdeck.

> The limitations of anti cheat on Linux might be insurmountable

Why is it insurmountable? It's not like it's impossible for the companies that produce anti-cheat solutions to get them running on Linux.

The tools for owning your Linux OS are strong enough that anti-cheat is pointless because they're just broken all the time and nobody wants a linux box they can't control at all.

I think most people who buy Steam Decks don’t care whatsoever about Linux and would be perfectly fine with not having control over it as long as all their games worked.

I can imagine a world where you still have full control most of the time, but when you open a multi player game the system reboots on a clean / verified OS image. Then when you quit it can reboot in to the OS with all of your mods and customisation on.

I think Steam Decks wouldn't ever have existed without Linux enthusiasts as early adopters of Steam Decks and the few previous iterations of Steam + Linux either playing games on their own machines or on the previous iteration of a Steam Linux computer. If at any point it was all tied up with DRM and that complete loss of control required for anti-cheat it would have just died and not be seen again.

The only way it changes course is an enormous rug pull that removes most of the differentiation between PC and Console gaming and you end up with Steam as a dying product unable to compete with either other modes of PC gaming or the dominant console players. (Sadly that's basically what I expect when gaben retires)

The differentiation of the Steam Deck is the game ecosystem, ability to play your existing PC game library on the go, and low game costs compared to consoles during the frequent sales.

I don't think Linux is a differentiator for the Steam Deck. It's obviously essential as a technical foundation though, similar to how it’s essential to Android phones.

But locking it down with DRM won't affect gamer interest in the platform as long as the games are still cheap, plentiful, and run well.

The anti-cheats that the competitive games use rely on being able to trust that the checks they add to the kernel can't be overridden. It relies on Windows not being able to be modified to lie about that.

Linux can lie about anything.

Is that a difference in degree or in kind?

It's possible to change windows, just a lot harder. Unless you are talking about secure boot, but that's available to Linux just as much as to Windows.

> Linux can lie about anything.

Linux should lie about being Windows then.

It is about secure boot and TPM. Linux is unable to 'lie' well enough to emulate windows because it can't cryptographically verify that it is a legit windows install.

The anti cheat developers rely on Microsoft asserting that other cheats aren't loaded prior to the anti-cheat in the kernel. There is no such entity in Linux to attest that a particular linux install is not modified to load the cheats into the kernel before the anti-cheat.

Now, such an entity could be created, and a linux distro released that is signed by that entity, and then the anti-cheat could work on that distro. That would require you to only use that particular distro, though, and you would be limited in how you could change the kernel.

So far, there has not been the push needed to make that happen.

It would be virtually impossible to completely disguise the fact that you are on Linux. It’s hard enough to trick software in to thinking it’s not running in a VM.

I just refuse to buy games that rely on kernel-level anti-cheat to work.

Playing any PvP games without them isn't fun anymore.

I suspect playing any PvP game with random members of the public?

Playing Streetfighter 2 with people you know should still be fun?

As an avid gamer for 35+ years, I have played a ton of PvP both locally and online.

One of those experiences can't replace the other.

I am married with two young children. All of my video game time comes in the hour or two after they go to bed and before I go to bed. I don't have friends around at that time, yet I still want to get some good multiplayer gaming in.

Online matchmaking is amazing these days. You are able to match up against people of about your skill level at any time of day. That experience is magical, compared to the matchmaking from 25 years ago where you would try to find a random lobby, and the players might be amazing or terrible.

For most online games, especially ones without chat, playing against sufficiently good bots is better than online. You don’t have to worry about cheating, connection issues, can quit mid game without issue, etc.

That is fine if you feel that way, but I really don't. I get much more satisfaction playing against real people. It just doesn't get my competitive juices flowing in the same way when I play against bots. There is no psychological aspect when you play against bots.

I know what I like.

But what if you don't know they are bots? :)

Wasn’t that the case for a lot of the .io style games, where they just disguised bots as real players.

I have been working in the industry now for 11 years, and this defeatism surrounding anticheat is frustrating. Especially when Epics anticheat which used to be free to use, supports linux.

Is it defeatism? I don’t game on Linux and generally like Windows, but from a principle and security perspective I’d preferably check a box on Windows to disallow any kernel-level anticheat from installing, and avoid any such games.

That’s fine, then those games are not available to you.

I’ll be honest, no matter how unpopular it is I’m really sorry, but those kind of solutions genuinely are the only way. I’ve said it before on HN, but we really do try everything. And not having anything leads to some of the worst experiences possible.

If you genuinely have a better solution, then you are more than welcome to enter the industry and make a significant amount of money.

Hell, I’ll offer you a job right now.

Simple solution that makes everyone happy: make it optional. Anticheat was optional in pretty much every 00s game that had it, and even in the servers that had it disabled, cheating was still rarely an issue. Diablo 2 even let you still bring your single player characters that you could obviously cheat with (which everyone knew from Diablo 1) onto Open Battle.net. Make the Internet optional like it used to be while you're at it with LAN/direct IP support so you can stick to friends only and keep your purchase forever.

Oh but then you can't make all of your revenue on stuff like gambling for textures that anyone could just mod in like they used to.

Interesting thought, maybe I do this in my next game.

I doubt it will show what you expect, but hey, I’ve been wrong before.

> That’s fine, then those games are not available to you.

See, this is my problem. I have no interest in online multiplayer, so anti-cheat is purely of negative value to me.

I understand the problem with cheaters, and if I did play multiplayer games, I'd want every effort taken to eliminate cheating.

I'd be perfectly happy if I could uncheck the "anti-cheat and online capabilities" checkbox in the game installer (or have it default unchecked when the OS indicates that anticheat isn't supported), and I could go on my way and play my single player game.

IMO that's a better solution technically, and for me personally, but I don't know that there's much money to be made in sales to single-player-only non-microtransaction-consuming gamers who were otherwise forgoing games.

A lot of games do have this feature.

What does defeatism mean here? As opposed to lobbying our representatives to make DRM (of which anticheat is a subset) or product tying restrictions (e.g. artificially requiring something to run on Windows/Xbox or Google Android or a Switch when a generic computer is perfectly capable of running it) illegal or something?

kernel level anticheat is a chicken and egg problem.

No game developers of seriously looking at enabling even in the cases where it is extremely easy and trivial to enable, because the additional support button isn’t considered worth it for the number of users as they might get.

so when I say it’s defeatist, what I mean is all you have to do is vote with your wallet enough and the games will follow. I know this an absolute fact because I’ve been in this conversation many times.

Kernel-level DRM isn't a chicken/egg problem; it's completely at odds with people who are choosing to run an OS that obeys them instead of some random third party like Microsoft/Google/Apple on hardware they own. Voting with their wallet is precisely what the other user said they do.

I don’t really know who you’re talking to?

Your options are,

1. Buy Windows. Means you has absolutely no control.

2. Promote the development of anti-cheat on the linux, where you can not install it because you don’t like it.

No idea that you’re arguing against me, when all I’m doing is arguing for increased amount of freedom is tad silly.. no?

Most gamers go with 3., buy a XBox, Playstation, Nintendo, or 4., stick with mobile games, in both cases go with a walled garden solution.

Yeah, thats a totally fair addition.

In fact, it’s one I chose at home (option 3) because I was unwilling to compromise my computing environment just so I could browse the internet and program on the same device I play games with.

If publishers were comfortable developing for Linux, maybe that would change, I don’t think it has to be so binary as “either you have total control or none at all”, especially since there’s so many non-free components to your system already and multiplayer games are a luxury product (and thus; totally optional).

The irony is that they already do, that is what Android games developed with NDK are.

So it would be rather easy to port such games to GNU/Linux, they don't bother, because of the cost/benefit in doing so.

its not that easy, Androids userland is pretty far from a valid Linux target, there’s a lot of platform hand holding that exists.

It is the same in what matters, ISO C and ISO C++ support, OpenGL ES, Vulkan, OpenSL ES and OpenMAX.

Much closer than porting Win32/DirectX, LibGNM(X)/OrbisOS and so on.

I think a better comparison would be porting a game from PC to XBox.

Technically the renderers and kernels are the same, but almost everything else, from debuggers and SDKs to peripherals is different.

Ah, ok from that point of view you're right.

Option 3 was already stated: don't buy software that requires a DRM rootkit. Vote against it with your wallet.

Battlefield 6 requires a rootkit? Battlefield 1942 and 2 are still fun and don't. I've had only Linux on my home computers for like a decade now, and Windows has since then become unusable so I'm not going back. Why would I buy software that won't run?

Your wallet has next to no voting power as is, in part due to self inflicted injuries making gnu/linux unviable for game development. Or any app development for that matter.

Sounds good, but gamers never vote with their wallets and the publishers know this. They complain and moan about everything but when the next year’s Madden or FIFA comes out, they forget their complaints and inevitably fork over their money.

I have been playing Madden and FIFA/FC for 30 years now. I love them. I love being able to play competitively against other people without having cheaters in every game.

Those two desires (to play Madden and FIFA/FC and play online without cheaters) requires that I not simply refuse to buy those games.

Sure, but on the margin you can still change your behaviour.

Ie for games that previously you were on the fence about, a look at whether they play or do not play well on the Steam Deck or Linux in general can push you over the fence (on way or another).

Like I said, I have a lot of games that I love playing on the Steam Deck. I am often looking for games that run well on Steam Deck.

I am not sure what behavior on the margins I can change that would change the situation. My favorite games can't be played on Steam Deck. Like I said, I have been playing these games for 30 years. I am not about to change my favorite games just so I can make a point about the importance of Steam Deck compatibility. That won't change anything other than I won't be able to play my favorite games anymore.

Honestly, I am happy that they have added proper PC support along with cross platform play at all. Most sports games focus almost exclusively on consoles, and most of the player base play on consoles. Before they added cross platform gameplay a few years ago, it was really hard to find games when I would try to play online. Now it is easy.

The reason they are able to offer cross platform support is because of the anti-cheat.

Take. for example, the NBA2k series, which I used to play a lot; the anti-cheat for PC is awful. They don't allow cross platform play because of that, so games are hard to find and every few games you play a game against a guy who is 12 feet tall and hits every 3 pointer from any spot on the court. It was so bad I stopped playing entirely. For years I settled on playing on XBOX, but i eventually got annoyed enough i stopped buying the game completely.

> My favorite games can't be played on Steam Deck. Like I said, I have been playing these games for 30 years. I am not about to change my favorite games just so I can make a point about the importance of Steam Deck compatibility. That won't change anything other than I won't be able to play my favorite games anymore.

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you change your favourite games or how you play them.

But I was assuming you are playing more than just your three favourite games over and over again?

> For years I settled on playing on XBOX, but i eventually got annoyed enough i stopped buying the game completely.

This is an example where you changed your behaviour on the margin.

Or another example: if one cupcake tastes massively better to you than another, you are going to buy that. But if there are two drinks that could go about equally well with your cupcake (Pepsi and Coke, say) and you are fairly indifferent between them otherwise, you'll probably going to have a look at the price or what's more convenient etc.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism

> without having cheaters in every game.

That's highly debatable. How do you know for certain they aren't using any undetectable cheats (like a driver-level cheat, say an aim assist) or a hardware level cheat? Cheating aside, how do you know that they aren't better than you simply because they've got better hardware? How do you get satisfaction from playing such games when there's so many variables that can affect gameplay that goes beyond human skill that you can't do anything about?

Cheating is often very obvious, even when the player is on your team. It’s when multiple improbable, too-perfect situations happen for the cheater in the same game.

But that’s beside the point. Gaming companies who produce competitive online games know that the competitive scene will die very quickly if there is rampant, unaddressed cheating. This is why kernel-level anticheat exists. When you have a free to play game banking on the competitive scene & selling cosmetics, cheating is an existential threat to your entire business model, and players demand you do something about it.

Valorant players BY FAR don’t care about kernel-level anticheat, but do care about cheaters getting detected and banned. People put a lot of time into ranked matches, and enjoy the game a lot.

Does riot have other options? Sure, and it probably uses a lot of tools beyond the kernel-level system to help with it. But there is zero business incentive for them to migrate to a different anti-cheat system.

It does not take much to upset your competitive players, because they spend so much time in your game system. And they’re the ones paying for season passes & cosmetics keeping the game alive. There is a lot of risk that companies have no business reason to tackle.

This doesn’t matter for plenty of games, sure, but for people who care about doing well and who enjoy being able to be ranked (and work toward being better) in a fair system, anti-cheat is an important part of the puzzle.

The HN crowd is asking people to prioritize something they don’t care about (how anticheat works) over something they already enjoy and put a lot of time into. That’s not how this works.

It’s going to take a company seeing the value of a Linux market to invest in better anti-cheat solutions for Linux, or investing completely into server-side tech.

> Cheating is often very obvious, even when the player is on your team.

It's obvious when it's obvious. But when it's not obvious, it's tautologically not obvious. And it still exists.

If a player's hardware improves their skill, they will get a higher skill ranking and will play against people who match their skill. All of the things (hardware, skill, network, etc) go into generating the person's skill level. That is fine.

Actual cheats are different because it fundamentally changes the game.

Basically. It kinda sucks. New BF6 actually seems good for once ( since Bad Company mebbe ). And Tarkov seemed to be really up my alley. But.. kernel drm. Hard pass. Unfortunately ( or fortunately depending on your individual interpretation ), it really is up to us.

As for the kids? Well, I suppose they gotta get their hand burned somehow.

Counter: it's the publisher's fault, not Linux. As you said, the hardware is perfectly capable, and the OS is capable, publishers just refuse to allow it without installing kernel level malware.

It's EA's fault that you're required to install a damn rootkit to play a game. It's not the fault of Linux for refusing to allow this. Microsoft shouldn't allow it either, and they will likely shut it down before too much longer.

EA wants to intentionally compromise your computer. Linux says they can't do that. EA doesn't want you to play on Linux.

I am choosing to let them install kernel level software because I want to be able to play multiplayer games without cheaters. There doesn't seem to be any other way that people have found to effectively block cheaters.

A user is in full control of their Linux install, which is great... unless I want to play them in a game and they decide to cheat.

It is a tradeoff, yes, but one I choose to make because being able to play cheater free multiplayer games is worth it to me.

Just play with your actual friends. If they start cheating you can go over and kick them in the nuts. Match making was a horrible development for gaming.

I play games at odd hours, when I get a chance between a busy life with being a father and working full time. I have a once a week game night with my friends, and we play games together online. However, most of the time I just want to play a few quick games. I don't want to try to organize with friends or do anything like that. I just want to play some people in fun competitive games.

Online matchmaking is what lets that be possible. I used to dream of having something like that, all the way back when I first started playing online games when you had to call your friend, then tell your family not to pick up the phone because it was your friend calling your modem, then lose connection when your sister tried to make a call. I remember having to set up a code with my friend; if the phone rang twice and then hung up, that means the next call would be me on a voice call wanting to talk, otherwise let the modem answer it.

I used to dream about being able to play people at any hour of the day, and now it is possible. It is an amazing invention.

Such a hn comment. “Just dont do this thing you bought the game to do” I play cod with friends so we can frag other players together.

I’d almost be ok with this if the kernel-level malware actually stopped cheaters but it doesn’t! Most (all?) modern multiplayer shooters that employ anti-cheats still are struggling with cheaters. So you get the worst of both worlds: you need to install a rootkit and still have to deal with cheaters. Why do gamers accept this abuse?

Kernel-level anti cheats are not perfect, but they decrease the amount of cheaters to the point where they stop being “common” and become “extremely rare”. An imperfect solution is much better than no solution.

There is a way. Custom servers with commuties police cheaters willingly and consistently. It also lets games exist beyond the corporate lifecycle.

My favorite part about playing Madden and FIFA/FC is that I can login, hit play online, and within 30 seconds I am playing against someone who is pretty close to my skill level.

That is impossible with custom servers. I have played MANY games that are based around custom servers (and still play some today), and there are many great qualities with those types of games. However, you lose that 'find a good game in under a minute' quality.

I am older now, and I don't want to spend the time to find and join custom servers. I don't want to have to talk to people or deal with server admins or get caught up in drama that a community like that can have. I just want to play competitive, fair games.

Warcraft 3 had random ranked matchmaking and hosted games. It's entirely possible to do both side-by-side.

Why can't game search include custom servers? Imperfect solutions can still be great solutions.

> I am choosing to let them install kernel level software because I want to be able to play multiplayer games without cheaters.

Except this way doesn't actually stop cheaters. A quick google shows that there's BF6 hacks for sale if I want to cheat.

It significantly reduces the number of cheaters and makes catching and banking cheaters easier. I hate it too, but that is just the reality right now.

Would it be technically possible for these anti-cheat companies to make third party proprietary kernel modules I wonder, a bit like Nvidia does with their driver for example, and then require that to be installed and loaded to play? Although with the user able to make custom kernels that'd be a bit of a nightmare. Probably would have to be only supported with specific distro's kernels or something.

I agree with you and I wouldn't want to install that myself but just something I've thought about.

> It's not the fault of Linux for refusing to allow this.

Linux doesn't refuse anything, it's free and open source software. If publishers want to offer anti-cheat software developed for Linux, it will run. In fact, many games do have anti-cheat, like Insurgency: Sandstorm, which uses EAC through Proton.

Publishers can even develop invasive kernel-level anti-cheat just like they do for Windows. They don't because it's a small portion of the market currently, and I assume they consider it not worth the investment as of now. To what extent existing Linux users would willingly allow such software to run is also an open question.

There's also the point that even invasive kernel level anti-cheat on Windows with requirements for secure boot continues to be inadequate to stop cheaters in competitive online games.

Assuming the Anti-Cheat won't be GPL licensed (which would probably make it useless), the Linux kernel does indeed refuse to cooperate: https://lwn.net/Articles/939842/

Sure, there are technical solution around this, but they are legally questionable.

Anti cheats basically don't work on Linux at all. One of the primary jobs of anti cheat software is to monitor the OS environment and detect people trying to inject code into the game process or read the game process's memory. On Windows kernel access is gate kept by Microsoft and restricts cheat software's options for how to read memory and inject code. The standard Win32 APIs are monitored and the cheats need exploitable kernel drivers to get in.

On Linux this can't work because a cheater can just build their own kernel with all the protections disabled or with intentional vulnerabilities. From what I've heard, statistics for games running anti cheats on Linux alongside Windows find the vast majority of cheaters on Linux.

Given this situation I think it's entirely reasonable to not support Linux if you're handing cheaters the game on a silver platter.

Bought GTA IV only to find out the Rockstar Launcher got broken on Linux about a month before I purchased it. Downloaded all twenty gigs of the game, can’t use a penny’s worth due to the broken Rockstar Launcher.

Rockstars DRM is so bad they sell Razor1911 cracks on steam.

Not even the legacy edition?

Although it's compelling to ditch the Rockstar malware, any alternatives would need to be obtained from the high seas and that's off the table.

I wonder how League of Legends (LoL) manages, given it didn't rely on kernel-level anti-cheat when I was playing. Granted, you'd have to report one or two players per week; but that was quite a rare thing and mostly it was obvious levelling bots. Clearly they manage without root kit-level hacks.

Valve wont's give anti-cheat tools root access, and Microsoft will, but after the CrowdStrike fiasco, there's rumors that Microsoft will limit root access to monitoring tools, so anti-cheat engines on Windows might lose their advantage.

Steam is doing the same thing as Microsoft, between DRM-locking everything so you don't own it, and gatekeeping what titles are actually allowed in their store. They're both locking you into their vision of the future.

If Gabe Newell gets hit by a bus, what happens when his estate sells majority control to pay the inheritance and estate taxes?

With federal taxes of 40% over $15 million, there's no way his estate maintains majority control, no matter Gabe's good intentions. After that, we can look forward to Microsoft Steam. Or, if the FTC is annoyed, Amazon Steam.

You're assuming that Gabe Newell doesn't have massive non-steam assets that can be used to pay the estate tax.

A. What assets matter at this scale?

B. They are also taxed at 40%

C. And the estate may just want to sell more Steam shares to keep whatever they are intact

D. Even if by some miracle Gabe Newell still owns the required ~85% of Steam to barely squeak by on federal estate taxes ($16B presumed valuation = ~$5.5 billion tax bill if he owned 85%, leaving him with ~51% after payment), who is taking the reins?

- edits - additional points -

E. I forgot Gabe Newell lives in Seattle. If Washington is his actual residence, then Washington has an additional 35% tax rate on high-value estates. Which makes it completely impossible even with 100% ownership.

F. Why would his estate even bother trying to salvage Gabe's vision at this point, when they're left with an illiquid minority stake? A very possible scenario is to sell all shares they possess, in one transaction. The possibility of majority control could inflate the share price dramatically over a piecemeal sale.

G. In which case, within 9 months of Gabe's death (IRS deadline), there is a high likelihood there will be an estate auction of all shares to any willing purchaser (highest value per share extracted + tax bill paid). And that purchaser will then have immediate intent to cash in.

H. Betting on Steam then, promoting them as better than other companies, is completely dependent on Gabe's actuarial tables. Not to be harsh but just honest, considering Gabe's decades of obesity before getting to a healthier place now, they're probably worse than average, as long-term obesity has persistent irrevocable effects. (This sounds harsh, but actuarial analysis is directly used in insurance and estate planning; you can be assured every major company's CEO has been assessed.)

Just speaking from things we can see, he owns yachts, a yacht building company, and a racing team. He also quite likely has a large investment portfolio like every other billionaire on the planet.

Let's say all those things added up to even $2B, as a hypothetical.

That means there's a $800M tax bill to keep those assets. If the estate has already lost majority control of Steam regardless; there's no real reason to not hand over even more of Steam, to keep hold of those other assets.

Why would the estate have lost majority control of Steam regardless?

A. Well, he does own a fleet of yachts.

Yachts are a hole in the water that you throw money into.

Ie they are more of a consumption than an investment.

I’d have to assume that a man of his wealth has an army of accountants and attorneys working for him and they have his assets sufficiently shielded from taxes through webs of trusts, shell companies, charitable foundations and so on.

Don’t rich people just gift their money and assets to a relative or trust to avoid those inheritance taxes?

The Federal Gift tax is the same as the inheritance tax - 40% - after the thresholds are maxed out.

Trusts also pay the gift tax at the time of the transfer. Trusts grant control, not much in tax exemptions at this scale.

Do these taxes still apply, even if you use a charitable trust?

Obviously, Gabe Newell should move to Singapore or another location without inheritance and estate taxes.

DRM is optional on Steam. The dev can opt to not include it, and the default Steam DRM is trivially bypassed anyway.

Valve barely does any gatekeeping that isn't caused by outside pressure, i.e. Visa and Mastercard in the latest instance, which they're atleast trying to fight back against, from what I can tell.

Valve does some important gatekeeping that has a real impact:

There's (almost?) no ads and microtransactions in Steam games. If you look at mobile games or browser games, you can see that developers would put them in, if they could.

Fair point! Although that's a gate I very much like.

I don't think Steam has any complete blockers to microtransactions, given that there are games that do have it, although I don't think they're as predatory about it as mobile games are. Maybe that's down to cultural differences between PC and mobile, or maybe there's more too it.

Ads standing in the way of gameplay are indeed banned,[1] although there are ways around that I'm sure if devs really wanted to be knobheads about it, but people on PC tend to be more loud about ads in their games than on mobile.[2]

[1] https://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-seemingly-bans-all-s...

[2] https://news.designrush.com/ubisoft-assassins-creed-ad-spark...

Yes, not all gatekeeping is bad.

Of course, Apple and friends will try to convince you that their gatekeeping is the good kind.

> microtransactions in Steam games

ROFL.

Valve made games have (and heavily popularized): Paid battlepasses, Microtransactions, Loot Boxes and "NFTs"

Valve invented loot boxes, they started with CS:GO. Don't forget skin "economies" from TF2. I find it really funny nobody acknowledges this.

There's no way to identify ahead of purchasing a game whether or not it's got DRM.

Valve has been gatekeeping long before this year's Visa and Mastercard crackdowns. It's been an ongoing problem since at least 2018. They'll flunk a title at review without telling the developer what they did wrong, or even allowing them to resubmit with adjustments. I don't see any sign of them fighting.

> There's no way to identify ahead of purchasing a game whether or not it's got DRM.

For Steam's own DRM I do believe that to be true, but mostly not a problem, since Steam's DRM is just there so that the DRM checkbox is ticked. Any user can bypass it if they care, and the ones who do go to GOG for their games.

For DRM beyond that, this isn't true. Denuvo and Securom is listed on store pages for games that have it, and the same goes for kernel-level anti-cheat.

PCGamingWiki has a good list outside of that,[1] but from what I can tell, Steam has a warning about DRM on all the store pages listed there.

> I don't see any sign of them fighting.

Quoting this article:[2]

> Apart from that, both Valve and Itch.io explicitly stated that payment processors are the reason games were deindexed or removed from sale entirely.

Given that Visa and Mastercard some pretty big giants, I'd say they're making a fight of what they can. Valve's hardly to blame. They're just in a bad situation. Blame Collective Shout for starting the ruckus.

[1] https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_third-part...

[2] https://www.pcgamer.com/games/mastercard-deflects-blame-for-...

No they are not. You can install the Epic store and others right on a Steam deck and use it. You can start any binary you wish, direct from the steam launcher. You can use the steam deck as a full-on desktop if you wished.

> The long-term end goal for Microsoft is to lock down Windows and force signed code

Defender already forces binaries to be signed by developers that spent money on certs from Microsoft-certified CAs.

Pull those certs, or don't use them at all, and 99.999% of users will not figure out how to run what they want, because the OS will trick them into thinking they're about to get owned by Russian hackers for just thinking about running something that wasn't blessed by Microsoft.

If they switch to steamos doesn't that ameliorate the harm?

I think that is a nice start, but I don't want sales of "Xbox" devices growing so Microsoft throws more weight behind them.

What if they're not "Xbox" branded? Eg GPD devices (they even advertise official Bazzite support).

I keep telling folks that Proton was a mistake and SteamDeck will suffer the same fate as netbooks.

FOSS folks don't get that the gammer culture does not overlap with FOSS, everyone is cool with NDAs and IP, it is all about the experience in that realm.

The call to migrate in droves to Linux has been happening since a unpopular Windows version comes out, since Windows XP, and still Valve had to come up with Proton, as even the game studios targeting Android/Linux with the NDK don't care about GNU/Linux.

XBox console is in a mess currently, however lets not forget XBox the business unit is part of Microsoft Games Studios, and Microsoft is one of the major publishers due to the amount of game studios that they own, beyond XBox.

I hear you, but at the same time, you can't deny the amount of improvements the Linux ecosystem has seen due to Valve's involvement: tons of AMD-related improvements in the kernel, tons of mesa/radeon improvements, massive improvements in KDE, improvements to Arch etc. Not to mention lots of other contributors riding the wave and contributing things like drivers for gamepads and other bits, making power user tools like LACT/OCCT etc.

Linux hardware compatibility has never been as good, and I suspect a lot of it is due to so many gamers trying Linux on a myriad of systems and submitting bug reports. I've also seen some folks in some communities go from complete Linux noobs to actually making FOSS software. We've also seen some very innovative distros being born as a result of all this hype (Bazzite, the uBlue family, CachyOS etc). So you can't deny the massive impact Valve has had on the overall ecosystem, and personally I think that's a good thing - even if Proton doesn't exactly sit well with FOSS ideals.

Great more distros, just what The Year of Linux Desktop needs.

Great more sarcasm, just want the HN community needs.

Yes, because many in the Linux community tend to focus on the wrong stuff, regarding adoption, and that is why one ends up with Proton.

You keep bringing up Proton but you forget that Proton is just Wine + a couple of other existing FOSS projects + some of Valve's patches. Wine is really what makes the magic happen, and Wine existed as far back as 1993, and there was barely a Linux community back then. So you can't really blame the community for Proton, it's just a natural result of things. Even before Proton came along, there were similar projects to make Wine gaming easier, such as PlayOnLinux, CrossOver etc. So Proton is nothing new, its just a natural evolution of an ecosystem that's been evolving over three decades.

Because that is ultimately what makes Windows games run on Linux, and represents Valve's failure to change the culture of game studios to consider GNU/Linux worth targeting, even when they have Android/NDK builds that they could easily use as starting point.

Indeed nothing is new, rebooting the Linux Desktop every couple of years, and I still cannot buy a GNU/Linux powered desktop at the shopping mall, with 100% everything working, unless it comes packaged on a VM running on top of macOS or Windows.

And when a problem is found in sleep modes, graphics, audio, fingerprint reader or whatever, there is always that person replying like being in some Linux forum powered by phpBB during the early 2000's.

Windows games work on Linux, until Microsoft decides it is time to do something about it, ROG XBox Ally is only the first step, and lets not forget current Valve's management won't live forever.

So it remains to be seen if the new owners when it comes to be, will be that willing to keep the same culture.

> Because that is ultimately what makes Windows games run on Linux, and represents Valve's failure to change the culture of game studios to consider GNU/Linux worth targeting

Unfortunately, eliminating the diversity of the Linux ecosystem would also be eliminating one of its strengths. Proton covers up that diversity, making it easier for game developers to target Linux (whether they do so intentionally or incidentally). While a few Linux gamers may be bothered by the Windows API providing that abstraction layer, I doubt that many are.

> I still cannot buy a GNU/Linux powered desktop at the shopping mall, with 100% everything working

If you tried installing Windows from official media on one of those shopping mall computers, you would likely find that significant pieces of hardware would not work. Sometimes, it is difficult to proceed through the install process due to this. (I have a laptop where neither the trackpad nor touch screen will work until drivers are installed, so you have to navigate through the installer with a keyboard or attach a mouse). Other times, it is theoretically impossible to complete the install process unless drivers are installed during the installation process or you temporarily add supported hardware to the machine. (Windows does not support the network adapter out of the box on the aforementioned laptop, so you theoretically get stuck at the network connection screen of the OOBE.) Do the same with Linux, and the only unsupported piece of hardware out of the box is the fingerprint reader. Heck, even the printer and scanner works out of the box. I haven't managed to get the printer or scanner working consistently under Windows even with the vendor's software installed. It's also worth mentioning that none of this hardware is obscure. (Lenovo Yoga laptop, Epson printer.)

I realize that this is misinterpreting your point, that you can walk into a store and buy a Windows laptop and you cannot do the same with Linux. At least from a major retailer. Yes, that is a valid point. On the other hand, the infrastructure is already in place. The thing that is missing is consumer demand.

> lets not forget current Valve's management won't live forever

I'm not even sure how that's relevant here. You could easily argue the same thing about Microsoft. If anything, the situation for Microsoft is worse since Linux, WINE, etc. isn't controlled by a single entity. Valve is, so the convenience of Steam could vanish. On the other hand, there are open source projects that aim to create Windows game launchers that are not tied to Valve.

They've sold ~8 million units. Well past the technical argument and the devs who can't be told, that's 8 million Windows licenses they haven't bought. I thin they've more than paid off the salaries of the few people they've hired to make Proton a reality.

Not sure I see your comparison to Netbooks; they failed because ultra-cheap laptops are inherently bad. You cut that many corners, you lose quality. They lost out to tablets, better phones, and Chromebooks, each doing something a netbook did but better. Steam Decks are a format that will persist.

> It's time that the PC gaming ecosystem breaks free from its dependency on Windows. Proton and SteamOS, combined with the unpopular mess that is Windows 11 is the perfect opportunity to do so.

Looking at the Deck's popularity, the PC gaming ecosystem alreadyd did break free.

Steam Deck is Zen 2. Rog Xbox Ally X is Zen 5.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ambCqcFuexk

Also, why didn't they install SteamOS directly? https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

Not sure what the specific benefits of SteamOS are. It’s forked from Arch, I don’t know what Valve changes. Maybe slightly better hardware support for Steam Deck? I run Steam on Fedora on my desktop and have no issues.

There's very good steam integration, a controller first UI, it's very performant, sleep works better, fantastic performance monitoring and settings.

I love it, but there's probably not a whole bunch of reason to run it on things in other form factors.

Pretty sure Bazzite offers all those things as well.

It does. It provides everything SteamOS does. So if SteamOS doesn't support the Xbox Ally X, why install SteamOS?

I don't run SteamOS but I run Bazzite on my desktop, the main advantage of running these immutable gaming distros is to have a fuss-free gaming experience - my PC boots straight to Steam, and I never ever have to worry about OS updates or other maintenance tasks. Basically I get to enjoy a console-like gaming experience.

I work as a sysadmin during the day, fixing PCs and stuff, and I really don't want to continue doing that after I get home - I just want to pick up my controller, put my feet up and get straight to gaming without having to worry about updates and other PC annoyances.

The best part is, if on the rate ocassion an update breaks something,I can easily boot straight to the previous image from the boot menu, without needing to run any commands or do anything special post-boot. And with Bazzite (and other uBlue distros), I can go back upto 90 days worth of images (3 previous local images + older images pulled from the cloud). I can also pin a known "good" image so it'll always be available in the boot menu. Essentially I get a rock solid unbreakable system, which is great because after a hard day's work, I really don't have the patience to deal with any PC issues at home.

Yeah that does sound nice. It really is the best possible experience if all you want is to play games.

I should have clarified that I meant the performance benefit of SteamOS over Bazzite specifically.

SteamOS is very different from Arch. There’s almost too much to list here. But it uses an image based read only OS, a fully custom wayland desktop environment/compositor, does not have pakman, software is distributed either through steam or flatpak, OS image updates have their own mechanism. And a whole lot of preinstalled drivers and software for things like controller support which typically don’t come out of the box on Linux distros.

The whole OS is made for controllers, no need for a mouse/kb for anything.

AIUI (I don't have any of this hardware) SteamOS is really meant for the Steam Deck; while there's "basic support" for the ROG Ally, it's not their focus. Bazzite seems to be quite happy to support everything, and AIUI it's frighteningly close to SteamOS (the same customizations, etc.)

It's not "we have SteamOS at home" - it's more like RedHat vs CentOS

This is changing. Valve is actively working with hardware manufacturers to get SteamOS on a number of systems other than the Steam Deck. You can buy a Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS today[1], and Valve will be supporting SteamOS on the Asus ROG Ally in the future[2], whether Asus partners with them or not.

[1]https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/handheld/legion-go-s/len106g0...

[2]https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/13/24219469/valve-steamos-as...

because official SteamOS doesn't support the Xbox Ally X yet. It's safe to assume that official SteamOS will eventually support the Xbox Ally X, but it's not there yet.

Valve moves slowly to add support for more devices, etc, whereas the Bazzite devs can move faster.

e.g.

Bazzite does a weekly release of a stable OS candidate, whereas Valve often takes months, if not up to a year, for to release a stable-channel OS update.

Edit:

Also, Valve tends to wait for proper kernel interfaces for functionality like controlling TDP, RGB, fans, etc. Whereas Bazzite devs are fine with using tools in userspace to directly talk to hardware, etc.

While I do think Valve's approach is better for long-term maintainability, Bazzite will always have the speed advantage because it can hack together a solution via userspace applications.

I wonder if this is why Xbox Series X never achieved a noticeable performance advantage over PlayStation 5, despite having more capable hardware.

The Xbox runs on a custom OS derived from Windows Core. Not the same as a consumer version of Windows.

[Edit] The answer you’re probably looking for is I/O. The PS5 is much faster than the Series X in terms of getting stuff off disk and actually using it. That more than compensates for the small speed advantage the Series X has.

> derived from Windows Core

if you polish a turd, it's still a turd.

The kernel is fine, it's all that crap they keep shoving into userspace that's the issue.

I consider that the core of Windows (the NT kernel and win32 api) is actually a very polished gem but it is encased in layers of upon layers of barely polished turds ( winui, the win11 shell, the over agressive telemetry, forced ms635 integration, etc..)

Makes sense, given that allegedly Windows NT is very much next gen OpenVMS... https://www.itprotoday.com/server-virtualization/windows-nt-...

The kernel might be a polished gem but win32 API?

Practical is a term I'd use as win32 has managed to survive to this day but that came with a boatload of hacks and problems. It's ugly.

When you run Steam games on Linux that mostly goes via a version of Wine, which implements win32.

Yes, win32 is ugly, and so is x86.

No it's just slowed down by windows bloat. Weaker and mobile devices suffer the most due to aggressive power saving.

I was so excited for the Series X and it's just another crap-tier wannabe gaming PC, with none of the flexibility. It makes me so sad how miserable the XBox has become. I fucking LOVED the 360 back in the day, I used to run home from school to get on Halo 3 and play with friends.

And granted, those same friends and I still play Halo Infinite, but we're all on PCs. Nobody bothers with the goddamn XBox.

The Xbox died the moment they announced it would require a constant connection to the Kinect, and internet in order to function. Even after backtracking from that, it never recovered. There’s also just a lack of reason for it to exist anymore. The PlayStation fills the need for a high power console, Nintendo offers something portable and gimmicky, what would Xbox even offer here?

These days most consoles run fairly standard hardware and games are programmed to be generic and published on every console.

I also heard that the PlayStation 5 graphics API's are more optimized to the hardware than DirectX is. Not sure if that's true though.

I've heard that too. And also Xbox had 2 different DirectX APIs, one more customised to the console, and one that's the standard Windows DirectX which is not as performant. From what I've heard most devs used the latter as it made porting the PC version of the game easier, and sales on Xbox would be tiny compared to PlayStation (1/3rd the install base, sales even less than that due to Xbox users not buying games and just using gamepass) there was less incentive to optimise.

That is quite common in all consoles.

Playstation has LibGNM and LibGNMX, Switch has OpenGL and Vulkan but you really want NVN for every drop of performance

This was always the case. Ps3 was supposedly more powerful but devs didn’t care to make use of it and just port and move on to the next project. Only nintendo hardware seemed to get special treatment with game design probably because it was like a generation behind in power.

This has been my experience. Linux+Steam+Proton delivers a more stable and performant Windows API than Windows. And that was on Windows 10 two years ago. I can only imagine things have gotten worse with Windows 11.

I play a lot of older games from 90s and 2000s. They certainly work better on Linux+Wine+DXVK than on Windows.

Not to mention for the different games that need different environments/configurations/libraries it's much easier to manage a bunch of profiles than a bunch of windows installations/VMs.

It can get funny sometimes. There a game from 1999 that I had troubles running in Wine on Linux all the way back in 2005, and wrote a patch for it:

https://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?actio...

And then the same error message started showing up on Win10. Thankfully the same patch still works...

Of course, why buy this disaster when this exists: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/handheld-gaming/amd...

I dont know... price, maybe?

also the fact that it doesn’t have an internal battery

I understand weight as an issue on a portable but since when is being able to replace the battery a design fault?

You're mixing things up. Normal replaceable batteries are still internal.

One disaster for another - why spend thousands on a giant "portable" with a 1-2 hour gaming time before you have to power it off to swap the bulky external battery.

GPD buyers are assuming the risks involved with a high consideration item without brick & mortar returns & support, one might as well wait to see what onexfly comes up with for amd 395. I'm a happy user of several GPD releases, but firmware/driver/software distribution via Google Drive, and having to ship individual replacement components from Hong Kong is reason enough to wait.

I have the Xbox Ally, Steam Deck, and original Ally.

The original Ally software launch was a disaster. Unbelievable amount of bugs and overall terrible user experience. After 6+ months of updates it was decent.

I figured, hey, maybe they figured it out in advance this time? So I pre-ordered an Xbox Ally.

It is a complete disaster in terms of software. It took 90 minutes to setup and download initial updates on a Google Fiber connection. Things break constantly.

The other day, I got a new error, "Something went wrong and your PIN isn't available." When I try to click anything, it just goes black. After 6 or 7 restarts, it randomly glitches out and takes me right to desktop without any PIN.

It is just constant bullshit like this. The entire experience breaks over, and over, and over. I hate it so much. Back to Steam Deck.

Unfortunately that is what happens when they keep laying off people, and the new interns have hardly done any Windows development.

See the mess on Windows development experience since Project Reunion reboot, or how WinRT transition was completely mismanaged.

But hey Satya got his bonus.

I don't mean to be rude, but why would you give them even more money after screwing it up so bad the first time? You're just rewarding bad behavior at this point.

OP explained that. The original was stable after 6 months of patches. The Xbox Ally should in theory have that stability baked in. Everyone deserves a second chance. Not so much a third.

Nice! Linux gaming came a long way.

It really has. I had always tried to use Linux in the past, but gaming was always a fight, and the OS just never felt like it behaved reliable for daily usage for me, was always some little annoyance or bug or issue I'd run into and inevitably switch back to Windows for the sake of things just working without having to spend hours and days and weeks trying to fix issues. That was 10+ years ago. I finally decided to give it a go again, using an Arch based OS. I figured it's been a while, try something other than debian or SLES that I've been used to. Honestly, I kinda don't notice much difference in overall day to day use between gaming and day to day use on Linux versus previously being on Windows just a month ago. Everything kinda just works. The one thing I do notice is I use significantly less RAM, I seldom exceed 32gb as where I was regularly 40gb+ on Windows, and everything runs much better while I do the same day to day stuff as I always have. It's not a huge performance difference, but if I'm paying attention, yeah, I do notice my games tend to run better, and everything within the OS is far more responsive. As for all the linux a-holes out there, please STFU, I don't wanna hear "winblows sux" or "this distro is better", it's why I didn't specify what specific distro I use. That toxic fanboyism is what keeps people away from seeing it as a viable usable OS.

My rambling is really just to say: Yeah, linux has come a long way, especially for gaming and day to day use. The work Valve and others have done to make stuff just run and work is astonishing.

I've been using Linux since the late 1990s.

Gaming has improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years, but non-gaming desktop use has been solid for ages. What little annoyances and bugs and issues kept you going back to Windows?

I found Windows 10 was the first bearable Windows, that I could use without wanting to go back to Linux all the time. Not great, but bearable.

I still used Windows for gaming throughout the whole time. (Until about a year ago, when I accidentally nuked my Windows installation, and then never bothered to set it up again..)

Depending on the job I had at the time, I also used Windows at work.

> As for all the linux a-holes out there, please STFU, I don't wanna hear "winblows sux" or "this distro is better", it's why I didn't specify what specific distro I use. That toxic fanboyism is what keeps people away from seeing it as a viable usable OS.

I've mostly heard that until perhaps about 10 years ago. I'm sure these people are still out there, but it seems to be much less common these days.

I use Arch Linux for what it's worth, but almost any distro can install almost any program (and they all run the same kernels), so it mostly comes down to what package manager and configuration system you want to use, and whether you like the defaults that come with your distribution.

I'm still having some trouble with screen tearing in some games on Linux, alas. I suspect these problems have been ironed out for the more mainstream window manager setups (like whatever you get in Ubuntu by default, instead of me using XMonad), but so far I couldn't be bothered to fix it, yet.

Try KDE Plasma Wayland session. No tearing there unless you explicitly request it.

I tried a compositor like picom and gamescope (the one the Steam Deck uses), and they help a bit with eg the modern Hitman games, but I still have trouble with eg Silksong.

I haven't tried Wayland, yet.

We're at the point where the only real holdback for more mainstream games on desktop Linux is the various kernel-level anticheat mechanisms.

I don't expect that atrocious garbage to ever get a solution on Linux. Normal games should focus on server side anti-cheats or anything that doesn't need to put stuff in the kernel.

What I see there is Windows games running on Linux.

Which is great for Linux gaming, since it removes the need to use Windows.

Windows games worked on Linux for years with different levels of success, the difference is that now they work much much better and at times better than on Windows itself :)

On the other hand, Linux still lacks a gamepad-focused UX out of the box, which is the real selling proposition of this device. These handheld PC's are not inherently "gaming" machines, they could have all sorts of interesting enterprise-focused uses out in the field if we managed to find a nice way of centering the whole UX interaction on those weird chorded buttons and analog controls.

What do you mean exactly on this comment? Do you mean a Linux distro like Bazzite or SteamOS which are both using gamepads as its main control?

This is not true of SteamOS and Bazzite. The entire OS is controller supported. I have my desktop running Bazzite plugged in to the TV with no kb/m. Can do everything from updating the system, changing the screen resolution, formatting sd cards, etc with just a controller.

As for the enterprise part of OP's comment, Bazzite is a community-contributed OCI container (similar to a Docker container) running on top of a Fedora bootc spin with GNOME or KDE. It is trivial for a company to add their own RUN instructions to the OCI Containerfile.

Here's a working one that I prepared earlier that installs 1Password on Bazzite GNOME and Bluefin:

https://github.com/lkdm/Phoenix

How do you install non-Steam games (e.g. from GOG)? Last I tried that still required dropping to desktop mode and using mouse/keyboard.

I hardly ever do that, but the one time I did (for Minecraft) I did just drop down to desktop mode and used the trackpad and touch screen. This wasn’t really to do with Linux though. Minecraft does not provide any way to install and log in with controller support.

After I installed it one time, I added it to Steam and could launch and update it with a controller. In theory GOG could integrate with Bazzite to offer a controller friendly store and UI. But considering they haven’t even bothered with a desktop Linux client, I’m not holding my breath.

Heroic Launcher requires dropping down to desktop mode once to install the app. Once installed properly it appears as an app inside Steam, which you can launch and then install and play your GOG and Epic games.

Bazzite does include the Steam frontend but that's a proprietary system, it's not something that the Linux/FLOSS community came up with. The KDE folks are starting to look into remote-control focused "10-foot" media center interfaces (see the Plasma Bigscreen project) that are also somewhat applicable to gamepad control (though these handheld devices generally come with touchscreens too, and this creates additional affordances) but that's a bit of a too little and too late situation. We need far more than that to make this novel class of devices usable for genuine production uses.

While it's still a work in progress, you should check out OpenGamepadUI. It's aiming to replace the Steam Client for gamepad-focused distros.

A Windows 11 gaming PC hooked up to a tv 100% needs a Mouse and Keyboard right now. You can't even sign in otherwise. This might change with their gamemode they are offering on these portables though.

pretty much everything runs faster on Linux than on Windows.

I didn't do any tests myself but based on what I read you still pay a hefty performance penalty when using e.g., a 5090 on Linux.

That's expected. Always use AMD for Linux gaming.

There is some WIP to address it for Nvidia, but it requires new Vulkan features.

See: https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/10/contributions/402/at...

I use Arch pretty much exclusively these days on my desktop, but this isn't quite true. Most of the time, Proton has a small performance impact (around 5% lower FPS), but some games tend to suffer more. For example Helldivers 2 runs around 10fps lower, which is pretty significant since I only got around 60-70 FPS on Windows at 4K (using a 3090).

Still, Proton is an amazing tool and these days it just works so well. The only games that don't work are those that are intentionally broken by invasive kernel-level anticheats. I won't be buying Battlefield 6, too bad for EA, there are now thousands of other games to play on Linux.

You’re comparing a game running on a compatibility layer, running on Linux to a game running directly on Windows. Not quite what the parent comment was stating.

There are few native Linux games, so performance on Proton is the essential benchmark. Besides, even when Linux native versions are available, the Windows version on Proton often offers a better experience (fewer obvious bugs).

I think grosswait is talking about the dx12 -> Vulkan translation layer. Running Windows games on Proton that use Vulkan get more comparable performance than Windows games that use dx12.

Proton is essentially the only stable ABI that Linux game devs can target

The general performance loss with the DX12 -> Vulkan translation on Linux especially with Nvidia hardware recently had the cause identified and will hopefully get solved in the near future. It has to do with descriptors and how Nvidia handles it is the general gist of it. A new Vulkan extension will be developed that more closely resembles how DX12 does things as I understand it, and then Nvidia and others can use that to hopefully solve this once and for all.

Here[1] is the full presentation and the slides[2] from it.

[1] https://video.tuwien.ac.at/events/xdc/v/OlwauRVEIGa

[2] https://indico.freedesktop.org/event/10/contributions/402/at...

Does this mean the performance gap of Proton for games using DX12 will close? What are the concrete implications of this?

It means that at the very least the Nvidia specific performance loss of 10-20% will disappear. That is already not an issue with AMD cards as I understand it.

If it'll further increase performance beyond that remains to be seen. I suspect there will always be some amount of overhead, although at least with earlier versions of DirectX it is quite minimal already.

>> up to 32% faster

> Average FPS gain (Linux vs Windows)

> +6.6 FPS (+13.47%)

The claim is “up to” which appears to be true of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

Yes, that’s how averages work.

“Up to” is the maximum number.

“Average” is the sum of all the data points divided by the quantity of data points.

Relative FPS gain is a meaningless metric anyway. Going from 30 to 36 FPS is -5.5 ms/frame, going from 60 to 66 FPS is -1.5 ms/frame.

Taking the average of that is even more meaningless. If they insist in comparing FPS instead of frame times, they should have simply compared the two harmonic means.

Oh no? only 13.47% on average for a single title?

Thats only 4 generations of improvement for intel CPUs. :(

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