Hacker News Reader

Comment by alecsm | Hacker News Reader

Valve is gonna save the day once again.

I was about to comment to say that unless Valve is prepared to invest significant effort into an x86 -> ARM translation layer that's not going to happen but a quick search for "linux x86 to arm translation" led me to an XDA article[1] proving me wrong. The recently announced Steam Frame runs on ARM and can run x86 games directly using using something called FEX.

Now we just need to be as good as (or better than) Apple's Rosetta.

[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/arm-translation-layer-steam-f...

From yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126446

Apple Silicon actually has microarchitectural quirks implementing certain x86-isms in hardware for Rosetta 2 to use. I doubt any other ARM SoC would do such a thing, so I doubt third-party translation will ever get quite as efficient.

Running Windows stuff.....

I don't use Windows but I do run a lot of software made only for Windows. I don't see any problem with that.

Until the fountain runs dry, because the kingdom lords diverted the river from Valve's well castle.

I'm sorry but that doesn't make any sense.

Valve is pushing mostly open source to expand to other platforms which is a win win for everybody.

That would be true if they were actually making devs embrace SteamOS.

They are. You're mad that Valve isn't militantly enforcing Linux-native games, which is nonsense. The OG Steam Machine did that and was DOA.

Thousands of game studios are gone now, and supporting their software is important legacy work. You don't have to appreciate that, but I do. I do not give the faintest fuck about the opportunity cost you bemoan towards native UNIX games when I do this. That's your problem, not mine.

Yeah, and Windows running WSL 2 is the Year of Linux Desktop, it is your problem to accept it, not mine.

If Proton is "Linux" games, so is running GNU/Linux under a VM a proper distro.

I quite prefer that to the alternative of not running Windows stuff.

Thing is, that strengths Windows market relevance, as IBM learnt with OS/2 and its Windows compatibility.

Good. I love exploiting Windows' market relevance, it's rather fun and engaging.

Until like IBM found out, devalues the underlying offer enough that it becomes irrelevant.

Isn't Valve's new VR headset running ARM?

I have faith!

I have seen VR headsets trying to break any significant market share since 1994, they have never been anything other than a niche, with customers having too much money to throw around.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com