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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

> Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller.

There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed.

Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware.

> As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and massive platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare.

You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform...

Have you ever developed anything for the desktop? It's not particularly difficult to get things to run on computers with different hardware...

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> There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros.

And there's 60 million Mac users worldwide, and it was asserted that that's not enough for a good gaming platform.

You can't have it both ways. If Linux is a good platform for games (and it may be), then OSX necessarily is as well.

Nah, his points go like this:

- There is a pretty sizable Linux userbase compared to OS X. Not larger, but the same league.

- Any existing Windows PC can be installed with Linux, and many other non-desktop devices already run Linux, so the potential for growth in userbase given the right trigger (i.e. games) is much larger

- A significant portion of machines that run OS X have very low performance hardware. The Macbook is one of Apple's top-selling computers, and it has always lagged in graphics.

So, to wrap it up, both Linux and OS X currently have small share, but Linux has the potential for rapid marketshare growth on capable hardware, while OS X has neither.

Add to this the fact that only some fraction of those 30 million linux users are interested in gaming.

Same for OSX. Personally I'm a Windows refugee and I've been bouncing around Mint, *buntus, Deb n Arch to find my favourite and TBH I love what I see. Valve has done great work on their Linux Steam client.

I foresee a few blockbuster games being ported for Linux and Valve using some great marketing for it to win PC gamers over. Eventually it will become the preferred platform. Unlike OSX, Linux isn't hardware locked and CAN spread like wildfire.

The only way I see Linux gaming becoming "the thing" is if it cannibalizes Windows gaming. I think that even if all new games have first-class Linux editions, that will still be a difficult future to realize since you will still have legacy games that are Windows only (and wine will never become anything but a rounding error in that regard. Not in the next few years anyway, maybe 10+ years out playing games in Windows VMs on Linux will become reasonable...)

Look at the stuff Parallels has been doing with getting direct X running Virtualized in OS X. It's definitely possible to do. Heck, if it was possible to run OS X on custom hardware and have drivers that supported SLI, it would run respectably as well.

>It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform...

No, but it has excellent binary compatibility, long term game APIs, and stable 3D and audio driver APIs. Which is what matters for desktop gaming, and what Linux does not have.

As for screen resolution and hardware capabilities, those matter on mobile (e.g iOS vs Android), and mostly for applications, not games.

Linux has good enough binary compatibility. I have seen 32-bit applications built on RHEL 2.1 run on RHEL 5. You need the correct libraries and versions, but that's not a difficult problem to solve. See AppCafe[1] by PC-BSD. You may use it if you use plugins on FreeNAS. Lets say that you need fifteen copies of SDL installed to ensure that you can support ten years of games. This is not a problem for a Unix/Linux system with existing tooling.

Stable 3D depends on the hardware and drivers, but gaming already has hardware requirements for graphics and it's getting much better. As far as OpenGL support, recent posts on HN lead me to believe that we are doing okay.

Audio compatibility? Support ALSA and OSS.

1. http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/AppCafe%C2%AE/9.2

  >  You need the correct libraries and versions, but that's not a difficult problem to solve

Or just ship statically linked binaries. That seems like it would be a good solution for games.

> Or just ship statically linked binaries. That seems like it would be a good solution for games.

Yup. That's what Steam does...

Not under linux. It does supply it's own set of .so libs though.

That or shipping the versions used is usually the way it goes on windows. Take a look at a lot of the games on steam, and many of them will carry an OpenAL dll with them.

Someone needs to dig up pre-ELF binaries for NetHack and XPilot and we can have a backwards compatiblity race, on latest versions of Ubuntu and Windows. Linux has a better chance now that Windows has dropped 16-bit support :)

Even Windows binaries WINE on 64-bit runs 16, 32, and 64-bit applications! :-)

Kind of. Turning on 64bit by default has resulted in a lot of problems for me, though. It doesn't do the search paths right, I often have 32bit things failing because they stumble on a 64bit dll while linking (or vice-versa).

I don't know if it will solve your particular problem, but I would suggest trying PlayOnLinux. It saved me from having a lot of hassle having different Wine configurations and versions side by side.

Yeah, I do use playonlinux for reasons like this, but to me it's a bit of a bandaid to the pace of patch acceptance to the wine project. Don't get me wrong, in spite of that the wine project moves at an amazing pace, but working fixes sit on their bug tracker for months and months before being integrated into the mainline.

But the mixed 32bit/64bit thing is just a fundamentally broken part of wine that got seems to have gotten turned on by default before it was ready. It makes wine look bad.

> Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware.

...What? That's a complete non sequitur. There are high-end and low-end Macs, just as with anything else, and high-end Macs play games just as well as high-end Windows boxes. And of course you can put OSX on custom hardware, it's just not a popular option.

> You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform... Have you ever developed anything for the desktop? It's not particularly difficult to get things to run on computers with different hardware...

Wow. Have you ever developed high-end games for a desktop? It's a damn nightmare to get fast 3D to run on computers with different hardware. There's a reason that so many devs only work with consoles: targeting a single, specific hardware set reduces development costs immensely. It's getting easier now that pre-fab engines are practical and popular and the developer can fob some of the work off on the engine creator, but testing a AAA game properly requires a bunch of tests to be repeated across dozens of different hardware setups, and you still get post-launch bug reports that the game crashes when run on X video card with Y motherboard.

And all that is just for Windows. Adding Ubuntu support alone doubles the testing and debugging load. I actually do think that Linux can be a successful gaming platform with Valve's backing, but your arguments are not good.

> high-end Macs play games just as well as high-end Windows boxes

Are you joking? Because even $2000 iMacs come with mobile GPUs. Not to mention CPUs that cannot be overclocked etc.

That's comparable to a high-end gaming laptop, not a PC.

> Are you joking? Because even $2000 iMacs come with mobile GPUs. Not to mention CPUs that cannot be overclocked etc. That's comparable to a high-end gaming laptop, not a PC.

And what's wrong with high-end gaming laptops? My $1000 MacBook Pro has played everything I've thrown at it acceptably well, and it's not even particularly high-end. It's no longer the mid-90s, when you needed a new $2000 rig every year to keep up with current releases. For the typical gamer, overclocking your CPU hasn't been worth the effort in years.

There's nothing wrong with gaming laptops, it's just that both their performance and the experience they provide pales in comparison to a PC. (A PC that costs less, mind you.)

I mean, you cannot realistically say that you can have an immersive experience on a 15 inch, 1600x900 monitor when it comes to graphically intensive games.

Also, with CPU bound games like Arma overclocking can result in a difference of 15-20 fps.

This is a rather shortsighted view. Integrated graphics are rapidly catching up to desktop cards. The built-in Iris is enough to play games like TF2 with high settings, while the 15" Macbook Pro's 750M is half as powerful as my desktop AMD 6850! Furthermore, desktop PCs are getting ousted by laptops, to the point where I barely know anyone with a desktop anymore. In my view, PC gaming will have to adapt to this new environment, or it will become an increasingly niche market. (The enthusiasts who suggest spending $500 every year just to catch up with all the poorly optimized ports aren't helping.)

And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people. According to the Valve hardware survey, only 32.61% are running at 1080p; most of the rest have to do with less. Giant monitors aren't as ubiquitous as you might think.

> The enthusiasts who suggest spending $500 every year just to catch up with all the poorly optimized ports aren't helping.

You are clearly out of the loop when it comes to PC gaming, I suggest we stop this discussion before you start saying even more embarrassing things.

Up to you.

Integrated graphics catching up with desktop cards? You mean the cards that need 300W by themselves in your PC tower? You must be joking. Its not because integated graphic cards are not as piss poor as they were that the gap is narrowing. The high end moves fast too.

>This is a rather shortsighted view. Integrated graphics are rapidly catching up to desktop cards.

I don't see how it's short-sighted, mainly factual. Integrated graphics are cards are rapidly catching up to only the lowest end discrete cards available.

How many people sticking solely to laptops were ever doing much gaming on their desktop back when they had one? I don't think it's useful to conflate all the people replacing their crappy old Dell desktops with a new laptop to people replacing gaming desktops with gaming laptops.

>And yes, I very much can have an immersive experience on my 15" display, as can many other people.

I'm sure plenty of people would have an immersive movie watching experience crowded around a 15" laptop as well, but I'll stick to my large screen TV in the living room personally.

The built-in Iris is enough to play games like TF2 with high settings,

TF2 is 5 years old, and the engine is even older..

I can't seem to load up the steam hw surveys for the various different video cards, but it would be interesting to see how many users are running at or below the latest MBP specs.

I can't get it either, but look here:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1748747

The top video card is Intel HD Graphics 3000 and Intel GPUs make up 12% of the list.

well one problem is that you have always had to buy the most expensive macbook / mac to get any sort of dedicated GPU. they've never had a GPU in anything but the absolute most expensive mac. besides that, apple has always had poor opengl software and driver support. they just released opengl 4 support with mavericks and touted it as a big deal, but it's opengl 4.1, which was released in 2010.

Have you been paying attention to Intel's graphics improvements? At the rate they're going, we'll have the power of (current gen) desktop graphics in just a few iterations. I think you could even make the claim that the current Iris graphics are as powerful as current-gen consoles, though you wouldn't know it from all the crappy ports and the lack of a low-level graphics API.

(Also, people still overclock their CPUs?)

> we'll have the power of (current gen) desktop graphics in just a few iterations

And where will desktop graphics be after those few iterations? Several iterations more advanced. Integrated graphics will never be competitive with discreet graphics, therefore systems that do not support discreet graphics will never be competitive with those that can (in gaming, of course).

Discrete graphics are expensive, noisy, hot, and suck up tons of power. Upgrading your graphics card used to make a huge impact, but each successive generation now yields less and less improvement. (Carmack himself said in the most recent keynote that there probably won't be any "wow!" moments from graphics upgrades ever again.) Furthermore, some of the best looking games of the past few years (Super Mario Galaxy) were designed to run on one of the weakest systems around. As fun as it is to flip every switch in Crysis or Metro, I don't think most gamers care that much about diffuse lighting and ambient occlusion. We're at the point where things really do look "good enough" for all but the nitpicky, and I say this as a PC gamer for 20 years.

You're definitely the only person I've ever heard describe Super Mario Galaxy as one of the best looking games of the past few years. I looked at some screenshots and I have no idea what you're talking about.

While there may not necessarily be more features like ambient occlusion on the horizon, increased raw processing power and memory are going to lead to higher fidelity scenes at higher resolution. You're going to have orders of magnitude more detailed props on screen, and there are going to be orders of magnitude more of them. You're going to have more animation and more flexibility. You're going to have tons more lighting and particle effects acting on those multitudes of more detailed props, and you're going to be doing all of this at 4K.

I don't know when the last time you upgraded your graphics was, but I just went from a pair of GTS250s to a GTX770, and I've had my fair share of holy shit moments looking at games like Crysis and Metro.

Saying that graphics isn't going anywhere is the same as saying 640k ought to be good enough for anybody. It's incredibly nearsighted to assume that progress is just going to stop because things are "good enough," especially in the technology field.

Perhaps they will outperform (current!) mid range GPUs at some point, but from what I understand only the most expensive processors come with beefy integrated graphics.

That means, that even if they manage to beef up their CPUs, buying a cheap i5 with a mid range GPU will cost less. Plus, you can upgrade the GPU separately etc.

Frankly, I don't see the point of APUs but it seems AMD is going in this direction as well. Rumors say they're actually discontinuing their enthusiast CPUs[1].

[1] http://www.techpowerup.com/195355/vishera-end-of-the-line-fo...

Dunno, but my MBA ran cs:go way better than my linux box with a dedicated (low end but new) ati card can run cs:source. I'm sure it's a driver issue, but point is that macs current can outperform many linux setups.

Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed.

I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (although it does work on 13.04).

Your problem is using Linux Mint...

Both Steam and Wine work perfectly on Ubuntu 13.10 (I'm running both on my 13.10 laptop).

> Your problem is using Linux Mint...

I think you just provided a shining example of the potential problems linux gaming faces...

I've used Steam successfully with Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, Arch, Manjaro...

Mint is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.

Ubuntu is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.

Fedora is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.

Arch is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not stable.

We could play this game all day to make stinkytaco's point.

You're right, any bleeding edge Linux can be unstable.

But I'd put an app into production on any of the ones listed over Mint.

Either way, the fact that Steam doesn't work on Mint is Mint's problem, not Steam's...

Because none of you seem to be reading anything outside your own little threadwars:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6847940

"Steam is included in the Linux Mint 16 repositories and you shouldn't have issues installing it from the package manager. Or you can always "apt-get install steam". Like most Linux applications, you are better off installing the application from the package manager instead of from the upstream website."

now stop spreading FUD.

>> Ubuntu is just a buggy distro

MMM, no. All of the others you listed, yes. Else, I wouldn't be running Linux. I'd be running Windows.

Ubuntu rocks.

Valve is making their own distribution.

Not entirely, its less an issue of Linux and more an issue of software packaging - which, incidentally is being solved right now.

Ubuntu is building a new packaging format called "Click Packages", which possibly would solve a lot of these installation issues.

It would be unsurprising, if Steam/SteamOS uses this at its core, precisely to solve the availability issue.

However, I believe that SteamOS will become the default distro for all gamers.

Works fine on Arch.

Steam is included in the Linux Mint 16 repositories and you shouldn't have issues installing it from the package manager. Or you can always "apt-get install steam". Like most Linux applications, you are better off installing the application from the package manager instead of from the upstream website.

Wouldn't install how/why? Both Steam and Wine are in the Mint repos, there is no reason they shouldn't install.

I updated to Linux Mint 16 a few days ago, and my Steam and Wine installations are working just fine.

Edit: But, yes LM 16 is little buggy, but its perfectly usable and I am sure the bugs will be ironed out in subsequent updates.

I'm curious what the user base of gaming focused users in for linux world wide. Linux tends to attract developers rather than users who spend a great deal of money on their gaming hobby. Perhaps I am wrong.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love this to work, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say it will work better than a platform that is already successful at getting people to spend money on games (see Mac App Store, iOS).

>You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform...

This coming from the guy who just told someone their problem is that they are running Linux Mint...

> I'm curious what the user base of gaming focused users in for linux world wide. Linux tends to attract developers rather than users who spend a great deal of money on their gaming hobby. Perhaps I am wrong.

I'd wager a good portion of Linux devs are gamers, and likely just dual-boot, have a console, an iPad, etc... Seeing as how the barrier to using Linux is lower than either Windows or OSX, it doesn't really matter how many users currently use it, as much as how many will in the future...

> Don't get me wrong, I'd love this to work, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say it will work better than a platform that is already successful at getting people to spend money on games (see Mac App Store, iOS).

As we like to say in trading, past performance doesn't guarantee future results... In any case, if you look at something like Humble Bundle, Linux total revenue almost always beats OSX revenue in Humble Bundle sales...

> This coming from the guy who just told someone their problem is that they are running Linux Mint...

Isn't it though? If a program works on every single other distro...

Barrier to using Linux is not lower than Windows. Windows comes installed on almost every PC sold. Linux does not. Therefore more work is required to use Linux.

I love Linux, but "if a program works on every single other distro.." is disingenuous. I have not once had 100% success with Linux on initial install. There has always been something that needed to be tweaked (usually sound or graphics). No, Windows isn't 100% either, but it's more like 98% while Linux is like 92%. For the majority of people, that 6% difference matters.

Gaming on Linux still needs to catch up. NVidia Optimus support is still being worked on. Most platforms don't ship with the proprietary drivers, which are the ones that are actually good for gaming. And from what I hear, the OSS AMD drivers are good at power management while they suck at gaming and flipped for the proprietary ones. AMD also has a problem where they drop support for cards relatively quickly.

I love Linux so much (Crunchbang, baby) but it's so fragmented that unless things change, gaming on Windows is going to stay easier. I don't see any reason why my family would give up Windows with its large library of games and all that support for Linux with its tiny library and not up to par drivers. That might not work on that distro without some workaround.

> Windows comes installed on almost every PC sold. Linux does not. Therefore more work is required to use Linux.

Keep in mind that most people who play games (and I'm not talking about Angry Birds or Facebook games but people who use Steam) tend to build their own PCs.

And installing Linux is just as easy as installing Windows, if not easier (you won't have to go on a driver hunt most of the time for instance).

> Keep in mind that most people who play games (and I'm not talking about Angry Birds or Facebook games but people who use Steam) tend to build their own PCs.

Do you have a source for this?

Visit gaming forums, Steam discussion boards, Reddit etc.

To be fair you're not describing "people who play games", you're describing gaming enthusiasts.

I know, but IMO the bar is really low. If you have 10+ games in Steam you're pretty much an enthusiasts. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm mad about games ever since I played the first Doom on my father's 486.

In my view you're either a layperson who plays Candy Crush or iOS games or you know about Steam and GOG and the sky is the limit.

I think the sticking point is assuming that "likes playing games" and "cares about super-amazing graphics" go hand-in-hand. You don't need a gaming rig for Dwarf Fortress. :)

In lieu of a source, how's about you try to disprove it using data that shows that people prefer to buy Alienware (or other branded) gaming rigs over building their own PC's?

Why are you even presuming a "gaming rig?" I have a large Steam library... on Windows, in Boot Camp, on my MacBook Pro. Personally, I just don't see the appeal of max-settings graphics, so I'm not really compelled to "upgrade" to anything more powerful, no matter how many games I play. (Then again, I also don't see the big deal about movies over-and-above theatre/opera.)

My laptop came with linux preinstalled. Same with my netbook. Neither required much work to use linux.

A standard Kubuntu (or Chakra) install on any Intel/AMD PC made before June will likely work without hiccups or missing hardware. Most distributions include an app to specifically detect/install proprietary drivers (Ubuntu uses Jockey). A browsing of Phoronix.com will provide you with benchmarks showing the NVIDIA/AMD/Intel drivers running neck-and-neck with Windows. But hey, let's not let the truth get in the way of your FUD.

Ubuntu Linux came on my last PC, my wife's current laptop, and will probably come on my next PC if PC makers get their heads out of ... the sand.

>> Therefore more work is required to use Linux.

Not according to most Windows 8 users, check YouTube.

Another thing that is not mentioned, is that Steam on OS X is kinda bad. Tends to freeze often etc.

In the case of Linux, Valve has the incentive to ship a better version because they'd be running that version on their Steamboxes as well.

>This coming from the guy who just told someone their problem is that they are running Linux Mint...

Nice Ad Hominem [1] you threw out there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

I don't see ad hominem. He explicitly stated that fragmentation would not be an issue for gaming on Linux, and then in response to someone saying that Steam didn't work, he said "Well, that's because you're running Linux Mint". That sounds to me like a fragmentation problem. I'm not attacking him personally, I'm pointing out that he literally just used fragmentation as an excuse for why something didn't work while at the same time claiming it's not an issue.

Yes, and if you'd read anywhere else in the thread, You'd find that the Linux Mint issue does not happen because there's a package in the LM16 repositories for steam. Which means that the entire issue of LM not running steam is moot. Which means there is no fragmentation issue in Linux as related to steam.

Which means we're left with your Ad Hominem, which you don't see.

> Yes, and if you'd read anywhere else in the thread, You'd find that the Linux Mint issue does not happen because there's a package in the LM16 repositories for steam. Which means that the entire issue of LM not running steam is moot. Which means there is no fragmentation issue in Linux as related to steam.

I don't follow this argument.

1. Linux Mint is Linux. People who run it say "I'm running linux." 2. Linux Mint does not run steam. People who run it say "Steam doesn't work on Linux Mint". 3. This means that the linux market is fragmented.

You can't just exclude Mint from linux for some arbitrary reasons. It's linux and it doesn't run steam.

And Mint is hardly alone. It's very much like android, there's a huge number of possible issues developers need to contend with. This doesn't mean it's a failure, it means that the cost of doing business will be higher than with the relatively controlled Windows ecosystem or the even more controlled console market.

> 1. Linux Mint is Linux. People who run it say "I'm running linux." 2. Linux Mint does not run steam. People who run it say "Steam doesn't work on Linux Mint". 3. This means that the linux market is fragmented.

Hmm. perhaps you'd like some reality:

1) Person who says they run it says "steam doesn't work on linux mint" 2) others come out and confirm that it does actually work on Mint. 3) you argue with person that makes original claim, and ignore that it actually does, in fact work. 4) When pointed out that LM does work with Steam, you reply that you don't follow the argument. 5) you then decide to expand on this false premise that something isn't working with a specific flavor of linux by comparing it to Android fragmentation, even though there isn't a case of fragmentation actually happening.

You still are unapologetic for your ad hominem, and decided to double-down on the fragmentation issue to move the goalposts.

To reiterate: Steam works on all reasonably-current flavors of Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, Arch, Slackware, and even Gentoo.

Fragmentation won't be an issue because, in all honesty, if people want Steam to work, they'll use either Steam OS or the recommended Linux distro - Ubuntu.

>> Linux tends to attract developers rather than users who spend a great deal of money on their gaming hobby.

Gamers want fun. Gamers don't really care what's underneath. There was a time, back before the illegal deals of Gates when any gamer you talked to would literally laugh out loud at you at the thought of paying serious money for any game not on DOS - meaning Windows.

> Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware.

I'm sure most of those 20 million Ubuntu boxes have top-of-the-line CPUs and blazing fast GPUs, right? Fact of the matter is, the vast majority those machines won't be able to run anything other than 2D games.

Also, before we start condemning OSX as a platform with no games, need I mention Borderlands 2? Metro: Last Light? All of Valve's titles? Civilization? Bioshock Infinite? Batman: Arkham City? XCOM: Enemy Unknown? I mean, come on. At least do some research.

> You sound like an iOS developer.

Don't do that.

Pretty sure a large portion of those 20 million Ubuntu installations don't even have monitors. (Ubuntu is a pretty good server distro.)

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