Valve seems to be working on tools to get Windows games running on Linux

[Sniperfox47]

23 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I remember when finding a mainstream game available for Linux was like finding a unicorn but these days it's honestly pretty common, from both big studios and indie devs alike.  Not as common as it could be, but still, orders of magnitude better than it once was.  I could be totally off-base with this but I attribute that change to Valve and their push for SteamOS.  If that really is the cause, I'd say with that alone, they've done more than any other entity for the cause, and now with this on top, well it's just icing on the cake

Valve and AMD both made huge pushes with regards to strengthening the graphics situation on Linux, improving SDL for developers, and just generally making Linux support easier.

 

We're still a long way off from everyone (or even most people) supporting the platform though. I mean pretty much any of the AAA devs avoid it like the plague, hell as mentioned earlier above, Id Software specifically said they had a totally working Linux version of DOOM 2016 on Vulkan but it was never released because Bethesda. Even Feral has a problem with the big AAA Devs and their whole schtick is literally "We do all the work and give you most of the money."

[Tog Driver]

After reading this I'm rather confused, I guess it's because it's all I've ever really used, but I have no clue why there is so much hate for windows. . .

 

I know it's not perfect or anything but still. . .

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, TheClueLessMajority said:

After reading this I'm rather confused, I guess it's because it's all I've ever really used, but I have no clue why there is so much hate for windows. . .

 

I know it's not perfect or anything but still. . .

It's not so much hate for Windows itself as it is for Microsoft the company who makes it. They've taken some really shady directions as a company and a lot of those directions have left their grubby fingerprints all over Windows.

 

Objectively Windows 7 was an amazing OS. It did everything you expect an OS to do and some things you didn't (widgets amirite?), and largly stayed out of your way except to protect you (UAC Prompts). All of the stuff you didn't want could be disabled in Windows Features pretty easily and while it wasn't anywhere near as customizable as Linux or BSD most of the little annoyances it had could be turned off with Group Policies and Registry Keys available to all users. And finally there was the much beloved Aero which made Windows look absolutely stunning for the time.

 

Fast forward to Windows 10. You've got performance tweaks, improved driver support, and rolling feature upgrades! Great, right? Not so fast. Windows 10 killed a bunch of features that niche minorities used like the built in TV recorder and is a lot more in your face with their advertisements and service pushes. Hell they're now more in your face than Android which is an OS made by an advertising company. Many of the things you might not want like Edge, Cortana, forced Windows Updates, and a lot of the tracking and telemetry  including uploading some files you open to Microsoft cannot be disabled even though they could potentially compromise personal information. They killed Aero which set Windows visual design back a fair amount for no real discernable reason. Some of that is coming back with fluent design but only if devs go out of their way to support it, and even then only really with UWP. And speaking of UWP that's a massive nightmare for any kind of poweruser since it obfuscates your apps and makes them a lot harder to manage things like config files and modifications from a user perspective and has anticompetitive undertones to it in terms of ecosystem lock-in for developers. All in all Windows 10 is just a worse OS for power users worried about anything other than performance.

 

And that doesn't even touch on the other sketch things Microsoft have done, like their attacks on the FOSS community.

 

If Windows 10 had the flexibility of Windows 7 I'd still be using Windows. But as it is, Windows 10 leaves a sour taste in alot of powerusers' mouths. Windows-as-a-service and the huge push for that is ultimately ruining what few plusses Windows had over other alternatives.

[S w a t s o n]

Once SR-IOV becomes the norm on GPUs (hopefully) it will make more sense to just virtualize windows and do it that way. VMs already have low overhead and by the time SR-IOV is mainstream so will be 8 core CPUs (even though they kinda are now)

[Tog Driver]

8 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Spoiler

 

It's not so much hate for Windows itself as it is for Microsoft the company who makes it. They've taken some really shady directions as a company and a lot of those directions have left their grubby fingerprints all over Windows.

 

Objectively Windows 7 was an amazing OS. It did everything you expect an OS to do and some things you didn't (widgets amirite?), and largly stayed out of your way except to protect you (UAC Prompts). All of the stuff you didn't want could be disabled in Windows Features pretty easily and while it wasn't anywhere near as customizable as Linux or BSD most of the little annoyances it had could be turned off with Group Policies and Registry Keys available to all users. And finally there was the much beloved Aero which made Windows look absolutely stunning for the time.

 

Fast forward to Windows 10. You've got performance tweaks, improved driver support, and rolling feature upgrades! Great, right? Not so fast. Windows 10 killed a bunch of features that niche minorities used like the built in TV recorder and is a lot more in your face with their advertisements and service pushes. Hell they're now more in your face than Android which is an OS made by an advertising company. Many of the things you might not want like Edge, Cortana, forced Windows Updates, and a lot of the tracking and telemetry  including uploading some files you open to Microsoft cannot be disabled even though they could potentially compromise personal information. They killed Aero which set Windows visual design back a fair amount for no real discernable reason. Some of that is coming back with fluent design but only if devs go out of their way to support it, and even then only really with UWP. And speaking of UWP that's a massive nightmare for any kind of poweruser since it obfuscates your apps and makes them a lot harder to manage things like config files and modifications from a user perspective and has anticompetitive undertones to it in terms of ecosystem lock-in for developers. All in all Windows 10 is just a worse OS for power users worried about anything other than performance.

 

And that doesn't even touch on the other sketch things Microsoft have done, like their attacks on the FOSS community.

 

If Windows 10 had the flexibility of Windows 7 I'd still be using Windows. But as it is, Windows 10 leaves a sour taste in alot of powerusers' mouths. Windows-as-a-service and the huge push for that is ultimately ruining what few plusses Windows had over other alternatives.

 

 

Oh that makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining that!

[Master Delta Chief]

8 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Fast forward to Windows 10. You've got performance tweaks, improved driver support, and rolling feature upgrades! Great, right? Not so fast. Windows 10 killed a bunch of features that niche minorities used like the built in TV recorder and is a lot more in your face with their advertisements and service pushes. 

 

The worst part of it all is that they removed everyone's favourite built-in game: Chess Titans (RIP since Windows 8). Of course, you can get it back by some download or whatever but it's still a shame they removed this 'succesful' game.

[pipnina]

10 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Spoiler

It's not so much hate for Windows itself as it is for Microsoft the company who makes it. They've taken some really shady directions as a company and a lot of those directions have left their grubby fingerprints all over Windows.

 

Objectively Windows 7 was an amazing OS. It did everything you expect an OS to do and some things you didn't (widgets amirite?), and largly stayed out of your way except to protect you (UAC Prompts). All of the stuff you didn't want could be disabled in Windows Features pretty easily and while it wasn't anywhere near as customizable as Linux or BSD most of the little annoyances it had could be turned off with Group Policies and Registry Keys available to all users. And finally there was the much beloved Aero which made Windows look absolutely stunning for the time.

 

Fast forward to Windows 10. You've got performance tweaks, improved driver support, and rolling feature upgrades! Great, right? Not so fast. Windows 10 killed a bunch of features that niche minorities used like the built in TV recorder and is a lot more in your face with their advertisements and service pushes. Hell they're now more in your face than Android which is an OS made by an advertising company. Many of the things you might not want like Edge, Cortana, forced Windows Updates, and a lot of the tracking and telemetry  including uploading some files you open to Microsoft cannot be disabled even though they could potentially compromise personal information. They killed Aero which set Windows visual design back a fair amount for no real discernable reason. Some of that is coming back with fluent design but only if devs go out of their way to support it, and even then only really with UWP. And speaking of UWP that's a massive nightmare for any kind of poweruser since it obfuscates your apps and makes them a lot harder to manage things like config files and modifications from a user perspective and has anticompetitive undertones to it in terms of ecosystem lock-in for developers. All in all Windows 10 is just a worse OS for power users worried about anything other than performance.

 

And that doesn't even touch on the other sketch things Microsoft have done, like their attacks on the FOSS community.

 

If Windows 10 had the flexibility of Windows 7 I'd still be using Windows. But as it is, Windows 10 leaves a sour taste in alot of powerusers' mouths. Windows-as-a-service and the huge push for that is ultimately ruining what few plusses Windows had over other alternatives.

 

Krita recently got taken off of the Windows store (now back up at Krita's compromise) because they put a link to their own website in the store description.

https://krita.org/en/item/krita-in-the-windows-store-an-update/

 

[Syntaxvgm]

On 8/16/2018 at 1:17 AM, Spotty said:

SINE? SteamOS Is Not an Emulator.

Interestingly I've both argued that Wine is an emulator and wine is not an emulator successfully before multiple times, mainly because I'm a dick. 

Technically it's an emulator by definition, but most people believe a comparability layer is different and should not be confused with the common idea of an emulator, but in truth the word Emulator by definition covers both emulating one hardware architecture on another AND compatibility layers. 

Wine's choice of name is important because most people think hardware emulation when they hear the word, when wine is simply a compatibility layer....which is an emulator. 
That's why I really really love the name. Not only is it a recursive acronym, when people argue it's an emulator without much info on it, and it's really fun to inform them that it's literally called Wine is Not an Emulator, which means they wont actually look further than the name and concede. On the flip side, people have hard time accepting that Wine is Not an Emulator is, in fact, an emulator. 
I've had a lot of fun with Wine on the internet. 

[Syntaxvgm]

13 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

It's not so much hate for Windows itself as it is for Microsoft the company who makes it. They've taken some really shady directions as a company and a lot of those directions have left their grubby fingerprints all over Windows.

 

Objectively Windows 7 was an amazing OS. It did everything you expect an OS to do and some things you didn't (widgets amirite?), and largly stayed out of your way except to protect you (UAC Prompts). All of the stuff you didn't want could be disabled in Windows Features pretty easily and while it wasn't anywhere near as customizable as Linux or BSD most of the little annoyances it had could be turned off with Group Policies and Registry Keys available to all users. And finally there was the much beloved Aero which made Windows look absolutely stunning for the time.

 

Fast forward to Windows 10. You've got performance tweaks, improved driver support, and rolling feature upgrades! Great, right? Not so fast. Windows 10 killed a bunch of features that niche minorities used like the built in TV recorder and is a lot more in your face with their advertisements and service pushes. Hell they're now more in your face than Android which is an OS made by an advertising company. Many of the things you might not want like Edge, Cortana, forced Windows Updates, and a lot of the tracking and telemetry  including uploading some files you open to Microsoft cannot be disabled even though they could potentially compromise personal information. They killed Aero which set Windows visual design back a fair amount for no real discernable reason. Some of that is coming back with fluent design but only if devs go out of their way to support it, and even then only really with UWP. And speaking of UWP that's a massive nightmare for any kind of poweruser since it obfuscates your apps and makes them a lot harder to manage things like config files and modifications from a user perspective and has anticompetitive undertones to it in terms of ecosystem lock-in for developers. All in all Windows 10 is just a worse OS for power users worried about anything other than performance.

 

And that doesn't even touch on the other sketch things Microsoft have done, like their attacks on the FOSS community.

 

If Windows 10 had the flexibility of Windows 7 I'd still be using Windows. But as it is, Windows 10 leaves a sour taste in alot of powerusers' mouths. Windows-as-a-service and the huge push for that is ultimately ruining what few plusses Windows had over other alternatives.

Can confirm. Hate microsoft, hate the idea of a closed source os, but the dumpster fire that is windows has a really special place in my heart. 

[Jito463]

16 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Many of the things you might not want like Edge, Cortana, forced Windows Updates, and a lot of the tracking and telemetry  including uploading some files you open to Microsoft cannot be disabled even though they could potentially compromise personal information.

I've disabled (or as close as possible) most of that on my computer.  I can't remove Edge (it may be possible, I just haven't bothered), but I just don't use it and remove any references to it so it's effectively gone (same goes for IE).  As for Cortana, she's been neutered as much as possible, to the point where it literally is just a local search function.  Windows updates are set to only check and not download or install without permission, though I could completely disable them if I wanted to.  As for the telemetry, I've used tools from Spybot to disable that functionality (though neutering Cortana does much of the work on its own).  I've also removed most of the X-Box garbage that I don't need, along with a bunch of other in-built "apps" that I'll never use through PowerShell.

 

Of course, this is with Pro edition, if you're running Home edition it's far more difficult to do.

[ZacoAttaco]

So if it is Windows games, that means you buy the Windows version on Steam and then it runs on Linux or do you have to double dip for Windows and for Linux?

[pipnina]

Just now, ZacoAttaco said:

So if it is Windows games, that means you buy the Windows version on Steam and then it runs on Linux or do you have to double dip for Windows and for Linux?

On Steam if you own Factorio, you own it for all platforms. So if you boot into Windows, Linux or MacOS you can still install the game.

[DrMacintosh]

If they can do this for Linux, that means it shouldn't be too hard to do it for macOS.  

[ZacoAttaco]

11 minutes ago, pipnina said:

On Steam if you own Factorio, you own it for all platforms. So if you boot into Windows, Linux or MacOS you can still install the game.

Is that standard now? I thought at some stage you bought versions for different operating systems. Thanks for the clarification.

[ZacoAttaco]

On 8/16/2018 at 5:32 AM, 2FA said:

According to that text, "Steam Play will automatically install compatibility tools that allow you to play games from your library that were built for other operating systems."

So is this just a wrapper, similar to 'WINE'?

[pipnina]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

If they can do this for Linux, that means it shouldn't be too hard to do it for macOS.  

It might well work for MacOS as WINE is available for MacOS and Linux.

 

1 minute ago, ZacoAttaco said:

Is that standard now? I thought at some stage you bought versions for different operating systems. Thanks for the clarification.

I believe this has been the case since day 1 of Steam Linux support in 2013, though I might be wrong.

[Ithanul]

14 minutes ago, pipnina said:

I believe this has been the case since day 1 of Steam Linux support in 2013, though I might be wrong.

Best I can remember since having Steam (2009) , buying the game once allowed playing it across any platform that it had a version for.

[suicidalfranco]

9 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

If they can do this for Linux, that means it shouldn't be too hard to do it for macOS.  

When apple will pull their head out of their own ass and bring support on macOS for both openGL 4.6 and Vulkan

[Sniperfox47]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

When apple will pull their head out of their own ass and bring support on macOS for both openGL 4.6 and Vulkan

I mean technically you can run D3D8-to-9 on top of D3D9-to-11 on top of DXVK for DirectX 10/11 to Vulkan on top of MoltenVK for Vulkan to Metal and support DirectX 8-11 on top of Metal

[suicidalfranco]

7 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

I mean technically you can run D3D8-to-9 on top of D3D9-to-11 on top of DXVK for DirectX 10/11 to Vulkan on top of MoltenVK for Vulkan to Metal and support DirectX 8-11 on top of Metal

definitely fits the criteria of "it works on Linux, should be ez on Mac" 

[Falconevo]

I have been hoping that the Vulkan API was a strong lead for a switch to using any OS for gaming.

[babadoctor]

What, nobody is going to post the github link?
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton

[Peter S]

This sounds a great news, especially to those who are in to windows games. It is good news that Steam Play will automatically install compatibility tools that will allow to play games from the library that were built for other operating systems. I just hope that this will not create issues or crashes on computer performance.

[Sniperfox47]

10 hours ago, Maria Phene said:

This sounds a great news, especially to those who are in to windows games. It is good news that Steam Play will automatically install compatibility tools that will allow to play games from the library that were built for other operating systems. I just hope that this will not create issues or crashes on computer performance.

That's the whole reason games will need to be whitelisted. In an ideal world Proton should be totally compatible with pretty much every Windows game. In reality there's going to be a lot of growing pains for at least the first few years.

 

Whitelisting games like they are means they can offer only those games that work well and are totally stable to basic users, while giving enthusiasts the ability to test it with games that may or may not work.

 

The part that I find most interesting in all this is just how much Microsoft is helping this process with Windows 10:

• They're pushing the Windows Store while ending development of the tradition windows API system meaning Wine no longer has a moving target to work towards.
• They're annoying gamers and enthusiasts to the point that they'd actually consider jumping platforms.
• They've dropped support for a *TON* of old games (anything XP and earlier) that Linux users will still have access to via Proton.

[LAwLz]

On 8/18/2018 at 1:33 AM, DrMacintosh said:

If they can do this for Linux, that means it shouldn't be too hard to do it for macOS.  

Sadly, because of Apple's lack of support for OpenGL (soon? already done?) and Vulkan it will probably be significantly more complicated.

You're gonna need at least one more translation step to get it running on MacOS, and each translation can introduce performance and compatibility issues.

 

Apple really should start supporting Vulcan like everyone else. It would benefit everyone, including Apple (although I think their main focus is vendor-lock in, even if it's at the cost of compatibility with other programs).

 

 

19 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

They're pushing the Windows Store while ending development of the tradition windows API system

They are certainly pushing the Store, and they are doing it very hard, but I think the whole "they are no longer developing traditional Windows APIs" idea is a load of bollocks mainly pushed by UWP supporters.

 

Microsoft are still developing new win32 APIs and frameworks that can hook into win32 applications.

 

I totally agree with your overall point that Microsoft are ruining Windows and pushing people away from their platform. However, it seems like they are doing better than ever so I don't think they mind that they are displeasing a portion of their user base.