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News Steam Play brings Windows games to Linux

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 22 Aug 2018.

  1. bit-tech

    bit-tech Supreme Overlord Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    Read more
     
  2. Omnislip

    Omnislip Minimodder

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    This is the most exciting gaming news I've seen in a long time! Fingers crossed it becomes generalisable to all games, and then I can drop the turd that is Windows 10.

    Except, probably, for all of these VR/racing wheel/audio peripherals :(
     
    adidan likes this.
  3. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I've toggled the switch on mine, and I can confirm I can now install 412 of my 412 Steam games on Linux. Only tried a couple not on the whitelist, mind you, but they all worked absolutely perfectly.
    That's another interesting thing: It includes VR support via OpenVR, including the ability to run Doom VFR. Could finally mean an end to Windows-exclusivity for virtual reality stuff!
     
  4. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

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    Proper good news!
     
  5. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    I think I just gone done a little wee.

    This may very well just be the best gaming news i've heard for a while. If i can switch to linux, boot up and play i may very well never have to touch W10 at home.
     
  6. Omnislip

    Omnislip Minimodder

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    Is there any performance hit to note these days from WINE?

    I'm still going to be tied to Oculus for some games I own via that, sadly. Perhaps with these drops in SSD pricing, I might be able to dedicate a little one just to Windows.
     
  7. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    In some cases, yes. In other cases, the game actually performs significantly faster than on Windows. Where a game has native Vulkan support, and speaking only for Valve's port of Wine here, it'll either be equal performance or faster.
     
  8. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    You think Steam are doing this to encourage a move from Windows to Linux and eventually make a big push for a gaming centric, but more feature rich than present, SteamOS to compete with MS?

    Or is that just a bunch of words i've thrown together?

    In any case, I may just get the laptop running a linux distro and give it a whirl.
     
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  9. goldstar0011

    goldstar0011 Multimodder

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    Yeah, I've a basic PC I'll SteamOS on to test with some indie games, I have a number of retro sega games that would be good to play on the couch
     
  10. loftie

    loftie Multimodder

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    I've always always always managed to break Linux whenever I've installed it, I suppose that's what happens when you give a monkey a hammer! However I do keep coming back to it to give it a try every now and again, even if I only really try Mint and Ubuntu.

    I was watching L1 Techs recent youtube video about gaming on Linux and it did look promising. Now there's this too, more options are never a bad thing! I assume since this is using Vulkan it steps around the AMD is turd on OpenGL issue?
     
  11. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    If MS ends up destroying gaming on Windows due to their incompetence (as Tim Sweeney famously predicted) Steam throwing its vast resources at Windows alternatives is the only silver lining...

    And even if not, always a good idea to have a plan B.
     
  12. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I'm sure Valve'd like to, given how much Gaben hates Windows, but after the complete flop that was SteamOS and Steam Machine 1.0 it'll be an uphill battle. (It'd also need them to get Microsoft to put Office on Steam, which feels... unlikely.)
    Is it? I've only got a lowly AMD A10-5800K with iGPU, and I've never had a problem running OpenGL stuff in Linux.
     
  13. loftie

    loftie Multimodder

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    I thought it was compared to Nvidia, though googling I'm not seeing much apart from other people mentioning the same thing when talking about CEMU. I should also not that they mention performance is higher on AMD on Linux, someone mentioning to the tune of 30-35%.

    I can't really seem to find recent benchmarks of No Man's Sky which IIRC is OpenGL, the old benchmarks I found had AMD falling behind their counterparts, these would have been tested on Windows. Hmmm, not sure now. Can't think of any other recent OpenGL games. *scratches head*

    Edit: There's this but it's just a benchmark.
     
  14. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    It is pretty much dead.
    Id, Blizzard and Valve where the biggest supporters of OpenGL...

    Id is focusing more on Vulkan these days, Blizzard moved to DirectX with Overwatch, Valve has stopped promoting OpenGL and promotes Vulkan now but doesn't really make games any more.
     
    Last edited: 22 Aug 2018
  15. loftie

    loftie Multimodder

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    Wait, Overwatch has Vulkan?!
     
  16. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    My bad, unofficial only (dxvk).
     
  17. loftie

    loftie Multimodder

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    Ah ok. Damn got excited there for a moment!
     
  18. jb0

    jb0 Minimodder

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    Next Valve ports Steam to FreeBSD so you can use it on a genuinely good OS!
    ...
    No? Okay, I'll see myself out.
     
  19. yuusou

    yuusou Multimodder

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    I just hope this drives Nvidia to make decent Linux drivers, because their binary blobs are just that, blob of crap.
     
  20. dyzophoria

    dyzophoria Minimodder

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    I think since Valve isn't developing much games nowadays, one of the steps of getting revenue is getting across all platforms and one of the platforms they can revisit is "again" a linux environment (steamOS wasn't that much of a success). I don't think they had much success on bringing steam to Apple.

    I doubt they are on a "kill Windows spree" they just want all bases covered.
     
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