Hello and welcome to episode 70 of Linux downtime. I'm Joe. I'm Gary. I'm Marmalith.
And I'm Liam. Nice to talk to you all. Welcome back, Amalith. And welcome for the first time,
Liam. Hello. Thank you for having me. So people may know you from gaming on Linux.
Yeah. I've been doing it for coming up to 14 years. How long have you been doing it
full time? Full time, a couple years less, but still probably around eight or nine years,
I think now. Wow. Well, clearly the last few years have been pretty momentous in terms
of gaming on Linux, but we will get to that a bit later. I wanted to start with just your
kind of general thoughts on the Linux and Fos Space. So what are you most excited about
in the Linux and Fos Space at the moment? Well, there's a couple of things really.
The big one is obviously Wayland. You can't go anywhere in the Linux and open source space
without somebody bringing it up. And you know, just how long it has been. And as an end video
user, I don't really reap many, if any of the benefits right now, because they've just
dragged their feet so long. I check on it now and then with like every new K.D. plasma
release and like later in video drivers. And it still just doesn't work very well. It's
really annoying. And HDR is another big one because I only just recently bought a big
fancy 1440p monitor that supports HDR, which again, right now, I can't really use. So that
is another big one because I really want to see more of what it's like.
And you think Wayland is going to be the key to unlocking all that, then?
Partly, yeah. I mean, when you think about it, Xorg X11, it's so old, it's unreal. And
it is the source of so many problems.
I mean, all doesn't mean it's not functional, though. I still support a lot of this stuff.
From what I've heard, it's like hacks on hacks on hacks. Have you written software before?
Yes. But another one that was really interesting that came up recently is that there's going
to be a new open source and video Vulcan driver, NVK, which is completely community built, but
recently, I think it was around January, it started to run the first games, like really,
really slowly. But that's kind of an exciting thing there because in the video, an open
source generally, you know, don't go too well together.
Another one, though, is SteamOS 3. So what is running on the Steam Deck? At some point,
Valve said they are going to do a generalized desktop release that anyone can download and
put on their PC or on a different handheld because there's various different handhelds
coming out now. And it's going to be really interesting to see because, especially with
the channels that I run for gaming, there are a lot of comments and a lot of people
waiting just seemingly sitting there waiting to install it. So that is going to be really
interesting.
So what are you worried about in the Linux and open source space? Like, what are you anxious
about and what can we do about it?
The biggest one is kind of the same problem as always, which is adoption on just a general
scale of Linux on the desktop. Like, where is it going? Is it going anywhere? And I mean,
still to this day, it doesn't really seem like it's actually going anywhere.
Yeah, I hear this all the time. And I always wonder, does it need to go anywhere? We get
these people that just, the claim that they only use Windows for games, right? But if we're
getting SteamOS as a desktop OS, isn't that just kind of the same thing anyways? If it
brings them over to not using Windows anymore and they're using a Linux desktop, sure it's
a Steam desktop, but that was Steam's whole big deal way back in the day with the Steam
PCs.
Yeah.
I think that's a win for us, maybe?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's one of the reasons that I'm, well, excited, obviously,
about SteamOS 3 eventually at some point, a valve time getting a release. It does go
into gaming as well, but it's also just a general sort of support and application thing.
And down to hardware as well, like, you still have hardware, you know, releasing all the
time that has absolute zero Linux support. So it is still quite a big issue.
That said, it's definitely gotten a lot better over the years than when I first started with
it, but yeah, it's still a problem to this day. I have a composite video capture card
that doesn't work because no one's written drivers for it. And I can't figure out how
to do it. So it's still a problem.
Yeah, that was a problem that I had as well, which is I ended up just going for a USB
capture card that had no drivers and it's beautiful.
When it comes to Linux on the desktop, we've talked about this on various shows over the
years. And I've come to the conclusion that we've kind of already won, if there is even
a battle to before and we're in a good place, we've got a lot of users. It might be miniscule
compared with Windows users. I mean, I get it from your point of view that gaming is
this kind of mainstream thing. And if we can get Linux to a mainstream position where it's
rivaling Windows, then that's great, especially for you and what you do professionally. But
we've got a bunch of hobbyists, a bunch of professionals, and just a bunch of people
using Linux on the desktop. And that's good enough for me, I think that there are enough
people. I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, we talked to Ammonith about young people.
And Ammonith, you talked about how there are young people of your age in the early 20s
who are really into Linux on the desktop.
I am of two minds about the issue though. On one hand, I do think we're fine where we
are now. I don't really see people leaving Linux in droves. I don't really see them
coming to Linux in droves aside from the Steam Deck. That was a huge thing for Linux
in general. But like we said, the last show that technically minded people will find
their way to Linux, not just the technically minded people, the people who need Linux will
find their way to it, whether that's through friends recommending it because it uniquely
fits their particular use case, or whether that's what they're interested in. They'll
find their way to it. But on the other hand, having that new hardware support could be
really nice. I like fun toys. I want to use the latest hardware. And if there's no one
on Linux, the hardware vendors aren't going to support it, and then it'll be up to the
community to write the drivers for it. And that doesn't always happen.
Yeah, I guess my viewpoint is a lot more unique, really, because gaming on Linux as just an
entire platform is highly dependent on the amount of users. And it's the same with hardware
support. So the concern there is really that right now, gaming as a sort of whole for Linux
is really massively dependent on Valve with Steam. And so if, say, the Steam Deck, they
decide at some point it's not as much of a success as they wanted it to be, or they
just move on to something else. Where does that really leave us? That's my big concern
on that right now. I understand what you're coming from there, but I mean, they already
tried the Steam machines. They had the Steam controller, the Steam link. Now, this is basically
like their third try. And how many more times are they going to try? But they've already
shown that they're going to try some stuff, see how it goes, and then iterate and continue
maybe it means they'll stop soon. Who knows? Well, how many Steam Deck said they sold at
this point? It's over a million. There was a KDE event, and one of their developers,
this is going back around October-ish last year. They gave out a figure on the stage
of a million. I don't think they were supposed to give it out, but it is anyway. But there
was also an analyst, I don't remember the name, but they put up an article recently
where they're basically saying they're estimating around three and a half million by the end
of this year. Wow. So when you think about it for a handheld PC, so it's a very specialized
piece of hardware, that's almost exclusively sold online, apart from a few places in Asia.
It's actually kind of amazing. It doesn't quite rival the Switch, but not much does, really.
Yeah, that's a slightly different category of product, though, to be fair. Yeah, it's
never getting to rival the Switch, the Xbox, the PlayStation, anything like that, because
it is so highly specialized. It is a PC, but just with controls and a screen all built-in.
Have you used it as a PC then, or have you just used it as a handheld? I've actually
used it as a mixture of both, because I actually had two, so they sent me one as a review unit
around maybe a month before it released to the public. So I obviously did the review
and all that. But then when it released properly, I already had a reservation in there for
my own personal unit, and I've just enjoyed using it so much that I just bought one for
myself anyway. So I've always got one hooked up to a dock, so it's hooked up either to
my TV in my living room or my TV in my bedroom, but then I've got one that I'll just carry
around and do whatever with. As an actual desktop, the Steam Deck can work quite well,
I think. In fact, I was speaking to someone earlier who uses Fedora Silver Blue, so when
they do their updates, it just refreshes the entire system, and that's what SteamOS does
on the Steam Deck. So it can be really quite stable because any major updates that you're
getting through is updating the entire system. You don't have to deal with these small, little
issues. One of the drawbacks, though, is that to actually get additional software on it,
you're limited to things like Flaphack with FlapHub or direct downloads. So if you do
need something that is not available in a Flaphack or a direct download, then you can
be a little bit stuck, really. On the whole, as a general purpose system, I think it works
surprisingly well. In fact, there is somebody in my Discord who got rid of their PC, and
they now use the Steam Deck for everything, which I thought was really interesting.
My girlfriend has one as well, and she's used it as a work machine in the past when she
didn't have her laptop with her. Well, it is basically as powerful as a laptop, right?
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And if you want to get in contact with us, you can email show at LinuxDownTime.com. You
said you've been covering Linux gaming for 14 years at this point. And surely it must
be in the best place it's ever been in 2023. Oh, yeah. Without doubt, I mean, I've basically
seen it all at this point. I've been there where the only real things you could do was
open source games like Frozen Bubble back in the day. Supertux car. Yeah. Then I've been
through the rise of things like the humble indie bundles, which when they first started,
they were absolutely massive. Everybody loved them. And they came along and basically said,
if you want your game in this bundle, it has to be cross platform, Linux, Macos and Windows.
And they kept doing loads of them. But obviously over time, that faded as they sort of watered
down their business model and they did bundles for basically everything now, then you had
all the rumors about steam coming along. And lots of people me included didn't believe
it. I mean, I remember emailing Gabe Newell, you know, the coal founder of Valve just like,
is this true? And he replied, yes, I was like, oh, okay. And then you had gog, GOG.com used
to be good old games, but now it's just gog. They saw what's Valve were doing with steam.
We were like, Oh, yeah, we want to get on and on that. No, you got the steam deck and
just, yeah, I mean, there's been ups and downs. Of course, like steam machines, they
were a big, hypey thing, but they just completely fell on the face for so many reasons. But
right now, with the steam deck and pushing steam deck aside for a minute, you've got
Proton as well, which they basically forked wine, the translator layer, made their own
special version of it that's focused purely on games. And right now, for the most part,
you could probably pick up a game, any game on steam, for the most part, and just hit
play and it works. And it is amazing. Well, yeah, Linux gaming is in the best place
it's ever been. But that is almost completely 100% down to Valve and what they've done with
Proton. Yeah, because this is what I was alluded to earlier is about the user share about why
or what more Linux desktop users, because without it, all our X are in a single basket
with Valve. And the majority of that as well, like 99% of it now is for Proton, because
developers aren't producing their games for Linux, because the user market share isn't
there. They don't get enough of a kickback for it to actually be worth it. So, you know,
here, a long comes Proton like, Oh, you want to play games? Let's do it.
Yeah, I think Proton is kind of both a blessing and a curse, right? Because what we're really
describing here is a chicken and egg problem. And while Proton is helping to bring people over
in the meantime and bring games to us, it's also possibly negatively affecting us because like,
we're not going to see native games and stuff like that. And maybe it's okay to have a platform
that games run on and whether that's the Windows API using Proton and everything. And maybe that's
okay. But I think that remains to be seen yet. It's one of those things where it's like, there's
plus is a minus is right now, but eventually time is going to be the thing that tells the story.
Yeah, so there was a lot of worry from me and various other people sort of in the beginning
of Proton when we were looking at and thinking, well, if developers can just make it game for
Windows and have it run through Proton, then never going to support Linux directly. And that could
have been a big problem because then you have the game engines that support building for Linux
might over time reduce their Linux support. And you know, that will have knock on effects
everywhere else. But when you just get down to it, the majority of people really don't care
how the game was made, what's behind it, what platform it was compiled for, the gamers,
they want to hit a play button and have it work. And that is the most important thing. And Proton
does that. I would imagine that most people, even if they are interested in the plumbing of Linux,
when it comes to gaming, that's kind of a separate thing for a lot of people. They have
their work time and then they have the gaming time. And they just want it to work. And if that means
Proton and whatever strings and gaffer tape is going on behind the scenes, if it works, if the
frame rates are good, that's all that matters. Yeah, that is it exactly. At the start of when
Proton was released, there was, you know, a lot of comments, a lot of pushback against the idea of
just playing games through Proton, because people just had it in their mind. And I was guilty of
this as well of it needs to be native Linux. It needs to be direct support. Native is the best,
you know, that sort of frame of mind. But over time, as Valve has constantly pushed out the updates
to Proton, constantly improved it. As I said, a large majority of games you can now just hit play.
And four people who are gamers, that is the most important thing. It should be the most
important thing. It should be the only thing that actually matters. Because you have to remember,
the vast majority, like 99% of games are proprietary, closed source anyway. So it doesn't really make
that much of a difference truly of what you're running it through, whether it was compiled for
Linux or whether you're running it through Proton or Wine or whatever. Will we ever get the anti-cheat
stuff working properly for those niche games that need it? Well, not niche games, the opposite,
the huge games that need it. That is a seemingly insurmountable mountain. It's like this peak
that we're always chasing. And it's like, you think you're getting to the top and then it just
sort of shoots out further away from you, you know, like out of some bad cartoon or something.
But they've made a fair amount of progress on that, though, to be fair. Like, you've got some of the
most popular anti-cheats do support Linux, both native and Proton. So you've got easy anti-cheat
and battle-eye. They both support it. But the problem is, again, it's that user share. It's
down to these individual developers to actually enable that support and a lot of them aren't,
because there aren't enough users. And they've, some of them have just outright said, like,
the game rust by the company Face Punch. They basically said, we don't want to enable it,
because we don't want to put the easy anti-cheat team under more pressure and end up having more
hackers come in, not as say, using Linux, and then have a detrimental effect to 99% of their
players, which is on Windows. And you've got things like that as well. But then you've got the other
side where you've got games like Apex Legends, one of the most popular first-person shooters
by EA, you know, of all people publishing it, they enabled it. And I mean, it's working great.
Well, and as Valve sells more and more of the Steam Decks and people don't seem to be installing
Windows on them, I think that is the biggest success of the Steam Deck story, is that I've not
heard of anyone installing Windows on theirs, because it just works fine with Linux. And so,
if they do sell millions more, then that will hopefully put pressure on these game studios.
So, to actually make their games work on that, and then the byproduct of that is, if it works
on the Steam Deck, there's a very good chance that it'll work on just a standard Linux PC.
Yeah. So, from everywhere, I can see Windows on Steam Deck is a minority, which is a really
fun thing for a Linux user to have to say. So, you can look at Steam, do a hardware and
software survey once a month. It is opt-in, so, you know, take it with a bag of salt on all that.
But you can see when you go through the details on it, and they can do a breakdown of just Windows,
just Mac, just Linux, or all of them combined, you can actually go in, say, on Windows. You can
go in and look specifically for the GPU that is in the Steam Deck and see it's just this absolutely
tiny percentage, or it might not even be listed because so few people are using it.
And a thumb stack for you as well, there was a Twitter account, Steam Deck Gaming, they just
did a poll today on this very thing. And they basically said, what are you running on your
Steam Deck? And the options are SteamOS only, SteamOS and Windows, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
89% have said SteamOS only. And that's of the people who are enthusiastic enough to follow a
Twitter account about it, rather than your average person who would just buy it, turn it on and
start playing. Yeah, and so, I mean, that stack alone kind of speaks volumes, I think.
Well, it's been really great talking to you, Liam. People should go to gamingonlinics.com
to read all the latest with that, and you've got YouTube channels as well, which they should
search for. Yeah, it's just gaming on Linux on YouTube. All right, well, I'll put links to both
those in the show notes then. We'll be back in a couple of weeks. But until then, I've been Joe.
I've been Gary. I have been I'm Olith. And I'm Liam. See you later.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.