Correct, but the majority of those numbers are command line servers, dvd players, etc etc. It’s kind of like when java brags about being installed on millions and millions of devices around the world when 3/4 of those number are things like microwaves and car stereos. Break that “80%” down into the REAL numbers of actual desktop/laptop users, now break what’s left of that up into how many game… It’s <1% of all gaming. As for the PS4 running Linux, no, it runs on a heavily modified BSD. If you took MSDOS and made your own Windows OS based on it; you wouldn’t call it Windows… Sure, they share some code, but they are apples and oranges.
Linux gaming will never really take off because first party companies won’t back it. It’s not that Microsoft has a monopoly, it’s that developers choose not to develop for Linux. They have had the option to do so for decades and have chosen not to. Also, companies like Nvidia hate open source stuff, so graphics drivers are usually shoddy at best. Vulcan is a step the the right direction, considering how opengl stagnated for ages, but it won’t be enough to bring people over.
Not many people want to give up using their normal programs, that function great in windows/mac, and be forced into using poor knockoff software clones. Prime example of a program that I currently have open: Zbrush… There is not a in hell that I’d attempt to replace it with anything else. Blender is “alright,” but is still waaaaay to clunky/buggy and has an atrocious UI. This is coming from someone who has used Blender on and off since around 02’ or 03’. Another example: Gimp… Granted, it’s come a long way over the years, but it sure as hell isn’t Photoshop…
If Valve, a company with 10s of millions of REAL steam accounts, failed at promoting Linux with their console thing, it’s probably going to continue to be a flop… Their hardware/software statistics page backs this all up: Linux - 0.81% of all installs.
In my country, there are about 5% of Linux users. We are trying to show our people that Linux is a better choice IF they don’t use a special software. I think the future of not only Linux but all Open Source is in Asia. They don’t want to be dependent on closed software. Now, Linux is ready as a desktop. The new improvements in DEs are really awesome. Now, only support of other companies is needed.
I didnt know valve promoted linux. Most people I know that game don’t use Linux for that purpose. Nor do they use mac. People game on windows pc’s, or consoles. External peripherals have drivers readily available, and multiplayer games go to the populus. If a popular multiplayer like destiny 2 was released installed, and ran linux right now they’d be waiting for a match until christmas… I never thought of linux for gaming. Never even played a game on the OS. It is not that it isn’t possible. I just never used this OS for that. I think of Linux as more of a workstation than a fun box.Which is exactly what Linux is for, and it is without a doubt the most efficient case for workstations. So for something Like UE4 Linux is perfect. Anything that’s ram heavy is generally going to run better. Kite demo runs great on this machines Linux, and on windows it hitches, and drops below 15 fps before crashing. Thats with a 1070 card. Nvidia releases linux before mac most of the time. I think they care more about the hardware.
Just pull the hard drive out of the windows computer, and clone it to a usb keychain in front of them. In all seriousness. Windows is a lot easier to use, but Linux is way more productive. It’s so hard to go from Linux to windows though. It’s far easier to learn Linux first. Mac falls right into line. Windows is just out there. If they can use Linux than they can use anything. You don’t even need terminal in a mac anymore. Though it’s there. Chrome app and unity launcher allows a lot of android apps to install to desktop in debian.
You don’t need super low level control access for 99% of “daily” tasks. Even in game development environments, you don’t need any of that either… If you want that, get the enterprise edition.
So what? Telemetry harvesting has been going on since the dialup days. You think running ublock/adblock prevents you from being harvested? Nope… It helps some, but doesn’t eliminate it. So what difference does it make if Windows is doing it too? You almost can’t even run a phone now without consenting to a EULA/TOS; in which there are clauses pertaining to them having the right to harvest telemetry. Switch to a custom android build like Cyanogenmod? Ooops, now your carrier won’t let you connect because they don’t allow custom bootloaders… I’m pretty sure that if you dig deep enough, in Linux distro coding(like Ubuntu, Mint or Debian), there is plenty of data harvesting too.
You speak of cost, well I’d gladly pay for a copy of windows before dealing with the headache of having an OS that runs around 1% of the games/apps that I use. Most of the Linux software seems like it’s written by interns and is usually pretty inefficient.
No amount of hipsterism and non-conformism is going to make PC Linux gaming take off. This is a topic that has beaten to death, over several decades now, and nothing has changed; nor will it in the foreseeable future. Even Mac gaming is barely a thing; siting around 3% overall usage on Steam. Plus, developing for consoles is the way to go now. Why focus resources on making a game for PC, with almost limitless hardware configurations to optimize for, when the console version of it, that only has a few FIXED hardware configurations, will easily sell 5x as many copies? Now go one step further with that: knowing that it’s not as huge of a market, why waste time developing/porting for an OS that makes up less than 1% of that market? Let’s say a game(also has a Linux version) sells 70% : 30% console : pc, of that 30%, you’d take 0.8% of that and get 0.24% of overall sales. Now let’s say that company spent 3 years developing the game and grossed $10 million USD, that means that the Linux market would only account for $24k USD. That 24k/3years=8k per year. That wouldn’t even cover the salary of someone working for minimum wage… Let alone, pay for a minimum of ONE programmer to spend massive amounts of time optimizing it for Linux. I’m pretty sure you get my point…
PC gaming isn’t dead, per se, but it’s definitely had a large audience snatched away and the majority of the persistent online PC gaming player base has gravitated toward a handful of specific titles.
Blender works better on Linux? That’s nice. But lot of the professional art tools don’t work on Linux at all. And gamedev artists rarely prefer to use Blender or Gimp
Unreal support for Linux doesn’t matter too much because entire industry is avoiding this platform. It’s 2017 and even video drivers don’t work properly.
You distort reality so it could match your point of view
TV sales are also falling for the first time in history. It because people don’t feel a need to replace current PC or TV.
It doesn’t help desktop Linux in any way. To be honest I don’ know what could help this system to be more popular for personal use. Maybe world doesn’t need it? We already have few great systems satisfying various needs.
BTW, Microsoft makes most of it money on software. Declining hardware sales? Not a big problem, as long as folks keep using MS services.
Brand new GTX 1070 card running Linux right now. no problems. Linux is the best “workstation”, but Linux needs PC’s. So does Apple, and chrome. Don’t get me wrong PC’s, and windows have their place in the world. I am not all about bringing down msft at all. Msft is very necessary in the world. Without them the tech industry as a whole would’ve been set back a decade if not more. It’s kind of like an itunes scenario. Apple didnt like creating itunes for windows, but knows ipod, and iphone would’ve never been so popular without windows. A computer can be a tool, or a toy. I have never thought of Linux as a toy. I’ve never played a single game on my linux desktop. Premium developers are starting to develop to linux. They are testing the waters. Autodesk has Maya, and 3ds releases in linux. My Substance painter works great. Blender actually is a professional art tool. 3dcoats is similar to zbrush, and can be run on linux. Anything that can be created by any major graphics company can be made with blender. Anything that’s cpu, and ram intensive runs more efficiently on the Linux Kernel. NOT Ubuntu. but people keep using ubuntu as a comparison to windows because of the amount of drivers, and software available. A lot of chrome apps can be natively run on ubuntu through unity. Linux, and red hat crushes Ubuntu in performance. The Joy of Windows is being able to install anything at any cost, and frankly that’s starting to get restricted. The new subscription based software model is pushing open source to get much better, or at least the “buy the entire program” to be more popular. It’s sad that most companies, and individuals don’t actually trust Linux as a supported Operating system. If you were solidworks than you would be nervous about some random folks having coffee just making drivers for your software to run on, and patching a bug when they get to it. Where as windows, and Apple has teams of developers that can get their patches pushed within hours. Anything. Anything that is ram, or processor heavy runs better, and more efficiently on a pure Linux Kernel. So for game development you have no nuances that you have with windows. Nothing scanning in the background, or updating itself randomly. while your trying to render a scene. You can have your entire computer devoted to one program running, and minimal tasks. Which means for Linux i have 11 free gb of ram ,and 4 free gb vram on an operating system that’s 12gb where as windows??? 40gb hundreds of processes intermittently poppin, and prairie ******* around on my task manager while im trying to render or compile. Not to mention what happens if update manager, or win defender starts while im cooking?
Well, I have been using Blender and GIMP from the beginning. Plus MakeHuman sometimes and now I’m looking at Manuel Bastioni Lab plug that is awesome product. I don’t need anything more now, only good engines running on Linux. If somebody is a bad developer, “professional” tools won’t help.
That’s so wrong it’s pretty infuriating. Linux gaming suffers from a lack of support from the industry, so of course no one is playing GTA V on Linux, since it’s not released there in the first place ; but the hardware support is mostly as good as on Windows. I am shipping my game on Linux this summer and we’re going for 100% platform parity in terms of graphics, so nothing like a cellphone game. There is just no reason not to.
What is needed is more support from Epic so that features are not broken for years (see : tessellation broken on packaged games on Linux for all of 2016), and the ****ing launcher so that we can give all our money to Epic in the marketplace. That’s just not a resource-intensive request, and coming from the company of Sweeney who keeps denouncing Microsoft and UWP, you’d think Linux could be some kind of medium priority instead of zero. Decent UE4 support for Blender is the reason we produced every asset with it instead of raking up $4000 a year.
On the OpenSUSE (my favorite and the best distro) reddit, I told all that up to 2020 Linux will be ready as a desktop. It was two years ago. Now, I see I was right. There’s a big difference between the situation in the late nineties and that of nowadays. No Linux DE was usable in the past (all was focused on the console), now we have super awesome DEs. And using such distros like OpenSUSE, you don’t need to touch the console. Yast plus KDE or GNOME is all what a regular user needs in his/her OS. We have a snapper (btrfs) if something goes wrong, MP3 and other proprietary codecs, we have apps containers that run on almost all distros (no problems with running a Fedora rpm on OpenSuSE). Universal software packaging system was the weakest point of Linux in general. And we have a Vulkan, especially important for us, game developers. So please don’t tell me that the situation we have now on the market is Linux fault. No, it isn’t. It is true there are still some problems but they are caused by support of other companies. here, we the problem: the support of other companies. Firstly, graphics drives MUST be better, especially from nvidia. And other companies like Epic MUST support Linux platform. I ask again: is it really so much work needed to pack the Linux sources up into flatpak or snap? So much precious time will be wasted? Sorry, I can’t believe in that. We have UE4 version on Mac, so what’s the problem to create a binary stuff on Linux.
Most Linux haters see problems in Linux itself. Sorry, no big issues in Linux nowadays. No good will in companies/corporations. Oh gods, Epic do something with that. Epic where are you?
No, it’s correct. An absolutely minute fraction of that 0.8% are actual “next-gen” style games. This is a fact. It doesn’t matter if “Linux gaming suffers from a lack of support from the industry,” because the point still stands that there aren’t many games that fall into that category and developers don’t want to waste time developing them for Linux. A good analogy would be if carheads got mad that the car industry didn’t adopt the Wankel rotary engine… Or how about people complaining that VHS won vs Betamax… Or that dvd won vs divx… Or that blueray won vs hddvd… I could probably name hundreds of examples like this, but you get the point.
Look, let’s be honest here… Epic halfheartedly threw in Linux support, and several other platforms, to brag about “Ooooh-oooh! look how many platforms we’re on!” and entice more people into using the engine. The odds of them bothering putting any effort into doing some major overhaul, for Linux, are slim to negligible.
Who’s apologizing?
All in all, if you’re looking to go the hipster “Windows is too mainstream” route, you’re gonna have a bad time…
You keep bringing up the market share of Linux, but VR has four times less market share on PC than Linux and still has been the subject of an intense focus from Epic Games, going as far as implementing a forward renderer specifically for it.
I am not saying that Windows is too mainstream, I am posting from a Windows desktop right here. I am saying that Linux is something my clients want, it’s something I support as a developer, and it’s something that doesn’t need much effort from Epic Games to make it a first-class citizen.
Linux support will not harm you or concern you, so please stop telling us not to worry about it. We want it, we need it, we’re being vocal about it - if you don’t want it, just leave this thread.
I don’t mind paying someone for their work. If it’s honest work. I don’t want ads on my games, and I have ad blocker on my browser. I have enough adhd, and free things come with a catch. I don’t like to subscribe to a software. I would buy Linux, or libre office suite. I would buy photoshop, and maya on linux. Though I don’t own it now. Windows isn’t all that evil. Theyre just getting a bit too greedy with software subscriptions, but that’s boosting Mac, and linux stock with software developers. Think of Msft as the Henry ford to Apple being Mercedes. Ford put a car in almost every driveway, and msft helped get a usable pc into tons of households. Linux is like a kit car. The Linux corp is still a multi billion dollar company. I just dont like the fact that I buy a comp, and it comes pre loaded with junk. The same as a phone with google, or apple. Windows will load and run anything including worms, viruses, ransomware, and malware. Though you cant always find it, and delete it in windows. Now if a company like google builds chrome into a true Operating system like Linux, or mac. There will be a turning point. As software companies will start to flock, and so will users.
OK, but you don’t represent all the artists, studios and projects in industry, right? There’s no reason to call rest of them “bad developers” because they prefer different tools.
Nobody is saying that Linux core/philosophy is bad. It’s keep getting better and better. But we all see that Linux still have the same problem as Windows Phone or Kinect. There are no enough apps for it.
Apple also had this problem with many devices. And finally they got breakthrough with App Store. It got successful because it’s totally different environment. Smartphone apps truly changed our lives.
That’s why industry invest so heavily in VR, it brings a whole new experience. Even could influence our real lives.
That’s why we still use PC and consoles for gaming - there’s difference in experience. Windows gives freedom to developers and gamers, consoles are easy to use and stable (i.e. every user of PS4 gets the same performance).
The problem is Linux doesn’t bring anything to the gaming table. It doesn’t give people new experiences or possibilities. And that’s the reason why Steam Machines didn’t win a market. They’re bit like a console but not that hassle-free. They’re bit like Windows PC but doesn’t allow you to play so many different games.
And I really like to see Mac and Linux as equal in gaming. So I could switch to Mac if just want to. Or Linux where I can customize anything, seriously I love Linux Mint. But… my personal preferences won’t change state of gaming industry
It’s a discussion forum. Are you telling us we’re allowed to discuss only if we support your point of view?
This is a really simple thing - people on Linux want to buy my game, and Linux support from Epic has issues, so I want the issues fixed. What do you want ? That my issues are not fixed ?
Can we have this thread for Linux feedback, and not have people tell us how Linux doesn’t deserve support ? Is that too much to ask ?
No, no, you got me wrong. I meant that in most cases Blender and GIMP are enough for creating a nice stuff. I personally don’t see a good reason to buy commercial software. I just don’t like words like “professional”, “industry standard”, etc. for commercial software like Maya, Photoshop, etc. Isn’t GIMP professional? Isn’t Blender an industry standard? If you have skills and time you can do all with this software. And all work perfect on Linux. We need well supported game engines. That’s all!
Nobody? Well, many Linux haters say that Linux isn’t ready as a desktop. Is ready or is almost ready. There are still some issues, but don’t tell me that Windows and Mac have any. Again, we need only support companies like Epic. Flatpak or snap - just that.
