*Valve
True that, OP did Gabe dirty, Gabe tried selling Linux before it became mainstream
but, and correct me if I’m wrong, steam still does not support good graphics on linux. It still only runs on X11 and has no wayland support. So many linux users switch temporarily to windows for gaming only. Valve needs to make the adoption happen faster. They’re the ones still holding gamers from switching from windows, not promote linux as you say. Not to mention tons of top games that still can only run on windows without any way around it (proton compatibility does not work on all games)
Dude, shut up. SteamOS is Wayland. Only the Deck shell (and KDE desktop mode used to) uses X in XWayland mode. But all games run on Wayland. Without Steam massive push of Proton we wouldn’t have the booming Linux gaming scene that we have now. You fucking lot are insufferable, this is why nobody likes Wayland. It is super good, massively better than it was before. Can it be better? Yes, sure. But shut up and let people cook, would you? Recognize a good thing when it happens. Just because it isn’t perfect yet doesn’t mean it isn’t good.
EDIT: You can downvote all you want, that doesn’t change the fact that SteamOS is Wayland, it runs the Gamescope compositor. You asked to be corrected, here I’m correcting you.
I want to say two things, but please ignore the first one, and just reply and focus on the second.
1- you are insufferable.
2- okay my linux is debian on wayland. Can I install and run steam on it without virtual machine? The last time I checked I was told no. If yes, then I will seek the solution and do it because I wish so.
The Steam launcher client itself is still on X, it will run on Xwayland. What the store front Steam runs on is irrelevant though. The Steam helper will run the game on the best possible configuration for the machine, and gamescope can run proton compatibility on Wayland, as long as the game runs on a library that supports it. If the game doesn’t support a Wayland capable library, the game will be run through Xwayland. This is literally how the Steam Deck works. The Steam client not being Wayland is not on itself any limitation on the graphical quality of the games.
I’m putting what you said to work, and thank you for correcting me that’s very helpful. That gives linux users fewer reasons to ever need to touch the filth that is windows.
And still we’re at 4% market share. They don’t seem to be doing a very good job.
Obviously, it’s Microsoft what did you expect? A job well done?
When i first got here we hadn’t even hit 1% yet. Open source scares Microsoft because if they fuck up they are done but we have a million distributions with a million different mutations its perfect evolution we cannot get worse only better.
Oh, it can get worse. If Windows market share should really plummet, it won’t be replaced by a heterogenous distro utopia but some company like Canonical or Red Hat or a new one will get their distribution to fill the gap. And call me a cynic but I doubt this will be immune to enshittification.
But even that scenario is better than what we have with Microsoft and Apple. The FOSS world would still benefit like it does from the Steam Deck developments.
Well, no offense intended, but that is cynical. The only way for enshittification to hit Linux would be if only one group controlled it. When IBM/Red Hat discontinued CentOS, the community immediately moved to fill the gap with AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux.
That said, yes, things can always get worse. I don’t think Linux is immune to having problems, but not on the scale of what’s happening with Windows with their Copilot garbage.
My response to that is Flatpak. 16MB of software requiring 700MB to download and consuming 2.8GB of disk space. Linux absolutely can be bad, due to cultural issues.
(My example software above is Handbrake. I’m sure someone’s going to “well actually” me about this, and I don’t even care. I don’t see how it can be justified, and I’m kind of curious to see if someone can do it.)
it’s great for applications that are notorious for requiring specific versions of libraries and can cause dependency hell. moves unnecessary system dependencies into a sandbox. for me this means i don’t have to enable multilib to install Steam and pull in 32 bit libraries on my root.
while it does take a lot of disc space it doesn’t duplicate dependencies in most cases. i would say you receive some good benefits at the cost of a bit more disc space, such as increased security, easy installs, explicit app permissions. it’s great for when you have to install a proprietary tool in that you gain control of what it’s allowed to access.
But it appears like we’re in a situation where it’s not used for specific situations, but for lots of different things. Just a few Flatpak programs starts to chew through a significant amount of disk space, and some programs are only being distributed as Flatpaks.
flatpak distribution is generally done by the developer as a common packaging method. if a distribution wants a native install it’s up to package maintainers of the distribution to support the application. although the package maintainers have to make sure they’re packaging the right versions of dependencies which becomes a problem known as dependency hell.
in your example of handbrake it’s true the main application is pretty small but that’s because it relies on libraries and is a wrapper for ffmpeg. even if you install through a package manager you still need to compare the total size of dependencies.
the disc space usage becomes a problem due to installing libraries both natively and in sandbox. however if you keep a relatively small system install and install applications through flatpak the disc usage will be pretty negligible. if disc space is really a concern then using something like btrfs with compression+dedup would probably solve most problems.
Now we just need proper Linux phones as well.
Fair phone needs support for Graphene
Fairphone needs to take security seriously and add support for hardware security features, in order for that to happen. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112320854846225341
