Rosenzweig, known for her Panfrost and Apple M1/M2 GPU driver work is now contracted by Valve to work on graphics driver development! Sounds like great news for Valve’s push for Linux gaming.
Valve is basically carrying Linux gaming. While no one should trust a corporate entity, their actions speak pretty loudly. Thanks, Valve.
I trust that they want my money
Well yeah but is it a bad thing in this case? I mean, one of the main reasons devs don’t support Linux is because it’s a small community and it doesn’t seem worth the time and money to support it. It’s fantastic that Valve is spending the time, resources and money to improve gaming on Linux, which is obviously a smaller market than Windows in a lot of cases. Yes, the main reason is probably because that makes their Steam Deck more viable and thus increases sales for them. But this benefits the entire Linux ecosystem, so I don’t think that really matters.
No, I mean that I trust them to want to keep selling me Linux games :)
OH. Wow I feel stupid for writing that whole wall of text. 😅
It happens
So long as Gabe is at the helm, I’ll bet they’ll keep being rad. Once he’s gone, though, the enshittification will undoubtedly begin.
Yeah I keep telling people to enjoy it as long as they can, cuz with Gabe I’m not worried
I was so skeptical of staying on steamos instead of replacing it instantly with windows for the deck, but compatability has been great and relatively easy to get working for even games that aren’t verified.
Big difference from when they tried the steam machines and game compatibility with Linux back then.
They learned from their mistakes and didn’t try to ship something crap. Also reviews helped, in part due to the fact that Windows didn’t have drivers for a while after launch.
Valve knows better than to put all of their eggs into one basket. Microsoft has signalled that they’re slowly but steadily moving towards a Windows + Xbox walled garden ecosystem, and while we’re not there yet, it is coming and Valve know that it could kill them off when it does.
It is the coolest thing to see a major corporation contributing so much to Linux gaming. Linux gaming is more viable than ever and it’s amazing!!!
I’m so torn about valve. It is after all a proprietary platform. I use it since always and have hundreds of games and just know they’ll all be gone at some point in the future. No word about making steam client open source, not even talking about something like decentralized proof of ownership etc. (For obvious reasons)
That said: they do incredible work for Linux. Their games have been Linux compatible since ages! And actually play well on Linux. Their client works flawlessly. And what they have done with proton is just flat out incredible. As you say Linux gaming is awesome currently and has not been that exciting for a long time. In short they do awesome work, I’d just wish they were a little bit open sourceier.
I’m gaming with no issues in Linux desktop, since the arrival of the steam deck
I decided about three years ago to give “100% Linux” gaming a go for a few months, since I was fed up with Windows shitting itself on a dual-boot system, see how I got on. Never went back. It does help that I’m not in to MMOs or things which require anti-cheat, since that’s a stumbling block, but it’s rare that I even check protondb before purchases now, nearly everything just works and it keeps getting better.
I wish Linux worked with anti-cheat Most games I play have some kind of anti-cheat, haven’t used Linux for anything but school and work (cybersecurity) for the past 10 years… before that I didn’t have a gaming PC so I had a Linux laptop and I’m excited to get rid of windows
Has Valve’s work on SteamOS so far affected any of the other distros positively in some way? Are the improvements transferable or is it all just for SteamOS?
Very yes. Not only are Steam and Proton usable on distros aside SteamOS, improvements from those regularly flow upstream into Wine, DXVK and also the Linux kernel itself.
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Before SteamOS could become a thing Valve made HUGE effort to make Linux useful for gaming. All the games everyone can now easily play on any x86 Linux distribution - that was possible, in a big part, by Valve efforts. Driver improvements, compatibility layers (not just Proton, but also improvements in the upstream wine), etc.
And they do continue the improvements, not just for their own Linux systems.
There can only be benefits to wider Linux acceptance in gaming, as it stands it’s shocking that it isn’t already there. Linux imo will never be window’s equal in distribution, too many people use windows compared to the various distros. But more people seem to use Linux now than before so there’s an untapped market here.
I think the days of the Windows monopoly are already gone - in my (academic) circles at least, I see more OS X/Mac than Windows users.
The OS X dominance is probably less sustainable than the Windows monopoly was, as it depends on one (already abusive) company for both hardware and software. In addition, mobile devices are increasingly taking over, shaking up the entire industry.
To me at least, it seems to be turbulent times where there is absolutely room for changes to happen. Not saying it’s going up be the year of the Linux desktop though, that one is getting a bit old.
This sounds so unreal, especially for big company like Valve lol.
I have some vague memory that they started seriously pushing for linux support after microsoft tried to limite steam acces on windows 8 or something like that.
But I can’t find any info on that…I remember seeing that stated around the time of steam machines, steam link and steam controller.
Its just sensible. Building their own os would take so much resources that they would have to successfully make a profit on it. Leveraging linux and the open source community allows them to make sure there is an alternative and gives them an os to use on their handheld device or any other they choose to make ensuring they can’t be cut out by a monopoly power. And all for pennies really.
I really appreciate that Valve seems to be ethical about the way they’re going about this, at least so far. I haven’t heard any bad news nor does it raise any “extend embrace extinguish” alarms. Rare for a company these days…
Well, Valve is a privately held company with a management that has a longer term vision than the next quarterly profits, so there’s that. Make it public and let the MBAs in and it’ll become shit in no time, which I sincerely hope will never happen.
Well, to be fair, Steam OS 3.0 is still closed source, but at least they are much-much better than Apple are
