[HN Gopher] Today is the 10th year anniversary of Steam being of...
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Today is the 10th year anniversary of Steam being officially out
for Linux
Author : evasb
Score : 121 points
Date : 2023-02-14 20:30 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (store.steampowered.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (store.steampowered.com)
| ajoseps wrote:
| I've switched over my main desktop to PopOS and while I'm missing
| out on some games which require anticheat, I'm constantly
| surprised as to how much I can actually play. It also seems like
| newer games have better proton support.
| soliton4 wrote:
| i am using kde neon and have a similar impression
| trasz3 wrote:
| But still only as a 32-bit binary, in 2023.
| pathartl wrote:
| Does it need to be 64-bit?
| Gigachad wrote:
| There is pressure to drop support for running 32 bit binaries
| and to stop packaging 32 bit libraries. Steam is pretty much
| the main force holding this transition off. Ubuntu proposed
| it a while ago and valve said they just wouldn't support
| Ubuntu any more.
|
| Apple did it way back and valve just updated to support 64bit
| for macOS.
| fathyb wrote:
| FWIW we've been waiting for a native M1 Steam app on macOS
| for more than 2 years since launch, I guess we need to wait
| for Apple to drop Intel support.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Many games are still 32-bit and will never be updated. This
| idea of killing off distro-level 32-bit support is pretty
| silly overall, especially since there's never much of an
| excuse for doing so (beyond "but it's old so it must be
| bad!").
| daniel-thompson wrote:
| When I tried installing it via apt on ubuntu 2204, it wanted
| to install an entire 32-bit GPU driver chain. Couldn't ctrl-c
| fast enough
| tapoxi wrote:
| It's still 32-bit on Windows too, for some reason. I have
| it installed via Flatpak to avoid the pile of 32-bit
| libraries.
| pathartl wrote:
| Ah okay yeah that's a huge issue.
| heelix wrote:
| It has been a fun adventure. We used a lot of RHEL at work, so I
| set out to get it to work on my Centos workstation and was
| shocked how well it worked. Gave the SteamOS distribution a try,
| which worked great for Steam... but really made me work harder
| than expected to get a terminal so did not expand on that, beyond
| seeing how it got the hardware right. Current workstation is
| Ubuntu, which also matches up with how work is done today. Proton
| is amazing.
|
| The jump from https://i.imgur.com/dGOw1G4.jpg
|
| to steam (2019!) https://i.imgur.com/H5QYFbz.png
|
| was incredible. My Linux box has the 'good' CPU/Video card these
| days.
| femboy wrote:
| is it just me or is it just Unusable on macOS? for a few years
| now
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| Steam works fine on my M1.
| wishfish wrote:
| On my M1 MBA, it's sluggish but still usable. Definitely worse
| than on Windows. It's probably the worst out of the few Rosetta
| apps I have. It's a little funny. The Steam client performs
| worse than any of my Mac games that are also using Rosetta. A
| simple client falls over more than a game which is (visually at
| least) doing much more complicated things.
| dmitriid wrote:
| What Steam did for Linux is very similar to what Ubuntu did for
| Linux: made the actual work to make sure there's something for
| non-nerds to use.
|
| No one cared about the "non-nerd" until these two came along.
| Because sure "you can alway select <one of thousands
| distributions> and <build/compile/config your own stuff>", but
| this doesn't scale.
|
| Even if this started as a way to keep being relevant in the world
| of competing OS-level stores and shenanigans (IIRC Steam for
| Linux started shortly after Windows Store was announced), the
| achievement is still nothing short of miracle: there are actually
| games you can play on Linux now.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I think this downplays some of the work Valve/Steam has done
| for Linux, especially recently.
|
| For a long time, playing games on Linux wasn't a "nerd" thing,
| it was a "nobody" thing. Getting AAA games to run on Linux was
| a pipe dream.
|
| Valve has put in the work (and in some cases, hired the people
| putting in the work) to get us to today, where most games work
| with decent performance (the major exception being anti-cheat,
| but Valve is slowly working on those as well).
| greenknight wrote:
| I play Counterstrike GO, and it was the thing holding me back
| from abandoning windows.
|
| I (use to) play daily so there was no point ever booting up
| into linux.
|
| As soon as linux support came out, I started playing under it
| immediately, and quickly realised that there was no point
| booting up into windows anymore.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Most people probably don't realise that Valve has actual
| kernel devs. I bought a Logitech racing wheel a while ago and
| force feedback wasn't working. After some research I found a
| mailing list where someone with a valve email has submitted a
| patch that fixed it.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > I think this downplays some of the work Valve/Steam has
| done for Linux
|
| Quoting myself: "the achievement is still nothing short of
| miracle" ;)
| danjoredd wrote:
| This tbh. I got Elder Scrolls Oblivion running the other day on
| Pop!_OS and I have been absolutely eating up the nostalgia. In
| 2016 I tried getting it running with plain old WINE and for
| some reason people were missing their heads and speech options
| were missing. On Proton it works perfectly, and I haven't
| noticed any glitches(that are out of the ordinary for a
| Bethesda title anyway)
| zeagle wrote:
| Did you do any modding or use a list?
| danjoredd wrote:
| Thats probably the reason, or at least part of it. On
| Windows I heavily modded it with tons of new items and
| sidequests, so that might have interfered with how it ran
| on Linux. However, I never installed any visual mods
| because I was playing the game on a toaster of a Windows PC
| and didn't want to risk lag. Its 7 years after the fact so
| its too late to troubleshoot, but I think it was probably a
| combination of the game not knowing what to do without my
| mods and WINE being weird.
|
| My installation was also bit weird because I was new to
| Linux and didn't understand how things were supposed to
| work. I installed the Windows version of Steam through Play
| on Linux and installed everything through that client,
| rather than running individual games through POL. Then
| again, the installation option wasn't even available for
| the game on the Linux client so at the time I felt that the
| weird setup was the only way to play it
| rightbyte wrote:
| Proton is great.
|
| I have played some games on it and mostly it is parasite apps
| like EA App or whatever that is a problem.
|
| It Takes Two worked great when running but lunching was always
| 5-20 minutes of restarts. And two times out of like 8 EA bricked
| their launcher app with updates and the game stopped working for
| some days.
|
| The next gaming rig will surely be Linux only for me.
| maccard wrote:
| Honestly, nonsense like this happens with Windows gaming too. I
| can't count the number of times one of my friends has had a
| networking issue with steam or the windows store, problems with
| anticheat or other "extra" services like uplay/origin, issues
| with graphics drivers, and probably most commonly, Audio
| devices. I'm a game developer, as are the group of people I
| play with and we still stumble on these issues regularly, it's
| honestly why consoles are so great.
| Thaxll wrote:
| You blame an app not built to run on Proton to be the issue? EA
| desktop / origin works just fine on Windows, I use it since
| 2013 without any issues.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Man, I got confused why the steam Linux sale wasn't on the front
| page when I noticed that this is a ten year old post. I thought
| it was a celebration for 10 years of Linux support lol. Also got
| excited for the Tux TF2 item and I feel a little let down that I
| am 10 years too late
| redtriumph wrote:
| This post should have (2013) in the title.
| kunwon1 wrote:
| I started using Linux around 2002. I evaluated and quickly
| dismissed it as a desktop OS largely because it didn't allow me
| to play the games I wanted to play. In 2021 or 2022 I finally
| switched, thanks entirely to Steam on Linux (more specifically,
| thanks to the Proton/WINE integration). I haven't looked back.
| I'm on Arch, if anyone is curious.
| zmk5 wrote:
| Not sure if you are mentioning Arch because of the meme or not,
| but it is funny how Arch users do love mentioning the fact they
| use Arch lol
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Would be curious to know if parent chose Arch because Valve
| chose it for the Steam Deck.
| kunwon1 wrote:
| Actually, I chose LFS. I was building out a systemd-based
| LFS system, and I had fucked up on GPT vs MBR or something
| like that, so I binned it. That was like ten hours down the
| drain, and I felt discouraged, so I didn't retry LFS.
|
| I wanted to avoid the monolithic desktop environments and
| build one out of individual components that I would then
| customize to my liking. I had some experience with two
| 'highly customizable' distributions: Gentoo and Arch. I
| picked the one that was less likely to get me made fun of
| /s
|
| It has worked out pretty well. My desktop has some quirks
| and I want to re-do it, but I haven't gotten around to it
| yet. Current desktop works and is 'good enough'
|
| Another consideration was the Arch wiki. There are few
| better resources for getting Linux desktop software to work
| the way you want it, IMO
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Reasons I _want_ to use Arch:
|
| - Almost always up to date software
|
| - Little to no patching/changing upstream
|
| - Follows upstream defaults/best practices
|
| Reasons I shy away from Arch:
|
| - Too much churn on keeping things up to date
|
| - Package maintainers are hit or miss, don't seem as
| engaged as Debian
|
| I'd like to use Arch on my servers and devices, but it
| seems like it requires more responsibility than using
| Debian vs the benefit of using.
| tapoxi wrote:
| I started around the same time (Debian Woody), it's certainly
| come a long way from SuperTux and Battle for Wesnoth.
|
| Windows is still on my gaming PC, mostly due to anticheat
| issues with games like Hunt, Destiny, and Battlefield. I'm
| finally able to play games like Crusader Kings 3 on my Linux
| laptop without any issues though.
| timonoko wrote:
| Thank you for that. I found 2012 gaming computer in the garbage
| room three years ago. Now I am 2-star General in GS:GO.
|
| I have never had Windows computer. Moved right from DOS to Linux
| around 1992. And I gave up gaming after DOOM/MYST in 1990's
| because there was nothing new happening and hardware requirements
| were excessive.
| zeagle wrote:
| As a coincidence other day I resized my desktop's win10
| partition, installed PopOS taking care to make my own partitions
| instead of the default clean install, and found a guide for
| steam, protonup and lutris. I think a lot of the steps would
| trouble folks that haven't used Linux extensively before.
| Dualbooting, pip as a user not root, flatpak vs deb, saving some
| Nvidia settings elsewhere, and I still can't figure out why my
| identical second monitor doesn't display anything until I change
| the resolution once after boot (Nvidia, working one is dp, other
| one is HDMI if anyone has ideas)... but overall I'm impressed
| with the few games I fired up and they just worked. Good stuff
| Valve. That was not the case last time I tried.
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(page generated 2023-02-14 23:02 UTC)