Let's talk about the current state of Gaming on Linux! I was watching The Game Awards ceremony last week, when I realised that more than a half of all nomine...
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Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
there should have been more if not better ways.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
You may have paid money to get copies of a free program, or you may have obtained copies at no charge. But regardless of how you got your copies, you always have the freedom to copy and change the software, even to sell copies.
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing
How so? They literally hire people to work on Proton. That’s exactly how FOSS should work as it relates to for-profit companies. Source:
Griffais says the company is also directly paying more than 100 open-source developers to work on the Proton compatibility layer
So they may not be Valve employees, but they’re paid by Valve (I suppose as contractors?), which is essentially the same thing. So it seems they’re throwing money at the problem, and reserving their internal talent to work on the graphics stack.
I suspect the Steamdeck and Steam machines were the main motivations for Valve to put as much resources behind Proton as they did.
The windows store was. Gabe is playing the long game.
No they did it for the money, steam deck isn’t a good handheld, it can become outdated in a few years, Linux hacks is a real possibility, etc.
No real reason for Steam deck existence other than money.
Well, I mean… of course, yeah? They’re a private a corporation, they want to make a profit on anything they do. But the idea is the Steamdeck with Linux on it is worthless if it doesn’t play games, hence why so much money was poured into Proton to make the Steamdeck a desirable and profitable object.
Saying it’s not a good handheld because it will become outdated is like saying every laptop in existence is bad because it will eventually become outdated. You sacrifice upgradeability for portability.
Technology can be upgraded and Valve chooses to make the deck a worst version of handheld. Just look at other handheld, less problem with holding and more gameplay experience. Proton doesn’t solve the linux gaming issue, companies are more willing to lose the Linux platform for protection of their games.
Gaming in Linux shouldn’t become this bad, one company controls the entire reason for the Linux platform, there should have been more if not better ways.
The other handhelds cost more, and usually have worse battery life.
Proton has absolutely solved the chicken and the egg problem. There’s a big enough audience on Steamdeck that many devs of online games have flipped the switch to allow their anti-cheat to work under proton.
Linux gaming was stagnant for over 20 years, what would you have done differently?
The other consoles are built for gaming and offering features that Valve hasn’t even announced for such. Moreover the steam deck being locked in the Steam ecosystem doesn’t help the “solved problems”. One company that is known for greedy developers is in control of Linux Proton.
It’s clear what should have happened, the steam deck shouldn’t have existed. Valve the billionaire company should’ve offered better alternative or find better hardware. We have computers in the size of a credit card and they decided a brick with unnecessary specs with uneven screen size is the best? They clearly didn’t care anything but cheap hardware and software that is free. The steamOS isn’t open source and you people are letting Valve make their money on free software.
Making money on free software is absolutely fine. Even GNU, perhaps the most hardcore free software group, has this to say:
There’s absolutely no problem with Valve profiting from free software, the only obligation is that they share their modifications to any free software they use with their users. Here’s their fork of Proton, and here’s an article about the rest of the software stack they have modified (i.e. they’ve made lots of changes to the graphics stack, as well as various other parts that are important to their use-case.
So it’s not like they’re taking and not giving, it’s a two-way process where they and the community both benefit from using free software.
The other points have been well covered here, I just wanted to point out that making money is not a bad thing.
Valve has not been pulling their weight. Hiring people and letting the community work on Proton isn’t a good thing. GitHub history shows zero work on Valve employees or developers of Proton. Only the community has updated the system not Valve, don’t give credit to lazy cheapskates.
How so? They literally hire people to work on Proton. That’s exactly how FOSS should work as it relates to for-profit companies. Source:
So they may not be Valve employees, but they’re paid by Valve (I suppose as contractors?), which is essentially the same thing. So it seems they’re throwing money at the problem, and reserving their internal talent to work on the graphics stack.