Ah cool, thanks for looking all that up. I knew Proton pre-dated Steam Deck, I just wasn’t sure exactly where in the timeline it fit between the original Steam Machine launch and the release of the Steam Deck.
It’s kind of a shame that Steam Machine failed, but in many ways it was a little too ahead of its time and its failure brought us to the Steam Deck which is a much more sensible approach.
Ultimately none of this would have existed without Wine and ironically the Microsoft app store (or whatever they’re calling it these days). The threat of MS getting a stranglehold on program distribution on Windows the way Apple does on OS X and iOS was enough to spur Valve into putting significant effort into making Linux a viable gaming platform, something we’re all benefitting from greatly.
People seem to be downplaying somewhat how significant an achievement this is for Linux. The thing is, for most programs you can find alternatives because the point isn’t the program it’s what you do with it. People don’t use Photoshop because they enjoy Photoshop, they do it because they want to create something, which means if you can create that same thing using a different program then you don’t need Photoshop. On the other hand games are an experience. The point is the game. Sure you can play a different game, but that’s not an Apples to Apples thing as the experience however similar isn’t the same. That means games are uniquely placed as a roadblock for migrating away from a platform, something consoles with their exclusive releases have known for a long time. Giving people the option to play the exact same game under Linux as they can under Windows is massive because there really isn’t any other way to solve that problem.
I think all your other info in the first comment, as well as this more recent one, is pretty much bang on accurate.
Getting gaming to work on linux is the path toward more mass adoption.
Linux has already been increasingly functional, capable, usable, and solid in many other ways, I’d argue superior in many ways… for a while, and gaming really is the last hurdle.
There are still some other hurdles. GIMP isn’t as good as Photoshop (at least that’s what the Photoshop-users keep telling me,) Kdenlive isn’t as good as Premiere, etc. There are still market segments where switching to Linux is unfeasible. However, gaming is a pretty big segment in itself, and it is becoming feasible for many of those users to switch to Linux (with the main exception being people who play games with kernel-level anticheat.)
This creates a snowball effect since as more people switch to Linux it creates incentive for software and hardware makers to provide Linux support, which will allow more people to switch to Linux, etc.
Gaming isn’t the last hurdle, but it’s a very important one.
Ah cool, thanks for looking all that up. I knew Proton pre-dated Steam Deck, I just wasn’t sure exactly where in the timeline it fit between the original Steam Machine launch and the release of the Steam Deck.
It’s kind of a shame that Steam Machine failed, but in many ways it was a little too ahead of its time and its failure brought us to the Steam Deck which is a much more sensible approach.
Ultimately none of this would have existed without Wine and ironically the Microsoft app store (or whatever they’re calling it these days). The threat of MS getting a stranglehold on program distribution on Windows the way Apple does on OS X and iOS was enough to spur Valve into putting significant effort into making Linux a viable gaming platform, something we’re all benefitting from greatly.
People seem to be downplaying somewhat how significant an achievement this is for Linux. The thing is, for most programs you can find alternatives because the point isn’t the program it’s what you do with it. People don’t use Photoshop because they enjoy Photoshop, they do it because they want to create something, which means if you can create that same thing using a different program then you don’t need Photoshop. On the other hand games are an experience. The point is the game. Sure you can play a different game, but that’s not an Apples to Apples thing as the experience however similar isn’t the same. That means games are uniquely placed as a roadblock for migrating away from a platform, something consoles with their exclusive releases have known for a long time. Giving people the option to play the exact same game under Linux as they can under Windows is massive because there really isn’t any other way to solve that problem.
No prob!
I think all your other info in the first comment, as well as this more recent one, is pretty much bang on accurate.
Getting gaming to work on linux is the path toward more mass adoption.
Linux has already been increasingly functional, capable, usable, and solid in many other ways, I’d argue superior in many ways… for a while, and gaming really is the last hurdle.
There are still some other hurdles. GIMP isn’t as good as Photoshop (at least that’s what the Photoshop-users keep telling me,) Kdenlive isn’t as good as Premiere, etc. There are still market segments where switching to Linux is unfeasible. However, gaming is a pretty big segment in itself, and it is becoming feasible for many of those users to switch to Linux (with the main exception being people who play games with kernel-level anticheat.)
This creates a snowball effect since as more people switch to Linux it creates incentive for software and hardware makers to provide Linux support, which will allow more people to switch to Linux, etc.
Gaming isn’t the last hurdle, but it’s a very important one.