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Comment by Procedural

5 years ago

There is no such OS as Linux, Linux is the kernel. Support Linux-based OSs you want to support and no other OSs you don't support.

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Procedural

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gpm  5 years ago

There is for all practical purposes a singluar linux.

Why? Because you can bundle your own "userspace" to support your game, and that's what steam does for you with it's runtime: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime

It has to pick up a few things from the surrounding environment, but steam entirely standardizes the vast majority of it, and the rest of it is really really similar between every linux-running OS.

  • 5e92cb50239222b  5 years ago

    TBH this runtime can be replaced, and Arch ships a package which makes it very easy to do

    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Steam/Troubleshooting#Steam...

    Sometimes it works better than what Valve ships. It saved me a couple of times.

    • mariusor  5 years ago

      The value of the steam runtime is not in how well it runs for users, but that it provides a singular target for game developers. I'm not sure if you witnessed any discussions around why most game developers are not willing to port their games to linux. From what I've seen the main complaint is that linux is too fragmented and nobody wants to package a binary for X versions of glibc, Y versions of sound libraries, and Z versions of graphic APIs. Having the steam runtime to target solves all of these issues, even if it doesn't represent the best that a user can run on their individual configuration.

      3 replies →

  • maccolgan  5 years ago

    Does whatever work on Android too? Because that's technically Linux, that's what I believe GP was referring to. I believe Android actually has a totally different graphics stack.

FastEatSlow  5 years ago

The point is that people who choose an OS other than Windows or Mac tend to choose something based on Linux, and are usually technically skilled and submit much higher quality bug reports, more often. Linux users just care more about the experience of using a computer, otherwise most wouldn't have jumped ship.

  • michaelpb  5 years ago

    Also, technical skill aside, Linux users are used to dev <-> consumer relationship being more symmetrical and more of a "two way street". The few non-coder Linux users I know prefer it for this aspect --- similar to why people might shop at a local neighborhood co-op instead of Walmart/Target/Microsoft/Apple