Comment by flaunf221
2 days ago
3. People who play games.
Because alternatives are bad. After decades of being great, Linux gaming community finally gave up on it working and accepted emulation of Windows as the way to go. (No need to nitpick on tech specifics of how Wine works)
Gave up? There are more Linux games than ever. Most commercial games work fine on Linux now. Some through emulation of some sort, others completely natively, because most gamer engines support Linux natively, making it trivial to do so. And as a gamer, I can't really tell the difference between the two.
If you mean Linux-only classic open source games, like Angband or Battle for Wesnoth or something, they still exist, but the demand has clearly gone down because now almost all games work on Linux. Except the ones with anti-cheat systems that rootkit-style access to your system.
Steam has been pushing Linux as a gaming OS, and it's working. Mainstream game support has come leaps and bounds over the last several years. It's still not quite as good as Windows. You will run into more bugs and have to fiddle with things a bit more to get them to work. It's improving rapidly though.
My only concern is that this is mostly just the result of one very influential company. If they turn evil on us...
The parent poster said "Linux gaming community". "Most commercial games work fine on Linux now" because a multi-billion dollar corporation, Valve, is paying to maintain Proton to protect their business model, not the Linux community.
> Most commercial games work fine on Linux now.
What about the performance (especially the bottom 1% frame time)? What about availability of those games in free online game libraries?
In my personal experience, performance is better than I've ever seen on Windows. But less subjective benchmarks exist. Apparently, if you have an AMD GPU, performance is likely to be better on Linux, if you have Nvidia, it's probably better on Windows. I have Nvidia and no complaints.
Bad take, what actually happened was the realization that games wouldn't be released on Linux unless there were enough users there to warant it. Just as with ARM Windows not getting a single usable software when first released. What happened was Wine/Proton and FEX, with a lot of monetary input from Valve.
By allowing a lot of people who are willing to take a performance-hit to transition to Linux, they sow the grass-roots necessary for the game studios to release native games on Linux.
> What happened was Wine/Proton and FEX, with a lot of monetary input from Valve.
So it took decades to understand that things aren't working and then investment from multi-billion company to finally start getting anywhere.
Meanwhile on Windows you can play today, could play 10 years ago, could 20 years ago. That should answer how it's still in business. It just works.
Although if you want to play the same game you played 20 years ago today, running it on Wine is your best bet to get it running.
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That’s due to xcel and word and corporate IT being built on AD.
You're saying this as if emulation (which Wine isn't really, more of a Win32 API compatibility layer; WINE literally stands for 'WINE Is Not an Emulator') was a bad thing. In reality, a lot of games benchmark better on Linux than on Windows today.
Emulation is not a bad thing - it gives users options. My point is that Microsoft were the only ones who managed to make a stable gaming platform.
Also "a lot of games benchmark better" - some games. And then some games don't work at all. And some games work with minor or significant issues. Which is not a slight against Wine and Proton as it's not an easy task.
Can't speak to it myself, but I'm not sure how up to date your infos are. I read a lot of reviews and it seems that the vast majority of the Steam catalogue should run fine on Linux today. The most important exceptions are games that require kernel-level anti-cheat (so if you're into online multiplayer games that could be a dealbreaker).
What are you talking about? Lol, Linux gaming is fine and still growing.
Huh? I just finished Fallout 4 on Linux, a game that is famously unstable and it worked totally fine out of the box. Install steam, install Fallout, go.
Not to discard your happiness at things working out for you, but that's a game from 2015 and it's 2026 now. And is also in top 50 of best sellers of all time, so I would expect it to work.