Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by shmerl 3165 days ago
Your sarcasm is misplaced because you didn't pay attention to the growth of the Linux gaming market. Check contributions to Mesa by Valve, Feral and others.

But more to the point - sure, Linux gamers are quite excited about all the work that's going now into the open graphics stack.
1 comments
sliken 3165 days ago
Amusing that you call it sarcasm. Linux gaming has flatlined at 1% or so for years without any noticeable changes.

I just checked the last steam hardware survey, linux is at 0.60%.

The linux steam hardware has pretty much been a flop. Ubuntu is ditching unity.

I sit in front of linux desktops at home and work. I do occasionally game some under linux. I have a linux phone (which has a linux kernel). But I fully realize it's a niche and feel lucky when any game comes to linux. I don't really see any reason for any real optimism.

link
bipson 3165 days ago
Ubuntu ditching unity has nothing to do with anything, what am I missing?
link
jhasse 3165 days ago
It shows that Canonical doesn't have the money to support the desktop like before and rather focuses on server / IoT instead.
link
Lorkki 3165 days ago
It's much more a sign of their failed mobile strategy, which hinged on UI convergence between the desktop and mobile versions of Ubuntu. With all that gone, pooling their efforts with the rest of the Gnome-using world only makes sense (much of the Unity desktop also consisted of appropriated Gnome components).
link
bipson 3165 days ago
I think your conclusion falls under the term non sequitur. It does not show anything about Canonical's financial incentives or their strategy, your statement is basically stating an assumption what the reason is.

Further I would argue it is irrelevant to the initial argument.

What has Canonical to do with it? Neither "Linux", "Linux Desktop", "Linux Gaming" or "AMD graphics under Linux" are in any way tied solely to Canonical or what Canonical does. Again, am I missing something?

link
jhasse 3165 days ago
> It does not show anything about Canonical's financial incentives or their strategy, your statement is basically stating an assumption what the reason is.

Fair point.

> What has Canonical to do with it? Neither "Linux", "Linux Desktop", "Linux Gaming" or "AMD graphics under Linux" are in any way tied solely to Canonical or what Canonical does. Again, am I missing something?

Ubuntu is the only official supported distribution by Steam and GOG (they also support Linux Mint, but it's based on Ubuntu).

link
shmerl 3165 days ago
RedHat and Valve do way more for Linux gaming than Canonical. So I agree with the above, Canonical's decisions aren't affecting Linux gaming that much.
link
shmerl 3165 days ago
> Linux gaming has flatlined at 1% or so for years

You didn't pay attention either. The growth was well described here: http://boilingsteam.com/linux-gaming-in-2016-the-good-the-ba...

And that was last year, since then it only improved. And please, stop using Steam hardware survey for any Linux market estimation. It's useless.

link
nl 3165 days ago
> The growth was well described here: https://boilingsteam.com/linux-gaming-in-2016-the-good-the-b...

That actually says (if you follow the links to try to find the actual claims): The Linux Market share on Steam is about 1%, Mac is about 4%. They are relatively stable around that. But obviously more people join Steam every day.[1]

So... about 1%, using Steam to estimate (not steam hardware though).

[1] https://boilingsteam.com/our-fifth-podcast-with-feral-intera...

link
shmerl 3165 days ago
It's referncing same useless Steam survey for that quote. See above.
link
nl 3165 days ago
Exactly!?

There is no evidence presented anywhere which disproves that. Your claim was that it showed evidence of growth, but if you read it then it turns out it is using the steam survey, and shows no growth in percentage terms at all.

link
shmerl 3164 days ago
The article above showed evidence of growth, read it again.

And there is actual sales data that comes from developers. It's very different from those survey numbers.

Also, since there is no info on methodology of that survey, you can't know even what it means. I've heard from many Linux users, that they never got one while using Steam on Linux, while they got it while using it on Windows for example. It even never comes up in Valve's own SteamOS, so it's clearly not something Valve put a lot of thought in.

So, I'll stand by what I said. Data from that survey is useless as is and should not be applied for any market evaluation.

link