[fidotron]

Honestly this looks like Microsoft must have thrown a pile of money at them to not mention it, as it's just too obviously the main question.

No one seriously cares about this running Windows. We want Steam and CUDA/Ollama, and Windows just gets in the way. nVidia are simply not that oblivious, but I have to admit in their position I'd have considered the Microsoft involvement more trouble than it's worth, which is among the many reasons I'm not a billionaire.

Maybe they think the RAM market is so terrible it will kill the whole initiative regardless.

[dist-epoch]

You misspelled llama.cpp

[kennywinker]

I’ve read all the stuff about how llama.cpp is much faster and better than ollama, and i believe it - but good god llama.cpp isn’t user friendly.

You’d think in an era where “code is free” there would be an easier story around running local ai than compiling llama.cpp by hand and then spending hours researching flags - only for it to crash from an oom error every ten prompts or so.

[greenavocado]

You're supposed to use a cheap ChatGPT subscription to run optimization loops over llama.cpp flags with a self-contained reproducible benchmark script and just let it burn for hours/days until it is fully optimized ))))

[numberwan9]

Please take a look at https://llama.app, all you need is 'llama serve'

[trash_cat]

There is more to it than typing "llama serve".

[pjmlp]

WSL is the answer in what most folks are concerned.

Has Steam finally started to push for native Linux games instead of translating Windows ones?

[drakythe]

Valve did that little more than a decade ago, the original Steam Machines. It didn't take, and despite the success of the Deck and current techy trends, Linux does not have the % to make the ROI worthwhile if it isn't simple for developers. Proton is a wedge in the door that will help Linux get there.

[pjmlp]

It is simple, Android NDK has all the same APIs for 3D rendering and audio, as do all major middleware engines.

The failure of business, only reinforces Windows as the platform most studios reach for.

Buy Windows, buy Visual Studio, pay game engines licenses, let Valve do the work.

This ignoring that current Valve's management doesn't live forever, so who knows what happens afterwards.

[thewebguyd]

A potential change in Valve's culture/management aside, "let valve do the work" is a feature, not a bug. Studio spends all their budget targeting one platform (which still has ~90+% of the PC gaming market), and get Linux support for free.

Windows' monopoly on game dev isn't just market share either, since game dev isn't just code. You still need Photoshop, Maya, etc. and in smaller studies there's typically a crossover where some devs are doing art as well. Visual Studio's C++ debugger is still one of the best, and the tooling elsewhere hasn't caught up yet (compared to DX + PIX).

Then you also have to solve distribution and handling the fragmented display & audio stack. It's gotten a lot better, but its still a factor.

I'm fine with most of the work going into Wine/Proton. A stable ABI for Linux is a boon, if it happens to be Win32 then so be it.

[pjmlp]

Hardly a monopoly, and the tooling has gotten there, on macOS, on PlayStation, on Switch, even on Android, it is better than GNU/Linux.

Valve isn't going to be around forever porting Windows games into Proton, which is actually hardly any different if they would start selling Nintendo games with Dolphin, if we ignore the legal implications for a moment.

[fidotron]

At this point Valve look more capable of running a platform business than Microsoft do.

Microsoft have spent the whole Nadella era in "oooo cloud" inspired wonder and actively screwed up everything else.

[pjmlp]

And yet where are the native games for the platform?

Note how game developers rather spend their working hours in Windows with all its issues, even if they happen to have Linux servers for running their MMOs.

[fidotron]

> And yet where are the native games for the platform?

My Steam library is full of old win32 games that run better on Linux than they do on Windows 11. There are some native games appearing because of the Steam Deck, but the fact is they aren't necessary.

Valve aren't simply better at running a platform business, they've thoroughly subverted Microsoft's old one and have done a better job at running that than Microsoft themselves.

Look at the absolute state of the XBox business: all native games, tens of billions spent on something, and yet it's just a trainwreck from top to bottom.

[bigyabai]

> Valve's management doesn't live forever, so who knows what happens afterwards.

Tens of thousands of Windows games would remain playable with ubiquitous Vulkan-capable hardware and a 500mb Proton runtime?

[stubish]

... after you watch these ads, or pay for our premium subscription. After all, those games aren't going to host themselves and your license doesn't allow an alternative.

[t-writescode]

If it runs faster than the windows ones, who cares?

[pjmlp]

The game developers that use Windows, with Visual Studio, to develop such games.

[fidotron]

This is, admittedly, the great anomaly.

In truth if AMD or nVidia put their mind to having decent profiling tooling on Linux, and the AI wave suggests they will have no option, then this could readily become a thing.