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posted by martyb on Friday April 05 2019, @04:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the drm-as-the-elephant-in-the-room dept.

Depending on how it is measured, the market share for gaming on GNU/Linux is less than 1%. Jason Evangelho writes at Forbes about what is holding back gaming on GNU/Linux. He outlines three problem areas. First, there is inconsistency across the distros in how hardware — especially the graphics card — is dealt with. Second, major titles continue to ban the accounts of those who join from GNU/Linux hosts. Lastly, he figures that the gamers need to pull behind a single distro and get support for just that one distro because vendors are using the existence of multiple distros as an excuse to support none of them.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @04:43PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @04:43PM (#824994)

    Ah, the old song about the number of distros. It's just that, an excuse. Bundle everything and ship it.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @05:18PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05 2019, @05:18PM (#825008)

    Yep. Just pick a distro. Can't make up your mind? Target Debian LTS then.

    Other binary distros like Void can package a compatibility layer (use the deep magic of LD_PRELOAD or LD_LIBRARY_PATH or chroot or something, plenty of tools available). The crazy Exherbo and Gentoo users will figure it out. (Source: crazy Exherbo user here. No problem running Steam games after a few tweaks.) systemd dependency got you down? Make a shim. We're smart. We'll figure it out. If you get Void, Gentoo, Exherbo, etc users calling for support, tell them to Debian or GTFO.

    And honestly, at least you can troubleshoot crap on Debian. Good fucking luck on Windows.

    In the final analysis, games are published for Windows for the same reason publishers insist on DRM despite the fact that all available evidence indicates that file sharing services increase sales. It is because, unlike early stage capitalism, in late stage capitalism the role of free markets is diminished as the market comes to be dominated by oligarchy or monopoly (depending on the sector of the economy, etc). Oligarchies and monopolies do not have customers towards which they must be responsive; they have consumers they are free to abuse according to every passing whim and fad, no matter how unpopular among the consumer population.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Saturday April 06 2019, @12:49AM (2 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Saturday April 06 2019, @12:49AM (#825210)

      Ahem ... How should I put it politely, to you, and to TFA's author ...

      Linux is the biggest gaming platform worldwide.

      A distro has been picked, and hardware discrepancies have been addressed. Major publishers are involved, minor ones and indie guys too.
      The only problem is that most devices running games are not as powerful as PCs from five/ten years ago, I guess. But that's not Linux's fault.

      It's a solved problem, that people keep discussing for no good reason, maybe because they don't like that it's driven by Google, and it ain't the distro on their desktop.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:35PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:35PM (#825834)

        That's not the same problem--it's any linux on the desktop and gaming--and by extension, control. There is a lack of control and it's getting attacked very strongly.

        Efforts are being made to prevent ownership of games--there is no effort by Google to solve gaming on linux as the IT crowd understands it. The solution has been to get regular people to accept the lack of ownership and pay a subscription, and bypass the gaming on desktop issues entirely via things like Stadia.

        Your solution is just a symptom of how pervasive the efforts are to prevent the problem from being solved.

      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:06PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Sunday April 07 2019, @11:06PM (#825987) Journal

        The only problem is that most devices running games are not as powerful as PCs from five/ten years ago

        The low CPU power of a smartphone is not the only problem, nor even the biggest in my opinion. That'd be the unsuitability of touch input for some game genres.

        Most devices with the Linux distribution you're thinking of have neither a keyboard nor a gamepad. Instead, the only input devices that a game developer can rely on are a touch screen and an accelerometer. I've tried to emulate a gamepad with a touch screen; it wasn't fun. Because I was concentrating on the action in the middle, not the on-screen buttons at the corners, I kept missing the on-screen buttons with my thumbs. Unlike with a keyboard or gamepad, there's no tactile feedback as to whether my thumbs are aligned over the controls. It's possible to connect a keyboard or gamepad to a smartphone, but I haven't seen evidence that a commercially significant number of people actually do this regularly.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday April 05 2019, @05:20PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday April 05 2019, @05:20PM (#825010) Journal

    Yes, bundle everything, There's even an app for that: AppImage.