Steam Survey Data For April 2019 Shows Only Minor Change In Linux Use

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Steam Survey Data For April 2019 Shows Only Minor Change In Linux Use

While Steam Play continues getting in better shape for running more interesting Windows games on Linux, there hasn't yet been a compelling enough reason for Windows gamers to switch over to Linux and that is reflected in the latest monthly Steam numbers...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Steam-Survey-April-2019

[flower]

my windows 10 vm with gpu passthrough setup is good enough.
i dont see any reason to switch to steam play. and i guess i am not the only one.

problem with this setup is that my powerful gpu is dedicated to my vm so i cant even use steam play for games.

why should anybody switch from a fully working system to something which only works most of the time?

[birdie]

"But I, royal majesty, have never received an invitation to participate in Steam HW Survey that's why Linux market share is a lot higher", let's have a couple of these idiotic comments below.

[Raka555]

We haven't gotten a steam survey in years, then on 1 May we got 2. So I was finally able to submit the details of our gaming PC.
A separate steam account on my laptop also popped up the survey within hours from the PC...
That after years of nothing.

[Ironmask]

As I've been saying, a lot more work needs to go into desktop Linux rather than just hoping the mythical year of the linux desktop will arrive fueled by hopes and dreams. Not even just technical work, I mean marketing too, the whole shebang. Valve's not doing much on either end. Canonical is inspiring, but still not quite cutting the mustard, especially with how much they prefer to re-use software than make their own. In fact I'm surprised they're even keeping up with Unity since they've abandoned everything else they've made (for better or worse, but it's still a bad statement). All other distros are hopeless without massive corporate backing, no matter how pretty their WM is.

[Creak]

why should anybody switch from a fully working system to something which only works most of the time?

I tried several times to set up a VM with GPU passthrough and failed each and every time.. there are just too many moving parts. You need to have the right motherboard, the right CPU, the right GPU, the right kernel, the right drivers, the right OS(es). On the other hand, on Steam, you click on "Play" and it just works. I think that's a pretty nice argument for Steam Play

[flower]

I tried several times to set up a VM with GPU passthrough and failed each and every time.. there are just too many moving parts. You need to have the right motherboard, the right CPU, the right GPU, the right kernel, the right drivers, the right OS(es). On the other hand, on Steam, you click on "Play" and it just works. I think that's a pretty nice argument for Steam Play

my point is: everbody who plays already has a setup which works for him. why should they switch?
some use dualboot, some vm's, some only play games like factorio others have a dedicated gaming pc.

it will take time for steam play

for me vm's are the best: i love to keep gaming seperate from business and i dont want to change that. most games are closed source and i dont trust many of them (looking at you epic atm)

[birdie]

On the other hand, on Windows, you click on "Play" and it just works.

FTFY.

[zexelon]

I am a semi-avid gamer, and have been for many years now. In the last year and a bit I have been through many iterations of software/OS's on my gaming rig. I have gone from a windows only machine, to a Linux hosted Windows box with GPU pass through that worked shockingly well (even had multiple gpu's allowing local multiplayer setups using LVM Gold Images), now to Linux hosted Linux with GPU pass through.

Why you ask would any sane person what to host Linux on top of Linux with GPU pass through??? Welp... why not? It actually provides a ton of benefits, especially using LVM gold imaging (i.e. thin provisioned images) and multiple GPUs.

My latest adventure of using Linux on Linux for gaming has also been stunningly successful! It has been many years since trying to game directly on Linux and I must admit it has come a very long way. Steam on Linux is awesome. Civ 6 is my game of choice these days and it actually performs much better on Linux on Linux than Windows on Linux, though based on some simple research this looks like a virt-io driver issue most likely (virt-io plays better with Linux than Windows... obviously).

My next test will be using X-Plane with VR on Linux... I am guessing this is going to be a rough go though given the very early stage of VR on Linux.

All in all the state of play on Linux these days is much much better. I was actually looking at purchasing Borderlands last night just because of the Linux support!

Also one shared PC for multi-player is just awesome Its also not that expensive:

CPU: i5 (with both VT-x & VT-d)
Mem: 16 Gb DDR3
GPU: 1070 (you need a GPU that supports UEFI boot, so anything nVidia 700 series and up... I have done it with BIOS boot but its really glitchy and has problems)
MB: Gigabyt something (dont remember the model)
HD: 3x Samsung EVO SSDs of various sizes managed by LVM

[oiaohm]

my windows 10 vm with gpu passthrough setup is good enough.
i dont see any reason to switch to steam play. and i guess i am not the only one.

problem with this setup is that my powerful gpu is dedicated to my vm so i cant even use steam play for games.

why should anybody switch from a fully working system to something which only works most of the time?

That is just because of your selected games there are particular old windows games in steam store that will not work at all on Windows 10. They work fine under Proton.

I tried several times to set up a VM with GPU passthrough and failed each and every time.. there are just too many moving parts. You need to have the right motherboard, the right CPU, the right GPU, the right kernel, the right drivers, the right OS(es). On the other hand, on Steam, you click on "Play" and it just works. I think that's a pretty nice argument for Steam Play

It more complex than that. Depending on the games you have go get VM with GPU pass-though to work and you have Windows 10 and the game does not run anyhow because it does not work under windows 10 and you now need to have Windows 7 or XP..

Something that is overlooked one of the reason why Valve is willing to invest so much money into Proton is they are looking at their pool of games they sell and seeing more and more that they could sell to Windows and OS X users that the cannot sell any more due to not working with updated versions of those operating system so after a new market for them that they have some control of.

The reality here with steam games Windows 10 is also only a solution that works most of the time just it still more most of the time than current proton but that may not stay that way.