Lutris as the open-source Linux game manager that makes it easy to install Wine game as well as various emulator games, Steam titles, and more, is out with an interesting update to kick off the new year.

The numbers Steam posted on New Year's Day for the December 2020 Linux gaming marketshare showed a drop of 0.33% down to just 0.57%. That is a rather large drop but now Valve has updated their numbers and point to Linux still regressing percentage wise but not as bad as originally reported.

It's been a turbulent year and 2020 is certainly ending interesting in the Linux/open-source space... If it wasn't odd enough seeing Sony providing a new official Linux driver for their PlayStation 5 DualSense controller for ending out the year, there is also a new Linux port to the Nintendo 64 game console... Yes, a brand new port to the game console that launched more than two decades ago.

If you miss flying this holiday season due to the pandemic, you can at least experience it virtually by flying your own aircraft with the open-source, cross-platform FlightGear flight simulator software.

The highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 game will run on Linux on launch day by means of Steam Play!

A new SDL2 library release is being prepared for this widely-used, cross-platform abstraction layer popular with games for supporting a wide range of input devices / peripherals and other vast subsystem coverage in a portable manner.

Proton 5.13-3 is out today as the latest version of this Wine downstream that powers Valve's Steam Play for running Windows games rather well on Linux.

The Syscall User Dispatch support looks like it should be mainlined for the Linux 5.11 kernel. This functionality is important for modern Windows games running on Linux under Wine / Proton.

DXVK 1.7.3 is out as the latest stable update to this project implementing the Direct3D APIs atop Vulkan for accelerating the Linux gaming experience.

Unigine 2 remains one of the most visually stunning game and simulation engines out there. That's even with still using OpenGL (or Direct3D 11 also on Windows) while their Vulkan renderer remains in the works. Unigine 2.13 is out this week as their latest iteration of this visually incredible engine with first-rate Linux support.

The Godot Game Engine has been funding work on a GPU-based texture compressor to deal with the issue that importing textures to this leading open-source game engine can often be painfully slow.

Earlier this year we reported on Linux kernel work for better handling Windows games/apps that make system call instructions that bypass the Windows API. Directly making the system calls without going through the WinAPI has become an increasingly common occurrence for modern Windows games, likely as part of their Digital Rights Management schemes. Syscall User Dispatch is now the latest take on that effort.

In time for the weekend Linux gamers is an updated Proton release from Valve and CodeWeavers for powering Steam Play to enjoy the latest Windows games on Linux.

Last week Valve added Sony PlayStation 5 controller support to SDL2 while today there is launch-day support for the Xbox Series X controller for this cross-platform abstraction layer popular with games.

FlightGear 2020.3 is out today as the newest feature update to this long-standing, open-source flight simulator software package.

While the Sony PlayStation 5 isn't beginning to ship until next week there is now support within the widely-used SDL2 library for its controllers.

We haven't heard much of traditional Linux gaming on any ARM-powered Qualcomm notebooks as it would rely on the likes of Hangover for running Windows x86_64 games on ARM, but the Turnip Vulkan driver within Mesa has a necessary feature for now being able to run DXVK with the Direct3D 10_1 (v10.1) feature level.

Windows gaming on Linux got some love this week at the Linux Foundation's Open-Source Summit Europe virtual event. In particular, a recap of the work that's been done so far on extending the Linux kernel to better support Wine / Steam Play based support for Windows games running on Linux.

If 2020 couldn't get more peculiar, today the SDL2 project mainlined support for the OS/2 operating system.

Warzone 2100 as the real-time strategy/tactics game that first premiered in 1999 before becoming open-source in 2004 and then fully open-source with game data in 2008 is now evolving in 2020 with Vulkan graphics support.

Not only did Unity Software experience a successful IPO last week but they also rolled out the Unity 2020.2 engine into public beta and with that comes some "major speed-ups" for performance.

Unvanquished was one of the most promising open-source game projects nearly a decade ago with its "Daemon" engine but since abandoning their monthly alpha release regiment and their beta/stable releases never materializing either, it's been relatively quiet the past few years. But their developers have been persisting and today they are announcing that following a three-year cleanup the game is fully free/open-source including all assets under applicable licenses.

GameMode 1.6 is out as the Linux daemon developed by game porting firm Feral Interactive for setting the CPU frequency scaling governor and other helpers when launching games in an effort to enhance the Linux gaming performance and then returning the system to its prior state after the game has quit.

For those looking at enjoying some open-source Linux gaming this weekend, SuperTuxKart 1.2 is out as the Mario Kart inspired racing game that is cross-platform and features the Linux mascot Tux.

Proposed last summer by Valve and Collabora developers were extending the Linux kernel's futex system call to allow for more optimal thread pool synchronization and paired with Wine/Proton work to better match the semantics of Windows. That then spun into creating a new system call, futex2. With the recently closed Linux 5.9 merge window the new futex2 system call didn't land, but the work is still being pursued.

The popular, cross-platform Unity game engine is planning for a very exciting 2021.

Linux game porter Ethan Lee who also develops FNA-XNA today released FAudio 20.08 as the open-source XAudio re-implementation.

The Unigine Engine appears to be having great success in the engineering and simulation space more so than for the competitive game engine space, but in any case Unigine 2.12 is now out with this visually stunning engine delivering even more life-like visuals while continuing to be Linux-friendly.

Last month on Phoronix were 350+ benchmarks of the AMD Ryzen 3 3300X vs. Intel Core i3 10100, including a number of Linux gaming performance tests. Following that I also ran some tests with the Core i5 10600K tossed in for those that may be weighing between the Ryzen 3 / Core i3 vs. Core i5 for gaming. Here are those additional data points.

Unity 2020.1 is out today as the latest feature release for this popular, cross-platform game engine.