Linux surpasses the Mac among Steam gamers

The article doesn't mention it, but you can flip SteamOS to Desktop Mode where it's just a normal Arch Linux desktop.

So it is proper Linux, as GP comment implies. Yes it's running games in Windows compatibility layers, but it is also a complete Linux system itself, with desktop. Definitely counts as running Linux.

And a decent chunk of those games are running on the Unity or Unreal runtimes. Do they count as "running on Windows"? Where are we drawing the line here?

>And a decent chunk of those games are running on the Unity or Unreal runtimes. Do they count as "running on Windows"?

if the developer released it as a windows build but is being played though a compatibility layer, yes. Unity and Unreal both support deploying Linux builds, but it doesn't mean making a proper Linux port is as easy as pressing the "Linux" button.

>Where are we drawing the line here?

I don't personally care for what counts or not. I just personally wish for more native support.

Same. I don't care about Proton compatibility for games and only look for native support. Something that works on Proton today might stop working tomorrow if the developer only cares about Windows. Even for games that do work on it, they have all sorts of bugs and glitches that may not be game-breaking but which I'm not going to put up with like a second-class citizen.

> but it doesn't mean making a proper Linux port is as easy as pressing the "Linux" button.

Depends ... It can be that easy, sometimes. I was maintaining a huge Unity based VR setup the last years which had both Linux and Windows PCs (mostly for legacy reasons). Building for both platforms was done from the same bash script with the only difference being the platform identifier.

Tbf that was a very standalone application that did not interact with the OS a lot, but otoh I would assume that a lot of games are like that.

> I just personally wish for more native support.

As someone who has played a lot of games with native linux "support", I want less of it.

In nearly every instance of these native ports, switching to using the windows version via Proton was a better experience, either because the Linux version was outdated, unmaintained and buggy, or it simply performed better.

Annoyingly, as far as I can tell, Steam these days doesn't make a distinction between native ports and Proton games so it's hard to tell if I'm getting served the unloved child version until something goes drastically wrong and I have to start messing around with it.

Many (maybe even most) native game ports on Linux use a WINE-like compatibility layer. So-called 'source ports' are rare.

Any kind of port can be of high or low quality, though.

>The article doesn't mention it, but you can flip SteamOS to Desktop Mode where it's just a normal Arch Linux desktop.

this is fascinating..

Is it possible to install Arch linux and add the SteamOS layer and cut over and back again as desired?

You can install any OS on it, and people have successfully recreated SteamOS behaviour on other distros (for example, NixOS).

You can also just go to the normal KDE Plasma environment from the steam menu and use it like normal Linux - or even install let's say emulators from Arch repos and add them to Steam then run them from SteamOS interface.

>either because the Linux version was outdated, unmaintained and buggy, or it simply performed better.

Sure, I can see that. My solution to that one day will hopefully be to make sure devs can keep their linux platforms updated, not give up and go around it with a windows build.

But Proton discourages that, not encourages. As you said, Steam doesn't want you to know what build you are playing, and if the audience doesn't know, then the devs won't care either.

Besides SteamOS, this is another reason why Linux is more popular on Steam. I play Steam games on both Mac and Linux: I can play more and better games on Linux (using Proton), but the ease of access on Mac makes me play there more. I just break my Linux too often because it’s a work tool.

So I think this is referring to the Steam Deck. Which (as you say) can support other Linux distros, it's not locked down to SteamOS. Or even other OS's if you wanted to.

I've only run SteamOS on my Deck, but afaik if you install it on something else then you can still flip it between the gaming mode and the desktop mode. In desktop mode it behaves exactly like you'd expect an Arch Linux install to behave, and you can mess around with it as much as you'd like. In gaming mode it's like a console and really only plays games (but isn't limited to Steam games - people have got it running emulators and all sorts of other stuff too).

I think Steam Deck is getting to be a large enough market that people are going to care about Linux support in the future (even if via Proton). It may be only 2%ish of the market, but I'll bet those 2% are the high-spending end of the market. The industry has reacted to the Deck by making everything work with it. That's not going to stop. Developers are not "only caring about Windows" any more.

You can install the normal steam client on Arch Linux, and the "big picture mode" (or whatever they call it now) is basically the "SteamOS" mode

The problem is that, long term, native games also break if they are not maintained. I trust more the wine/proton developers to fix compat issues than random game publishers.

My experience is the exact opposite.

So it might be they're using an outdated version of Wine, whereas leaving it to Steam means you get the latest Proton version?

My impression is the exact opposite. A native version would have to be actively maintained by the developer, and if they're not that interested the native version is likely to have more bugs, lag behind in development, not receive the latest updates, or even stop working altogether. If it's running on Proton, it's out of the devs hands, and it's either Valve or gamers maintaining the right configuration to get the best experience.

At least that's my very limited experience with linux gaming. I started only a couple of weeks ago, but so far, everything works incredibly well.

I'm using EndeavorOS (which is friendly Arch for newbies), and Steam is just an application that launches Steam games and it works great.

There are a couple of other game launchers, like Heroic, which handles both Epic and GOG games, which also works great.

But what's even better, is that if a GOG game doesn't quite run perfectly on Heroic because it lacks some of the latest refinements from Proton, you can import that game into Steam and taie advantage of Valve's nice work on Proton anyway.

I might do that; Cyberpunk on Heroic doesn't support raytracing or DLSS, and as I understand it, those do work if I were to run it on Steam. So that's a very nice option to have.

Yes, this is Steam Deck, and the "gaming mode" of steam deck is essentially a submode of Steam Big Picture mode (used for TV-like screens).

Not exactly. I don't think those proprietary compatibility layers are generally (ever?) based on Wine, since Wine is LGPL. But they might have different bugs than Proton does, and in some cases they may have more bugs that affect a given game.

Around the turn of the millennium a bunch of high profiles games were ported to linux. All of those are hard to run today as rely on libraries that are no longer easily available on a common Linux distro. Yet wine runs the WIN32 version just fine.

In the mid '10s Feral (and a to a lesser extent Aspyr), ported many AAA games to linx. Many of the ports were of quite good quality. I own a few of them, yet occasionally I have to switch to the Proton version as the native one fails to start.

OSS games are the exception of course: being able to produce a good working binary from source make them future proof.