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How would something like FreeBSD show up on the steam end of year statistics?

Obviously nobody in their right mind is using BSD for gaming but I do wonder how it would show up

I heard there was a bsd port of steam at some point and some people got the Linux build working on it. I have to assume the Linux build would probably report as Linux unless it has some mechanism to determine operating system besides it being hard coded

Having 1% of my playtime be on BSD seems like a pretty good meme to me

sugar_in_your_tea , (edited )

On FreeBSD, you either run the Windows build through WINE or the Linux build through the Linux emulator.

People have claimed that running the SteamOS UI on a non-Steam Deck is reported as Steam Deck, so I’m guessing it’s based on the client version, not the OS version. So my money is on “Windows” if you’re running through WINE or “Linux” if you’re using the Linux compatibility layer. The hardware survey probably says “Other.”

That said, I do have like 5% on macOS, which is basically BSD. So I guess I’m a meme. :)

But you got me curious, maybe I’ll install FreeBSD and see if I can get Proton to work properly. I love FreeBSD, and if I can get most of my games working, I may consider switching back. It was my first *nix and I tried it as a desktop for a couple months, but bailed because of sleep not working on my laptop and Steam not working well on my desktop. Maybe it’s worth another look.

Edit: Here’s that related post about using the Steam Deck UI on a non-Steam Deck and having it count as a Deck.

anon5621 ,

Mac os is not BSD,but unix like OS,basically Darwin.Also if u are gonna need Vulkan ,and as i know .nvidia doesn’t support it on freebsd so only through opengl which is slow enough.About Intel and AMD not sure.

sugar_in_your_tea , (edited )

The userland is largely pulled from FreeBSD, so your basic utilities like cp and ls will be based on FreeBSD versions (go ahead and man something). Add to that the kernel is based on the mach kernel, which is based on the BSD kernel, which the FreeBSD kernel is also a descendant of. So there’s basically more shared heritage between macOS and FreeBSD than pretty much any other OS family, including other BSD-derivatives like OpenBSD or NetBSD.

Also, the main reason macOS is “UNIX” is because they paid a bunch of money to get certified. I’m guessing FreeBSD would also pass if they cared, and some Linux distros probably could as well. But nobody really cares about that branding anymore, so it’s not worth it.

Darwin is just what Apple calls their kernel, but it came from the mach kernel which itself came from BSD (before the bad times of the early 90s fractured the BSD community with lawsuits).

Vulkan

Yeah, that’s my biggest worry. I use an AMD GPU, and I haven’t kept track of the status of AMD on FreeBSD. I know NVIDIA drivers used to be way better than AMD drivers on FreeBSD, but maybe that has changed now that the AMD driver is FOSS.

I gave up my last FreeBSD server about 5 years ago because I wanted to use Docker, but maybe it’s time to give it another look. At the very least, it’ll be fun to take another look.

flashgnash OP ,

Ah I see. Seems like a good theory. It can definitely tell Linux and steam deck apart as I’ve got both on my report (about 40/40 as of this year whoop)

Let me know how it goes though I don’t think the report updates, think it’s just a static snapshot

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yeah, I wouldn’t do it for the report, I’m more curious about the state of gaming on FreeBSD.

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