I don’t game regularly, and Steamdeck is probably not something I’m going to be purchasing anytime soon. However, I was hopeful that Valve’s investment into Linux would be beneficial and to the larger Linux landscape.
I’m hopeful that more companies will look at Valve’s success and start building more on Linux in a way that will benefit the upstream community.
SteamOS is really evolving into something incredible. Now that it supports HDR and VRR it has become one of the best gaming experiences imo. It’s the fine tuning of a PC alongside the ease of use of a game console.
“Anti-piracy technologies is to the benefit of the game publishers, [but also] is of benefit to the players in that it protects the [publisher’s] investment and it means the publishers can then invest in the next game”
The only entity benefiting in this scenario is Denuvo, while the client clutches their pearls to protect a misguided concept of the elusive lost sale. Denuvo rakes in cash in the name of copy protection, but the truth is most acts of piracy are driven by a lack of means to obtain the product or a desire to demo the product.
Sure it’s their right to protect it but I don’t think there’s any accurate way to actually measure the impact of games with and without such aggressive copy protection.
because desktop Steam is technically browser with specific website opened.
The Steam client does use Chromium Embedded Framework for its interface, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. For example, Steam Input, Steam Overlay, Steamworks, and Steam Play (aka Proton) which itself is a collection of of nontrivial components.
If you just want an alternative launcher, there is Lutris, but there is no stand-alone Steam client alternative as far as I know.
It might be interesting to see how much functionality could be replicated in an open-source client. Some components, like DXVK and a web engine, are readily available. Others, like Steamworks, are not. SteamDB shows that it’s possible to inspect Steam’s game repositories, but actually downloading from them without Steam (or steamcmd) might be challenging. Goldberg Emulator shows that it’s possible to fool some games into thinking Steam is running, but that’s not enough to run games that include DRM.
Anyone attempting this would have to weigh the time they spend reverse engineering and re-implementing against the fact that Steam can always change its internal services, rendering all that time and effort wasted. And, of course, there would always be a risk that anyone using it (without explicit permission from Valve) might have their account banned.
Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I plan on keeping Linux on my second drive to continue playing around with it, but my gaming will probably go back to Windows. Might give bazzite or popos a try next.
My bad, that’s what I mean. Whatever drive bazzite is not installed on is difficult to deal with when it comes to flatpak steam. There’s a bunch of mount params you are supposed to use but for me they didn’t work whatsoever on bazzite.
I used what was there. From precious experience with auroraos I assumed it must have been flatpak steam, that’s my bad. Either way, even after following bazzite’s own instructions on auto-mounting drives to a T, external drives still had all sorts of issues. Link to the docs: universal-blue.discourse.group/t/…/970
I recommend trying another linux distro for a while. Arch has a pretty steep learning curve. So big respect for getting it to work as a first distro, but there is a lot of stuff you have to setup manually that just works on other distros. If you got more stuff working and get a little more familiar you can always go back to arch.
I use arch nowadays, but the first time i tried to install it i basically gave up a few times. If you just want to try it out in order to learn then it’s perfectly cool to take some time. But if your goal is to play games then arch is just a means to an end. Then it becomes really annoying, because you cannot reach your goal.
I don’t have experience with visual impairment, so take my answer with a grain of salt, however it seems that KDE has all the features you need. Plus it’s super customizable, so you could set it up to essentially emulate the MacOS desktop.
given nvidia having a better performance to cost ratio,
In what part of the world? I haven’t found that to be true.
the power usage (big one for a compact living room system),
You might want to do some more homework in this area. I recall AMD having better performance/watt in the tests I read before buying, but it’s hard to declare a clear-cut winner, because it depends on the workloads you use and the specific cards you compare. AMD and Nvidia don’t have exactly equivalent models, so there’s going to be some mismatch in any comparison. In stock configurations, I think both brands were roughly in the same ballpark.
Departing from stock, some AMD users have been undervolting their cards, yielding significant power savings in exchange for slight performance loss. Since you’re planning a compact living room system, you might want to consider this. (I don’t know if Nvidia cards can do this at all, or whether their drivers allow it.)
Regardless of brand, you can also limit your frame rate to reduce power draw. I have saved 30-90 watts by doing this in various games. Not all of them benefit much from letting the GPU run as fast as it can.
and the fact that they have the potential for HDMI2.1 support which AMD doesn’t have a solution to yet.
AMD cards do support HDMI 2.1. Did you mean Fixed Rate Link features, like variable refresh rate, or uncompressed 4K@120Hz? You’re not going to get that natively with any open-source GPU driver, because the HDMI Forum refuses to allow it. Most people with VRR computer displays use DisplayPort, which doesn’t have that problem (and is better than HDMI in nearly every other way as well). If you really need those FRL features on a TV, I have read that a good DisplayPort-to-HDMI adapter will deliver them.
Another thing to consider: How much VRAM is on the AMD card vs. the Nvidia card you’re considering? I’ve found that even if a card with less VRAM does fine with most games when it’s released, it can become a painful constraint over time, leading to the cost (and waste) of an early upgrade even if the GPU itself is still fast enough for the next generation of games.
I switched from Nvidia to AMD, and have not been sorry.
I’m not an Nvidia user, but just sounds like an overall win to me. Good for the developer (getting paid for open source work), good for Nvidia (further support of open source software), good for Linux Nvidia users (more Dev time/effort into the driver will likely improve it greatly).
linux_gaming
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.