75% of Steam's Top 1000 Games Work On Linux Now (ghacks.net) 83
75% of the top 1,000 games run on Linux now, and the figure is even higher, at 80%, for the top 100 games. gHacks reports: Valve Software, the company behind the popular Steam gaming platform and smash hits such as Dota 2, Half-Life and Team Fortress, announced plans in 2018 to improve Windows game support for Linux. [...] The independent database protondb keeps track of compatibility using user reports. Compatibility has improved significantly in recent years. The site highlights compatibility for the top 10, top 100 and top 1000 games on Steam.
75% of the top 1000 games run on Linux now, and the figure is even higher, at 80%, for the top 100 games. Only the top 10 games are not well represented, as only 40% of them run on Linux without major issues according to the database. Users have submitted more than 150,000 reports for over 21,000 games to the site. Of these 21,000 games, more than 17,600 are working according to the site. Games on the database are ranked using a medal system. Platinum and Gold rated games run perfectly, and silver games may have minor issues. Bronze games may crash or have serious issues. Borked games won't work at all or are unplayable, and native Linux games are just the opposite of that.
Protondb has a search feature that Linux gamers may use to find out if games that they are interested in work well on Linux. All games that match the search term are returned, which means that you can search for entire series of games, e.g. King's Bounty, Final Fantasy or Civilization, and get all reported games and their compatibility rating returned. Compatibility is improving, and while there are still games that won't run on Linux, it is clear that compatibility has improved significantly in the past couple of years.
75% of the top 1000 games run on Linux now, and the figure is even higher, at 80%, for the top 100 games. Only the top 10 games are not well represented, as only 40% of them run on Linux without major issues according to the database. Users have submitted more than 150,000 reports for over 21,000 games to the site. Of these 21,000 games, more than 17,600 are working according to the site. Games on the database are ranked using a medal system. Platinum and Gold rated games run perfectly, and silver games may have minor issues. Bronze games may crash or have serious issues. Borked games won't work at all or are unplayable, and native Linux games are just the opposite of that.
Protondb has a search feature that Linux gamers may use to find out if games that they are interested in work well on Linux. All games that match the search term are returned, which means that you can search for entire series of games, e.g. King's Bounty, Final Fantasy or Civilization, and get all reported games and their compatibility rating returned. Compatibility is improving, and while there are still games that won't run on Linux, it is clear that compatibility has improved significantly in the past couple of years.
Moving the goal posts (Score:3)
We can't say we have won until boring crap like Photoshop and Office run on Linux natively.
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Are they /really/ needed when analogues (like gimp/krita) exist?
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Yes.
Like languages (spoken or programming), when you know only one, picking up the second seems overwhelming. Once you know a few, it's not such a big deal. If you know only Photoshop, learning another just so you can use Linux is laughable. And Gimp, despite its many advantages, really isn't good enough to replace Photoshop.
Re:Moving the goal posts (Score:5, Insightful)
So clearly you're talking about what Windows users need from Linux. Which is frankly irrelevant if you're not the CEO of some company looking to profit from selling desktop Linux or save a few bucks converting your workers to it.
As a Linux user, I have no interest in Photoshop or Office being ported for exactly the reasons you describe: I've been using Gimp and LibreOffice(/OpenOffice) for 20 years and don't want to learn something new for the same tasks.
Game ports, on the other hand, will interest Linux users -- because most people don't like to play the same 3 games for decades.
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Well Photoshop seems fairly usable for someone who has not used it a lot. I have had to use it a few time in the last few years and it went fairly easily.
But I tear my hair off every time I try to use Microsoft Office(specially Excel) for anything more complicated than typing a formula or value in a cell, as it has morphed into a quite different beast from the last version I used more (2003) and is definitely not user friendly. Any way to know how to do anything is by search and even even you need to know t
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Krita is considerably better as a digital painting tool than Photoshop is, and digital artists probably account for the majority of Photoshop users. Or in other words, Krita is better at what Photoshop is most often used for.
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Yes, especially high end cad packages.
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For Office, including lecture slides and the like, I use LibreOffice for my own stuff, which is nicely cross-platform. Unfortunately most of the industry insists on the crappy MS Office and MS makes sure to stay incompatible.
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MS Office seems actually fairly compatible on the level that matters to me, that is it can read and write files done by LibreOffice and LibreOffice can read and write files done by it for documents and spreadsheets.
I do not use the slides so no idea how compatible they are between them.
The problem is that MS has made the Office user interface totally unusable, specially in Excel. (Word basic formatting is still possible to find). Unfortunately I have to use Excel a few times a year and Duckduckgo gets a lo
Re: Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
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As long as libre office continues with crap compatibility it will never gain significant marketshare
I've had a decent number of documents that would not open in MS Office but would open in LibreOffice. While I'm sure not everyone has had this experience, I can tell you quite certainly that compatibility on the LibreOffice side isn't such a problem as you're saying it is.
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As long as libre office continues with crap compatibility it will never gain significant marketshare
I've had a decent number of documents that would not open in MS Office but would open in LibreOffice. While I'm sure not everyone has had this experience, I can tell you quite certainly that compatibility on the LibreOffice side isn't such a problem as you're saying it is.
The problem is as follows: tell you boss/client/whomever that you can't open his file with MS Word and it's a "oh well it must be corrupted". Tell them it won't open in LibreOffice and you'll get "a what office? What kind of shitty crap hippie app can't doc files?! Get MS Word this instant or you're fired!!!".
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As long as libre office continues with crap compatibility it will never gain significant marketshare
The compatibility problem in on the MS side. Well, eventually they will be forced to stop their anti-competitive practices.
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To what actually is Gimp an analogue? Never heard about Krita, though.
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Are they /really/ needed when analogues (like gimp/krita) exist?
For Pete's sake....
Having GIMP is nice. I use it frequently. But GIMP isn't even in the same league as Photoshop.
Re: Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
Look at it this way.
Gimp is better by lengths than Photoshop was 10 years ago.
And 10 years ago I heard nobody bitch around how "inadequate and bottom-league" Photoshop was, and how "it's lacking all these features before you can do real work with it" and "a real pro can't use Photoshop of 2010 yet... maybe in 10 years' time." All I heard was praise and flowers, the only limitation to quality being the artist's skill and phantasy. So... while Gimp may or may not be equal in capability to Photoshop today, I f
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Look at it this way.
Gimp is better by lengths than Photoshop was 10 years ago.
No it's not. Not even close. Gimp is better than Photoshop was 20 years ago, MAYBE. I maintain a copy of Photoshop CS6 on a Windows 7 VM. GIMP isn't even as good as that release... And that fucker is pretty old now (Photoshop CS6 was released in May 2012). So no. GIMP isn't where Photoshop was 10 years ago.
And 10 years ago I heard nobody bitch around how "inadequate and bottom-league" Photoshop was, and how "it's lacking all these features before you can do real work with it"
It's obvious you don't use both. Because that argument is silly. Photoshop was never the "bottom league" editor so, of course, nobody said anything stupid like that. It has always been the cutting-e
Re: Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
I never claimed I worked with any of both (I actually do work with Gimp once in a while; but I didn't even make that claim, and it's not important).
But you managed to use so many words and still misunderstand my point: it's not about whether Photoshop is better or worse than Gimp. It's also not about whether 700 hp is better than 500 hp (to use a car analogy).
It's about whether you can get useful work done within a comparable time and cost frame. 500 hp is plenty for essentially everything - yes, even for r
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But you managed to use so many words and still misunderstand my point: it's not about whether Photoshop is better or worse than Gimp. It's also not about whether 700 hp is better than 500 hp (to use a car analogy).
It's about whether you can get useful work done within a comparable time and cost frame.
And the answer is no. The time-frames and cost are not comparable. They MIGHT BE if the two programs were... closer in features and technology, perhaps. But they aren't. I'm approaching this from the CS6 perspective. i.e. a program you paid for once and can use forever. I'll not be getting into the CC (creative cloud) subscription bullshit.
$600 spread out over however many years you want.. I'll use my 20. That's $30/year. I.e. Almost nothing. Photoshop makes a lot of stuff MUCH faster and is much mor
Re: Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
When your income derives from a program, you use the best value for the money. Free isn't always the best value.
You're restricting yourself to a purely monetary interpretation of "value".
And you saying that you're not into "that Creative Cloud fuckery" is pretty much my point: it doesn't matter whether you're into it or not. It's not your decision, it's Adobe's. All it takes for them is for example to change the file format, and everyone evolves away from CS6. You have months left in which you can decide whether you buy into the "fuckery" or abandon years of acquired skill, because you won't be able to save data in a
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You're restricting yourself to a purely monetary interpretation of "value".
And you saying that you're not into "that Creative Cloud fuckery" is pretty much my point: it doesn't matter whether you're into it or not. It's not your decision, it's Adobe's. All it takes for them is for example to change the file format, and everyone evolves away from CS6.
WTF? I have mentioned both COST and the labor saving aspects of it. That's not restricting myself to a monetary interpretation of value. Why are you now engaging in gas-lighting?
My copy of CS6 works now, and will work for as long as it works. Two decades so far. I paid for it, in full. I get to use it as long as I want. And you can still purchase it today. The CC fuckery is IRRELEVANT. All formats Photoshop has ever produced are still supported, as far as I am aware, and at least as an IMPORT.
Adobe
Re: Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
I don't think we'll be getting anywhere here.
I'm emphasizing a philosophical background which you have difficulties to acknowledge even has a right to exist - freedom for the user (as in: the 4 basic freedoms, courtesy of RMS). Not only that, I'm also claiming that this is in fact crucial and worth throwing almost everything else out for. (So much in fact that you may have noticed I didn't call it Open Source, I consistently called it Free Software.)
You on the other hand are not even remotely interested in
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So enjoy your software your own way.
Ditto.
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I'll sing Linux's praises all day long. Because it IS better than Windows. Gimp is NOT better than Photoshop. Gimp isn't even in the same league as Photoshop.
Photoshop isn't better for the simple reason that I cannot use it on *BSD or Linux systems. It is of no use whatsoever to me. Perhaps if it was available on Steam I may have a look some day if I ever need it, but I don't. GIMP works everywhere for me.
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Photoshop isn't better for the simple reason that I cannot use it on *BSD or Linux systems. It is of no use whatsoever to me. Perhaps if it was available on Steam I may have a look some day if I ever need it, but I don't. GIMP works everywhere for me.
And that's a perfectly fair and reasonable statement.
Re: Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
Is it because it's not FOSS?
I'll sing Linux's praises all day long. Because it IS better than Windows. Gimp is NOT better than Photoshop.
Also, to clarify: yes, to me, it's all about Free Software. Proprietary software gives people I haven't met (e.g. Photoshop developers) too much power over my life - even if inadvertently so. Remember few years ago, when all of a sudden everyone in a South American state (Venezuela I think) was unable to use their bought & paid for Photoshop instance for a week or so? And they also couldn't request a refund?
That's possibly all of someone's life's work, all the economic basis of a business, just gone, at
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Is it because it's not FOSS?
I'll sing Linux's praises all day long. Because it IS better than Windows. Gimp is NOT better than Photoshop.
Also, to clarify: yes, to me, it's all about Free Software. Proprietary software gives people I haven't met (e.g. Photoshop developers) too much power over my life - even if inadvertently so. Remember few years ago, when all of a sudden everyone in a South American state (Venezuela I think) was unable to use their bought & paid for Photoshop instance for a week or so?
Yeah. That's the Creative Cloud (CC) fuckery. I'm not getting into that. I already disclaimered that. I'm basing everything off the CS line of products (pay for ONCE, own forever).
I mostly don't care for "better" or "worse". I don't even care forn" same league". I actually only care about free (as in speech). I'd take an order of magnitude productivity loss only to use Free Software. (If it costs me more than that, I'd have to think hard, admittedly; but I didn't come into that situation yet..). That's what my freedom is worth to me.
Fine. But my whole argument was around the Professional use. I'm not trying to push Photoshop on amateurs or home users. Goddamnit.... Taking an order of magnitude loss in productivity in a professional setting would drive you out of business pretty fucking fast.
As to the why I get into these arguments: What usually triggers me is the comparison between MS Office and LibreOffice. Because there's essentially no significant difference there; whoever complains is just being various versions of whiny.
Yeah. The two are very close. I suspect a lot of that is because L
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Adobe Creative Accounting
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It isn't in the cloud in meaning running on someone else's computer. It's in the cloud meaning you can log in and install it on a computer without physical installation media and you can store documents on Adobe's servers to sync between computers. The applications still run locally. There are full-featured Mac and Windows versions, and mobile versions (iOS and Android) with somewhat reduced functionality.
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Yes. The biggest reason I still have windows is solidworks.
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Could be a pyrrhic victory when linux makes it to the business desktop.
Looking at how firms try to castrate your workflow in the name of "security", just try to imagine the abomination that would result from them laying their grubby hands on linux.
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Photoshop will be very difficult to get working on Linux. It has a load of DRM crap that is designed to be difficult to fool, and supports GPU acceleration via Windows APIs that don't easily map to Linux ones.
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Anything wrong with LibreOffice?
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What argument? I didn't see an argument mentioned in TFS. This is just saying that Linux users who like modern games might be interested in Steam's offerings now.
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He was engaging in "projection through accusation". It's fashionable these days.
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Only if you consider broken-by-default as working (Score:5, Informative)
ProtonDB advertises the "gold and better" as being "compatible", but even gold games require manual tweaking to get working, with many high-profile "gold" games seeing reports of crashing or black screens or just not working at all. I would only consider "Platinum" and "Native" rated games to be properly compatible (especially for the Steam Deck where people will expect a console-like experience and not diving into the terminal and config files on their new handheld game console) and the numbers there are far more dire. 30% of the top 10 games, 35% of the top 100 games, and 41% of the top 1000 games.
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There has never been a time in the past 30+ years when PC gamers didn't tweak game/[dos | windows]/graphics settings as evidenced by the copious quantity of "tweak" guides and sites online.
Ergo, you must be one of those game console dweebs.
Re: Only if you consider broken-by-default as wor (Score:2)
Re: Only if you consider broken-by-default as wo (Score:1)
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FPS not GPS. Nothing in Earth orbit, Mars, or whipping through the Solar System runs on MS Windows.
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Except for Cyberpunk 2077, anything from Bethesda (except id Software, their stuff always at least at least work OOTB), Microsoft (you'd think they could get their games to work day 1 on their own OS...), and a whole host of other AAA games whose forums (and on Steam) are lit up with issues just running let alone at a decent fps.
Also, most tweak guides are not for nutjobs like me that goes out and buys the latest computer gadgetry for best whiz-bang eye candy and frame rates. They are for people to get PLAY
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Sure, but their own definition of "gold" compatibility is "Runs perfectly after tweaks". For many Linux users, that may be fine. For a new Steam Deck customer who thinks of it like a Nintendo Switch for PC games, and who doesn't even have a physical keyboard on the device to make those tweaks, it's going to be a terrible experience. And how does a user sitting their on their handheld game console know what tweaks they need to apply? By scouring the ProtonDB compatibility reports?
My skepticism is not about P
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Valve could build game-by-game compatibility profiles that are applied automatically.
If they do not do this, the product is worse than DOA. Isn't the entire point of Steam OS to be Linux, but with all the necessary tweaks for running Steam games? Since Steam knows the platform your are playing on, it would be nonsense to let the user download a game onto their steam deck if it doesn't work out-of-the-box.
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Well a lot of games also have problems when running natively on windows, so who's to say that a game crashing on proton is because of proton - that crash might have occurred anyway.
The Internet is full of forums of people complaining about bugs with games.
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Many people aren't going to be comparing this to a Windows PC, they're going to be comparing it to a Nintendo Switch or a Playstation or an Xbox. And whatever problems those might have, when you download a new Switch game and launch it, it just works.
Steam Deck (Score:1)
If they're Gold, the Steam Deck will come with recipes automatically applied to tweak them to the specific spec of the device.
Work or "work" (Score:4, Insightful)
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Linus Tech Tips is doing a series of videos where they are trying to use Linux on their personal machines for a month. So far they have covered installing and getting their streaming set-ups to work, and the next episode is going to be gaming.
I expect they will have the same experience as you. A lot of stuff that is supposed to work doesn't really work, a lot of fiddling is needed, and in the end the performance is noticeably worse than Windows.
They mean "Wine" when saying "runs on Linux". (Score:4, Informative)
The reason this works is that Valve forked Wine to create Proton, which runs all those games. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but its emulation alright.
Re:They mean "Wine" when saying "runs on Linux". (Score:4, Informative)
You do know what Wine stands for, right?
From Wikipedia: "Wine provides its compatibility layer for Windows runtime system (also called runtime environment) which translates Windows system calls into POSIX-compliant system calls, recreating the directory structure of Windows, and providing alternative implementations of Windows system libraries, system services through wineserver and various other components (such as Internet Explorer, the Windows Registry Editor, and msiexec)."
It's more of an alternative implementation of the Windows runtime than an emulator. Fine point, for sure.
In any case, Wine and Proton are impressive bodies of work. And some of the implementations of the system libraries and services are superior under Linux. Some of the scaling tricks, for example, are better than one can get on Windows using the same hardware. I don't really game, but when I looked at what was going on in the Proton world, I was truly impressed, but not quite enough to dive back into gaming.
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It is indeed a very fine point, when you consider that many emulators these days work the same way. The first was UltraHLE, an N64 emulator that didn't attempt to emulate the GPU directly, but rather translated the API calls to it into DirectX ones.
Many emulators for systems that came after the N64 do the same thing. They still call themselves emulators, even the ones that are for systems which run X86 code natively.
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Read the fine print (Score:2)
Proton is still in its infancy so support is inconsistent, but regularly improving.
"support is inconsistent" - What does this mean?
Most of what you may be used to on Windows or MacOS is possible on Linux without having to tinker too much, and the tinkering can even be fun.
Define "too much". Define "tinkering can even be fun". BSDM can even be fun (to those who enjoy it), but that's niche fun, not mainstream fun (I hope...).
silver games may have minor issues
Define "minor issues". To me, it means it might crash once in 100 hours of gameplay, or that some button label exceeds its text area. I looked up a few games I usually play:
Game 1: "Store related pages, including Collector Vehicles Page show up blank with invisible clickable elements. not aware of any work ar
minor issues = at risk of be flagged for cheating? (Score:2)
minor issues = at risk of be flagged for cheating?
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Not the OP, but there are a few types of tinkering that will handle, say, 80% of tinkering needed for games:
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Yes, but in order to do that, someone needs to first be a Linux user, then be a gamer.
Therefore, this is not (yet) addressed to people who want an out-of-the-box experience, like most gamers who currently use Windows.
I'm ditching windows 11 (Score:2)
There is no need for me to have spyware built in to my OS anymore, or all the other privacy reducing 'features' that microsoft is now forcing on users.
Don't worry. (Score:3)
Epic will fix that by buying out the most popular ones, making them Epic Games exclusives and giving the middle finger to Steam users who were happy running them on Linux, like they did with Rocket League.
All to save PC gaming from the evil's of Steam naturally.
As Microsoft intends... (Score:2)
The low numbers for the top 10 games are exactly what Microsoft hopes to achieve and maintain. Continue to add new features to DirectX/Windows for new games to take advantage of that won't be present on Linux for years. This will forever ensure that the newest, most popular (and profitable) games remain in the realm of Windows.
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While it is the standard sport here to blame everything on Microsoft, if you have a look at the top 10 list you will see that multiplayer games are the most played games on the PC. It is not DirectX and Windows that is the problem, but rather anti-cheat software that is the bane of playing Windows games on Linux.
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I don't think you can blame Microsoft for actively maintaining DirectX. Hardware gets faster so DirectX gets updated to do more. After all, it's not like elsewhere people add URL parsing and LDAP calling functionality to a logging mechanism...
Linux Gaming still has a long way to go (Score:1)
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I'd say it's true, generally speaking, that Linux doesn't offer much of anything over Windows in the PC gaming space. What it does offer is an alternative to Windows if Windows is seriously pissing you off, which seems to be more and more common. I've put 800+ hours in Satisfactory and maybe a hundred-ish hours in Subnautica, Phasmophobia,
How well does it work? Real usage stats? (Score:2)
Now let's ask the real question about what percentage of all games played are played on Linux vs. Windows? Perhaps break it down per top 1, 5, 10, 100, 1000 games (or heck, do it per game!), what percentage of game time is spent on Linux vs Windows. "Works on Linux" is ambiguous, doesn't mean it works as well on Linux as on Windows. Users actually playing it will tell you whether it works well.
Recommended browser extension (Score:3)
There's a cross-browser web extension, ProtonDB Steam Summary [mozilla.org], which adds info from ProtonDB to Steam store pages. I find it very useful.
The protondb is flawed (Score:2)
One of the games I own is shown as "bronze" i.e. "runs with issues". However, on several systems I have tried it on, it does not run at all. Doesn't even start.
Yes it's one example only, but that database is not reliable as it's comprised of - in many cases - the individual experiences of 1-2 people, and often those experiences are several years old and not reproducible in the present state of Proton.
Until Linux takes games seriously (Score:2)