The recent news that SteamOS may soon be shipped with third-party devices could be particularly important for Linux gaming on desktops.

Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    301·
    12 days ago

    The only bastion left is anticheat. Everything else are just (bad) old habits fueled by marketing.

    • dan@upvote.au
      121·
      11 days ago

      Anti-cheat systems already have to make changes, since Microsoft have plans to significantly restrict kernel mode access after the major Crowdstrike issues earlier in the year. Kernel mode code is very invasive, difficult to get correct, and can result in major security holes or stability issues if not written correctly.

      A bug in userland code may crash that one app. A bug in kernel mode code can (and often does) cause bluescreens, that people blame Microsoft for. I’m sure they’re tired of being blamed for buggy code written by other companies.

      Running the anti cheat code in userland will (in theory) make it easier to run on other OSes too.

      https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-paves-the-way-for-Linux-gaming-success-with-plan-that-would-kill-kernel-level-anti-cheat.888345.0.html

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
        3·
        10 days ago

        Yes indeed, I’ve followed that from afar (as I generally mostly play offline, definitely not competitively) so I hope this will be the final missing piece.

        • dan@upvote.au
          1·
          10 days ago

          I also only play games offline, and these days it’s usually on my Xbox rather than on PC, but I’ve been following this since I’m a software engineer and it’s interesting from a development perspective. Kernel-mode anti-cheat has a lot of similarities with malware/rootkits.

    • Amju Wolf@pawb.socialEnglish
      91·
      11 days ago

      …and VR. VR is already finicky on its own, gaming on Linux can be finicky in different ways, and the issues multiply if you have two things like that.

      • utopiah@lemmy.ml
        61·
        11 days ago

        I work in VR, I play in VR, including Windows games, all on Linux. No specific problem for me on that front.

          • yonder@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            11 days ago

            Yes, Meta shit actually works quite well using Wivrn apart from it being, well, from Meta. lvra.gitlab.io is a treasure trove of Linux VR info. SteamVR is kinda shit on linux, so using the open source openXR runtime Monado is ideal. I personally use a pimax 5k I got cheap used to play Beat saber and it works quite well. While not complete, there is very promising progress on getting WMR headsets working. The Index, Vive and Vive pro all work with no fiddling though if that’s what you’re after.

          • utopiah@lemmy.ml
            2·
            10 days ago

            I’m basically just using Steam with SteamVR on the Index, no tinkering in there.

            I also tried other things, e.g. Monado, streaming to headset, etc but in practice I prefer to “just” play when I’m playing and for that the Index works great.

            • yonder@sh.itjust.works
              1·
              10 days ago

              Huh. I have personally found SteamVR to be slow and very flakey, even on Windows. I find using monado I can just play. I guess monado has a bit more initial setup, but I personally found it to be worth it.

      • priapus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        5·
        11 days ago

        Tends to depend on the headset you own, some work perfectly. Also, Valve is very likely releasing a headset based on SteamOS, which should help.