Because for decades Microsoft has yielded to Linux’s superiority with unethical anti-competitive behaviour. E.g., it’s hard to compete with hardware that comes pre-installed with Windows.
Also for decades, Linux has had awful drivers for graphics cards (among other things) and godawful usability. It’s not like Linux would have taken over the desktop computer market in 1998. Have you ever tried installing a vintage distro? It’s a nightmare.
Not been my experience at all. Or am I misunderstanding and you’re saying that’s a past problem? Because I’ve used both AMD and Nvidia drivers on Mint and they’ve both been fantastic.
They’re a lot better these days, but I remember 15 years ago I had to spend hours in a command line just to get Linux to recognize my video card, much less utilize it properly. It’s definitely come a long long way but still far from perfect
I’ll ignore the market share question and talk a little about history. The compatibility layer is what killed OS/2 back in the day.
See, IBM (with OS/2) and Microsoft (with Windows 2.x and 3.x) were cooperating initially. Windows was the new kid on the block, and MS was allowing IBM to make a windows application compatibility layer on OS/2 in the early days. Think Windows 2.x/3.x. This was a brilliant stroke on behalf of MS, since the application developers would choose the Windows API and develop against that API only. Soon, there were no real native OS/2 apps being sold in any stores. Once MS Office came about, OS/2 was effectively a dead commercial product, outside of the server space.
The parallel here is that wine allows developers to target only the Windows API (again). This means you don’t have to bother with linux support at all and just hope that Proton or whatever will do the work for you.
There are some modern differences though. First: Linux didn’t start as a major competitor to Windows in the desktop/gaming space. We’d all love the Linux marketshare to increase, but largely there isn’t a huge economic driver behind it. So Linux will increase or not and the world will keep on turning. We’re not risking being delegated to history like OS/2. The second: the compatibility layer is being made as an open source project, and this isn’t MS trying to embrace-extend-extinguish in the same way that their assistance to IBM implementing that layer was. (We could quibble about .Net and Mono and others though.)
So I don’t think it’ll play out the same way. Linux will be okay. It’s already a vast improvement from prior years.
Historically, there was nothing like a killer hardware situation for OS/2 – no equivalent of the Steam Deck – that was driving wide hardware adoption to encourage additional native apps. Valve has done more for linux desktop adoption in the last few years than anyone that came prior.
I remember it well. I think the biggest difference between OS/2 then and Linux today is that OS/2 wasn't all that much better than Windows in any easily understood way for the average non-technical user.
I definitely feel like I got an absolute steal of a deal. No idea when the sale ends, but I got all 3 games in the BioShock series, with DLC, and the 2 remasters for a little over $11USD before tax this weekend. I just finished my first time playing any of the games on PC. Had to install the original on my desktop with win10 because I couldn’t get the resolution right or brightness slider working on my steam deck when docked. Definitely prefer console controls because I was having a lot of trouble with mouse and keyboard controls, so I’m gonna have to switch to controller.
Other than that, I started playing Stellar Initiative this weekend as well and it’s was pretty difficult on the easiest difficulty while I was learning how to play and what works well with which enemies.
Don’t know what’s going on at 2K, but I gladly took the offer and even got the bundle for a Steam friend I haven’t talked to for years.
Absolutely wild and I thought it was some sort of error at first considering right below it they were advertising just BioShock Infinite and their DLC pass thing for more than the whole bundle by a little less than $2.
The original is one of my favourite games of all time. I love everything about it. The setting is phenomenal. The mix of plasmids and gunplay. 2 is also really good and being able to use gun and plasmid simultaneously was a great quality of life improvement.
2 is a very solid game and well worth playing, but it doesn’t have anything on the original in terms of story execution in my opinion. But that’s a tall order since Bioshock 1 is one of the best games of all time.
I’ve still yet to play Infinite, but it’s on my list for this year.
I was one of the beta testers and back then it was severely lacking. Right now D4 is at its best and I can see that it will only get better. This season is tied for one of the best seasons so far. I’ll be playing it for several hours today.
As a gamedev I never saw this as a big issue. Just run Debian Oldstable on your build server, link whatever you can statically, and you are good.
(However, I am talking on a purely theoretical level here - we only released one Linux game, and that was before I joined the company. I will explain our actual reasons in a separate post.)
That would kinda mean you deliver every single dependency yourself, which kinda defeats the purpose of shared dependencies, which in turn proves my point that linux distros are fragmented to fuck. It also means you have to put actual effort into building your game for a userbase that was less than 1% before the steam deck came around.
So my point still stands - proton is the best thing that could’ve happened to linux gaming because it lets windows games run on linux with the dev putting only minimal effort - or even no effort - into making the game run on linux with near native performance. Hell, at times even with better performance.
Been playing Arcanum, hopefully through to the end for the first time this time. Only begun it before, never got far. The game has a lot of charms, but also a lot of frustrations. Typical Troika, I guess. When it’s firing on all cylinders and the pieces of a quest puzzle happen to click into place it can be great, but oftentimes imbecilic design decisions get in the way of having fun. And it doesn’t help that combat is horrible and the animations are ugly, even for its time.
I’m towards the end of the game now so I’ll try to push through since I’d like to have finished it at least once. I do enjoy the world building, at least parts of it. It’s a little disappointing that the races are derivative sort of boilerplate fantasy Tolkienesque Dwarves and Elves and Halflings etc, but the Victorian era inspired steampunk setting is well executed and the tension and conflict between magic and technology feels fully fleshed out and very grounded in the game world. I also really appreciate the again very Victorian flavored racism towards Orcs and Half-Orcs, including an explicit reference to The Jewish Question.
One of my favourite RPGs from growing up. Such a cool game. I loved the variety of builds you can make. Have you tried playing a low INT character yet? Really entertaining. Totally new dialogue options. Honestly though the main thing I remember is that metal door sound effect they use for basically everything.
I don’t think low INT is for a first playthrough so I haven’t, but I know it’s an option. And given a lot of the people behind Fallout 1&2 went on to work for Troika I’d expect nothing less. I might check it out some day, the low INT run in the first two Fallouts are great. I rarely feel like I have time to replay games these days though, with the length of my backlog.
I couldn’t put down Baldur’s Gate 3, again, but managed to beat Honor Mode for the first time. It felt like my characters were doing twice the damage, compared to my previous time in Act 3, so I just mopped the floor with pretty much all the bosses. There are a few more playthroughs I want to do, but I want to wait a bit. I’ve had like over 150 hours of BG3 this year already.
If anyone is interested, here are some more details of the run:
Honor ModeAct 1 and 2 were three permanent party members and two that alternated. Fire Sorcerer (MC), Gloomstalker Assassin (Astarion), Life Cleric (Shadowheart) and switched between Berserker Thrower (Karlach) and Battle Master Fighter (Lae’zel). Act 3 I shelved the Cleric and just went full DPS. For some quest fights I took the appropriate companion (Wyll for Ansur, Jaheira for Minsc), but for the House of Hope fight I went full caster comp and just stacked AoE spells on the choke point and hid, while the enemies slowly died. I also found out that a thrower build with returning weapons doesn’t work for the very final fight against the Netherbrain, since the weapons just fall through the non-existent ground and never return. The rest of my party had more than enough damage, so it didn’t matter, but I should have kept some of the gazillion Daggers I got shortly before. As for progression, Act 1 I got halfway to level 4 with very little combat. Disguising as a Drow and skipping combat with the Goblins is pretty easy. At level 4, more fights like the Gnolls, Paladins in the Tollhouse and starting in the Underdark. Then, at level 5 with a big power spike, the game gets pretty easy. Clearing out the rest of the map, and get to level 6 for the Mountain Pass. In Act 2 I travelled with the Drider group to Moonrise, but joined the Harpers in the ambush. I made the Drider drop the lantern and picked it up in combat. The Harpers want the Lantern afterward in a cutscene, but you can just switch to another character to free the Pixie. So after like 10 minutes, the Shadow-Curse becomes a non-issue. The rest of the zone is pretty easy, I defeated the three bosses in the ruined town (toll keeper, doctor and dude in the tavern) just through dialogue. Then the Gauntlet of Shar. I like to open the door to Balthazar with Knock, so he has to fight himself, while I slink away, invisible. Before finishing the Gauntlet, I go back and clear out Moonrise Tower, so the Harpers don’t just get killed. Then just finish the Gauntlet and beat Ketheric. That fight was probably the hardest in the game. At the end of Act 2 I was halfway to level 11. Then Act 3. Made my way to the Lower City very early and bought all the gear you can. First boss was Lorroakan, since he’s pretty easy, and Rolan survived this time. Through some easy side quests and fights, I made it to level 12, then started on the rest of the bosses. I had to kill Ansur early, since he ended my Honor Mode run previously. With Globes of Invulnerability, it’s a non-issue. The next ones were also no problem. Ethel 2, Cazador, Sarevok and Orin went down easily. Minsc wasn’t a problem, but the fights are kind of annoying, and you have to be careful at the end and don’t kill him. Raphael, another easy one, then the House of Grief. I messed up the Iron Throne again, since I didn’t speak with Gortash and/or Mizora enough and the Duke was dead. Everyone else survived, I think. The Steel Watch was surprisingly easy, it was only my second time doing it, but my party just shredded it. Gortash was the last boss, before the finale, and it was pretty sad, since he and his helpers just continually slipped on ice, while I sniped them from a distance. At the end, my MC was turned into a mind flayer, and I went to kill the Brain. I quickly cleaned up the Dragon and Mind Flayers, before getting to the Brain itself. Inside it wasn’t a problem, but the reaction after your first attack is annoying, and I lost a lot of damage because of that. In the epilogue, I started to talk to everyone, almost ate Jaheira’s brain, and then peaced out. I didn’t want to risk losing the run at the very last moment.
Then, I continued Final Fantasy VII Rebirth today. I completed a quest, won a Chocobo Race and fought a boss. Not much progress, but with BG3 done, maybe I can focus on this one.
The New Order was enjoyable vengence porn against Nazis, it’s a good time; maybe I need that again!
I’ve been playing the heck out of Harebrained Schemes’ BattleTech; I haven’t binge-played like this in a long time. It never feels fair; 2-1 odds is typical, but it’s always possible. Pretty satisfying to overcome unfair situations. Makes me feel smart and capable! Plus, jumpy stompy robots!
I started 1000xRESIST over the weekend and just can’t put it down, I should finish it in a few hours.
After that, I’ll likely pick up either Divinity: Original Sin 2 (I’m a couple of hours in) or the DLCs for Alan Wake 2 (since I finished the main game a few days ago), we’ll see.
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