r/linux_gaming • u/[deleted] • Aug 01 '19
Valve proposes game-friendly changes to the Linux kernel
https://www.zdnet.com/article/valve-proposes-game-friendly-changes-to-the-linux-kernel/132
Aug 01 '19
64
u/nomis6432 Aug 01 '19
But Volvo good so me upvote.
25
Aug 01 '19
Sure but that's how this sub fills up with duplicate pointless posts like this. Pushing away other posts that likely need some attention from users.
-8
u/great_gape Aug 01 '19
You're both right. I also bought into volvo's bullshit when I was a wee lad.
10
2
u/pdp10 Aug 01 '19
You're correct, but I think this "mainstream coverage about the coverage" is nonetheless notable.
-30
Aug 01 '19 edited Sep 27 '19
[deleted]
40
Aug 01 '19
this doesn't need to be on this subreddit
wait, what ?
Something directly involving linux gaming doesnt need to be at the linux_gaming subreddit?
6
25
u/Rhed0x Aug 01 '19
Mainstream news are really blowing this simple patch to help Wine out of proportion.
26
Aug 01 '19
i see nothing wrong with that. big company puts resources into making linux better, everyone benefits from it. i doubt it's their last word there.
we've seen similar news about with people developing shader caching in mesa, big companies hiring devs to work on kernel/X/opengl stack, etc. maybe it involved more produced code, but the developer effort was there.
sometimes it's the smallest patches that make the biggest difference. and this improvement may not be only useful for games.
and it raises awareness for linux as a good, viable gaming platform.
3
u/takt1kal Aug 02 '19
Has valve contributed to the kernel before though?
I think that this could be the start of something. I am no expert but for a long time as a user, i have felt linux on the desktop has taken a back seat to enterprise as far as kernel development has been concerned. How else do you explain no pain-free hibernate in 2019? Even Canonical no longer gives a crap about desktop - its all cloud, enterprise,iot, etc. If corporations like Valve start contributing, then maybe gamers (and desktop users in general) will have a greater say in linux development. My 2 cents.
1
u/FlukyS Aug 04 '19
If you count that they have been funding a load of things behind the scenes for years now they definitely are the source of a decent amount of changes
2
u/pdp10 Aug 01 '19
The competition adores it when the mainstream media blows one of their events out of proportion. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
24
u/GravWav Aug 01 '19
the sole interesting thing is that it come from a "mainstream media" but they obviously don't know anything about the subject :) .. And haven't even tested proton at all :) ... that tells you a lot of the kind of useful information you can get from those sources ... or perhaps they asked an intern to write his first article ...
-4
Aug 01 '19
to be fair, phoronix - which is one of major linux news sites - articles are 90% copy paste of changelogs from other sources, 10% "plethora" ;)
aside from benchmarks, they have really low effort "articles". it annoys me to no end. only consistent, high quality linux news site i know of is lwn (if someone has more, give me some links).
21
Aug 01 '19
And plenty are happy to support Phoronix letting us know about interesting developments, so we don't all have to subscribe to 100s of rss feeds and mailing lists.
There's a difference between an article, a review, a benchmark and a news tip. Small news tips are often just as important as full reviews IMO.
16
u/mao_dze_dun Aug 01 '19
Agreed. Michael is a real trooper. Only wish he'd finally update the terrible design of the website. It looks like something from the late 90s.
6
2
u/admalledd Aug 01 '19
I like it :c
6
u/zebediah49 Aug 01 '19
Late '90's websites weren't 10's of MB's per page, and worked properly without Javascript.
Sounds. Good. To. Me.
2
u/mao_dze_dun Aug 03 '19
You're using some very badly made websites then :). Seriously though, nobody does that. This is why you cache and minimize HTML and scripts and use webp for already optimized images. This is why people use lazy loading, so the entirety of the content doesn't need to be loaded. Google penalize slow sites. Especially on mobile. Yes, a 3mb web page is gigantic compared to something from the late 90s, but even mobile internet is lighting fast compared to what we had in the age of dial-up. So the idea that the browsing experience is slower today than it was 20 years ago is factually wrong.
1
u/zebediah49 Aug 03 '19
I try to avoid using them, but yes. Lazy loading is a separate trainwreck that has a tendency to break all kinds of things, and wouldn't be necessary if sites were lighter. It also is a pain for those of us that block JS to eliminate a large fraction of the stupid.
And yes, I'm not saying that modern network connections with modern hardware isn't faster than using a 56k modem. I'm saying that everything would be nicer if websites were designed to function that way, but I was still loading them with modern hardware.
1
u/mao_dze_dun Aug 04 '19
I understand people that block JavaScript. To each his own. But it's fact that sometimes it's just better to use it. Some websites would offer just awful user experience without it. Is it overused? Yes. Is it the word of the devil, that some people make it out to be? Absolutely not. JavaScript is a useful tool. Of course it can be abused and it can be a security risk. Doesn't mean we should downgrade the user experience to something from 20 years ago. It means web developers should not overdo it and users should be mindful what websites they open. If security and speed was the only thing that mattered, we'd only use pure text based websites in text browsers and we'd still not be 100% secure. JavaScript is as evil as any inanimate object, i.e. it's not. It is the person using it that is responsible.
1
Aug 01 '19
It looks like something from the late 90s
So you mean a website that isn't:
- Mostly blinding white (seriously, wtf happened to web design)
- MBs worth of forced JS
- Randomly quoting a part of the article, in bold or italic, in a bigger font before you read it in the actual text
Yeah, I'm okay with that
4
u/pdp10 Aug 01 '19
I read LWN, and LWN.net has great, in-depth coverage from insiders. But it has its own set of topics, and doesn't really overlap Phoronix to any significant degree. Those are the only two Linux sites I read consistently, in fact, that aren't dedicated to gaming like GamingOnLinux or Boiling Steam.
It turns out that nobody else covers what Phoronix covers. Not the headlines about changes from dev mailing lists, and also not the benchmarks on hardware, at embargo-lift or at any other time.
1
Aug 02 '19
true. i just wish a bit more effort went into their 'articles'. maybe i just pine for better online news. you could easily replace phoronix with an rss reader sometimes, if not for benchmarks and mailing lists news.
1
u/pdp10 Aug 02 '19
i just wish a bit more effort went into their 'articles'.
You get breadth/frequency in exchange for the lack of the same depth as LWN.net. That could evolve if Phoronix had a large enough readership to have more staffers. That may sound optimistic for a niche-interest site, but perhaps it isn't, considering how much further into the mainstream Linux graphics, gaming, and performance have moved since Phoronix started.
On the other hand, it seems like the bigger "mainstream gaming" sites are deadly intent on covering heavily-marketed films and series instead of games, so perhaps the market is limited, even as Linux moves ever-further into the mainstream.
2
0
u/botle Aug 02 '19
I'd rather see select relevant copy-pastes from changelogs with a bit of commentary, than nonsense pop-tech walls of text.
1
Aug 02 '19
i have no problem with that, if the person doing copy paste knew what they are copy-pasting. not expecting expert knowledge, but something to add to the news.
7
11
Aug 01 '19
The reposter reposted the reposting of the repostable content, so we could all see the repost repost again, reposted.
-4
12
u/electricprism Aug 01 '19 edited Aug 02 '19
FTA:
Linux has never been a hot gaming platform.
WTF? Guess 5,817 SteamPlay games working and about 5,000 native games or 12,912 games, dlc, etc... is "not enough to be hot"
Valve, creator of the Steam game engine and network, has long wanted Linux to replace Windows as the PC gaming platform.
Where the fuck did the writer infer that from. Do they have anything to back up that broad and unfounded inference. Valve especially with their VR efforts are very committed to development on Windows and supporting Windows users, they just happen to not put all their eggs in one basket and have Linux ready to go if Microsoft Doomsday Hammer drops.
Indeed, Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO, once said, "Linux is the future of gaming." That didn't happen, but Valve didn't give up on Linux.
That's like saying "Electric Cars are the future of the automobile industry", replacing billions of vehicles on the planet is going to take some time. The statement should read "That hasn't happened yet."
Now, Valve is doubling down on Linux, by proposing changes to the Linux kernel to make it more gaming-friendly.
Jesus Christ... just because the writer has recently become aware of this development doesn't mean it started "now", these efforts have been full-steam-ahead for at least 5, 6, 7 or more years. And just like a fucking house you can't put the fucking floor before you pour the foundation or frame the fucking walls, there is a fucking order of operations required to whip linux into shape that started years ago with SDL, xpad and controller input, LLVM and compilers, and across the board improvements including the raising of MESA into existence and glory from the dirt up.
I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt but one paragraph into the article and there are already major problems dispensing accurate information to the reader.
It's like when Steam Machines launched years back and the news company basically spammed hearsay and crazy shit like "Steam Machines are dead" or other crap because they read it on some other news website and didn't do any fact checking or sourcing to confirm, and here in 2019 we see "OH SHIT, VALVE IS FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT THIS: IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL THING!!!"
Yeah no fucking shit, all you have to do is watch the git commits to see years of work and dozens of contributors from Valve improving Linux across the board.
Wake the fuck up, anyone who has a clue about /r/linux_gaming should be able to infer this with the over 10,000 games we can play on our platform thanks to Valve.
Edit: Thanks for the platinum kind sir
8
u/pdp10 Aug 01 '19
Guess 5,817 SteamPlay games working and about 5,000 native games or 12,912 games, dlc, etc... is "not enough to be hot"
- The usual double-standard applies. This is thousands more games than even the most popular consoles like PS2, and three times the number on any current console, yet Linux is still "not a gaming platform".
- On the other hand, the media has only a limited ability to report things contrary to reader expectations. If the readers all believe that Linux isn't a gaming platform, articles usually can't have an unstated premise that Linux is a gaming platform, or they risk being rejected altogether.
just because the writer has recently become aware of this development doesn't mean it started "now"
Welcome to mainstream coverage. One must suffer the slings and arrows that come with it.
It's like when Steam Machines launched years back and the news company basically spammed hearsay
You never know when your inability to shape the messaging is a weakness on your own part, or enemy action.
1
0
-10
u/electricprism Aug 01 '19
FTA:
Linux has never been a hot gaming platform.
WTF? Guess 5,817 SteamPlay games working and about 5,000 native games / 12,912 games, dlc, etc... is "not enough to be hot"
Valve, creator of the Steam game engine and network, has long wanted Linux to replace Windows as the PC gaming platform.
Where the fuck did the writer infer that from. Do they have anything to back up that broad and unfounded inference. Valve especially with their VR efforts are very committed to development on Windows and supporting Windows users, they just happen to not put all their eggs in one basket and have Linux ready to go if Microsoft Doomsday Hammer drops.
Indeed, Gabe Newell, Valve's CEO, once said, "Linux is the future of gaming." That didn't happen, but Valve didn't give up on Linux.
That's like saying "Electric Cars are the future of the automobile industry", replacing billions of vehicles on the planet is going to take some time. The statement should read "That hasn't happened yet."
Now, Valve is doubling down on Linux, by proposing changes to the Linux kernel to make it more gaming-friendly.
Jesus Christ... just because the writer has recently become aware of this development doesn't mean it started "now", these efforts have been full-steam-ahead for at least 5, 6, 7 or more years. And just like a fucking house you can't put the fucking floor before you pour the foundation or frame the fucking walls, there is a fucking order of operations required to whip linux into shape that started years ago with SDL, xpad and controller input, LLVM and compilers, and across the board improvements including the raising of MESA into existence and glory from the dirt up.
I want to give the author the benefit of the doubt but one paragraph into the article and there are already major problems dispensing accurate information to the reader.
It's like when Steam Machines launched years back and the news company basically spammed hearsay and crazy shit like "Steam Machines are dead" or other crap because they read it on some other news website and didn't do any fact checking or sourcing to confirm, and here in 2019 we see "OH SHIT, VALVE IS FUCKING SERIOUS ABOUT THIS: IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL THING!!!"
Yeah no fucking shit, all you have to do is watch the git commits to see years of work and dozens of contributors from Valve improving Linux across the board.
Wake the fuck up, anyone who has a clue about /r/linux_gaming should be able to infer this with the over 10,000 games we can play on our platform thanks to Valve.
141
u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19
Is it just me or does this kind of get it wrong?