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When it comes to PC gaming in general, Windows has always been the main OS for users, for its focused development on said OS, and for its compatibility with the vast majority of gaming software available.

While Windows has historically maintained most of the gaming market for PC, other operating systems have also hold a share in it, even if low, like Linux and macOS, which next to Windows, have also their own gaming market. For decades, Windows held the first place, with a percentage of around 95+%, followed closely by macOS and then Linux following with percentages barely breaking above the 1%.

However, due to the popularity of the recently released Steam Deck just a year ago, alongside Valve's own SteamOS, the percentage share for Linux gamers has seen a historical rise in usage, taking the 2nd place with 1.96%, which was held previously by macOS with 1.84%. That 1.96% isn't specific to a particular distribution of Linux, since Linux also ranges from a wide variety of them, with the following braekdown based on Linux distributions for gaming:

SteamOS: 42.07% Arch Linux: 7.94% Ubuntu 22.04.2: 7.38% Freedesktop.org SDK 22.08: 5.99% “Manjaro Linux”: 4.29% Linux Mint 21.1: 3.84% Pop!_OS 22.04: 2.97% Other Linux operating systems: 25.52%

Without a doubt, a huge number of the chart is taken up by SteamOS users, and while SteamOS is the operating system that comes bundled with the Steam Deck, it can also be installed in PCs, though it's unknown just how much of that 42% is taken up by actual Deck users, and how many by PCs with SteamOS users, but it might be safe to say that the majority of that portion from the chart could very well be Steam Deck players.

Source #1
Source #2

 

[tabzer]

Ultimately, Valve wins, PC gaming wins, and exclusivity loses. As a closed platform, MacOS has many of the same issues/privacy concerns that Windows does, and so Linux being pushed as an alternative is important.

I get that you thinking Linux is important is a good reason to shill for Valve, but I fully disagree. If that's the crux of our disagreement, then fine. Exclusivity does win a lot of things, btw. Don't live life in absolutes, as they don't actually exist. Feel free to block me and plug your ears from unpleasant facts like baka-chan.

 

[Xzi]

Exclusivity does win a lot of things, btw.

Exclusivity is dead. Microsoft and Sony are porting all their games to PC, and Valve is making sure those games run on both Linux and MacOS instead of just Microsoft's platform. Nintendo games will always emulate at higher resolution and frame rates on PC.

 

[tabzer]

Exclusivity is dead. Microsoft and Sony are porting all their games to PC, and Valve is making sure those games run on both Linux and MacOS instead of just Microsoft's platform. Nintendo games will always emulate at higher resolution and frame rates on PC.

I'm sorry, can you play FFXVI. Oh. You don't have a PS5?

Please continue schooling me on how exclusivity is dead because you have the power of imagination.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Ultimately, Valve wins, PC gaming wins, and exclusivity loses. As a closed platform, MacOS has many of the same issues/privacy concerns that Windows does, and so Linux being pushed as an alternative is important.

huge chunk of steam OS is closed code, and it is a data collection machine just like the windows application. Heavy DRMs in play too, spying you a lot.

That said, linux is indeed being an alternative, for 20 years or so btw, but not with steam and steam OS.

Exclusivity is dead. Microsoft and Sony are porting all their games to PC, and Valve is making sure those games run on both Linux and MacOS instead of just Microsoft's platform. Nintendo games will always emulate at higher resolution and frame rates on PC.

If an individual is already pirating nintendo, why would buy a PC game? It is easier and cheaper just to pirate everything.

I don't believe there is someone dumb enough to pirate just selected systems. If you are not willing to pay, you don't for everything.

 

[Kioku]

I'm sorry, can you play FFXVI. Oh. You don't have a PS5?

Please continue schooling me on how exclusivity is dead because you have the power of imagination.

Just have to wait 3 years and we’ll eventually get it.

 

[tabzer]

Just have to wait 3 years and we’ll eventually get it.

Nah, 3 years is too specific. Two more weeks!

 

[Foxi4]

Ultimately, Valve wins, PC gaming wins, and exclusivity loses. As a closed platform, MacOS has many of the same issues/privacy concerns that Windows does, and so Linux being pushed as an alternative is important.

MacOS is UNIX. Linux is an open source UNIX look-alike. They’re both built around the same principles and follow very similar design philosophy under the hood. They’re closer to each other than they are to Windows. That’s nitpicky though, so let’s ignore it. I will agree that having an alternative is nice, if only because it gives impetus for innovation. Windows needs a big trim, it’s been in need of one for a long, long time, and perhaps Proton is how we get there. I had high hopes for Midori that never materialised, perhaps proliferation of Linux-flavour devices will help. It’s the exact same battle plan for the last 30 years, except now it’s less of a ball ache, so we’ll see.

 

[Dungeonseeker]

MacOS is UNIX. Linux is an open source UNIX look-alike. They’re both built around the same principles and follow very similar design philosophy under the hood. They’re closer to each other than they are to Windows. That’s nitpicky though, so let’s ignore it. I will agree that having an alternative is nice, if only because it gives impetus for innovation. Windows needs a big trim, it’s been in need of one for a long, long time, and perhaps Proton is how we get there. I had high hopes for Midori that never materialised, perhaps proliferation of Linux-flavour devices will help. It’s the exact same battle plan for the last 30 years, except now it’s less of a ball ache, so we’ll see.

macOS is based on BSD and the Mach kernel, neither of which are UNIX. Both the Linux Kernel and the BSD kernel were derived from UNIX philosophies, built from scratch and both were created to avoid having to pay the absurd cost of entry to UNIX. There was a famous case where AT&T sued Berkeley Uni because there was something like 3 lines of AT&T code in BSD.

Also worth pointing out that macOS X is based on NextStep which was built on the BSD kernel because at the time Jobs created it Linux didn't exist. The lawsuit mentioned above is often cited as the reason BSD usage declined and Linux grew massively, all the BSD users got scared AT&T were gonna impose royalties and since Linux was (mostly) binary compatible it was the safer option being fully open source.

Edit - Its actually way more nuanced than that but for the sake of everyone's sanity I'll skip over most of it. Yeah BSD was originally under the AT&T license because the first few releases were "upgrade modules" to UNIX but Berkeley decided to move away from that and basically rewrote UNIX from scratch which allowed them to A) tailor it to more modern platforms and B) license it themselves. Which they did, they literally created their own license that's still around to this very day.

 

[linuxares]

MacOS is UNIX. Linux is an open source UNIX look-alike. They’re both built around the same principles and follow very similar design philosophy under the hood. They’re closer to each other than they are to Windows. That’s nitpicky though, so let’s ignore it. I will agree that having an alternative is nice, if only because it gives impetus for innovation. Windows needs a big trim, it’s been in need of one for a long, long time, and perhaps Proton is how we get there. I had high hopes for Midori that never materialised, perhaps proliferation of Linux-flavour devices will help. It’s the exact same battle plan for the last 30 years, except now it’s less of a ball ache, so we’ll see.

Wine, Proton and Vulkan have made the Linux flavor savoir real hard of late. It's no surprise that Proton and Vulkan (Valve is one of the sponsors of Vulkan) have helped accelerate the adoption rate of playable titles on Linux.
We got to remember it's still translation and not native. Native is always to prefer but if companies make their games Proton ready, it's still a win.

Sadly, there isn't a perfect Linux for the average Joe. SteamOS is really well made for those who have no idea and just want to game, but you're locked to Steam if you don't wanna travel out to it's normal interface.

Flatpak is somewhat a solution, but it's extremely far from perfect to help the average Joe.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Proton doesn't emulate Windows in the same manner Apple's toolkit does, and Linux doesn't have near as many native ports as MacOS does.

It kind of does, they're both projects based on WINE, ultimately. The difference is on macOS right now, to play Windows games, one has to launch the Windows version of Steam, which is what Valve sees as running on Windows as a result.
There are some differences, like Proton supporting DX9-DX12, whereas Apple's alternative only works with DX11 & DX12. Proton also capitalizes on being able to use Vulkan for graphics using DXVK; Apple instead uses their own Metal graphics API.

Post automatically merged: Aug 6, 2023

Ultimately, Valve wins, PC gaming wins, and exclusivity loses. As a closed platform, MacOS has many of the same issues/privacy concerns that Windows does, and so Linux being pushed as an alternative is important.

As someone who uses Windows/Arch Linux/macOS, I can tell you this with confidence: macOS is the worst for gaming. Its insistence on using the Metal graphics API holds it back from even being a contender, and OpenGL games of the past also suffer because OpenGL is just bad on macOS. We're talking about like half of the performance of other operating systems (on a good day) when it comes to OpenGL, on the same hardware.

 

[Xzi]

I'm sorry, can you play FFXVI. Oh. You don't have a PS5?

Please continue schooling me on how exclusivity is dead because you have the power of imagination.

If there's a time limit on the exclusivity, it's not actually exclusive. I do own a PS5 and I'm fine waiting for the PC version anyway, since I own every other FF game on Steam. Not to mention I'm busy with the rest of this year's packed release schedule.

 

[Metoroid0]

Thanks Gabe/vALVE~ <3

 

[Xzi]

huge chunk of steam OS is closed code, and it is a data collection machine just like the windows application. Heavy DRMs in play too, spying you a lot.

People customize and change SteamOS in all sorts of ways, and Valve doesn't do anything to discourage the practice. DRM is on a game-by-game basis, and the publisher is responsible for that.

That said, linux is indeed being an alternative, for 20 years or so btw, but not with steam and steam OS.

If Steam Deck dropped you straight into a Linux desktop, it wouldn't move the needle at all in terms of popularity or usage. It's because of SteamOS that any ten-year-old Switch owner can learn how to use Deck in a matter of minutes, and yet there's enough freedom there that even power users rarely have to pull up the desktop once everything's installed/configured correctly.

 

[Foxi4]

macOS is based on BSD and the Mach kernel, neither of which are UNIX. Both the Linux Kernel and the BSD kernel were derived from UNIX philosophies, built from scratch and both were created to avoid having to pay the absurd cost of entry to UNIX. There was a famous case where AT&T sued Berkeley Uni because there was something like 3 lines of AT&T code in BSD.

Also worth pointing out that macOS X is based on NextStep which was built on the BSD kernel because at the time Jobs created it Linux didn't exist. The lawsuit mentioned above is often cited as the reason BSD usage declined and Linux grew massively, all the BSD users got scared AT&T were gonna impose royalties and since Linux was (mostly) binary compatible it was the safer option being fully open source.

Edit - Its actually way more nuanced than that but for the sake of everyone's sanity I'll skip over most of it. Yeah BSD was originally under the AT&T license because the first few releases were "upgrade modules" to UNIX but Berkeley decided to move away from that and basically rewrote UNIX from scratch which allowed them to A) tailor it to more modern platforms and B) license it themselves. Which they did, they literally created their own license that's still around to this very day.

It’s really *not* nuanced at all, nearly all macOS releases are UNIX certified. Their BSD and Mach lineage is a testament to that, not a counter argument. I don’t know why you wasted your time writing a sermon just to muddy the waters, this is common knowledge. Any OS, even one written from scratch, that satisfies SUS requirements is considered UNIX-compliant, it does not require an ounce of the original source. To be more specific, every release since OS X 10.5, with one exception of 10.7, is UNIX-03 compliant. The funny part is that XNU stands for X is not UNIX. Except it kinda is, and it’s certified as such by The Open Group.

https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Wine, Proton and Vulkan have made the Linux flavor savoir real hard of late. It's no surprise that Proton and Vulkan (Valve is one of the sponsors of Vulkan) have helped accelerate the adoption rate of playable titles on Linux.
We got to remember it's still translation and not native. Native is always to prefer but if companies make their games Proton ready, it's still a win.

Sadly, there isn't a perfect Linux for the average Joe. SteamOS is really well made for those who have no idea and just want to game, but you're locked to Steam if you don't wanna travel out to it's normal interface.

Flatpak is somewhat a solution, but it's extremely far from perfect to help the average Joe.

I think we’re in agreement about this, actually. The Steamdeck is a big opportunity for the Linux crowd because it’s a standardised machine. There’s not a whole lot that can go wrong in terms of the configuration, and with the right overlays it can offer a competitive experience, for sure.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

it wouldn't move the needle at all in terms of popularity or usage.

well... according to the sources on this very article, it kinda didn't.

I thought that steam OS was 10 times bigger than it actually is, because of amount of noise it had since before launch.

Maybe it sold well, and people do not bother with the steam OS and went with things like windows or batocera, or maybe it is indeed bellow wonderswan in sales. I really don't know.

(the fun part is that it was supposed to be a Nintendo Switch killer, that was a hyperbolic statement so it seems)

 

[Dungeonseeker]

It’s really *not* nuanced at all, nearly all releases are UNIX certified. Their BSD lineage is a testament to that, not a counter argument. I don’t know why you wasted your time writing a sermon just to muddle the waters, this is common knowledge. Any OS, even one written from scratch, that satisfies SUS requirements is considered UNIX-compliant, it does not require an ounce of the original source.

I never claimed it did. You however DID state that macOS is UNIX which as my sermon pointed out, is false. They (I should clarify here, Berkeley) wrote their own version that looked and acted the exact same way but wasn't UNIX so they could have control of the licensing terms.

UNIX compliant =/= UNIX.

SUS/POSIX certification means literally nothing and no, BSD releases are not certified for SUS or POSIX, they never have been and never will be, its actually counter productive to force your project to abide by a fairly strict set of rules in order to get a mark that most people have never even heard of and those that have don't care about. Apple did get macOS POSIX certified, to my knowledge that's the only BSD based project to do so.

POSIX (not so much SUS though POSIX has replaced that now anyway) enforces things on both the kernel and the userspace, this means your project ships with a certain set of tools that all behave in the same way regardless of the platform (think GNU/Linux, GNU is the userspace tools, Linux is the kernel). A perfect example of why this is not always a good thing is netcat, this was a binary that was written by Berkeley and included in BSD that didn't conform to the standards yet performed its task better than the certified alternative. It didn't take long for it to get ported to Linux and has become the ubiquitous binary to catalog a networked device yet it still would mean your system doesn't meet the spec.

Literally the only people who care about POSIX certification are the multi-national mega corporations like IBM & HP, in fact if you go find the list of certified OSes you'll see that, other than macOS, its all IBM & HP spins of UNIX (AIX & HPUX). Nobody else cares at all.

 

[Foxi4]

I never claimed it did. You however DID state that macOS is UNIX which as my sermon pointed out, is false. They (I should clarify here, Berkeley) wrote their own version that looked and acted the exact same way but wasn't UNIX so they could have control of the licensing terms.

UNIX compliant =/= UNIX.

SUS/POSIX certification means literally nothing and no, BSD releases are not certified for SUS or POSIX, they never have been and never will be, its actually counter productive to force your project to abide by a fairly strict set of rules in order to get a mark that most people have never even heard of and those that have don't care about. Apple did get macOS POSIX certified, to my knowledge that's the only BSD based project to do so.

POSIX (not so much SUS though POSIX has replaced that now anyway) enforces things on both the kernel and the userspace, this means your project ships with a certain set of tools that all behave in the same way regardless of the platform (think GNU/Linux, GNU is the userspace tools, Linux is the kernel). A perfect example of why this is not always a good thing is netcat, this was a binary that was written by Berkeley and included in BSD that didn't conform to the standards yet performed its task better than the certified alternative. It didn't take long for it to get ported to Linux and has become the ubiquitous binary to catalog a networked device yet it still would mean your system doesn't meet the spec.

Literally the only people who care about POSIX certification are the multi-national mega corporations like IBM & HP, in fact if you go find the list of certified OSes you'll see that, other than macOS, its all IBM & HP spins of UNIX (AIX & HPUX). Nobody else cares at all.

macOS is definitely UNIX, and is registered as such. If you can’t admit that in the face of conclusive evidence, that being the conglomerate in charge of UNIX certification telling you that it is, then there’s nothing here to talk about. At least you’ve learned two things today - that macOS is UNIX and that you’re not the smartest person in the room, even if you’re unwilling to admit that. The rest is just posturing and trivia.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS

 

[Dungeonseeker]

macOS is definitely UNIX, and is registered as such. If you can’t admit that in the face of conclusive evidence, that being the conglomerate in charge of UNIX certification telling you that it is, then there’s nothing here to talk about. At least you’ve learned two things today - that macOS is UNIX and that you’re not the smartest person in the room, even if you’re unwilling to admit that.

View attachment 386945

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS

And if your smoothbrain can't understand the difference being something or being certified as compliant with something then I don't know what to tell you.

Riddle me this batman, if macOS was UNIX then why would it ever have needed to pass certification in the first place? They can label their OS as part of the UNIX family because they have the certification to do so, your argument here is that macOS needed to get certification to prove it complies with itself?

Again for those at the back, UNIX =/= UNIX Cerified. macOS is based on the BSD kernel and BSD is listed as Unix-like on Wikipedia.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD.

macOS ships a UNIX compliant kernel, as does Linux & BSD, macOS ships a UNIX compliant set of userspace binaries, BSD & Linux do not hence macOS is UNIX compliant, Linux & BSD are not hence macOS is considered part of the UNIX family, Linux & BSD are not. None of them ARE UNIX, the clue is kinda of in the name.

Pretty hilarious you'd attack my knowledge of a subject that earlier you openly admitted to not caring about.

 

[Foxi4]

And if your smoothbrain can't understand the difference being something or being certified as compliant with something then I don't know what to tell you.

Riddle me this batman, if macOS was UNIX then why would it ever have needed to pass certification in the first place? They can label their OS as part of the UNIX family because they have the certification to do so, your argument here is that macOS needed to get certification to prove it complies with itself?

Again for those at the back, UNIX =/= UNIX Cerified. macOS is based on the BSD kernel and BSD is listed as Unix-like on Wikipedia.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBSD.

macOS ships a UNIX compliant kernel, as does Linux & BSD, macOS ships a UNIX compliant set of userspace binaries, BSD & Linux do not hence macOS is UNIX compliant, Linux & BSD are not hence macOS is considered part of the UNIX family, Linux & BSD are not. None of them ARE UNIX, the clue is kinda of in the name.

It belongs to the UNIX family of operating systems. I don’t know why you’re arguing about this at all. It’s indisputable. I quote:

The present owner of the trademark UNIX is The Open Group, an industry standards consortium. Only systems fully compliant with and certified to the Single UNIX Specification qualify as "UNIX" (others are called "Unix-like").

By decree of The Open Group, the term "UNIX" refers more to a class of operating systems than to a specific implementation of an operating system; those operating systems which meet The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification should be able to bear the UNIX 98 or UNIX 03 trademarks today, after the operating system's vendor pays a substantial certification fee and annual trademark royalties to The Open Group. Systems that have been licensed to use the UNIX trademark include AIX, EulerOS, HP-UX, Inspur K-UX, IRIX, macOS, Solaris, Tru64 UNIX (formerly "Digital UNIX", or OSF/1), and z/OS. Notably, EulerOS and Inspur K-UX are Linux distributions certified as UNIX 03 compliant.

It’s UNIX. Not “UNIX-like”, just UNIX. The term does not refer to a specific monolithic implementation, but to a class. You can keep embarrassing yourself, by all means, that doesn’t make macOS not UNIX. It is UNIX, as per The Open Group’s classification and standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

You can insult me all day long, that doesn’t change reality. You’re objectively wrong, and the time to save face has passed. You might have a different standard of classification, but since it’s not up to you, nobody’s obligated to care that you don’t know what the term UNIX means. I don’t have to “attack your knowledge”, you’re doing a splendid job all by yourself.

 

[Dungeonseeker]

It belongs to the UNIX family of operating systems. I don’t know why you’re arguing about this at all. It’s indisputable. I quote:
It’s UNIX. Not “UNIX-like”, just UNIX. The term does not refer to a specific monolithic implementation, but to a class. You can keep embarrassing yourself, by all means, that doesn’t make macOS not UNIX. It is UNIX, as per The Open Group’s classification and standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix

You can insult me all day long, that doesn’t change reality. You’re objectively wrong, and the time to save face has passed. You might have a different standard of classification, but since it’s not up to you, nobody’s obligated to care that you don’t know what the term UNIX means.

Again you attack me based on a fallacy....

It doesn't say macOS is UNIX, it says macOS is part of the UNIX family. My BMW 230i is equal to your M3 because they're both a part of the 3 series line or my I3 iis equal to your I9 because they're both a part of the same CPU family. You realise how idiotic that sounds, right?

Honestly I'm done arguing with you now, your entire argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of a topic that you openly admit to not caring about.

You can accept it or not, IDGAF either way TBH, macOS is not UNIX, UNIX as a platform is dead and has been for a very long time.