Gaming on Linux finally becoming a thing? (through the announcement of Stadia)

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soulcake

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#1  Edited By soulcake

With the advent off Stadia (the google game streaming service) becoming a thing, i couldn't keep my mind of its Server infrastructure seem to run on a Linux Distribution. So will this mean that more Developers will be pushed to develop for Linux and the Vulcan API as the whole server infrastructure runs on it? I still use Windows for pc gaming as this is the only viable option IMO, Sure you can put Wine on Linux and stuff but that still gives errors and just outright doesn't support every game plus your using CPU resources to create a bunch of Windows resources. As for the rest of my daily life computing needs i use Linux (Ubuntu / Rhel) at work, but i will happily switch to a Linux distro. if every game would run on Linux.

If this new Games as a Service means that more game will support Linux sign me up!

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Justin258

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#2  Edited By Justin258

I still wouldn't call this "gaming on Linux", you're streaming stuff to an application running on Linux.

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soulcake

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#3  Edited By soulcake

@justin258: Nah i meant through the development of Stadia (running on Linux) we would finally get some Linux ports for AAA games. So games would run on my hardware not some data center.

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Gundato

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I suspect Ubi are going to start targeting this since they seem fairly involved.

Whoever partners with MS will use whatever setup MS likes (hmmm....)

Same with Amazon/Twitch when they inevitably get involved

Which will result in what it has always resulted in: Middleware like Unreal and Unity will interface with the backends and OSes. Like they already do

The things preventing widespread linux adoption aren't not being able to build your game with gcc. Its the support burden. PC already adds a LOT of different SKUs to deal with and lots of corner cases. Linux takes all those and adds OSes and people who don't know how to maintain those OSes and who would rather demand you help them than deal with the average linux tech support forum

What Stadia gives in those cases is effectively just another console to target. The multi-gpu stuff is still a wild card (as is a LOT more stuff), but they get a single variant of linux and effectively a single SKU to target. And, at least at the start, Google is going to be helping them in the same ways that nVidia does.

But none of that means that those linux builds are going to be distributed to the end user.

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IEEE_GB

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@gundato said:

I suspect Ubi are going to start targeting this since they seem fairly involved.

Whoever partners with MS will use whatever setup MS likes (hmmm....)

Same with Amazon/Twitch when they inevitably get involved

Which will result in what it has always resulted in: Middleware like Unreal and Unity will interface with the backends and OSes. Like they already do

The things preventing widespread linux adoption aren't not being able to build your game with gcc. Its the support burden. PC already adds a LOT of different SKUs to deal with and lots of corner cases. Linux takes all those and adds OSes and people who don't know how to maintain those OSes and who would rather demand you help them than deal with the average linux tech support forum

What Stadia gives in those cases is effectively just another console to target. The multi-gpu stuff is still a wild card (as is a LOT more stuff), but they get a single variant of linux and effectively a single SKU to target. And, at least at the start, Google is going to be helping them in the same ways that nVidia does.

But none of that means that those linux builds are going to be distributed to the end user.

I would imagine cloud computing gaming would be easier to run from a linux server instead of a traditional Windows 10 gaming PC. Proton and Wine/DXVK is really good now and GPU passthrough from integrated CPU graphics to GPU card means almost no loss in performance these days. Linux gaming has had a revolutino the past year and its really exciting, I imagine the main OS would be for Ubuntu, if devs wanted it on Linux Mint or something similar then that is on them for now.... Lets also not forget Microsofts heavy influence financially on Linux and Red Hat