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flaunf221 • today at 1:21 PM • 5 replies • view on HN

3. People who play games.

Because alternatives are bad. After decades of being great, Linux gaming community finally gave up on it working and accepted emulation of Windows as the way to go. (No need to nitpick on tech specifics of how Wine works)


Replies

mcv • today at 1:45 PM

Gave up? There are more Linux games than ever. Most commercial games work fine on Linux now. Some through emulation of some sort, others completely natively, because most gamer engines support Linux natively, making it trivial to do so. And as a gamer, I can't really tell the difference between the two.

If you mean Linux-only classic open source games, like Angband or Battle for Wesnoth or something, they still exist, but the demand has clearly gone down because now almost all games work on Linux. Except the ones with anti-cheat systems that rootkit-style access to your system.

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OrangeRange • today at 1:59 PM

Bad take, what actually happened was the realization that games wouldn't be released on Linux unless there were enough users there to warant it. Just as with ARM Windows not getting a single usable software when first released. What happened was Wine/Proton and FEX, with a lot of monetary input from Valve.

By allowing a lot of people who are willing to take a performance-hit to transition to Linux, they sow the grass-roots necessary for the game studios to release native games on Linux.

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c7b • today at 1:49 PM

You're saying this as if emulation (which Wine isn't really, more of a Win32 API compatibility layer; WINE literally stands for 'WINE Is Not an Emulator') was a bad thing. In reality, a lot of games benchmark better on Linux than on Windows today.

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testerius • today at 1:47 PM

What are you talking about? Lol, Linux gaming is fine and still growing.

atoav • today at 4:14 PM

Huh? I just finished Fallout 4 on Linux, a game that is famously unstable and it worked totally fine out of the box. Install steam, install Fallout, go.

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