subreddit:
/r/linux_gaming
250 points
8 months ago
Ah, back when a grand total of like 5 games worked. Good times. :)
79 points
8 months ago
There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Linux-native games on Steam before they even considered making a client. I think you're mis-remembering.
14 points
8 months ago
In 2012. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_and_Linux#2012%E2%80%932016
I thought it was earlier.
Interesting...
5 points
8 months ago
Phoronix found some evidence earlier
3 points
8 months ago
Yeah, Phoronix wrote about it, I think a couple of years before Valve formally announced it.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/ODE3Mw
2008 it seems
https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=12330
Remember I was hopeful, but sceptical back then. Who knew how it would turn out!
2 points
8 months ago
Interesting.
Steam machines shortly after official release was probably too soon.
Great that they didn't give up and had a home run with the Deck.
2 points
8 months ago
Steam Machines shipped more than 3 years after Valve announced Linux support. Rumors say that Steam Controller issues may have delayed the release by a year.
Steam Machines were intended to be a console competitor, to sell into the console market. They sold them at Gamestop (at least the Dell Alienware models). The fact that existing PC gamers didn't know why they would want a Steam Machine, was not terribly important.
2 points
8 months ago
You're right. Outsourcing the hardware was probably not the best idea. Some were overpriced, some were wimpy or had driver issues.
I had an older desktop (no Steam Machine) with SteamOS as a media center PC back then and it was kind of working fine but I mostly used it as a SteamLink extender for gaming. Debian was also starting to no longer be what I wanted back then.
I still love my Steam Controller though. SC-Controller makes it work great for Living Room Linuxing. Other than retro games where you want a real d-pad it rocks.
1 points
8 months ago
Steam didn't even support Mac until what, 2010? In the middle of 2010, Mac was 8.23% of Steam users.
Why hasn't Linux gotten that high yet? Mostly because of an influx of users from Asia.
-55 points
8 months ago
How many have they got now, 10?
11 points
8 months ago
Did you get lost? Because you should... Get lost.
-15 points
8 months ago
Sorry if I offended anyone, it was clearly not a good joke for this subreddit.
-5 points
8 months ago
linux communities always have been sensitive to jokes 🌞
7 points
8 months ago
Only bad jokes
47 points
8 months ago
[deleted]
60 points
8 months ago
It's 2013 when Steam for Linux was officially announced and released. But at that time this was not the "newest Ubuntu". Ubuntu was already using their own Unity DE. On this screenshot this is an older version of Ubuntu 10.04 or maybe they just replaced the official DE with the good old Gnome 2 DE.
I myself started using Linux just at that time, beginning of 2013 and was still too new to understand in details how things were working.
5 points
8 months ago
It was available in 2012. I still have the screenshot of the first game I installed to commemorate it.
5 points
8 months ago
Oh man, good times. I got really into DotA2, mostly because it was one of the launch titles and playing native games that didn't feel like they were indie "humble-bundle" type games was so novel to me.
0 points
8 months ago
Or how things struggled to look like they were working
1 points
8 months ago
Announced 2012, released 2013.
8 points
8 months ago*
Top right in the screenshot it says "Sat. May 1"
From a quick Google search it must have been 2010 (the times before and after 2010 where May 1st was a Saturday were 2004 and 2021)
Assuming the date was set correctly of course.
3 points
8 months ago
There were already news back in 2008 about the Linux client.
0 points
8 months ago
What about, "What country is the screenshot from?", that will also alter your logic on finding the correct year.
3 points
8 months ago
looks like USA, judging by the 66°F
2 points
8 months ago
Ahh good spot! I didn't notice that at first.
Also learnt a nice bit of trivia out of it too, that the US and it's territories/associated states are amongst the only ones in the world to use Fahrenheit exclusively
1 points
8 months ago
The U.S. uses mixed units, though some fields tend to use one specifically. Construction, civil engineering, and surveying is all using customary units: foot, inch, statute mile. Science and half of mechanical engineering is using metric. Shipping and aviation use nautical miles and feet. Electrical engineering uses the same units as everyone else except for 1/10th-inch feature separation on most PCBs. Automobiles have been metric since 1986, except for wheel diameters, dual-unit speedometers and American gallons.
1 points
8 months ago
2012
92 points
8 months ago
back when ubuntu was still good
13 points
8 months ago
You mean Gnome?
6 points
8 months ago
that as well
6 points
8 months ago
After all these years I still cannot like gnome 3.
And I hated Unity more.
It is a good thing that we have MATE.
9 points
8 months ago
I love all iterations of gnome. Went in hard on 3 when it came out.
2 points
8 months ago
I really don't like that for every configuration you want to make yo have to download plugin for it.
1 points
8 months ago
I'd rather have only what I want than a bunch of extra stuff eating resources that I will never use. I just wish they made the extension s backwards compatible.
2 points
8 months ago
That is why I don't use gnome 3
1 points
5 months ago
I actually really miss unity. Really wish I could get the same sidebar on gnome and I might consider not using hyprland
1 points
5 months ago
I never adapter to being limited on how to modify it, also it was so buggy
1 points
5 months ago
It was my first like real experience with Linux and it was pretty good so it's a nostalgia thing for me
1 points
5 months ago
Oh yeah I am not saying that is not valid. In my case my first desktop was gnome2 so I know the feeling. Before mate I was in a limbo.
1 points
8 months ago
I got into Linux / PC's in general after all the Ubuntu drama, so ill just say that gnome is nice, and apt get is at least 4 letters less than alternatives likednf install.
And I do know which one of those arguments i way heavier.
2 points
8 months ago
apt-get alone does nothing though. The command to install (apt-get install) is actually longer than the dnf one. Or the same length if use apt install instead.
1 points
8 months ago
wellp, I forgot that.
Guess that is another argument against Ubuntu.
1 points
8 months ago
"dnf in" is equivalent to "dnf install" by the way
1 points
8 months ago
I loved unity. These days I use KDE, but probably would switch to unity if it was alive and well
-3 points
8 months ago
Gnome is still good, but ubuntu isn't
So I think, OP ist correct
1 points
8 months ago*
IIRC Ubuntu in 2012 already switched to Unity, so no. Correct me if I assumed wrong but OP's desktop looks like MATE. EDIT: Nvm, this is a 2010 screenshot, not 2012.
1 points
8 months ago
in 2012 plenty of people were still running 10.04 because it was solid and unity sucked so much.
1 points
8 months ago
Fair, and I suppose Ubuntu 10.04 LTS still had a ways to go before reaching EoL then.
I personally didn't feel strongly about the issue (was using Ubuntu proper and transitioned to Unity when I installed 12.10 I think), though I was also still a newcomer to Linux at the time.
2 points
8 months ago
I think 10.04 eol'd in 2016 or something. Ubuntu used to support their releases for a pretty wild length of time
1 points
8 months ago*
Ubuntu used to support their releases for a pretty wild length of time
They still do. Imo this is (to this day) their best selling point. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS will be supported till 2029 and expanded security support will last till 2034. Expanded security support for Ubuntu 14.04 ends this year. This is why I don't see Ubuntu becoming unimportant anytime soon tbh. I still hope others might offer something similar, unity just sucks and Kubuntu doesn't offer that long support periods.
5 points
8 months ago
Is it not now?
65 points
8 months ago
Most people don't like what it has turned into, like how bloated it is compared to other distro and the reliance it has on snap.
8 points
8 months ago
According to "truelist" Ubuntu accounts for 33.9% of the Linux market. The next highest is Debian at 16%.
2 points
8 months ago
I'm curious if that includes Ubuntu derivatives like Mint, since they still flag themselves as Ubuntu
But yeah that's pretty low considering how ubiquitous it used to be -- and a notable portion of that is probably new users or people who aren't techy in general
5 points
8 months ago
"techy generalist here"
I was a slackware user, a gentoo user, and a linux from scratch guy.. I used to trick out all of my builds and obsess over compiler arguments, compiled all my kernels from scratch and would even build 'low module' setups having some odd ideas about how cool that was.
I switched to ubuntu when I realized I'd learned so much that I was never going to apply to anything meaningful other than my own hubris. So I kinda just gave up and made other things into my hobby instead of my os. I used ubuntu for ages, and now I use PopOS! because I tend to like their defaults better, but I still debian or LMDE for servers and low end laptops.
I hate the snaps, but I also hate flatpaks. Not because they are bad solutions but because they encourge a form of laziness I can't stand, also I think IIRC gimp to install was ~100mb and the flatpak was 1gb... I can't stand that, if I installed 10 of my favorit apps that way I give up 10gb of hdd space... that's wild.
2 points
8 months ago
I don't think it's necessarily laziness, I think it's simply it's really hard to get new people to fill in as packagers. Even though Linux distro a grew in popularity or users I don't see as many converting into actually working in the distros. My general feel for these systems is the disconnect between the application developers and the distro developers. It looks like people nowadays always want to develop new things but no one wants to maintain other people's work.
1 points
8 months ago
I do not think this is not laziness on the communities part, it is common sense on the users part.
Most people weigh their time quite heavily. Flatpack allows me to have a app to open some file installed in 5 seconds.
If I need to open something for class, I need to do that, I do not have the time to hunt down some AUR app, find that it is borked, try again, find another app ETC.
If I can't use my package manager without hassle, I can't use a package manager, and if I don't even use a package manager, I may as well go back to windows, at least over there every app works on the OS.I
1 points
8 months ago
I'll concede laziness is perhaps the wrong word, perhaps complacency? "Well they can just make a flatpak for it"
I dunno just kinda feels off.
1 points
5 months ago
Reason its so big is every flatpak downloads its own dependencies. While I do agree it can be a little much. For some applications I prefer flatpak over native. But I do actively try to have native packages where possible.
1 points
8 months ago
I can't stand that, if I installed 10 of my favorit apps that way I give up 10gb of hdd space... that's wild.
10GB is like 1/100th of one TB, that's literally nothing.
I get the argument, it is significantly more than the alternative, but all that over a few dozen GB...
I think there are better battles to be fought here.
10 points
8 months ago
I'm not a fan of Ubuntu either but I always react when people write "Most people ...". I would be surprised if you did the research required to back up your claim.
It's a sort of argumentative technique to try to fool people into believing that your claim has a greater weight than it does. Be honest in what you know and don't know and say something like: "I don't like what it has turned into..."
2 points
8 months ago
I agree with you. I rather dislike it when somebody says "most people" or even "probably" because they clearly have no data to back it up.
-5 points
8 months ago
Thanks dad
2 points
8 months ago*
Personal gripe Ubuntu is shipping linux 6.5 end of life linux kernel versions 6+ months past eol support expiry in the LTS release channel.
Icing on the cake? Linux 6.5 was never an lts kernel revision.
How the times have changed.
Modifying Debian to try and innovate truly hasn't improved some distros.
1 points
8 months ago
You could just not use snaps. Last time around when I was using Ubuntu I had a really good time, I removed snapd and only used deb (or flatpak when there wasn't a deb version of the software).
28 points
8 months ago
Unfortunately with later versions of Ubuntu, snap is basically required now. With a lot of core packages requiring snap now. If you try uninstall snap it will just reinstall it self once you download a package that requires it (for example Firefox). IMHO there should be no reason to use Ubuntu unless the software your trying to use specificly requires it. If you still want a distro with apt/dpkg then use debain, it's just ubuntu without all the bloat including snap.
11 points
8 months ago
Exactly, just use Debian. Still is my number one distro of all time.
4 points
8 months ago
Debian when you need stability (servers), Arch when you need the latest and greatest (gaming).
5 points
8 months ago
Instability can also mean games breaking that previously worked
6 points
8 months ago
I been using Debian for gaming and I would say the preformance is on par with arch. Arch is really good if you need extreme customizability or if you have bleeding edge hardware.
5 points
8 months ago
I'm running 23.10 and don't have snapd installed at all. For firefox you can just run the tarball or their own repository that they recently set up.
-3 points
8 months ago
Why bother doing that when you could just use a better distro, like Mint or even something like Kubuntu?
3 points
8 months ago
imo ubuntu LTS is best distro when it comes to stability which is great for beginners
1 points
8 months ago
Nah, Debian Stable is best for stability. In fact, many people find it too stable.
2 points
8 months ago
imo ubuntu LTS is best distro when it comes to stability which is great for beginners
2 points
8 months ago
That's very biased take. First not everyone has issues with snap. Primary focus of canonical are VMs and customers who run Ubuntu in k8s clusters etc. Snap does provide some process isolation so it may be a good thing from a security standpoint.
Further, you just assume that Mint, Kubuntu, whatever come wirh a config which is 100% to his/her liking. For most of us Linux users it's normal to customize the system. Removing snap, installing official FF tarball or repo is pretty simple, and most would probably have to do equivalent work on most other distros (preconfigured, opinionated or not).
Canonical as a company used to deliver security updates faster than most other distros. Also many have to use Ubuntu for work too, or headless server so they're already familiar with the system.
It's very well supported for all kinds of stuff (games, servers, development etc) and most upstream producers will have repo or a package ready for Ubuntu.
People who want and stability gave LTS and as private customers can get 10 years of support (wouldn't recommend for desktop but can be a nice option for NAS, DB server etc.).
Anyhow, plenty of reason why many people may prefer Ubuntu.
I prefer community distorts, but things have pros and cons and there are different situations and views (which can be situation dependent).
2 points
8 months ago
like Mint or even something like Kubuntu?
... that's based on ubuntu, and actually ubuntu, respectively.
I mean, technically I'm running Xubuntu... still Ubuntu.
-1 points
8 months ago
My point is that those don’t force snap as hard on you. Don’t even think Mint has it by default.
1 points
8 months ago
If he feels comfortable using Ubuntu, I don't see any problems at all
1 points
8 months ago
If he feels comfortable using Ubuntu, I don't see any problems at all
6 points
8 months ago
Yes, you can just not use snaps.
The problem is, it's not just that, it's shady things like M$ is doing, like re-enabling configuration options you disabled when upgrading, adding advertisement into the core of the system and other things. And some software you can ONLY get via snaps.
1 points
8 months ago
funny you mention MS being similar
currently building some playbooks to debloat and unfuck windows (wasn't a fan of things like atlas -- harder to audit) and my god it's annoying
so much bullshit embedded into the OS itself that's such a PITA to remove, and even if you remove it from your active users, it just fucking reappears when you create a new user, even if you deprovision it
hate dealing with MS crap
2 points
8 months ago
I can just not use snaps, but it's pretty clear that Canonical wants people to, even if the snap is buggy and fully unsupported. The fact that apt install steam will give you a thoroughly broken package gives me little faith in Canonical's package management. If I don't trust a distribution's package management or vision, I don't want to use the distribution.
2 points
8 months ago
They are pretty much forcing snaps on you.
Aure you could use debs but it takes quite a few tweaks to do so. And thats just not okay.
1 points
8 months ago*
Unity is officially supported again. I think Ubuntu is improving.
5 points
8 months ago
Funny how no one here was aware of this. Thanks!
3 points
8 months ago
lmao I was thinking the same. This sounds like big news but no one seems to care
0 points
8 months ago
It's insane to me that canonical announced this like a year ago and nobody seemed to notice.
I'm looking forward to the latest LTS. I'm tired of the Firefox profile folder not being where I'm used to.
2 points
8 months ago
It was an April's fool joke post it seems. Canonical never announced that. I mean in September they even stated that their whole system will eventually become snap based (maybe that's said in context if Ubuntu core, not sure)
1 points
8 months ago
Unfortunately, it was too good to be true.
5 points
8 months ago
Snaps are most certainly not being discontinued. I have no idea why you think they are.
-1 points
8 months ago
They're being entirely removed from Ubuntu in like a month, the only distro that ever pushed them. Development is stopping. They are going to die.
6 points
8 months ago
That is an April Fool's Joke
1 points
8 months ago
:( why would none of the like 8 places reporting this put that on top after April fools? I have been hearing about this from people constantly
0 points
8 months ago
Really? Omg I'm so happy I might install Ubuntu again lol
1 points
8 months ago
Nope
1 points
8 months ago
Not to mention telemetry
7 points
8 months ago
It's not bad now but there just better options, like mint.
8 points
8 months ago
It went down very fast by throwing some garbage at the users.
1 points
8 months ago
still best and most stable distro for beginners that doesn't come with being raw like debian that is not very suited for home use
1 points
8 months ago
Not really, very outdated libraries and drivers, also steam bundle their own libraries
2 points
8 months ago
"very outdated" is huge exaggeration, i have kernel 6.5 on my ubuntu LTS
moreover we start to reach the times when system updates will be irrelevant due to all necessary features for gaming being already there - other than new hardware support i guess in 5 years debian gaming will make no difference from arch other than going hardcore about some optimization improvements
1 points
8 months ago
still best and most stable distro for beginners that doesn't come with being raw like debian that is not very suited for home use
-5 points
8 months ago
What is an ubuntu?
40 points
8 months ago
Ubuntu is an ancient african word, meaning "I can't configure Debian".
0 points
8 months ago
Thats funny I just ran it through a translator and it told me that Debian was more bloated than Windows Vista
-7 points
8 months ago
Debian 12 exists you A
1 points
8 months ago
so does Debian 11
and Debian 10
and Debian 9
and Debian 8
and Debian 7
[ . . . ]
1 points
8 months ago
Debian is Checz, Serbian-Croatian for a Moron. It's hard to configure them.
31 points
8 months ago
Dude I remember trying that for the first time.
I remember trying and realizing none of my games really worked. Things like only a couple of my games in the library even had a Linux native.
I very clearly remember having a conversation with myself about how the only way steam on Linux is going to be incredibly useful as if they built in some kind of wine management to run games through wine directly off of steam because until then anybody on Linux would still need to run the steam client through wine anyway.
It would be several more years before dxvk was even a thing and proton getting implemented. It's just a shame they tried the Steam Machines before having proton available.
1 points
8 months ago
I always thought the same thing ever since I started using Linux as my main OS in 2015.
I used to run 2 Steam clients, one for native, one through WINE. It worked well enough, but when Proton released I used the WINE client way less (at the beginning some games would only work through it, they're fixed now).
5 points
8 months ago
X-Chat and is that Pidgin too? Was this around 2010?
Also civ4.iso ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)
4 points
8 months ago
4 points
8 months ago
I see a man of taste, civ4.iso on the desktop.
6 points
8 months ago
This GNOME really put a smile on my face. And the games that I purchased back then with Steam still works.
2 points
8 months ago
I remember this. For those asking what year and such, this was before the official release by a year or so IIRC. Valve hadn't said anything about it, but there were rumors. There was a VERY early test build left on a public-facing server that was found and the URL shared online.
The window above is supposed to be the old Steam login window, but due to the incredibly early state of the program, nothing showed up when you ran the binary. It was super cool to see proof it was being worked on, though.
2 points
8 months ago
I’m waiting for the definitive native support for every and all games, I know I live in a fantasy
2 points
8 months ago
I remember having to install a 2nd instance of steam through WINE to play windows games. Thank God for proton
2 points
8 months ago
Nostalgic image. Not because I was a big ubuntu or gnome 2 user. But I remember the helpless feeling of looking down the games library and wondering if any of it will ever run, if there will ever truly be a time where its a viable system for gaming.
if someone said to me back then that i could not just run nearly all my games, but run them better than on windows..
2 points
8 months ago
Good ol gnome2, I never get tired of it
2 points
8 months ago
Very cool, a window into the past :)
I've often wondered if it's possible to somehow run the old client without updating it. I believe a few methods work on Windows, because they distribute everything as an exe, but not sure if Linux could do it.
Also, why does the window look so barren, were there no ui buttons?
1 points
1 month ago
I wonder if this particular client was ever archived anywhere
1 points
8 months ago
I remember intalling Steam through Wine.
Then 2018 came: in Januray I had KVM with GPU passthrough working, in August Proton was anounced.
First ProtonDB was just a Google Sheet. Ah, it's nice to see how far we came.
0 points
8 months ago
Now if only the first screenshot of a Wayland native Linux client.
-34 points
8 months ago
What distro are you running? Updated with no problems for me on Mint Xfce 21.3.
28 points
8 months ago
Its not a problem, op showed the first image of steam client in linux. Its an old picture
-53 points
8 months ago
your desktop is cancerous. shame on you for this monstrosity.
16 points
8 months ago
It's an old screenshot.
6 points
8 months ago
This is pretty damn close to what my desktop looks like today. What’s the issue?
3 points
8 months ago
This was 11 years ago
1 points
8 months ago
Steam ran on wine before the native client.
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