May 17, 2018 - For us to get up and running, we only needed a few things: A Mac or a PC with the beta version of Steam running plus an iPhone, iPad or Apple.
Steam Play - Valve's name for its cross-platform initiative - is getting a major update, adding. From a report: The new tools run on Proton, which is custom distribution of the widely-used Wine compatibility tool. In the most practical terms, this means you can now download and install Windows games directly from the Steam client without any further fuss.
Valve is currently checking 'the entire Steam catalog' and whitelisting games that run without issue, but you can turn off those guidelines and install whatever you want, too. Proton should provide enhanced performance over Wine in many cases, according to Valve.
DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, and performance in multi-threaded games 'has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine.' You'll also see better fullscreen and controller support with Proton. It's also fully open source.
How is a Wine app on a GTK+ system any less 'native' than a Qt app on a GTK+ system? It's literally just a different set of userspace libraries. Wine is a layer in the middle that adds some inefficiency, compatibility issues and bugs of its own. Albeit not much - the Wine devs are pretty awesome to do what they do - but it's there. The biggest issue with companies ignoring 'native' Linux is they'll tend to stick with the tools for the platforms they target and they will tend towards the most modern APIs particularly for graphics where modern generally means faster and with more features. Wine is always playing catch-up with those APIs so there's a very good chance today's Windows game will be years before it's even half playable on Linux using Wine. The biggest issue with companies ignoring 'native' Linux is they'll tend to stick with the tools for the platforms they target and they will tend towards the most modern APIs particularly for graphics where modern generally means faster and with more features.
How much of this issue goes away if a developer instructs quality control to treat Wine as a fully supported platform alongside Windows 7 and Windows 10? That's how BGB (Game Boy debugger), FCEUX (NES debugger), OpenMPT (sample based sequencer), and FamiTracker (chiptune sequencer) work: the developer ships Win32 binaries tested on both Windows and Wine. It depends upon how well any particular Linux distribution is aligned with Wine and the various hardware drives to produce a solid reliable outcome, probably with a drop in performance, to ensure no game crashes the system but can crash wine.
So you never need to reboot the system, only reboot wine, its for gaming afterall and so you want other things to run liably as well. This tied to a more modern era of in home servers, keeping the corporations out and you family privacy in ie your own in home encrypted.
Wine is a layer in the middle that adds some inefficiency, compatibility issues and bugs of its own. How much more so than GTK+ as 'a layer in the middle' between an application and Xlib? Much more, for the reason that GTK+ is a layer that provides high-level functionnality (I want a button, I want a window, I want a drop list, etc.) to the application, while itself talking to a low level interface (mostly used for blitting and rectangles filling). What wine is doing is taking a certain low-level API and reconverting everything into a completely different low-level API. It would be like if you took that Xlib API, but instead talking to the Xlib library it self, you talk to a separate layer that takes in Xlib API and translates it into something that is displayed using openGL, running on SDL, so that it could be used on some weird gaming console, because that GTK+ application is compiled with a GTK version hard-coded in that isn't supporting OpenGL. Could be entirely solved by having that application built with GTK supporting OpenGL as a render back-end, but it cannot be done, because you have zero control on it, thus you need a rube goldberg layer of pancackes of middle layers to get the application working. Wine is that adaptation layer.
That's why it would be great if eventually one day developers started to target Linux too. But until then, there's the chicken-and-egg problem of linux not being a popular gaming platform, thus not worth spending resources on from the developers point of view, and in turn never getting popular because there are no games on it. How much of this issue goes away if a developer instructs quality control to treat Wine as a fully supported platform alongside Windows 7 and Windows 10? That's how BGB (Game Boy debugger), FCEUX (NES debugger), OpenMPT (sample based sequencer), and FamiTracker (chiptune sequencer) work: the developer ships Win32 binaries tested on both Windows and Wine. Yup, developers at least starting to give attention to wine is a good intermediate step. That at least solves the 'users won't pick up linux as a platform due to lack of games' part of the equation.
And who knows, maybe this will suddenly make steam-on-linux a popular platform (maybe because it could enable cheap linux 'steambox' gaming consoles?) And once these 'steambox' gaming console become popular enough to show on the radar of the devs, some will try putting effort into true native linux builds, eventually? How is a Wine app on a GTK+ system any less 'native' than a Qt app on a GTK+ system? It's literally just a different set of userspace libraries. Not quite, though. Most of those userspace libraries are emulating behavior that isn't well defined and translating behavior with a.very. thick compatibility layer encompassing.literally. every single aspect of a program's interaction capabilities.
Wine isn't implemented as a personality within the kernel to interact directly with native primitives, nor is X running a GDI subsystem. Ultimately, I guess what is native then? I suppose it's shades of gray. One could argue, I suppose, that qemu binary cross. You're correct that wikipedia.org, which modifies the kernel to accept a simplified machine model presented by the VMM, blurs these lines. But historically, publishers of proprietary operating systems have been hostile toward production use thereof as a guest under paravirtualization. The other big differences: 1.
Wine is $119.99 cheaper than Windows in a VM. It'd be technically possible to automatically provision a VM on the user's machine on demand, but I doubt that Valve would want the legal hassle as. The other big differences: Oh I really don't disagree with the use of Wine at all. I think it's fantastic that some Big Money is picking it up to help those guys out. Their job is horridly complex (emulating a more or less undocumented API, with a black box implementation) and it's a miracle it works at all. I've used Wine for many years.
Being this is happening with Steam, which is a large enough distribution platform that developers actually pay it attention- we may see Windows apps even targeted for Wine compatibility. Your clothes are a layer between your skin and people observing you. A giraffe costume is a layer between your skin and people observing you.
Your clothes are made to fit you. They don't hide your shape or size, or make you look like something other than what you are. They are a natural fit to a human of your size and shape. They don't get in the way of using your hands and mouth, the interfaces you are designed to work with. An giraffe costume isn't a natural fit for you, and it hides your actual size and shape. It gets in the way of using your hands and mouth naturally. It's awkward, and definitely not what you want to wear while running a race, because it slows you down.
Wine is a Windows costume for Linux, to make Linux look kinda like Windows. Rather than exposing the Linux interfaces in an organized, easy to use way as GTK does, it hides the Linux interfaces the same way a giraffe costume hides your mouth, and the result is muffled communication. GTK is designed for Linux, to fit properly on Linux, the same way your clothes are designed to fit properly on your body.
Got to correct you there, you're a bit unclear on how these stack. Qt apps never link to GTK+ libraries. Both Qt and GTK+ sit on top of a window manager, to which they link, in addition to many other low level libraries such as Xlib. Ah, but what of wikipedia.org, a part of Qt since Qt 4.5? It uses GTK+ to draw GUI elements for Qt applications, thereby making them look somewhat like GTK+ applications (save for the excessive whitespace that seems to appear in all Qt apps.) There is a corresponding equivalent for going the other direction as well, but I can't recall its name at the moment and it's not directly relevant to the conversation anyhow. Different people have different opinions on the philosophical question of what an operating system comprises.
As long as defining 'operating system' is hard, defining 'native' will also be hard. These questions should help determine where one might draw the line: Is an executable loader part of 'the operating system'?
In Linux, executable loaders are not part of the kernel except in the special case of a statically linked ELF. Everything else, such as Wine's PE format or an ELF that uses a shared library, go. Also, is this some kind of secret advertisement for Qt? I'm just stating the view that Wine is a UI toolkit with a PE loader. Just as LessTif reimplements Motif API and GNUstep reimplements Cocoa API, Wine reimplements Win32 API. This makes it in theory no less native than any other UI toolkit that your desktop environment happens not to use.
If you run a KDE Plasma desktop environment, apps using GTK+, Motif, or GNUstep are just as non-native as apps using Wine. If you run GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon, Xfce, or LXDE, apps using Qt, Motif, or GNUstep are just as.
One, AFAIK Qt apps aren't 'on' a GTK+ system, so I'm not sure on what you're trying to drive at here. I have used the name 'GTK+ apps on a Qt system' to describe the result of the following steps: 1. Install Kubuntu or any other KDE Plasma distribution on a PC. Discover that Krita doesn't do indexed color and install GIMP through the distribution's package manager.
I have used the name 'Qt apps on a GTK+ system' to describe the result of the following steps: 1. Install Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, or any other GNOME 3, Xfce, or Cinnamon distribution on a PC. Discover that GIMP doesn't do adjustment layers. I've started testing Zorin OS (based on Ubuntu, quite nice) but games is the one thing keeping Win 8.1 Pro on my gaming machine, if Valve manages to make it so my entire Steam catalog 'just works' without any bullshit? Nutella can keep Windows 10 Spyware Edition and I won't have to worry about MSFT pulling the plug on the non spyware versions of Windows.
BTW one of the nice things about Zorin is it already has Wine setup for most of the basic Windows productivity programs so with Steam taking care of the g. Are you specifically talking about the Steam Client? For some of the games, they seem like wrapped Playstation, XBox and even DOS games with Windows 'mannerism', wrapping themselves alongside a 'shoddy' keyboard/ controller interface, that may or may not break during the next Steam update.
Perhaps running on Linux will bring new issues, but it may fix others such as Windows dialogs taking focus away from your games and asking you the same question over and over, despite checking the box that says 'Never. As one with a dedicated game machine that was never going to update to Windows 10, this is a very positive outcome. A game box with Linux will be far more useful, and likely to be on more than a couple of times a week. Good news for me.
I've replaced a couple components in my pc recently, and since I bought an OEM copy of Windows 7 years back when I first built it, it now shows as 'not genuine'. My HDD was also failing so I bought a new one on the cheap. I was planning to upgrade my PC later this year with a new processor but was worried I would have to upgrade to windows 10, because basically all I use it for is gaming. If Steam can now run most of it's games on Linux, I'll just bite the $40 bullet, keep the good HDD. That's a pretty ignorant statement, when you look at how many Macs were sold in the last decade or so, and are in active use. Sure, I have no doubt Apple and Valve/Steam have butted heads over how to handle online sales.
Apple has an online store, after all. But open source that you can compile and run inside OS X is somewhat immune to Apple's whims. Yeah, they might have a graphics API that's unique - but that can be worked around (MoltenVK). The OS is Unix based, though, and should really require less so. Some Linux diehards will say this is a backwards step because they think developers should make native games, and they worry that this will cause developers to get lazy and not bother building for anything but Windows.
But this is actually a good move by Valve. I've been tracking Linux games for a long time, and the rate of Linux game releases has flat-lined over the last two years. Initially Linux was gaining ground on Windows, in fact by mid-2016 Linux as a% of all games on Steam had reached the giddy height of 25.5% - there were 9000 Windows games and 2300 Linux games. Since then Linux has been losing ground again.
The rate of new Linux games has been a virtually flat linear growth of 100 new games a month. My conclusion from this is that the developers willing to make Linux releases are already doing so, and the rest aren't likely to. In contrast, Windows (and Mac) continued to show accelerating growth, pulling away again from Linux's linear growth. Some attribute this to the explosion of Windows gaming in China, and others attribute this to a boom in Windows shovelware.
Regardless of the reason, only 20% of all games on Steam nowadays have a Linux version - next month we'll see the milestones of 5000 Linux games and 25,000 Windows games respectively I believe Valve also noticed this trend two years ago and drew the same conclusion. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the Vulkan / Wine / DXVK work started then. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. They had already reached saturation in winning over developers to support Linux, and now they need to win more users. With more users will come another opportunity to win over more developers. So yes, this is a good thing for Linux gaming. 'Some Linux diehards will say this is a backwards step because they think developers should make native games, and they worry that this will cause developers to get lazy and not bother building for anything but Windows.'
Theres some truth in this statement but I welcome the renewed push to get more games working on Linux. Remember that Steam is the foremost digital games distribution platform and therefore carries a lot of weight. This presumably will invigorate SteamOS usage more and with it an increased us. Some Linux diehards will say this is a backwards step because they think developers should make native games, and they worry that this will cause developers to get lazy and not bother building for anything but Windows. But this is actually a good move by Valve. I've been tracking Linux games for a long time, and the rate of Linux game releases has flat-lined over the last two years. Initially Linux was gaining ground on Windows, in fact by mid-2016 Linux as a% of all games on Steam had reached the giddy height of 25.5% - there were 9000 Windows games and 2300 Linux games.
Since then Linux has been losing ground again. The rate of new Linux games has been a virtually flat linear growth of 100 new games a month. My conclusion from this is that the developers willing to make Linux releases are already doing so, and the rest aren't likely to. In contrast, Windows (and Mac) continued to show accelerating growth, pulling away again from Linux's linear growth. Some attribute this to the explosion of Windows gaming in China, and others attribute this to a boom in Windows shovelware.
Regardless of the reason, only 20% of all games on Steam nowadays have a Linux version - next month we'll see the milestones of 5000 Linux games and 25,000 Windows games respectively I believe Valve also noticed this trend two years ago and drew the same conclusion. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the Vulkan / Wine / DXVK work started then. It's a chicken-and-egg dilemma. They had already reached saturation in winning over developers to support Linux, and now they need to win more users. With more users will come another opportunity to win over more developers. So yes, this is a good thing for Linux gaming.
Developers should make native Linux games. But to get that happening you need people to be gaming on Linux. So using a stopgap measure like running Windows games through WINE or some other system is the way you get gamers to Linux. The truth is I hate Windows, we all hate Windows but I love games, I love games more than I hate Windows so I end up using Windows. If you can get the numbers to Linux, the games will come. You mean MS Office - there is still no usable alternative for Linux - just some free half-baked toys for people who never needed an office suite in the first place - Most people who use MS Office have no need of an office suite - they would do fine with a simple word processor and calculator - For typing a letter, making a simple graph or presentation, etc, libreoffice is fine.
Google docs/calc/etc offers a decent set of tools. It's missing a lot of features, but the collaboration features are fantastic.
A lot of my work doesn't really need complicated type setting and reference management, and google docs makes it a lot easier to share things - The CSV import/export i. Name any modern game that you own? Almost all of them are Internet-dependent, with servers run by the software manufacturers, that stop receiving updates after a few years. But I've have 1000 games on my account for.
14 years now? That's a better ratio than the number of games I owned in the DOS days whose disks still work or which I can get running on a modern machine. You're using the same argument as people did 14 years ago. The answer's still the same and well-publicised.
Nobody really knows, but Stea. When STO went free to play, I started playing it on Linux. (though I was hoping for an eventual PS3/PS4 version). It performed okay, but as time went on, the performance suffered. And then Cryptic did a major update which pretty much prevented STO from running on Wine unless you compiled a bleeding edge wine install and engaged in the usual travails of getting it to work.
I basically had to quit the game as a Captain 35. I installed it via steamplay on my Fedora machine and it 'just worked', though I have. I have bought many Humble Bundles over the years, and while there have been a lot of games available for Linux, there have been quite a few 'steam/windows only' games that I haven't been able to play. My kids' computers run Win7. I have been disappointed that more and more games in bundles are 'steam-only' instead of DRM-free like in the beginning. For the most part because my kids all use my steam account because that is what the games are linked to.
But there are challenges with that approach (one log.
Hello, I'm totally new to the Mac world and love the look of it. I've been a PC user for a decade and would like to make the switch, and mainly because I want a machine to do work (print and web design) and less gaming. BUT I would like to be able to play my Steam games and other pc games. I've heard about Bootcamp and wondered if on a Mac, it would run the games much better than on a native PC. I've heard that some games run better on a bootcamp/Mac OS/System, is this true? The games I play are: Company of Heroes ALOT Bad Company 2 Half Life 2 Thanks for Listening. I hope to purchase the new Mac Mini soon.
Grahamwookie wrote: Hello, I'm totally new to the Mac world and love the look of it. I've been a PC user for a decade and would like to make the switch, and mainly because I want a machine to do work (print and web design) and less gaming. BUT I would like to be able to play my Steam games and other pc games. I've heard about Bootcamp and wondered if on a Mac, it would run the games much better than on a native PC. I've heard that some games run better on a bootcamp/Mac OS/System, is this true?
The games I play are: Company of Heroes ALOT Bad Company 2 Half Life 2 A Mac using BootCamp to run Windows means the Mac is really running Windows literally just like a real PC. With BootCamp the Windows is not running in an emulator, or virtualisation engines it is 100% real unadulterated Windows.
In theory a Mac of the same specification as a PC i.e. With the same speed chips etc.
Should run Windows at the same speed as a real PC. However real PCs usually are shipped with lots of bloatware which clogs up the PC and slows it down. If you yourself install a fresh copy of Windows on a Mac via BootCamp it will not come with all that bloatware. As a result the Mac might in fact feel faster than an otherwise identical speed PC. If you ran Windows on a Mac via Parallels, or VMWare then these are virtualisation solutions.
They have the advantage that you can then simultaneously run both Mac and Windows applications but the Windows applications will not run as fast as BootCamp which is Windows only. Games are very demanding so BootCamp is probably the best approach. If you are going to be running games on this Mac mini you should make sure you choose the slightly higher spec model with the AMD video chip. Grahamwookie wrote: Hello, I'm totally new to the Mac world and love the look of it. I've been a PC user for a decade and would like to make the switch, and mainly because I want a machine to do work (print and web design) and less gaming. BUT I would like to be able to play my Steam games and other pc games. I've heard about Bootcamp and wondered if on a Mac, it would run the games much better than on a native PC.
I've heard that some games run better on a bootcamp/Mac OS/System, is this true? The games I play are: Company of Heroes ALOT Bad Company 2 Half Life 2 A Mac using BootCamp to run Windows means the Mac is really running Windows literally just like a real PC. With BootCamp the Windows is not running in an emulator, or virtualisation engines it is 100% real unadulterated Windows.
In theory a Mac of the same specification as a PC i.e. With the same speed chips etc.
Should run Windows at the same speed as a real PC. However real PCs usually are shipped with lots of bloatware which clogs up the PC and slows it down. If you yourself install a fresh copy of Windows on a Mac via BootCamp it will not come with all that bloatware. As a result the Mac might in fact feel faster than an otherwise identical speed PC. If you ran Windows on a Mac via Parallels, or VMWare then these are virtualisation solutions. They have the advantage that you can then simultaneously run both Mac and Windows applications but the Windows applications will not run as fast as BootCamp which is Windows only. Games are very demanding so BootCamp is probably the best approach.
If you are going to be running games on this Mac mini you should make sure you choose the slightly higher spec model with the AMD video chip. Apple Footer. This site contains user submitted content, comments and opinions and is for informational purposes only. Apple may provide or recommend responses as a possible solution based on the information provided; every potential issue may involve several factors not detailed in the conversations captured in an electronic forum and Apple can therefore provide no guarantee as to the efficacy of any proposed solutions on the community forums. Apple disclaims any and all liability for the acts, omissions and conduct of any third parties in connection with or related to your use of the site. All postings and use of the content on this site are subject to the.