3.10.2 Patch with Beta of Vulkan Renderer

I started with DOS in the early 1990s and Linux in 2001. I played games mostly on Linux in ~2005 to ~2010. Play games in a Windows VM on Linux since ~2013. I don't trust Microsoft and hardware vendors with automatic firmware updates that cannot be uninstalled and I want day1 hardware support I.E. latest CPU, GPU, HDR, Freesync, studio-quality audio peripherals, or VR... at the moment running Windows in a virtual machine is the "best of both worlds compromise".

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devon752 wrote:

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dyneol wrote:

Where would you even start ...

Jk I know it's not that good as people make it out to be. It's "virus-free" and "open-source" and "no government spying". Meanwhile w10 is also virus-free, haven't had a virus ever since w10 came out and I can play anything on it.

If you went to a good university you would know security through obscurity is bad. From playing PoE you should know that your experience of a blackbox system could be subjective/wrong. There's a huge difference between claiming something is virus-free because you don't get random popups or ransomware and actually being able to inspect the system completely to verify that everything including the system it self is virus free (by design). PoE analogy: There are now hidden backend changes in PoE because you don't see it in change-log (n)or notice it on your character.

Facebook's CEO covers his webcams and uses Thunderbird and everyone consider macOS as being very secure... https://www.hackread.com/mark-zuckerbergs-laptop-cam-tape/

Steve Ballmer (Microsoft ex-CEO) called Linux a "cancer," and Microsoft chose to act if Linux or WINE did not exist. Microsoft's current president (Brad Smith) says Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when it comes to open source.

Linux is about openness, freedom, privacy, and security. Since Windows 7 security has improved a lot and privacy was still relatively good. The other factors are still missing. Since Windows 10 privacy has become extremely bad with bloatware and no way to completely disable "telemetry".

Microsoft is slowly improving openness with open sourcing software like https://github.com/Microsoft/Terminal but moving forward IMO they will never provide as much openness, freedom, and privacy as Linux does.

One of Linux's biggest advantages is arguably also one of it's biggest disadvantages. Where Microsoft and Apple forces policies and software on their users, Linux allows people to personally do what ever they want. The pro is that it drives innovation and creativity, the con is fragmentation and support challenges. Sometimes it's really good like cgroups and other times it's really stupid like Ubuntu's Mir display server. Some of Linux's tools are so good that Microsoft has given it's users the ability to install it on Windows (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux).

These are the dumbed-down fundamental differences in philosophy between the systems.

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Unfortunately linux since it's open-source it doesn't and probably never will support games made for the commercial OS's.

No. Popularity is the primary reason for the limited Linux games. Not directly due to the open source nature. Another major factor is that companies want/need a stable long term supported interface that they can target.

Software and standards like SDL2 and Vulkan really helps to provide abstraction and support. On the other end you have things like ALSA/PulseAudio and which is implemented badly. X11 to Wayland transition also creates uncertainty although XWayland works very well IMO. The biggest challenge has probably been compatibility/support of glibc AFAIK. That said, Windows also had it's set of issues regarding visual-c, .net or d3d9_xx.dll runtime support. People seem to forget those growth pains very quickly when they compare it to other systems.

Linux has really good graphics drivers support and performance. It's relatively ease to use with an active community. One feature that is missing is the ability to have a "one click" upgrade/backup systems as easily as macOS or recent Windows versions does. It's very important to check your hardware support before trying it out. To power-users or most gamers that I know those two aren't major problems. Any newbie can test the OS before installing it.

Currently it simply isn't profitable for companies to pay for development, testing, and support for the array of system configurations if there is so little adoption. Some companies like Valve are passionate enough to take that on just to give people the freedom of choice. It has helped them to combat Microsoft Store policies and subsequently improved gaming for everyone that uses a computer. I am delighted that Vulkan made it in to PoE as this will allow the game to perform much better on Windows and other platforms in the long run. It's a bumpy start as you have notice in this thread. It's not something that is easy to add on top of what you currently have.

In terms of Steam games support, this is my experience:
I have over 1000 games on Steam.
Top 5 most played games in my library, except PoE, has Linux support. (I mostly game on Windows)
More than 40% of my 1000 games has Linux support.
With some effort more than 90% of my 1000 games runs in Linux with software like Lutris (including PoE).