Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
The only bastion left is anticheat. Everything else are just (bad) old habits fueled by marketing.
Anti-cheat systems already have to make changes, since Microsoft have plans to significantly restrict kernel mode access after the major Crowdstrike issues earlier in the year. Kernel mode code is very invasive, difficult to get correct, and can result in major security holes or stability issues if not written correctly.
A bug in userland code may crash that one app. A bug in kernel mode code can (and often does) cause bluescreens, that people blame Microsoft for. I’m sure they’re tired of being blamed for buggy code written by other companies.
Running the anti cheat code in userland will (in theory) make it easier to run on other OSes too.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Microsoft-paves-the-way-for-Linux-gaming-success-with-plan-that-would-kill-kernel-level-anti-cheat.888345.0.html
Yes indeed, I’ve followed that from afar (as I generally mostly play offline, definitely not competitively) so I hope this will be the final missing piece.
I also only play games offline, and these days it’s usually on my Xbox rather than on PC, but I’ve been following this since I’m a software engineer and it’s interesting from a development perspective. Kernel-mode anti-cheat has a lot of similarities with malware/rootkits.
Well put.
…and VR. VR is already finicky on its own, gaming on Linux can be finicky in different ways, and the issues multiply if you have two things like that.
I work in VR, I play in VR, including Windows games, all on Linux. No specific problem for me on that front.
How do you work ‘in’ vr?
Apologies I wasn’t clear. I actually I work “on” VR, namely I’m a software developer who write VR/AR code.
Still though… I also do work “in” VR as I have numerous demo where I’m coding in the headset. Most recently you can check this 1min video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGvc4kNXiUY that I did for https://futuretextlab.info/ and it’s all open source, cf https://git.benetou.fr/utopiah/text-code-xr-engine/src/branch/fot-sloan-companion . To clarify a bit I drag&drop file on my (Linux) filesystem and they are reflected in AR in that example. I can open them, manipulate them, if it’s code (here JavaScript and AFrame) it can live reload part of the scene, etc.
I’m also working “in” VR for the NLNet sponsored project xrsh aka XRshell https://nlnet.nl/project/xrsh/ where thanks to WASM we basically put a (small) Linux system with its terminal on a Web page and thus can code and work in the headset.
Maybe they mean that they use flatscreen applications in VR, or maybe they take all their meetings in VRChat.
Not exactly, clarified ;)
Can you provide some context… VR has many devices? Can you make meta shit work?
Yes, Meta shit actually works quite well using Wivrn apart from it being, well, from Meta. lvra.gitlab.io is a treasure trove of Linux VR info. SteamVR is kinda shit on linux, so using the open source openXR runtime Monado is ideal. I personally use a pimax 5k I got cheap used to play Beat saber and it works quite well. While not complete, there is very promising progress on getting WMR headsets working. The Index, Vive and Vive pro all work with no fiddling though if that’s what you’re after.
I’m basically just using Steam with SteamVR on the Index, no tinkering in there.
I also tried other things, e.g. Monado, streaming to headset, etc but in practice I prefer to “just” play when I’m playing and for that the Index works great.
Huh. I have personally found SteamVR to be slow and very flakey, even on Windows. I find using monado I can just play. I guess monado has a bit more initial setup, but I personally found it to be worth it.
Tends to depend on the headset you own, some work perfectly. Also, Valve is very likely releasing a headset based on SteamOS, which should help.
Sure, the Index should work fine, but I’m not so sure about accessories, my Slimes, etc. Also on an nvidia GPU…
Really hope Valve does indeed release the new headset, because my Index is getting very dated.
Completely depends on the accessories, and an nvidia GPU is unlikely to have a major impact, I’ve used one for VR before. What are slimes?
Slimes as in SlimeVR, open source trackers.
I think it all should work, but I’m afraid of just having to solve issues in general with stuff I don’t have to solve any issues with now.
I assumed it was that. I saw explicit Linux support on their site, so wanted to confirm.
Nothing wrong with having that fear, just not super fair to assume it won’t work in that case. Both the devices you’ve mentioned have good Linux support, and would likely work pretty well out of the box.
Yeah, it’s also that “it just works” now, and one undisputable (though unfortunately self-fulfilling) advantage of Windows is that chances are if you do encounter an issue you’re not the first one and someone has already solved it.
Being an early(ish) adopter of anything like that is always a bit of a risk and pain.