by neverminder on 8/29/23, 6:37 PM with 95 comments
by asmor on 8/29/23, 7:59 PM
I was hoping for that trend to reverse with game porting toolkit, but it doesn't seem like that's happening. Whoever pushes for Gaming at Apple doesn't seem to have massive internal support. Metal VR died almost as soon as it released and somehow they thought making Game Porting Toolkit license incompatible with Wine/Proton/CrossOver was a great move, because all you need to convince a game developer to invest in a dead (to your audience) platform that will likely deprecate your API in a year or two is a proof of concept of how well it can run.
by clhodapp on 8/29/23, 7:35 PM
However, I think that this speaks more to the degree to which Apple have put the torch to Mac gaming than it does to the size of Linux gaming.
by esalman on 8/29/23, 8:05 PM
Truth be told we got more pleasure from cussing at the Apple guy than actually playing any game.
by aidenn0 on 8/29/23, 7:35 PM
There's plenty to disagree with RMS on, but he's absolutely right that Linux is not an OS; it's a kernel.
by simion314 on 8/29/23, 7:45 PM
by pugio on 8/29/23, 8:10 PM
Thankfully, the Apple Silicon machines are powerful enough to support many modern games. I'm currently (and happily) playing Baldur's Gate 3 using Wineskin on my M1 MBP with no problems. So far no bugs, and multiplayer with PC users works great.
by gorkish on 8/29/23, 9:21 PM
Fixed headline
by jauntywundrkind on 8/29/23, 9:08 PM
Back when Steam was trying to make consoles, they were recruiting others to make the hardware. I'm not sure how available software was then, how open options were then. But I so want to know it compares to today.
It sounded like the whole Deck UI was fairly custom at start? And there has to be a decent bit of custom integration, beyond the shell itself. Tweaks to the base Arch OS & it's packages. Supposedly the Big Picture Mode in Steam has gotten a decent overhaul that makes it more Deck like, but I haven't tried it nor a Deck yet!
I hope someone else out there has the courage to try a Linux gaming deck!
by tabeth on 8/29/23, 7:55 PM
Unsurprisingly nvidia dominates with gpus.
by whalesalad on 8/29/23, 7:58 PM
by shmerl on 8/29/23, 8:08 PM
by ragle on 8/30/23, 12:56 PM
I finally retired that machine this year and bought a higher-end gaming pc for less than half of what it would cost me to get a less-than-the-best Apple Silicon MBP.
Yeah, it's heavy. Battery life isn't great. But my phone has replaced so much of my mobile computing needs that I don't really need to take a laptop with me when I'm traveling unless it's for work, in which case I'll have my company-issued machine with me anyway.
I never thought I'd leave MacOS for Linux - but I recently got back into gaming and basically wasn't willing to spend $4k+ on a machine I couldn't game on when all of my personal project needs, etc. can be attended to on a cheaper gaming laptop.
The fact that Apple Silicon is an absolute beast, graphically, made it all worse somehow. Like having a Ferrari in your garage that you aren't allowed to drive - only pay for and look at.
Am I Apple's target demographic? Apart from being a developer - probably not. I don't do a lot of multimedia stuff (at least, I don't do anything that isn't adequately served by a PC with a solid GPU). Because I grew up on linux I'm right at home there with all of my non-work dev / geek / fun stuff and that probably makes me an outlier.
Apple's success clearly speaks for their business savvy - and, there's now a number of chinks in my (previously 100%) Apple loyalty across my wide array of gadgetry (several Apple TVs and one each for me and my wife of: laptop, ipad, iphone, watch, airpods). After a disappointing battery experience with my airpods - I replaced them with some excellent-sounding soundcore buds. My apple watch needs to be replaced soon and I'll probably get a Garmin (again - battery life and consistent failure to capture VO2 max on outdoor runs, other frustrations). I enjoy VR gaming and plan to upgrade from a quest 2 to a quest 3 instead of buying a vision pro. What's next to go in my Apple line-up? I don't know but I've become much more open to shopping around for non-Apple tech than I was in, say, 2016 when it seemed to me that nothing else could compete with Apple.
I wonder how true this is for Apple's "geek core" of tech professionals, and how much of it is just my unique little anecdote? And, in any case - does Apple care? They've cornered the market for both the technical-artistic and "luxury" class. Plenty of meat on those bones without worrying about the geeky whims of the pesky few that are open to (and capable of) something like abandoning Mac OS for Linux.
Still, it was sad to give up my Mac OS personal computing environment. I love Apple - but for what I care about, Apple just doesn't seem to love me. We'll always have our iOS time together I guess, for now anyway.