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Games run faster on SteamOS than Windows 11, Ars testing finds
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I last checked in December. At that time Linux had an all time high usage rate of 5.6%. For a platform that's existed since the early 90s, 5.6% is the highest they'd ever achieved. So I wouldn't exactly say microsoft EVER pissed it away. They still have, and always have had, dominant market share of users. And they do so by charging hundreds of dollars as opposed to a free alternative.
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I'm really curious to see what kind of performance gains the Xbox-mode or whatever they're calling it is going to provide. I don't know if it'll reach SteamOS levels, but it does legitimately look like they're taking the bloat's hit on gaming seriously with the Xbox-branded ROG Ally. The reality is that mostly people aren't going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it's still a win.I think we're beginning to see a serious shift about how people view Linux. I do think valve being on Linux will significantly legitimizes it, and drivers will become much more accessible for it. In the next decade I think we will see a big migration of gamers to Linux. Being on Linux myself, the experience is even more streamlined and less glitchy than just a year ago, just because of the widespread adoption of OS's like steamOS and bazzite.
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It's not a slight, as I said it's a doubt, not criticism. I'm not saying "did the author EVEN ..."Your other doubts and concerns seem slightly biased, e.g. wondering what settings could be tweaked on only one of the systems being tested and then reminding us all that there do still exist some things that won't run on SteamOS. It's only that one that is outright ridiculous.
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This is really not surprising to anyone who has used modern windows and Linux recently. Windows is so incredibly bloated, whereas Linux is a true real-time OS basically out of the box.I recently switched from windows (with a debloat scrpit ran on it) to linux mint and I was shocked at how much faster it booted. When I turn my pc on I usually get up and do something else for a bit (not because windows is THAT slow but because I could spend the minute it takes to turn on to make lunch or something) and linux booted before I was out of my chair.
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They had internet explorer dominance, they pissed that away They had PC gaming OS dominance, they're now pissing that awayThe closest thing they had to internet explorer dominance is saying that it was manditory to be installed in every OS. The OS had market dominance, and you couldn't uninstall internet explorer. But actual usage? Everybody used Netscape.
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The compatibility layer is overhead, but the key difference for many games is that DXVK swaps directX for Vulkan, and Vulkan often gets better performance. The performance gains of using steamOS are twofold, there's less OS load (this is particularly noticeable in low performance games, windows will consume much more battery on a game like Dead Cells than SteamOS will), and there's also a vulkan performance increase for some games. My understanding is if you see a big performance increase in a demanding game, that's usually thanks to vulkan.
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I think we're beginning to see a serious shift about how people view Linux. I do think valve being on Linux will significantly legitimizes it, and drivers will become much more accessible for it. In the next decade I think we will see a big migration of gamers to Linux. Being on Linux myself, the experience is even more streamlined and less glitchy than just a year ago, just because of the widespread adoption of OS's like steamOS and bazzite.
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This post did not contain any content.I like to see this. This is not my experience out of the box (in debian so not truly a comparison) on legacy hardware. (Which shouldn't be running win 11 anyways). We are definitely most of the way there with proton but game devs/publishers have a lot of room of improvement.
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I'm really curious to see what kind of performance gains the Xbox-mode or whatever they're calling it is going to provide. I don't know if it'll reach SteamOS levels, but it does legitimately look like they're taking the bloat's hit on gaming seriously with the Xbox-branded ROG Ally. The reality is that mostly people aren't going to leave Windows, so if Valve and Linux force Windows to improve it's still a win.
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The closest thing they had to internet explorer dominance is saying that it was manditory to be installed in every OS. The OS had market dominance, and you couldn't uninstall internet explorer. But actual usage? Everybody used Netscape.People who knew what they were doing with computers used Netscape until it died, those people went to Mozilla suite and then Firefox (well, Phoenix then Firebird then Firefox). But that was a shrinking minority of people on the internet at the turn of the millennium. Practically everyone else used IE (90%+ of web traffic at its peak) and continued to do so until Google released Chrome and shone a light on how little Microsoft had been doing for nearly a decade. Dominance was dominance however they got it, and they pissed it away through complacency, somewhat similarly to what they're doing now.
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The closest thing they had to internet explorer dominance is saying that it was manditory to be installed in every OS. The OS had market dominance, and you couldn't uninstall internet explorer. But actual usage? Everybody used Netscape.
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The compatibility layer is overhead, but the key difference for many games is that DXVK swaps directX for Vulkan, and Vulkan often gets better performance. The performance gains of using steamOS are twofold, there's less OS load (this is particularly noticeable in low performance games, windows will consume much more battery on a game like Dead Cells than SteamOS will), and there's also a vulkan performance increase for some games. My understanding is if you see a big performance increase in a demanding game, that's usually thanks to vulkan.Vulkan isn't magic, its power comes from the flexibility it gives developers in its API. If developers are using DirectX, especially older versions, then they're not utilizing that flexibility. If DirectX code performs better through a Vulkan translation layer than on Windows, it means the driver implementations or OS bloat are what's causing it. With your theory, you could run a DirectX to Vulkan translation layer on Windows and also get increased performance. Which may be true, but once again points the finger at bad drivers.
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Linux will never be mainstream while it's controlled by nerds. I mean there is no uniform interface (there's so many guitar options) and when people want to learn it, the support is from people who think "it just works".
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Linux will never be mainstream while it's controlled by nerds. I mean there is no uniform interface (there's so many guitar options) and when people want to learn it, the support is from people who think "it just works".
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Take aways: * Sample set is of 5 games * Lenovo drivers are much slower than Asus * There are 2 games where windows is neck to neck or better, 3 where SteamOS is far ahead Some doubts: * Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation. 99%ile would be helpful. * I wonder if it makes sense to test DirectX10, 11 and 12 games separately to better understand where Proton has an edge. * I wonder what all settings can be tweaked in Windows to find potential fixes (core isolation, cpu boost, power profiles). Point is Microsoft and OEMs need to do better, however not every game or subscription services work on Linux, so in the interim time users should know what they can do to close the gap better.> Did the author run the benchmarks few times to rule out shader compilation. Why should the author rule it out? Honest question. If shader compilation leads so worse real world experience for gamers on Windows than SteamOS, it is a valid point to include.
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I think this time actually does have the potential to be different. They're co-launching an Xbox-branded handheld PC designed to go head-to-head with the Steam Deck while downplaying the future of dedicated consoles. Microsoft's gaming division is going all-in on PC, so it matters more than ever.
