Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
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Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
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*Mac Mini At the 10K top end model
Mac gaming would have been light years ahead of where we currently are if Apple officially supported Vulkan. I believe early versions of Proton targeted both Linux and MacOS. But Valve walked away after Apple showed little to no interest in working with them.
The decision to create another video API doesn’t make any sense for me. If Apple would have supported Vulkan, it would probably be the most popular video API by now.
Makes sense for their wallet. If devs spend a lot of time on metal, then a iOS port is more probable, and finally because the code isn't easily portable they will exclusively focus on apple devices
True but Linux is benefiting from a huge project to build a compatibility layer for Windows binaries to execute on Linux. macOS doesn’t have that benefit.
But neither Linux or macOS has native builds of those games.
Proton and Wine are astounding and I use them daily but they do mask over the fact that so many game developers don’t care about platforms beyond Windows.
At least macOS is partially open source and POSIX compliant vs Windows.
Proton literally runs on MacOS, all MacOS would need to do to get the same compatibility is to just not get in the way. All they need to do is release a Vulkan driver.
Proton literally doesn’t run on macOS since Metal and no Vulkan. Proton translates to Vulkan. You’d need to reimplement everything to talk to Metal. It’s not a driver issue but an API issue.
That's on Apple for not supporting Vulkan.
Wait I was wrong on the specifics, MacOS runs wine and thats what they use for their game translation software (some of Protons improvements have been upstreamed tho)
Walled garden problems, skill issue honestly.
It’s nothing to do with walled garden - macOS/Unix and Linux are simply operating system architectures. FreeBSD also doesn’t benefit from Proton for the same reasons.
There are Linux compatibility layers for FreeBSD so you can run Proton, and macOS has CodeWeavers’ CrossOver and Game Porting Toolkit (based on CrossOver) which can run Cyberpunk on macOS today.
The only reason macOS/Unix are behind in compatibility layer efficacy is simply they don’t have Valve money and resources being thrown at them.
Since Valve joined forces with CodeWeavers to accelerate development, well, we know the results. We got Proton and the Steam Deck.
Apple most certainly has the "Valve money and resources" to throw at the problem. They just choose not to. Bottom line is Mac gaming sucks because Apple has chosen that outcome.
How does Apple not have Valve money lmao?
by partially open source are you referring to Darwin or are there other system components which this applies to?
That just looks like open source toolkits that are used to make things for apple devices, not actual OS components.
Drivers, subsystems, kernel are all in that list of releases. That list of GitHub repos together is Darwin (the OS). The kernel is XNU (also in the list).
The cocoa and swift runtimes are open source and the languages themselves are open source. The big pieces that are not are the window manager.
Kinda-object here: If you want to have native wayland, it's a pain (as even with a custom glfw(?) package, some game versions and mods are still incompatible)
Really? I don't recall that being a problem for me. But i'll take your word for it, there's no reason for me to disbelieve that linux modding isn't buggy lol
Not the best example as Cyberpunk 2077 will get an official macOS release soon (and it works via translation layers right now as well), but yeah Linux is obviously miles ahead of macOS in terms of game compatibility.
I don't think any sane person buys a Mac specifically for gaming. Aside from game compatibility, you'd need to spend a lot of money on an M4 Max or M3 Ultra to get graphics performance in the realm of "mid-tier" dedicated GeForce/Radeon GPUs.
But if you buy a specced out Mac Studio with 512 GB of RAM and whatnot for machine learning and it happens to be decent at playing (compatible) games, heh, why not?
Mac sucks Linux is way better. Full stop.
Linux can't even do Roblox now. I'm not complaining, but it once worked fine and now it's actively blocked.
wym? sober works?
I hadn't heard of that. The last time I played was on WINE.
Sober looks like a hack. I guess wine never got official support either.
Sober works by emulating android with a few hacks to make desktop use better. Actually great and up to date flatpak
Last I checked, sober does not currently work due to the event Roblox is currently running, although this could have changed, as I haven't checked in the past week.
Played with my kid yesterday - event is over just get the latest update and Sober is working again
Ah, thank you for letting me know. I enjoy playing roblox a lot more than I care to admit.
I appreciate your enthusiasm for bashing Apple whenever possible, but still I’m not sure what you’re referring to as Silicon chips can run both games and many more very smoothly for the last few years.
So happy with my linux installation... damn.. just sounded like a Lemmy user there!
Cyberpunk 2077 is announced for 2025. Your point is valid anyways
Only 5 years after release. Amazing what Apple technology is capable off
And by 2027 it might even function!
I've been so happy with bazzite.
I've been going through my old steam library enjoying stuff from the past, and also playing some old and some new games I've never played before.
Interesting tidbit, bazzite's system management CLI tool is a just script.
Macs can run some games with wine too, not as well as Linux but whatever
Doesn't Steam run on Macs? I am not a gamer (but have been wanting to start playing some stuff) and I genuinely have no idea.
Yes but there is not a proton compatibility layer, so games can't run. Also, Apple pushes their own API Metal over Vulkan and doesn't support Vulkan. Because Apple. A third party team has to make MoltenVK to translate Vulkan to Metal.
Gotcha. Apple being a pain in the ass again.
Pretty much. They also enforce usage of the Metal API on iOS, AFAIK. No idea why they don't just adopt Vulkan across the board. It would make game development so much easier.
Are you implying that Minecraft is not one of, if not THE most fun game? What heresy is this??
Why would I play games on my mac anyway?