Anti-cheat, even kernel level anti-cheat has worked on Linux for a very long time. Some of the most popular products used by AAA have been available for years. They just intentionally refuse to make their products work on Linux.

Remember Genshin Impact, for example. It literally has an internal flag that instantly closes the game if it detects it is running on Linux. There’s no technical limitation for any of those big multiplayer titles from working, they just don’t want them to.

Meh, sure it was an operational loss for sony. But there’s a slew of condintions so different from the ps3 to the steam machines that it’s very hard to compare them. First of all, the Linux PS3 never actually worked. It was janky and required a ton of workarounds and hacks, not really a viable desktop PC. The famous calculation clusters were created by universities and technology enthusiasts. The processing units are too niche for day to day use, having virtually no consumer software for them.

Second, Sony got pushed into a higher cost of manufacture than planned because of a shortage of blurays and the rise in costs of their unique silicon manufacturing. Some say it was more than 100% over their expectations. And I still remember people in the gaming scenes complaining that it was too expensive.

Third, speaking of bluray, the ps3 was way too ambitious technologically speaking, to not be a good target for this type of scalping. First commercial bluray, first HDMI output, a “supercomputer for the living room” vision. If anything, it was the cheap bluray angle that drove scalping and shortages, not the OtherOS capabilities.

I still think it is an unfounded concern with the Steam Machine. Valve already said, it won’t be sold at a loss. It has no specialized technological advancement in particular. It is a mid range entry PC at the most. Having worked with many IT teams and business acquisition teams, it is just not a very attractive proposal. It will be seen as a gaming toy. No exec wants to buy toys for employees.

Nor do I know which point you are making. Because so far you’re arguing about things I haven’t said. Either you don’t have the reading skills or are arguing in bad faith. And I extremely dislike wasting my time explaining myself to someone who is intentionally misleading just to be contrarian.

Way to take the comment out of context and build a strawman. I was reiterating something I said in more detail in a higher up comment. Companies do buy expensive laptops. I said so. Mind you, the steam machine is, emphatically, not a laptop.

There’s an axiom that every single news headline on the internet that ends in a question to the reader can be accurately answered with “no”.

Not enough to cause a shortage. As I said. No business will pay more than a couple hundred for a PC. If they need more juice, then the steam machine won’t be it. It is more like an enthusiast or a content creator midlevel machine.

That just wouldn’t happen unless the steam machine costs less than $300. That’s usually the top a corporation is willing to pay for bulk mini nucs, which is all that they want for clerk desks. Information workers get laptops with dell or HP embossed in the lid. Workstations for top design or video editing require way more juice than the Steam Machine can deliver, those are bought on order to professional boutiques, or they just buy Apple. Also, no administrator will sit on the steam shop page to buy one at a time, they like their bulk purchases and Valve can simple refuse anyone buying hundreds of machines. Then, corporations don’t just want the PC, they want tech support, advanced guarantee schemes, etc. This usually come with a subscription per seat. All things Valve simply won’t provide. It won’t even register as an option for businesses.

This is an unfounded concern.

Let me show the math:

The base M4 model is 16GB ram and 256 GB of storare and it costs $600, “cheapest minipc ever with such performance”.

The 512GB storage model costs $800.

May I point out that 256GB of ssd storage does not cost $200.

The 24 GB model costs exactly $1000.

No matter how much ram prices are ramping up right now, 8GB of sodimm ram does not cost $200…yet.

Anything else above those specs throws the Mac mini into $1k+ territory. It can go all the way up to $2600.

Now, Apple rarely publishes manufacturing numbers to the public. But historically this has always been their strategy. A base product that seems too good to be true (because it is) that leaves buyers wanting a bit more. For which they get skinned alive, price wise. Of course, I can’t be 100% certain that the base Mac mini is sold at a loss. But evidence suggests the $600 mark is priced exactly to act as a loss leader.

They are so neatly seated though. Perfect columns.

Apple mini is a hard comparison to make because the cheapest mini is a loss leader. Add a bit of extra ram or extra storage, which you have to do since the base model is very limited and the only way to get it is through Apple because everything is soldered together, then it is suddenly more than a $1k PC. They make the profits up with those upgrades which are practically mandatory and grossly overpriced.

I guess they are including the screen, the keyboard and the trackpad with the Windows license in those $200 estimates.

Again, who cares? A sale for Valve is money into Linux gaming support. Still not a bad thing. I don’t care what corporations use in their daily work. It is me who wants to use Linux for gaming.

But I doubt it will happen, if a ton of companies want to buy hundreds of computers at a time, they won’t buy from Valve. They have their own vendors who sell in bulk at lower prizes. Corporations today acquire mostly laptops for day to day office work and mini PCs for service stations. High power workstations usually exceed the steam machine by a whole order of magnitude in required specs, and it is way too powerful just to shift spreadsheets around. The mid range independent creator space and mid range studios might see some use for it if it’s cheap. But I don’t see them causing scarcity of the machine itself. There are other just as cheap options purpose made for office work.

It’s Fedora based. If you want to develop on it, it supports containerized workflows. There’s a DX version explicitly designed for developers.

That wouldn’t be a bad thing. A lot of the trailer footage was dedicated to showing video editing and 3d modeling software (it’s just a PC, was one of the marketing lines). They want people to buy this machine. Who cares if they aren’t gamers. Valve also sells digital creative software on Steam.

And if farts were rocket fuel I could fly. We all have dreams.

No, they wouldn’t care. It’s a mild annoyance at worst. Nothing critical was lost. Maybe stop putting money into digital goods that have no tangible value and zero guarantee of property.

Yes, and that is why I’m hopeful for more RISC-V development. One day, maybe, there will be first party manufacturers making open devices that work easily with any software of choice instead of proprietary vendor lock-in.

Which contradicts his position that cheating is a massive huge front to wage an endless war on. 13 people is a ban list, not a cry for rootkits on all clients. It stands to reason that if Linux was 0.01% and even if they were all cheating, it is not a massive problem. Is it tiny or is it massive? It can’t be both at the same time.

Complement with the alternative view offered by the developer of ΔV: Rings of Saturn. Also, there’s a lot of erased responses and contradicting tweets he made.

It isn’t. Cheating is a game culture problem, not a technical problem. Just to counter example. Rust is filled with cheaters precisely because they haven’t done everything they can to fix cheating. They are culturally fixated in a single lane thinking. As a result, they’re flooded with cheaters (plenty on Windows) who exploit their inflexible strategies. This is top Flanders “we haven’t done anything and we are all out of ideas”. Linux is not the source of cheating on Rust either, but he’s arguing as if it is. He is lazy. That’s not bad on itself, but he is also disingenuous and is arguing in bad faith.

Make server side anti cheat and suddenly what OS the player is running becomes irrelevant.

Edit: another contradiction in their argument. Linux was less than 0.1% of the Rust user base. But, Linux was also the biggest source of cheating? How? It is just a disingenuous and dumb argument made to spite Linux out of hatred. It has no basis in reality.