Presumably the EU/etc. would go after them if they tried something like this? Besides desktop isn’t really as important to MS these days as it used to be.
> fostered a native GNU/Linux
Wouldn’t that require a stable ABI and such? Making Linux binary/proprietary software friendly seems like a much harder task than [potentially] fighting MS over the right to reimplement their APIs.
Why build something from scratch when Wine/Proton is already there and is pretty much the same thing?
Of course that would be the trivial (if still very complicated and expensive on its own) part, incentivizing developers to invest the amount of resources needed to port their games to a new platform (which would have single digit % market share at best) would be a lot harder.
Sure there might be some risks. But I don’t really see why MS would be bothered to actually try and kill Wine. The risk of antitrust etc. would be very high and MS wouldn’t gain too much from this anyway.
Besides.. the Supreme Court already ruled in favor of Google over the Java/Oracle thing not sure how would this be much different.
And? I fail to see how is that so valuable on its own.
I mean don’t get me wrong I do see some merits but realistically if Valve went that way they would struggle getting of the ground and it would just be a waste of time/money.
Possibly one pathway that could actually be feasible would be to leverage Wine to gain significant marketshare and then incrementally transition to a more “native” approach.
> the hard way.
How? I mean what could MS actually do about this? Besides trying to compete by offering alternative options.
Just the existence of steam deck is the transition to a native approach, they put pressure on devs and game engines to support, but proton is a weird middle layer, it would be easier to support Linux and vulkan natively and that's growing
There is zero pressure on the devs, as it is currently, they target Windows and Valve does the work if they care to make it work, just like IBM tried with OS/2 and its "Runs Windows better than Windows" campaign.
Also good luck supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate features not available on Vulkan, or what Microsoft and NVidia just announced at CES, AI Shaders.
If Nvidia and game developers care about supporting Linux they’ll try to figure something out.
If they don’t they won’t. But surely the cost required to do so is lower when targeting Wine/Proton than native Linux?
If they are unwilling to do that when the cost is relatively low (or at least e.g. making these new features toggle-able/optional) they certainly wouldn’t even provide a native Linux if Proton wasn’t a thing.
Exactly. If Valve went the native route why would that have changed?
> Which as IBM discovered
You keep repeating that in every comment but I don’t quite understand how is this some conclusive argument. Especially when you don’t elaborate on what specifically do you think could happen.
> If Valve went the native route why would that have changed?
We would have an ecosystem of native GNU/Linux games, and Microsoft could do whatever they felt like withouth any side effects.
> You keep repeating that in every comment but I don’t quite understand how is this some conclusive argument. Especially when you don’t elaborate on what specifically do you think could happen.
It will happen the same it did to DR-DOS, OS/2 and EEE PCs, and did to anyone else that built kigdoms in other people castles, the rest you can discover yourself.
Another example, even though Android is heavily dependent on Java ecosystem, and Google has won the lawsuit, they have started rewriting even the core components in Kotlin, because alongside JetBrains, they control the narrative of what goes on their kingdom.
Likewise Apple's approach with Game Porting Toolkit, is to help rewrite DirectX into Metal, not to run them unmodified, again control the narrative.
> We would have an ecosystem of native GNU/Linux games
Or we wouldn’t, perhaps a small fraction would be available on Linux severely limiting the appeal of devices running SteamOS etc. which would just give the entire handheld market to MS without them even having to do anything.
Of course it possibly wouldn’t exist in the first place because Valve would have had much less incentives to develop the Deck if the market for it would have been much smaller.
> Likewise Apple's approach
And nobody cares about it or gaming on Mac. IMHO despite all of Apple’s success gaming on Mac is in a worse state than it was back in the early 2000s.
My entire point is that however flawed Wine/Proton approach it is better than wasting money on a platform nobody cares about or develops for. I assume Valve could start paying developers to port their games to Linux or something but I can’t really think of much else..
> they have started rewriting even the core components in Kotlin
Exactly. Valve can start doing the same when they gain enough market share to justify this. If Linux gains at least 10-15% of the PC gaming market game developers won’t be able to afford to ignore it anymore. Anyway that’s a relatively nice problem to have compared to the alternative.
> fostered a native GNU/Linux
Wouldn’t that require a stable ABI and such? Making Linux binary/proprietary software friendly seems like a much harder task than [potentially] fighting MS over the right to reimplement their APIs.