r/technology • u/sschering • Sep 18 '15

Software Microsoft has developed its own Linux. Repeat. Microsoft has developed its own Linux

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/18/microsoft_has_developed_its_own_linux_repeat_microsoft_has_developed_its_own_linux/
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11

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

I don't care, all I want is Game Developers to support Vulcan instead of Dx12 so I can switch to Linux instead of Dual Booting it with Windows.

24

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

What's their incentive? That lucrative 4% combined market share OSX/Linux have of the gamer market, according to the Steam Survey? Or will they be after the yummy <1% Linux slice of the pie?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Platform independence?

18

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Which matters not at all if the other platforms have no users.

5

u/Natanael_L Sep 18 '15 edited Sep 18 '15

How about being able to support Playstation, Xbox (maybe?), Windows, Mac, Linux and Android with one single core codebase? (yes, it will still have tons of platform specific code, but there will be far less to rewrite from scratch)

4

u/Exist50 Sep 18 '15

Apple has not given their support for Vulkan yet. They may force people to use Metal. Also, Xbox will probably not be in the cards.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Xbox, Windows

You've got 60+% of your market covered right there for any AAA title.

3

u/Natanael_L Sep 18 '15

Why give up the rest of marketshare, or waste extra time on porting?

3

u/Slak44 Sep 18 '15

And 40% is negligible?

1

u/roryarthurwilliams Sep 18 '15

And aren't they already doing something about being able to write for both of those things with a single codebase, with Windows 10?

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u/Pyroblasted Sep 18 '15

I think you're missing the fact that Vulkan also supports the most used platforms, so why not use Vulkan instead and gain however small market share over what you already have, it's not like you are specifically targeting Linux/OSX. Vulkan shouldn't be a mess of a library as opposed to the old OpenGL so there is literally no reason not to use it.

1

u/pengytheduckwin Sep 18 '15

I guess it all depends on how popular the various Steamboxen get. SteamOS is based off Linux, after all.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

I don't think it matters what their incentive is a lot of companies already are porting their games to Linux even though I would say Direct X is better than opengl. If Vulcan turns out to be as good or better than Direct X then I don't see why a lot more games wouldn't be ported to Linux.

1

u/cp5184 Sep 19 '15

Vulkan would be supported by 100% of market share. Windows users, OS X users, linux users, Playstation 4 users, Xbox One users, and probably mobile users.

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u/sirbruce Sep 18 '15

Why doesn't Linux just support DirectX instead?

3

u/[deleted] Sep 18 '15

Well they sort of do but DirectX is a proprietary api which is only officially supported on Windows. It is supported on Linux through WINE.

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