But does the capsysnice thing has to do with it being 32 bits? I thought it was an independent issue.

Also, good luck with the wait-list, hopefully you’ll get your email soon.

I don’t remember having to do that on my “Steam Machine” which is a desktop running NixOS. This is most of my “VR” module:

    environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
      iw
    ];

    nixpkgs.config.allow32Bit = true;

    # Steam Frame dongle requires a region be set to work
    boot.extraModprobeConfig = ''
      options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=ES
    '';

    # SteamVR requires CAP_SYS_NICE, this patch allows it to have it
    # WARNING: This allows any application to create high priority contexts
    boot.kernelPatches = [
      {
        name = "amdgpu-ignore-ctx-privileges";
        patch = pkgs.fetchpatch {
          name = "cap_sys_nice_begone.patch";
          url = "https://github.com/Frogging-Family/community-patches/raw/master/linux61-tkg/cap_sys_nice_begone.mypatch";
          hash = "sha256-Y3a0+x2xvHsfLax/uwycdJf3xLxvVfkfDVqjkxNaYEo=";
        };
      }
    ];

    # SteamVR environment variables
    environment.sessionVariables = {
      # Force XCB platform for SteamVR under Wayland (prevents Qt Wayland issues)
      QT_QPA_PLATFORM = "xcb";
    };

It’s been working with my Frame perfectly.

Mathematically for every game you buy from Steam about 0.07% of what you pay for it ends up flowing to help the Linux gaming ecosystem.

Valve is personally financing over 100 open source devs across wine, proton, dxvk, drivers, Vulkan, etc. 100 people at 100k it’s at least 10 Million yearly investment, and that’s just what they directly finance on open source devs, their own employees also contribute and projects like the Steam Deck, Machine and Frame require specific things outside of those 100 open source devs for which they hire people directly. I don’t know where your 0.07% number comes from but regardless the point is that by paying the same price for the same product I get some benefits like cloud saves and I’m directly financing that. Whereas if I were to buy the game from GoG I would not, simple as that. Also, I don’t see GoG investing anything into making games DRM free, so while buying from them does signal you like DRM free it doesn’t fund that.

Linux was not in my main gaming PC until recently because until maybe 5 years ago it was a PITA for it and frankly I didn’t have the patience to, after hours working making and bugfixing software, come home and have to fix problems in games in Linux before I could have some R&R playing a game.

This, this is what Valve changed. Like I said, you migrated to Linux as your gaming OS recently, after Valve pushed the scales, you are the proof that what Valve is doing is improving the Linux gaming landscape. You just don’t see it because you’ve migrated after that change was in motion, so to you it’s just a natural progression, but as someone who was full time Linux gamer since before Steam came to Linux I can absolutely tell you that it’s not.

Gaming on Linux had always ben a Chicken and egg problem, not enough users to justify the investment from studios, not enough games available to justify users migrating. Valve broke that cycle. By providing an easy way to play games that weren’t made for Linux, users had a way to keep playing their games when migrating, even better the devs would see how many users were doing so, and be incentivized to maintain compatibility even if through proton.

To achieve this Valve invested so heavily into wine and dxvk that it made the ecosystem better even outside of Steam. This moved a lot of people over to Linux gradually (like you), and made other companies start paying attention, and at least attempt to make things compatible.

I’m younger than you, I don’t remember the 80s, but I do remember gaming on the 90s, however I’m from a third world country, so until midway through the 00s most of my games were pirated. Not that I knew it back then, I went to the store and bought the games, the fact that they were copies wasn’t something I truly understood until much later in life, but here’s the thing, I didn’t had any alternative, my entire childhood I cracked games thinking that that’s what you do with games to be able to play them.

All that is to say I understand the DRM-free appeal, but if a game developer blocks me from playing a game I paid for I won’t feel obligated to give them money again, and likely won’t give them money again for any future games as they’re not trustworthy. No DRM is perfect, eventually it will get cracked. So while I agree with you and would like to play my games without DRM, I would first like to be able to play my games before even worrying about DRM, and that was not an easy possibility before Steam for Linux.

I will not change your mind because to you DRM is more important than Linux. That is to say, we would both prefer to run DRM free games on Linux, but you would rather keep a windows partition to play DRM free games than play DRMd games on Linux, and for me it’s the other way around.

No, my metric is what am I getting for the money?. on Steam I get the game and some niceties, plus I’m directly financing the game development and indirectly financing wine/proton/FEX. On GoG I get the game and I’m directly financing the game development and nothing more.

Buying the game directly from the game dev I’m financing game development and nothing more exactly like GoG but the dev gets 100% of my money, if the game is doing things very right (like the 3 I mentioned) that’s my preferred form, especially because Valve gives developers extra keys for them to sell as long as they don’t sell them cheaper than on Steam, so I can have my cake and eat it too. Although to be honest most of the time I just buy on steam because I’m a lazy fuck. But for example, Project Zomboid I bought directly from the devs before Steam came to Linux, exactly because it had a Linux version.

Which reminds me of something, you probably started using Linux recently, some of your comments mention GoG Galaxy on Windows, and that only came out in 2014, so I must assume you migrated after that. Depending on when, you probably haven’t been around long enough to feel the impact Valve is having. So while in relative terms to their profit they might not be doing that much, in absolute terms they’re definitely doing more than every other player combined at least 10 times over. And I’m not naive in thinking that they’re doing it out of the kindness of their heart, but the improvements are real, and even if they do a 180 and completely shit on Linux their improvements are here to stay and I can vote with my wallet then.

That’s a quote from the TV show, it’s referencing that in the original movie O’Neil is written with one L and he’s a serious character, but on the TV show he’s named O’Neill with 2 Ls and makes jokes regularly.

It’s ‘O’Neill’, with two L’s. There’s another Colonel O’Neil with only one L, and he has no sense of humor at all.

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Yeah, but the fact that Lutris allows to do that painlessly is neither GoG nor the game dev doing. The game dev made a game for a different OS than mine, old enough games I can excuse, but all major engines have supported Linux for a while now, so I don’t feel particularly morally obligated to give money to someone who made a statement that they don’t care about me playing their game. On the other hand GoG also did nothing other than provide a store, and game devs could just sell their DRM free copies on their own websites and bypass GoG entirely, the convenience GoG sells goes out of the window if I can’t access it and I have to rely on a third party app to make it convenient.

That being said, there are amazing games that have native versions and sell DRM free copies on their website and I strongly encourage anyone to buy directly from them, for example Factorio, RimWorld or Project Zomboid. Other games don’t sell on their own websites but do provide Linux versions on GoG, like Dead Cells or SOMA, I definitely see the point of buying there to give money to the devs. But for devs that don’t care about me, and a store that treat me as a second class citizen.

Valve invests the fee onto improvements to wine, dxvk, FEX, as well as the features they offer like Steam client, cloud saves, etc. They invested money that allows me to play non native games easily, so to play those games I’m okay to pay Valve for it, they’re the ones that allow me to play them. But neither GoG nor game devs that don’t care about Linux want my money so I don’t care about them either.

Yeah, I understand all that, but first of all I have 4 gaming systems, 3 of them boot straight to Steam big picture (Desktop plugged to my living room TV, Steam Deck and Steam Frame), while I could have my gaming laptop for something different it just makes it easier to use the same on all systems, plus I would miss on cloud saves which make it seamless to switch from one system to another.

But here’s the thing, to run things in Lutris I have to set it up myself, and setting it up with GoG downloaded installers or pirated versions is essentially the same, so what exactly is GoG providing me that I can’t get by pirating? Am I only paying them for the legality of it?

Yup, I can totally see that logic, but as someone who’s using Linux as their main OS for a long while being able to easily play the game on my system is more important than most instances of DRM (although always on DRM is not acceptable to me). My reasoning is that if I have to jump through hoops to get the game to run on my machine by for example having to setup a wine prefix and figure out things for it I’m not paying for that game, if they don’t care for me as a customer, then why should I pay them?.

For a long time that meant only native games got my money, and back then I used to buy stuff from GoG as all being the same their no DRM policy is better than Valve’s. But Valve invested heavily on Wine and Proton, which not only improved my experience inside their store but also outside of it, so I see a lot of return in giving them money, whereas GoG I’m getting the same experience from them than from the pirate bay or whatever kids are using nowadays, so I don’t see a reason to give them money.

All of that being said, when GoG Galaxy comes to Linux, and if they integrate wine with it in a useful way, I plan on having a look at the old games catalog and possibly throw some money their way to encourage both Linux and DRM free support, but nowadays rebuilding my game library elsewhere would be prohibitly expensive, not to mention the pains of having to deal with multiple launchers, systems, etc.

I don’t disagree with most what you said about Steam, I really wish they were more strict about DRM and disclosure of it, I think they have a lot to improve in that area, and you are absolutely right that just because there’s a workaround doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.

In fact the only thing I disagree with is this:

Meanwhile you can buy from GOG without such hassles or risks that you have when buying games from Steam to make sure they’re free of nasty DRM

You do know GoG allows DRM on their store, right? And that you don’t have curators or similar to have a workaround, your only hope is to go through this thread https://www.gog.com/forum/general/drm_on_gog_list_of_singleplayer_games_with_drm/page1 to find if it’s listed there.

I’m not anti-GoG or pro-steam, I wish both of them to succeed because I want to play DRM free games on my Linux machine, but I feel that GoG gets a lot of good propaganda for things they’re only doing marginally better than steam.

It does, kinda, there are warnings for games that require certain things like kernel level anti-cheat or 3d party accounts, although I think they should have an extra one for always on DRM which is particularly nasty and troublesome for people on a steam deck so there’s reason for them to warn on that.

But also, you have 14 days to return a game as long as you have less than 2h of play, if this is a major concern for you you can run the game offline and ensure it works otherwise refund it. There are also unofficial curators run by community that allow you to quickly see if a game is in those lists which is a nice community way to ensure weird cases are captured. Still would be nice to have more official stance from Valve on hard DRMs, hopefully with GoG coming to Linux they might have to care more about it, but we’ll see.

It took them over a decade to implement the most requested feature which could have probably accomplished in one afternoon as GoG Galaxy is an electron app, and they didn’t, I’m not holding my breath expecting them to be competent.

It’ll almost certainly have something like this or there’s no point in them making it at all.

GoG has native games for Linux, at the time the feature was initially requested to GoG Proton wasn’t a thing and we had to do janky stuff to run windows games on Steam. I’m not saying GoG won’t do it, I’m saying people are assuming it will just because everyone else does, which might not be true. Hopefully it is, but it’s just an assumption.

First of all let’s get something out of the way, I don’t think Valve is doing anything to be nice, they’re doing it because it’s in their best interest, however their best interest happens to align with mine.

I don’t expect GoG to do what Valve is doing, but porting Galaxy to Linux has been the most requested feature on GoG for a LONG while, and honestly it’s not that hard to do, especially considering they have a Mac version. If they can’t even dedicate one programmer for one month to implement the most requested feature for their app, and allow me to play their games on my “steam machine” then they don’t really care about my money.

GoG doesn’t produce hardware, so that’s a moot point.

Absolutely, otherwise the game wouldn’t truly be DRM free. There are some games that have a different version on Steam that on GoG where the game crashes if it can’t find steam running, IMO those are badly programmed games and while it is technically DRM I would put those into a category of unintentional DRM, and there is an easy crack which is to replace the steam library they ship with with a fake one that replies as if it were steam. And while easy to do I would not call those DRM free.

I know it’s theoretically easy, but that doesn’t mean GoG will do it.

I feel like this and DRM are the two things people point out as GoG’s benefits, but first of all GoG also sells you a license, so it’s EXACTLY the same as Steam. The “difference” is in the other point, because without DRM games bought on GoG can be backed up and installed again without needing GoGs approval, but this ignores two HUGE caveats:

• GoG also allows DRM on their store, with some games having DRM for DLCs or extra content.
• Steam doesn’t require DRM, so all games that are DRM free on GoG are most likely also DRM free on Steam.

All in all this means that in regards to ownership morally GoG is essentially the same as Valve, they just have better PR about it.

PS: To give credit where it’s due, GoG is a lot more restrictive with what DRM it allows, and you can expect most of the game you bought to be playable without DRM there. However I feel that allowing me to play on my libre OS is a lot more morally significant than the difference between those two DRM stances.

You’re assuming those will work on GoG, that might not be the case unless they do something like Proton, otherwise those old games are Windows/DOS only and so you would have to manually download the binaries and run then through wine or something, so Galaxy coming to Linux wouldn’t affect this.