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And SteamOS is Linux based so that is another reason.
The client could easily be ported, but even if it is there will be no games for FreeBSD. Porting games is what will cost time and a lot of money, and 10-ish people who play TF2 regularly on FreeBSD are not going to earn back the hundreds of thousands that was invested in porting the game.
If you want to run a Libre Unix-like OS Linux is here for you today.
If there was some uniform compatibility layer for all x86 OS' that would be neat and it could speed things up.
Glad to hear that the client could be easily ported. But I am not sure if that would have to be done for the games also? As I said, I run Linux Games on FreeBSD. So it is that the Linux installers for games are available for the FreeBSD package and ports system and therefore can be easily fetched and installed by a single command, but it is still a Linux binary and running with OpenGL. But it is also possible to install games with external Linux installers, e.g. from here: {LINK REMOVED}liflg.org
I could install and play ETQW like that. Also Dark Mod runs fine, nothing ported to FreeBSD in those cases.
So the idea would be to use the same offer of Steam Games for Linux, that all run with OpenGL, obviously.
Actually all I am annoyed about that the Linux Steam Client does not work with the Linux emulation of FreeBSD because it is some "cutting edge" Linux binary for Ubuntu especially. FreeBSD uses CENTOS 6.9 right now as emulation, soon 7.0. If the Steam Linux client was more of a "lowest common denominator" in terms of different Linuxes, there wouldn't be a problem. One could just use the Linux Steam offer of games and play them all.
Maybe that was a mistake in the first place. According to some benchmarks SteamOS/Linux falls behind Windows considerably. So imagine SteamOS was based on FreeBSD. To the customer running it on a play console or separate PC for exclusive gaming use, it would not matter what is under the hood. Also just want to mention that Sony chose FreeBSD for the PS4 for some reason, I guess...
And some time ago, I wanted to install and try SteamOS on a separate PC, but I couldn't: The PC had a BIOS instead of UEFI. Is that really necessary?
So at the moment I am stuck with wine and that is why I would/could never buy a game from Steam, because wine just seldom works and you never know in advance if it will or not.
Interesting statement. But I do not get what you want to tell us with that? Backward compatibility for certain games or what?
Most Linux ports of games are terrible. Many of these "ports" are not even real ports and use a compatibility layer instead.
Two games that are great ports are Total War: Warhammer and Rise Of The Tomb Raider.
The performance I am getting in ROTTR is nearly identical to what I would get in Windows. But I am having some drives issues with the game which cause me graphical bugs (This appears to have been fixed) and system hardlocks.
I am getting identical or even better performance on Linux in TWW then on Windows.
BSD has a very small userbase. There aren't enough potential customers for a port to make a profit; it would cost a studio potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, none of which they would see back.
It's not a judgement of the OS, it's purely a financial issue.
That's basically what it mostly comes down to, and if devs choose to port to Linux, that's a plus for the Linux user base, but again comes down what they want to do, and what they have to focus on to keep the profits flowing.
If they have to focus on one OS, I have to say Windows OS over Linux. As much as I like Linux, it's not anywhere close to how massively popular Windows is ATM. It's not bad because you can dual boot.
The best way I see this is that if more games are made with vulkan or OpenGL, you can hope they bring it to Linux, and Vulkan is fantastic because it help the communication between Software, and Hardware.
And no person in their right mind would buy Apple products for various reasons. Especially for gaming.
I think that playing on MacOS, additionally with their specific hardware, is even more freaky than just using FreeBSD on a regular PC. BTW, I did not mention that FreeBSD is perfect especially for older Hardware, even if it is only 32-bit. With standard Ubuntu you need a newer machine.
In the meantime I have learned that there is a Linux installer for Prey and a Prey demo. I have just downloaded the Prey demo and it runs just fine with my Linux emulation on FreeBSD.
So again, I would be just happy if the Steam Linux client ran on FreeBSD just like apparently any other Linux game installer or demo does.
We are the double, to be precise :D
It's not only the number of users but also how much money those users spents money in the platform. That said, how many of W10, W7 accounts are freemium accounts or one game accounts? That's the question to answer...
I believe that the best chances for FreeBSD would be to improve their compability layer with Linux. From my point of view, that's easier to achieve than wait for Valve to get a client on that platform.
After some Googling I found this on the FreeBSD wiki:
I am still not sure what you are trying to say. Sorry I do not know any numbers on this, but are you saying that it's mainly Win XP users that actually pay for games on Steam?
It sounds about right what you say about the compatibility layer. But I don't think that choosing CentOS as compatibility layer is a bad choice. Actually it's a free version of RedHat. To me the question rather is why the Steam Linux Client must be a so "cutting edge" package especially for Ubuntu when all other Linux game installers are not? Then there would not be a problem.
So what would it take Steam to write a more generally compatible Linux Client?
They're saying that virtually nobody on Steam uses Windows XP, Linux or FreeBSD. And that without a paying market, there's nothing to convince developers to support those platforms.