2 hoursI’m typing this on a M1 Pro McBook right now and let me tell you, from all of my Steam games maybe 10% are compatible with macOS/Apple Silicon. I tried Crossover and it kinda sucks.
It’s a shame really when you consider that Apple once had a better gaming scene than Windows/MS DOS, but it clearly hadn’t been a focus for Apple for a long time until maybe 2 or so years ago.
But yeah, gaming on Linux is awesome and is gonna get even better with stuff like Wine 11 eventually coming to Proton.
- rabber@lemmy.caEnglish5 hours
Gaming on Mac is infuriating. I brought my MacBook air to my parents last time thinking I could use it to play left 4 dead with mom. Which used to run at 120 fps. Now it doesn’t run at all. Lol
- warbosstodd@piefed.socialEnglish9 hours
I have a Legion Go and I wiped Windows 11 off the damned thing so fast and installed Bazzite.
You have to wonder what these numbers will look like in about 6 months after the Neo’s well received release.
- sen@lemmy.zipEnglish8 hours
I feel like I’m part of the minority when I say I’m highly excited for things like M5, APUs, smaller power efficient machines that barely draw power while doing boring work tasks yet can handle proper gaming loads (waiting for the last part still).
As soon as one of these checks all my boxes I’m selling my massive PC for it.
- melfie@lemmy.zipEnglish5 hours
Yep, I’d really like to stick to SoCs in the future as well. I’m holding off on hardware purchases until 2027 when AMD’s RDNA 5 will be available. Apple Silicon is amazing, but I’d like a less expensive alternative that has broader Linux distro support. RDNA 5 will bring true RTX cores, which is critical for my Blender rendering workloads, and is the main reason why I couldn’t justify AMD GPUs in the past for anything other than a dedicated gaming machine (e.g., Steam Deck).
- warbosstodd@piefed.socialEnglish8 hours
Oh I’m right there with you. My machines are a Legion Go, an M2 Mac mini and a MacBook Pro m1. What CPUs are starting to do with such a minute amount of power is amazing.
- sen@lemmy.zipEnglish8 hours
Right? Now just let me push 1440p x2 and play games on high/ultra from the size of half a shoebox please.
- TotalCourage007@lemmy.worldEnglish5 hours
We should be able to download 1440p storage sized games instead of giant 100gb+ honkers FFS.
- Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish13 hours
Linux passing 5% is a major milestone, good to see Linux thrive. 👍 😎
Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers
I wonder why there needs to be special correction for China, but I’m guessing it’s about some sort of bots probably farm bots.
If anyone knows more please share your knowledge.- cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish7 hours
A bit of a guess, but it might be related to software cafés. They are a lot more common in the east.
Since multiple people can log into the same computer, it might over count them. They are also likely exclusively windows machines.
- themurphy@lemmy.mlEnglish5 hours
~~I think, like the rest of the world, we try to go away from US software. Windows is the big one, and China would like to go open source.
They do that because it’s the strongest weapon against capitalism in the US. That country is nothing if they cant monetize on everything.~~
EDIT: I’m an idiot. Didnt read the article, but I did now. Just pass my stupid comment.
- NGram@piefed.caEnglish9 hours
Maybe you should read the article, because the increase in Linux users correlates with a reduction in Chinese users.
- Deestan@lemmy.worldEnglish13 hours
I mean yeah? As a PC gamer what are you supposed to use? Fucking… Windows?
I know some people still manage to tolerate paying Microsoft for an operating system that serves popup ads, popunder ads, inline ads, bundles spyware, bundles adware, bundles malware, and literally spies on you. They either manage to filter all that out or tolerate having to spend time turning it off or mitigating it every two weeks/months when an update introduces more of it.
They angrily cope. They say things like “what is so hard about just clicking Close / Ignore on a few buttons!?” when this is pointed out. But they grow fewer and fewer.
Macs are mostly valid but expensive. If work doesn’t pay for one, or you have another big hobby that makes Mac a necessity, buying one for gaming is a bit silly.
- Zagorath@quokk.auEnglish8 hours
paying Microsoft for an operating system
To be fair, I haven’t paid Microsoft for my OS…ever. And it’s not even piracy.
I got a licence for free through my university when I was in uni. And Microsoft seemed happy to let me keep using it and even upgrading it. I started on Windows 8, upgraded for free to Windows 10. If my PC didn’t have a processor that seemingly arbitrarily they decided can’t run Windows 11, I could be on that today.
- tehn00bi@lemmy.worldEnglish10 hours
I’m glad back a few years ago I planned my PC for Linux. AMD everything. It’s been a mostly smooth operation.
- uenticx@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
There’s only three players. It’s more like the second Piston Honda.
- Zagorath@quokk.auEnglish8 hours
A decade ago things were looking really positive for the future of Mac gaming. It felt like more and more games were coming out supporting it. I’m not sure if their transition away from Intel has hindered it, or if it’s something else, but it definitely seems to have stalled.
Plus, the move to Apple Silicon has killed the back-up option of Bootcamp. Or I assume it has, I’ve not been a Mac user since before the transition, when my ageing MBP died and I just found I didn’t need any laptop to replace it.
- realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish5 hours
It’s simple, Apple has never cared about gaming except for that 1 year you are talking about. They’ve done fuck all to get developers to target mac and it shows.
- realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish4 hours
I definitely don’t remember any sort of golden era of mac gaming like that. I remember them announcing some games along with their Metal API’s and that was about the end of that .
- Zagorath@quokk.auEnglish3 hours
I wouldn’t have described it as a golden era. More like a constant, steady, quiet sense of improvement.
- Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish4 hours
I had a friend who gamed on a Mac for a while during that period, most games did work for her.
I do think the M series chips set it back a bit because most games aren’t targeting ARM, so you have to use Rosetta to emulate reducing performance
- realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish3 hours
There are some pretty good emulation layers for the M chips. If Apple set up a certification program like Steam Deck has, they’d be in pretty good shape.
- Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.worksEnglish2 hours
Except I’m sure they’d charge out the ass and they don’t seem to put any effort into gaming 🤷
Ah, but no-one would question Mac support when you’re developing new software. If you can support Mac, which is certified UNIX, then the jump to supporting Linux isn’t all that much extra, and we can prove there’s a growing install base.
Started the ball rolling, and it just keeps going faster.
- Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish4 hours
Games rely on more than just the OS API and even variation between Linux flavours or installed libraries on the same flavours can make compatibility difficult. My success rate at running games with a Linux native version is maybe 50% before I fall back to proton and the windows version. The consistency helps, though kudos to the developers who put in the effort to get their games working on Linux in general rather than just their particular systems.
The gpu library is a big one. There’s OpenGL, DirectX, and Vulkan (which is the successor to OpenGL) that I know of. Linux and windows support all three, in some form or manner, but afaik mac only supports OpenGL, which really holds back game development, especially with DX being the most popularly targeted one.
Though my info might be a bit dated because I dgaf about macs generally, just wanted to point out that the shared roots between mac and Linux don’t necessarily mean targeting one would make targeting the other easier in a meaningful way.
Maybe one day they’ll sell a dongle to play games (which is really just a live boot linux install).
- realitista@lemmus.orgEnglish10 hours
Oh definitely. Linux should definitely be targeted before macs because people who are on it I’m sure play more games. But again not a high bar as a lot of games never get Mac versions either.
- IratePirate@feddit.orgEnglish4 hours
That very same, yup. You might know my song:
“Imagine all the people /
Living life in shells.”
- 12 hours
Apple doesn’t support Vulcan (or the support is outdated, idk exactly), and expects devs to use Metal instead. Which they don’t. So outside of small indie games, people gaming on Mac likely boot Windows anyway, or at least that’s how it was ten years ago — the situation might’ve changed with the M* processors, in that I’m not sure Windows runs on them.
I recently got my custom game engine running on an M4 Macbook, and it was definitely a pain. Using MoltenVK to translate the API works, but there’s a bunch of device features that are missing still I had to work around.
Off the top of my head it’s missing drawIndirectCount, linePolygonMode, and the ability to set line thickness above 1 px, which are Vulkan 1.2 features. I also had to do some tweaking since several device limits are lower (can only reference ~500 textures at once instead of 64k like most systems)
- MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish12 hours
No, there’s no way to easily install Windows on Apple Silicon like back in the days of Bootcamp on Intel. If there’s no native macOS version of a game, you have to use translation layers like you would on Linux - either Wine or Apple’s own Game Porting Toolkit.
There’s also no support for 32-bit apps any more, so many older games with native macOS releases don’t work anymore either.
That said, when I looked through my Steam & GOG libraries on Mac I was surprised at how many games do apparently run natively. Far more than I expected. But it’s just a curiosity really - if I want to play a game I’ll use my PC.
- 11 hours
how many games do apparently run natively
From what I understand, indie devs mostly just check a box in their engine’s build script to compile the game for MacOS. It’s rather the big boys who always have trouble porting their games anywhere due to bespoke engines, anticheat or whatnot. And also sim racing devs for some reason, those never support anything but Windows — even though Feral has ported F1 games to Mac and they worked fine.
- MurrayL@lemmy.worldEnglish6 hours
Very few things in game dev are as simple as checking a box in the engine, unfortunately.
To distribute a macOS game on Steam I believe the app needs to be signed and notarised, which requires several extra steps and a (paid) Apple Developer account. It’s one reason why many devs simply don’t bother supporting the platform.
- 6 hours
Sure, but the developer account costs about two and a half Doordash pizzas (which every USian orders every day for some unfathomable reason, judging by the incessant complaining on Reddit), and to my understanding signing can be automated.
