
Google Stadia Should've Used Windows Instead of Linux - me551ah
http://ajit.dhiwal.com/2020/01/google-stadia-shouldve-used-windows.html
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billconan
As someone who had worked on cloud gaming for a few years, I think using Linux
is the right thing to do.

We used windows, and it was a disaster. Windows is not a multi-user system.
User isolation is so difficult. Without user isolation, user A can access user
B's data or login information, and it's difficult to clean up a seat's state
without a slow reboot. We did lots of ugly hacks to make it work, as the OS is
not open-sourced. Also, existing windows games don't support multi-users, the
same CD key can only be used by one user. All these issues made virtual
machine sharing difficult and hence resulted in very high cost.

The one thing done right by google is moving to linux and developing games
specifically for cloud.

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me551ah
But microsoft has now launched support for DirectX in docker containers. So it
is possible to containerize games on Windows now. That should take away a lot
of the pain points around user isolation.

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StudentStuff
Running games on Linux is trivial at this point, Valve has made WINE so easy
to use that all my games from Windows work without me lifting a finger. Civ 5?
No problem. Random Indie Game that only ever worked on Windows 7? Works great.

Google did not put sufficient resources towards building a broad platform. If
they had, then the Stadia catalog would have many more titles. Instead the AAA
rabbit hole has consumed the resources spent on Stadia, and players still get
a crummy experience.

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alpaca128
> Running games on Linux is trivial at this point

Running most things on Linux is trivial if you're lucky enough to run the
right hardware and software configuration.

I'm not one of the lucky ones and even on my otherwise pretty compatible
desktop more than 50% of my Steam games don't even start with Wine/Proton. Not
to mention games from other distributors where you have to get both the
launcher and the game to run at the same time. Lutris helps but may still need
a lot of fiddling if it doesn't run on first try.

On average it's simply not comparable to Windows where a game not running well
is a rare exception.

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bdavis__
you could have said the same thing about the google office suite. just run the
existing windows programs. doing it in linux lets google go vertical. they can
own and manipulate the entire stack. and not pay for windows licenses. now the
games are the hurdle. get a critical mass, and then the studios would build
for Stadia as a prime target.

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me551ah
Google's office suite is a collection of tools made by Google which run in the
browser. It doesn't need to run any third party software which wasn't designed
as a plugin. Stadia on the other hand needs to run third party software which
wasn't originally built to run on it

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bdavis__
i agree. but if Stadia had enough market penetration the game studios would
target it instead of windows.

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me551ah
It's like a chicken and egg problem. Stadia isn't getting many users cause it
doesn't have many games and studios aren't porting games cause of too few
users

