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Steam beta gets native Apple Silicon support — the only public Arm version of Steam (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] [S] 5 points 1 year ago* (15 children)

Rosetta 2 is supposed to be available for older games only but I’m not sure how they’re planning to enforce that. Maybe some kind of whitelist? Either way it was a travesty that Valve didn’t bother before. Running what is essentially a full web browser through Rosetta couldn’t ever work well because of all of the recompilation already happening there.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    I mean sure, but apple killing Rosetta support is also idiotic. I think that they just want to turn OSX into iOS which is just awful.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Apple not keeping legacy cruft is why they were able to move to ARM so quickly. For all the grumbling about cutting 32-bit support couple of years ago, this is what allowed them to do that (among other things). And, as demonstrated, developers like Valve take action only when they are forced to. Windows and Linux on ARM are stuck in the mud with no end in sight while Apple is almost done with the transition.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Linux on ARM is stuck in the mud? Huh? Everything works fine on ARM, including the desktop. There are like a billion ARM devices running Linux right now.

    Or did you mean Linux on Apple hardware? Because that's by design.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Since we’re talking about Steam here for example, Valve have not even bothered to release a 64-bit x86 client, let alone Arm client, except for Mac.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Right, I'm not talking about Steam, I don't think misk was either, the context is Apple transitioning to ARM silicon.

    Also Steam definitely runs native 64 bit on x64 systems. It's intended to run in either environment, and so will have 32 bit deps, but if you start Steam, the actual executables you're running (e.g. ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper) are 64 bit ELFs when needed. And, of course, games run in 64 bits and link to a 64 bit steam client library.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Steam for Linux is mixed 32/64, unfortunately the main executable (~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam) and its associated steamclient library continues to be 32-bit only and runs with a couple of horribly dated libraries in the mix. That process does pretty much everything aside from the UI.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I mean, yeah, that's what happens when you still want to be 32 bit compatible. It's also why I said they were ELF64 when needed. My only point was that it's not like Valve just shipped a bunch of 32 bit binaries and called it a day or x64 support was some kind of after thought that needs future support.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    No, I meant that by setting the same bar for both platforms or by using same evaluation metrics.

    Supporting native software is trivial and everyone can do it obviously. How well does Linux on ARM support proprietary x86 software? Is it anywhere near as fast as Rosetta and is it as compatible? If I were to use 100% ARM software can I play any modern video games at all?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Oh, you were still talking about emulating an x86 binary? That's kind of a weird comparison because if you're running Linux and want to run x86 software you can just do it on x86. No corporation is forcing you off of the game's native architecture.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yes, I’m talking real life use, where there is pre-existing software like video games that I own. Apple accommodated their customers properly by developing ARM SoC that is specifically designed to be performant at emulating x86-64 and compatibility layer with very good compatibility and performance. Not perfect by any means and there are no miracles but nobody comes close.

    Nobody is forcing anyone off x86 and so it looks like Windows and Linux users will keep using it indefinitely while Apple users enjoy that sweet low power draw and instant wake from sleep that’s just not possible with x86.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    They really did you a favor by breaking your existing, paid for software and then designing a chip to emulate another processor to fix the problem they made.

    Anyway, enjoy your low power draw. I'll be over here running my whole Steam library on a handheld device that costs less than your RAM upgrade.

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