Recreation streaming companies are gaining steam as viable alternate options to spending large cash on decked out PCs and devoted
gaming consoles, they usually’ve come a good distance in a comparatively brief time. One of many advantages is that they’re principally platform agnostic. Or they need to be—there are a number of stories that Microsoft’s
Xbox Cloud Gaming service appears noticeably worse on Linux techniques than it does on Home windows.
This was delivered to consideration on Reddit the place Non secular-Ad2806 stated they observed that the picture high quality appeared decrease in Ubuntu and Manjaor in comparison with Home windows. Suspecting they weren’t simply imagining issues, they determined to change the browser person agent strings to spoof working
Linux on the identical PC.
“Just a few days in the past I observed that once I play on Linux (Ubuntu or Manjaro) the picture high quality is decrease than once I play on Home windows. So I made a decision to do a check utilizing the Edge browser with the Person-Agent Switcher and Supervisor extension altering the user-agent for Home windows 10 with Edge 103 on my Manjaro. As unimaginable as it might appear, the standard was a lot increased, getting the identical high quality as Home windows with out Readability Increase turned on,” the person wrote.
In addition they shared a few comparability screenshots…
Home windows person agent (Supply: Reddit)
Linux person agent (Supply: Reddit)
As you may see within the
screenshots posted to Reddit, the textual content and graphics are blurrier within the Linux instance. This may not be a difficulty in fast-moving video games, however in case you’re stopping to understand the graphics in any specific title, we may see the place this may be irritating. That and the truth that there doesn’t look like cause for this to occur.
It is not simply the Reddit person, both. The oldsters at Arstechnica ran their very own exams and confirmed the discovering with a number of examples of their very own.
“To match how xCloud handles a Linux machine vs. a Home windows machine, an Edge extension was used throughout testing to power the browser’s Person-Agent string to current itself as a Linux browser,” the positioning explains.
You possibly can take a look at the
website’s gallery for extra examples, however it’s clear that photographs look worse on Linux with fuzzier textual content and washed out graphics. What’s odd is that enabling Microsoft’s Readability Increase in its Edge browser fixes the issue.
Some have speculated that that is intentional on Microsoft’s half, as a method of incentivizing Linux customers to change over to
Home windows. That is a dangerous tactic, although, and the identical phenomenon is not noticed when utilizing a Macintosh person agent string. Microsoft may be making an attempt to favor its personal Edge browser, however that leaves the query of why this actually solely reveals up in Linux.
One believable clarification is that Microsoft assumed most Linux detections could be Android gadgets with smaller screens. In such instances, the picture degradation would not be as noticeable, and this may save bandwidth. Or it may not be intentional in any respect and will merely be a bug.
Microsoft hasn’t commented on the problem but, so we’ll have to attend and see what develops.
