Game streaming providers are gaining steam as viable alternate options to spending huge cash on decked out PCs and devoted gaming consoles, they usually’ve come a good distance in a comparatively brief time. One of the advantages is that they’re principally platform agnostic. Or they need to be—there are a number of studies that Microsoft’s Xbox Cloud Gaming service seems noticeably worse on Linux methods than it does on Windows.
This was delivered to consideration on Reddit where Spiritual-Ad2806 mentioned they observed that the picture high quality appeared decrease in Ubuntu and Manjaor in comparison with Windows. Suspecting they weren’t simply imagining issues, they determined to change the browser person agent strings to spoof operating Linux on the identical PC.
“A few days ago I noticed that when I play on Linux (Ubuntu or Manjaro) the image quality is lower than when I play on Windows. So I decided to do a test using the Edge browser with the User-Agent Switcher and Manager extension changing the user-agent for Windows 10 with Edge 103 on my Manjaro. As incredible as it may seem, the quality was much higher, getting the same quality as Windows without Clarity Boost turned on,” the person wrote.
They additionally shared a few comparability screenshots…
Windows person agent (Source: Reddit)
Linux person agent (Source: 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 problem in fast-moving video games, however when you’re stopping to understand the graphics in any explicit title, we might see where this may be irritating. That and the truth that there doesn’t look like a superb cause for this to occur.
It’s not simply the Reddit person, both. The of us at Arstechnica ran their very own checks and confirmed the discovering with a number of examples of their very own.
“To compare how xCloud handles a Linux machine vs. a Windows machine, an Edge extension was used during testing to force the browser’s User-Agent string to present itself as a Linux browser,” the location explains.
You can take a look at the location’s gallery for extra examples, but it surely’s clear that pictures look worse on Linux with fuzzier textual content and washed out graphics. What’s odd is that enabling Microsoft’s Clarity Boost in its Edge browser fixes the issue.
Some have speculated that that is intentional on Microsoft’s half, as a way of incentivizing Linux customers to change over to Windows. That’s a dangerous tactic, although, and the identical phenomenon is not noticed when utilizing a Macintosh person agent string. Microsoft may be attempting to favor its personal Edge browser, however that leaves the query of why this actually solely exhibits up in Linux.
One believable rationalization is that Microsoft assumed most Linux detections can 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 difficulty but, so we’ll have to attend and see what develops.