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Nice! I should have mine setup today (I can't actually download it because the single DL is much larger than my monthly bandwidth allotment, so I need to *drive* to an ssh server I've setup... 'mericuh internet). I'm trying to remember what collections are especially good because I haven't played in a while (should change now that it's available on linux), so assuming my memory is still good:

Designed For Danger Collection http://steamcommunity.com/work...

12 Angry Tests Collection http://steamcommunity.com/work...

Dilapidation Collection (if I recall correctly this is of especially high quality) http://steamcommunity.com/work...

Killing Machine Collection http://steamcommunity.com/work...

And there are many other great ones which aren't coming to mind yet. Some of the above--at least in my opinion--are better than the SP or coop campaign (at least in terms of how challenging and interesting the puzzles are)

I'd be up for that too.

Haven't bought it yet but should had bought it when Nuuvem sold it for cheap. It can be had for about 100 SEK not from GetGames or something but I haven't picked it up.. Since I haven't got the computer no need to hurry it ..

There already was a Slashdot group on Steam but it have 7 members and a weird logotype so it may not have anything to do with this forum which is sad.

Here you go:
http://steamcommunity.com/grou...

From the FAQ:

Supported Audio File Formats
At the moment only MP3 files are supported. This will change over time.

From the announcement:

With Steam Music, you can now listen to your music collection while playing games. Once you’ve pointed Steam to your local music directory, your Steam Library will include Album and Artist views of your collection.

Sounds like, for now, this is a convenience feature for steam users to access their own music while gaming rather than a distribution method.

Secure boot was only recently added in v2.2.

And every (non-Apple) x86-64 PC and PC motherboard since the release of Windows 8 has shipped with Secure Boot.

10s if not 100s of millions of shipped systems predate that by many years such as every Intel Mac, Itanium systems from both Intel and HP, etc.

I thought Intel Macs were just EFI, not UEFI. And according to the FAQ, this distro is designed for x86-64, not Itanium. I understand Windows 7 Service Pack 1 for x86-64 supports UEFI, but did most Windows 7 PCs come with UEFI pre-2.2, or did they come with legacy BIOS?

Not required, supported. The list is supported hardware. I would assume standard BIOS is supported as well but they wanted to point out that newer UEFI only boards are also supported.

Seems you got modded up, despite being WRONG. UEFI booting is required for the installer, which is why UEFI Support was listed as a hardware requirement in the FAQ you looked at. The requirement is also mentioned further down in the FAQ. Also reference:

http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/valve-releases-steamos-beta-early-build-your-own-system-requirements/

One benefit to this is that people won't be trying to install this on an old piece of crap and then complaining it's slow.

for the original Zelda without needing to emulate

The virtual console on the wii-u has it. Although its probably emulated still. But at least its official, sanctioned emulation, with a controller that works properly with no hassle. (And as someone who played the original SMB through to the end on VC, the timing is really good... I always had major issues playing SMB in emulation, but I can play SMB on the virtual console with muscle-memory learned at childhood, lol.

Ikaruga -- great game -- you may be interested in:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=183195387

F-Zero GC -- there were rumours GC titles will show up on the Wii-U virtual console, but i dont' think it's happened yet. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Your best bet for Ikaruga and F-Zero right now are probably a used Wii... or even a used GC.

Why would it need HDMI connection? I can already wirelessly stream video to my TV.

Were you were referring to DLNA? As I understand it, that's more designed for noninteractive video, which doesn't value low latency nearly as much as gaming does. Something with latency on the order of a single 16 ms frame would need a specialized protocol, which probably means a new box to receives the wireless stream and forward it to the TV.

Apparently the latest version in Debian is 2.13 this thread suggests using the version from the experimental branch

Oh and by the way, if you didn't know, HL1 beta for Linux is out. :)

Because that's what they officially (I guess) support. I think valve has talked about making it more distribution agnostic in the future. http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/846939854324291029/

Other distributions that are not supported will obviously repackage it. Archlinux has it in the AUR and it works fine. https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/steam/

I'm fine if they only officially support ubuntu as long as they don't do too much ubuntu specific stuff. For example I think they still have no tray icon, only the indicator stuff. That's not so nice.

Those discussions seem to involve them trying to interact with each distro's package manager rather than them supplying updated versions of the libraries, but package managers are not designed to support dependencies for proprietary software like Steam; they are designed to support software that the distro provides.

They refer to providing all their own libraries as "bloatware", but I think it's the best choice since it gives them the most control and provides the most distro-agnostic experience. Modern gaming computers are probably not pressed for disk real estate.

I did it using the "gamerlay" overlay. There are guides on doing it without using overlays for example http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Steam one bug that bit me was fixed like this http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/846939071390931093/

Try the below and then updating again:
$ sudo apt-get -f install

Or look at this discussion. It seems to be a common issue currently. I bet you can get around it though.

Just got in the beta, and decided to try it out. Debian Wheezy, 64-bit. Like many people here, I had hell, but instead of using some lxc for steam or bringing in ubuntu packages, I went for the native approach.

Yes. It's possible and working. I'm studying for finals, so I'll include the short and sweet version.

1) Enable multiarch, add i386
2) Install dependencies, substituting libjpeg8 for libjpeg-turbo8. Do not worry about versions for now. Don't forget to specify arch ( :i386 )
3) Add experimental repo if not done already; update package list
4) Update libc6 to 1.16, which is in experimental. This will break many things since apt won't initially follow dependencies into experimental, and without doing pinning you'll have to manually resolve them. I used aptitude for this step
5) At this point steam can be installed with dpkg --force-depends -i steam.deb
EDIT: Make you installed all dependencies. the --force-depends is to ignore the misnamed libjpeg library and libpulse0 version mismatch.
5a) You will have broken depends now, I just temp fixed it by editing /var/lib/dpkg/status and changing the dependencies for 'steam' to the correct name for libjpeg8 and edited the version for libpulse0 (remove the leading 1:)

This part may be nvidia specific; I don't have an ATi card to test with

Now, steam will fail to launch citing it can't find steamui.so. Doing some debug work shows it can't find libgl.so; for you 64-bit users thats because you need the 32-bit opengl libs. Attempting to install the 32bit version of the libgl1-nvidia-glx package will break due to a dependency not being multiarch enabled. There is a patch submitted but currently not accepted due to the Wheezy release freeze.
6) Download both amd64 and i386 versions of the patched deb from http://twolife.be/debian/todo/xvmc/
7) install them with dpkg -i
8) install libgl1-nvidia-glx:i386

I think that's it. I didn't start this journey expecting so much pain so I may have missed a step or two. I'm busy with finals for the next week so no, I probably can't help you if you don't understand what I wrote above. Use google, or maybe someone else here can help.

Hope this helps someone.

has the 10-foot UI capability of Windows and Steam improved to the point where one can use VGA out through a scan converter as a media PC's primary UI?

There are adapters out there that will convert HDMI or DVI to S-Video

I'm aware of these adapters. SewellDirect.com sells them, for example. However, the whole reason why general computer use moved away from TVs in the first place was that the 480i resolution of S-Video makes general computer use difficult, as most PC applications are not optimized for such a low-density display.

In the advanced search on store.steampowered.com, I failed to figure out how to filter for games that include full support for multiple controllers.

As far as Steam goes you'd probably have to use the website

I was using the website.

Look up "passing arguments to Steam"

For one thing, the only Google result for that exact phrase is this page which appears not nearly relevant. Removing the quote marks brought me to this page, which likewise mentions nothing about search. But I'm probably being "far far too literal" again. I tried steam search filter multiplayer and found a recently posted request for enhancement for this very feature, which sort of rules out the feature already being present in Steam search. In any case, how would the average end user discover how to pass in the right filters to Steam or Google?

for an HTPC [Windows 8's Start Screen] gives you a bright easy to read target to hit so frankly for that particular niche its not bad

You have a point there. The modern UI works on Windows 8 for the same reason it works on Xbox 360 (apart from two-thirds of the tile space on the 360 being taken by advertisements).

But Steam works, all the games on Steam don't seem to be bothered by metro

Do all the games on Steam have a "10-foot" user interface that can be read from far away or on a 480i S-Video monitor?

If it sounds like I'm trolling, that's certainly not my intent. I'm just trying to present the alleged barriers to firmly establishing the PC as the fourth console. Some other Slashdot users stick to their claims that 1. the complexity of connecting and maintaining a PC is unsuitable for the majority of living rooms apart from a slim minority of geeks, 2. there exist video game genres that don't work well on a PC, phone, or tablet, and 3. for this reason, these genres are unsuitable for independent developers. By relaying their arguments to you, a staunch fan of living-room PCs, the goal is that the answers will lead me to counterarguments to organize by the next discussion.

One Slashdot regular maintains that paying one's dues to the establishment is the only viable way to get an idea out to the public in the form of a video game, and console makers' requirement for previous experience is the only way to vet games for quality and prevent a repeat of the 1983 crash (for which see Wikipedia and TV Tropes). He maintains that part of paying such dues involves moving to Austin, Boston, Seattle, or Silicon Valley, just as stage actors need to move to Broadway and screen actors need to move to Hollywood. So I humored him and asked him for tips on rearranging my life so that I can work for the establishment, and in this post he said that if I have

First, there is the HUGE amount of previous games, which still won't work correctly on Linux.

I actually have been rather successful in running games on Linux (sample of games I have ran). Mostly running them all under Crossover Games. Do feel free though to tell us exactly which games are having problems, how they're having problems etc.

That would mean gamers would have to set up a separate Linux installation, maybe by dual booting or getting another PC, just to be able to play both new and old games

Amusing story about this... I have to use Linux to run old Windows games, because Windows 7 won't run them.

There would have to be an IMMENSE advantage to using Linux to play newer games

Like VALVe's claims that they're seeing superior performance on Linux than they do on Windows?

normal people do not really care about benchmark numbers

That's right, because they don't understand them. But they can still see the difference.

Completely different scenario. With games you are (and always have been) allowed to share between friends and even siblings, or to sell them or gift them used. Windows was never the case (legally).

*Glances at Steam games list* Yeah.. I don't believe you. See, I remember a similar argument about Steam. Didn't stop it there either. It became one of the most dominant distribution platform despite the lack of rentals.

Please people stop buying stupid hats and stuff for TF2. Every single time you dump money on that game it's less incentive for valve to spend money on other, one time cash cow, games like HL3 or HL2:EP3.
Why should they spend massive resources making a game people only buy once when they can get idiots spending real money on digital hats from now until valve runs out of pixels.

Most (all?) new items these days are community submitted, and the majority of those are cosmetic items. In other words, it's easy money for Valve because they don't even do most of the work.

with the exception of the list of games I've bought (oh, no!)

Not even a google away (it's only a guess) : http://steamcommunity.com/id/firehed/games/?tab=all

Do you have any other recommendations for ways to approach FPS multiplayer games if you're a (let's say slightly) below-average player?

I would say a good idea would be to choose carefully which games you go for. I'd avoid the Call of Duty series like the plague, simply because those games reward fast, twitchy aiming and your ability to fire rocket launchers. (And/or shout slurs at people who are better at firing rocket launchers than you.)
In contrast, games like Team Fortress 2 don't rely purely on aiming skill; there is a lot more teamwork involved (in theory, at least...) and you can be very useful to your team without firing a shot, as medic or engineer. Also, in general there isn't much of a skill level expected of you in TF2 - it recently went free-to-play so there are a lot of new players anyway, and it's not assumed that everyone will know what they're doing.

I'm older than most of the gamer community, so I don't have a lot of friends who are playing games online at the same time I am. On some games, like the old Burnout Paradise, I made friends online. But when you're not that good or at least your stats are not that good, people aren't always anxious to see you join their team.

In TF2 there is no way to know anything about a player's skill level other than watching them play (or making a guess based on whether they're wearing a hat...).
BF3 is slightly more ambiguous in that you can see what rank people are. That said, in general I've been playing on 64-man servers which are mostly full; if someone gets annoyed that out of 30-odd people, your team has one level 1... Call them out for being the crazy idiot that they are. ;)
That said, if you don't think you're that good, or possibly don't know what you're doing yet, avoid taking up the "important" roles, which in BF3 are usually helicopter pilots and tanks; both are generally quite a scarce resource in-game and can make a large difference to how the game goes. Also, there's nothing quite as depressing as spawning to join your squadmate as he/she nosedives a helicopter into a mountainside. :D

I've been playing TF2 since it was in beta, and plan to be playing a lot more BF3 (and play quite a few other multiplayer FPSs here and there). Feel free to add me on Steam or on BF3's infernal Battlelog system if you like (my username's Esvandiary on there too). I'm in the UK so depending on where you are the timezones might only match up if I'm still up at about 3am (which, uh, clearly never happens) - but I'm happy to help you get the hang of TF2 by healing you lots and giving hints, if you decide it's something you want to get into. :)

If I remember correctly, punctured fire extinguishers temporarily inconvenience them, but not enough to knock them out. What I was talking about are large yellow gas canisters (for some mysterious reason they are labelled "poison", but in my experiments they knock out rather than kill) which, when destroyed, give out a huge cloud that will knock out everyone in AoE. There are quite a few on Panchaea maps, but occasionally you can find some before that - usually, they are conveniently stashed away near areas with large enemy concentration.

Screenshot from the game http://steamcommunity.com/id/apc17/screenshot/540651622691231829

Most savvy... and demonstrably the most untrustworthy. I mean, you've already shown you could care less about violating your carrier contract, and your device EULA, and probably Google's Android agreement to boot.

Rooting a phone probably does violate some EULA or another (not Google's BTW). If there actually existed an alternative, I would pretty happily jump on it. Sadly, here in the States you have basically three cell network left and they have colluded to make it so that you can't simply buy a phone that works on their networks. With the pending doom of T-Mobile, we don't even have non-two year contracts any more.

The manufacturers are almost as bad as a the cell networks. They have amassed a pile of patents, cross licenses those patents, and created a cartel. There should be a thousand and one Silicon Valley cellphone maker startups designing phones in the Valley and then mass producing them in China. They don't exist because patent law has made it physically impossible. It is utterly impossible to make a cell phone these days without violating literally hundreds of patents. Hell, every time someone makes a phone they knowingly violate patents. The only thing that keeps the system somewhat in check is that the other guy is doing the same thing, and if he sues you, you can sue him back. For an example, just look at Apple and Samsung currently suing the piss out of each other. If you don't have a few billion for lawyers, you can't even consider stepping into that fucked up industry.

If there was any sort of real competition left to be had you could make an argument with doing it the "right" way (as if a EULA isn't legal flaming piece of shit). As it stands, if you want a cell phone you need jump a mountain of meaningless 30 page EULAs. I am sure that my fucking alarm clock these days has a EULA that declares that I agree surrender my rights to my first born child by plugging it into a wall.

And you *had* a choice, rationalizations aside. You had a choice as to which phone to buy. You had a choice of carriers. But every sentence you wrote demonstrates that you believe you're entitled to whatever it is you want, however you want it, and no matter what it takes to get it. Face it. If it wasn't this, it would have been the rental price. Or the selection. Or the quality. Or the rental period. Or whatever.

That is very much untrue. Point me to the carrier that doesn't have stuffed into their contract an agreement not to mod your device and I'll pretty happily switch carriers. There is however literally no choice. You get to pick between, shit, shittier, and shittiest (that would be Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T, respectively). I in fact have picked the one with the most liberal policies (Sprint), coverage and cost be damned.

Your declaration that anyone who doesn't want the fucking NASCAR app on their phone must be a pirate it also pretty fucking stupid. That is my Steam profile. Unless I have been hacking Steam, it looks like I bought 139 video games. I'll apparently throw $60 at any video game that looks shinny. It is a pretty safe bet that I'll pay a couple of bucks to watch a movie too.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197969828904

There are a lot of very good reasons to root your phone, almost none of which are nefarious. Unless you are on AT&T's shit network, all Android phones allow side loading which allows for piracy without violating any 59 page EULAs or rooting. The biggest and best reasons to root your phone is so that you actually have an up to date version of Android. Being able to customize the shit out of your interface is also very nice. On older phones, rooting is almost mandatory because the carriers and manufactures love to fill your phone full of uninstallable crapware and skin it with their shitty memory hog proprietary interfaces. If uninstalling the fucking NASCAR app violates my EULA, then Sp

However, thus far the track record is in Valve's favor.

Except when they do things like release L4D with an indication of post-release content, then release a sequel that is really at best an expansion with a such a timeline that indicates they moved everyone off of L4D1 content as soon as it shipped? Or being vocally against paid DLC only now they have it? I don't know what Valve did to convince so many people to have such a huge blind spot when it comes to any of their anti-consumer behavior. It isn't that they are worse than anybody else for it, and they are definitely better than many, but they've already proven repeatedly that they their customers do not necessarily come first.

On the top side, it has good organizational features which is nice if you have many games, but more importantly..

While playing, the steam friends network and communities (one-to-one and many-to-many communication networks) is usable in-game (overlay.) A quick sample of this is the Quake Community for those old schoolers, or you might like to find some people up for some Homeworld 2, and this is but one of the numerous private world of warcraft servers with a steam community. Hell there is even a German NetHack community.

On the top side, it has good organizational features which is nice if you have many games, but more importantly..

While playing, the steam friends network and communities (one-to-one and many-to-many communication networks) is usable in-game (overlay.) A quick sample of this is the Quake Community for those old schoolers, or you might like to find some people up for some Homeworld 2, and this is but one of the numerous private world of warcraft servers with a steam community. Hell there is even a German NetHack community.

On the top side, it has good organizational features which is nice if you have many games, but more importantly..

While playing, the steam friends network and communities (one-to-one and many-to-many communication networks) is usable in-game (overlay.) A quick sample of this is the Quake Community for those old schoolers, or you might like to find some people up for some Homeworld 2, and this is but one of the numerous private world of warcraft servers with a steam community. Hell there is even a German NetHack community.

On the top side, it has good organizational features which is nice if you have many games, but more importantly..

While playing, the steam friends network and communities (one-to-one and many-to-many communication networks) is usable in-game (overlay.) A quick sample of this is the Quake Community for those old schoolers, or you might like to find some people up for some Homeworld 2, and this is but one of the numerous private world of warcraft servers with a steam community. Hell there is even a German NetHack community.

Crap - they're gonna know all my comments on slashdot, as well as what games I play?

Indeed, I noticed this the other day.

After I beat Fallout:New Vegas on the 'Seize control of New Vegas yourself' path, I wondered how many people have picked which ending pages, which control who end up in charge of New Vegas. There are at least four obvious ones I could see. (You, House, NCR, Legion(1). Might be more.)

Then I realized that there was an achievement given for that ending, and remembered I could look up how many people got each achievement, so could see what endings people picked. I was shocked, I will repeat them because I think people can't see the stats if they don't have the game. (Here is the link if I am wrong, although you still won't know the names of things.)

The stats for each achievement that I could figure out are the ending ones: 9.6%, 6.5%, 4.7%, and 1.2%.

That means less than 25% completed the game, and it might be lower, as some players probably did it in multiple ways.

Only 58.2% got to level ten, which is about a third through the game. 34.5% reached lever 20. (There's a level cap of 30, I only got to 27.)

Only 58.8% completed the quest to get to the strip at all! (Technically, you could get to the strip without that, but I doubt anyone skipped it, at least not without doing it once.) Yes, 40% of the people playing the game haven't made it to the strip.

Of course, it's only been out a month, so some people just might not have done those things yet.

1) No relation to ME2's Legion, heh.

Sorry, I typoed my steam link, it should be http://steamcommunity.com/id/Ash_Weststar/games?tab=all

Also the hours are not very accurate as I play often when I have no Internet access.

Writing/producing music?

I have been running fl studio just fine under Crossover. No tweaking involved.

Hah! Gaming?

Steam has been working fine for me under Crossover too. No tweaking involved.

Graphic design type stuff?

What's wrong with Krita? Still no tweaking involved.

Having to hunt for a couple of drivers when you install the OS is a small price to pay for actually being able to do the things you need to do with your computer.

I don't have your problems.

Games:
Ubuntu 10.04: 1
Windows 7: 9

Weird, most of my games work perfectly on Kubuntu 10.04 (It's Ubuntu, just uses KDE by default instead).

A few I have seldom played, but don't feel bad because they only cost $10.

I can't access steamcommunity.com here, but I know I have more than 100 games on my Steam account. A lot were bought through various sales, some in packs with other games. Quite a few I wouldn't have bought otherwise.

Heck I can think of one game I've bought twice: Overlord... once standalone, once as part of the Overlord Complete Pack after the Raising Hell expansion was released on Steam. After I priced it out, it was cheaper to buy the complete pack than to buy Overlord: Raising Hell and Overlord II separately.

The kicker here is: I've never finished Overlord. I've never even started Overlord II.

I've probably played half the games on my Steam list once or never.

Prophunt is a mod of Team Fortress 2. It's hilarious. Kind of like hide-and-seek with flamethrowers and axes.

Pirated games are simply superior.

The last pirated games I looked at had all the DRM still. Examples of this were when x3: reunion and x3: terran conflict came out, until the day Egosoft removed DRM on them, the pirate versions had the exact same DRM and were more likely to have problems due to the DRM driver software being updated by other newer games with the same DRM system being installed and thus the whole 'cd emulation' software workaround wouldn't help.

So, I have no idea where you get this whole 'superior' idea from.

Pirated games treat me like admin of my own computer.

Yeah, I'm not big on administrating a single player game. I just want to install and go, fortunately, my legitimate purchases have all been like that.

It is MY hardware, not ubisoft / Ea / etc

Not your software however, software is licensed.

Steam shows how much you have played a certain game in total: http://steamcommunity.com/id/robinwalker/ and you can view the inventories of TF2 players ( http://www.tf2items.com/ ).

However unlike WoW, you can opt out as player info can't be obtained from private player profiles. When someone asked Valve why you can't grab "information" from a player who marked their profile as private, they said it was a recommendation from their lawyers. Interesting...

Wine and CrossOver are pretty sweet, but pretending that either one is anywhere close to 100% compatible (especially with new releases) is ridiculous.

I don't pretend, I just use. For some reason, there is a lot of people that assume I don't and just make up this stuff.

some other thing - like the video driver not doing hardware accel for no discernable reason (I've seen this three times, on three different versions of Linux across two different hardware configurations) - may prevent you from gaming.

That's easily resolved by just clicking the check-boxes for the hardware in restricted manager (installs proprietary drivers).

but when two CS students with five years of Linux expecerience between them can't figure it out in the first hour

I know people who have 10+ years experience with Windows and can't figure out how to change their wallpaper. Stating a profession and years of experience literally means nothing to me because I have seen all kinds of people being in places they shouldn't be.

the average computer user who is switching for the first time doesn't have a chance

Maybe, maybe not. This isn't really a point I can argue much with because I've seen a 19 year old guy unable to handle a icon being somewhere else and then I have seen a completely computer illiterate 60+ year old lady learn the Linux CLI on her own, without help, because she hated the mouse so much.

Valve managed to effectively decapitate that boycott group by flying the two leaders of the group out to Bellevue, WA for a tour of the Valve offices and a look at the game.

Who knows whether or not it'll actually affect the boycott, though.

Seriously. Did they pay the ratings board to write that?

That is not so unlikely, the Left4Dead community is not at all pleased with how Valve seems to be abandoning them, and have created a Left4Dead Boycott Group with over 40.000 members.

Even if they sell each l4d II game for only 40 dollars (instead of the usual 49) that represents 1.6 million dollars in lost sales.

So Valve has to generate more interest in the new title, and this is probably a part of that.

They're bothering because this is exactly the kind of support they promised for Left4Dead.

Let go of the silly nerdrage, you''re blinded by it.

Everyone expected more content from _Valve_. More campaigns, more survival maps and only thing L4D seems to get is Tools for community to make their own campaigns and survival maps so that Valve can concentrate for L4D2 instead.

However, the L4D2 Boycott group on Steamcommunity (that has around 18% of people compared to the official L4D Group) made Valve to change their mind. Now they promise more content for Left 4 Dead, the original one and promised not to ditch it when L4D2 is out.

I paid 50$ for the game, i assumed that it would get atleast 2 more campaigns before the end of the year + a lot more content than this, for free. Now 7 months passed after it's release and i've seen 1 _new_ map, survival mode lighthouse. Rest are just warmups for the maps that has been played over and over and over again. Then L4D2 was announced and it's not a suprise for me that a lot of people are dissapointed for the current count of DLC.

TF2 has gotten a lot more content since and so did CS Source too. In the first year of their release, there was amazing count of new maps for these games and new features. L4D is way behind in the schedule.

On the other hand, look at Apple. Snow Leopard is only a $29 upgrade for a single license and a $59 upgrade for a family license. There is only 1 Leopard version not the myriad of versions like Windoze, and Leopard kicks Windoze butt any given day.

But then the hardware is more expensive. I spent £400 on my widescreen laptop that comes with everything from bluetooth, firewire, sdcard readers etc. (and even a copy of Windows) that is superior to a Mac Mini (hardware wise) which costs £499, that is £99 more... For what?

But then I need to buy a Windows license to use my Windows only software and run Windows - like most users do. So why would I want that?

The worst is, majority of stuff I use (mostly games) works absolutely fine in Wine in practically every platform... But on OS X's wine ports (including crossover), it doesn't seem to work for the majority of it (Jeremy White mentioned something about OS X having broken opengl and buggy drivers, requiring each application to have specific hacks).

OS X, in my opinion is cheap - but I'm not referencing cost in that statement.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/L4D2boycott

I think a lot of the anger will subside if they give a BIG discount to L4D owners.

Note: I am not the grand parent.

"Macs are overpriced for the components they have "
this has been shown to not be true many times.

It has also been shown to be true many times. I have a £400 widescreen laptop (HP DV6000 series) with 802.11a/b/g wireless, dvi, nVidia graphics with 768MB dedicated (not shared) video RAM, 3GB RAM, 120GB harddrive, Intel Core Duo @ 1.66ghz (admittedly slower than a Mac Mini, however the video RAM which the Mac Mini does not have pays off big time), SD card reader, bluetooth, firewire, optical audio, DVD/CD writer & HD DVD ROM, some built in webcam and microphone I never used, 3 USB ports all with maximum bandwith available for each port and it runs the majority of my games at maximum settings quite well. Compare this to the Mac Mini which begins at £499, can't even exceed the performance of my system for most tasks, plays my games like complete utter shit (probably due to the onboard graphics sucking so much - even that slightly faster CPU doesn't help), can't convert movies as fast via VLC.

Sure, this isn't a 1:1 comparison of hardware, but I can get more for less, so why should I settle for very specific components which are not really that great to begin with? If I was willing to spend more, I could of still got a better laptop than what is currently available from Apple and it would cost less with more features - so, for me, non-Apple computers are cheaper and offer more value.

most people don't customize there PC.

..But gamers do.

no, it's better.

No, it's worse, there is far less choice when it comes to graphic cards for one and the ones offered aren't exactly fantastic for gaming.

BTW, must hard core gamers don't customize their PC anymore either. It's pretty pointless these days.

Every hard core gamer I know has at least customized one component after they got a custom built system, be it changing a soundcard to a far better graphics card etc. While not as many, may not build an entire machine from scratch, they do usually customize it to a degree that Apple likely doesn't offer and then customize further after.

Good luck buying equivalent parts for less.

I have heard and seen some great deals on newegg.com for some components, so I do not believe that is a problem.

Of, and most importantly. If you were truly and hard core gamers, and you new shit about computers, you would WANT OSX to run games because they will run better do to how it manages memory and devices.

Why would he want OS X?

It has piss poor OpenGL support, to the point that projects like crossover games have to write custom fixes for each game they support to work on the buggy drivers (there is your superior hardware support!) and messed up OpenGL, while on Linux, BSDs crossover has universal fixes that work for all games for any potential problems which is not application specific.

The memory management is superior? I disagree, OS X's philosophy of applications is to have each application duplicate libraries that aren't frameworks and therefore a lot of common libraries end up taking space multiple times for each application that uses it. I don't see how that is superior memory management at all. This problem does not exist on Windows or Linux, they are both more efficient in terms of memory usage. Windows does have a problem with sometimes with allocating certain wanted information to swap files, however this not really a concern since generally only 'idle' processes and data get sent to the swap file, allowing for greater bursting capability from applications that need it - that said, there are times this does goes wrong, of course most true Windows applications do not suffer from this problem.

You ge

If they don't:

1. Game,
2. Use Adobe products, or
3. Use some other Windows-only software

then it's already desirable for non-tech-literate users. Certainly if it's already installed and configured by a manufacturer, with a simple recovery disc that fixes everything if you somehow manage to break it (no more likely than with Windows, and probably a bit less likely).

*shrugs*

I don't use Adobe products but, I certainly do game on Linux with various games and I definitely do use some Windows software too. Didn't really take much more effort than running the installers too.

I get fed up of hearing about the "killer applications" that everyone needs on Linux, a lot of them do run just fine already.

I've had x-sessions freeze so completely that I had to do a hard reset, no ctrl+alt+backspace, no switching to a console login and killing it, completely frozen.

That happened to me a long time ago, it turned out to be a frequent issue, the reason was the fan on the graphics card had stopped spinning.

I will admit to the stability if you use only the supported packages, but who aside from a server admin doesn't go for unsupported packages?

I use a lot of 3rd party software, vmware, google, staroffice, tonnes of games under Crossover games. Still, not had any issues.

I've heard it said in Geekdom that BSD is full of elitists, but generally I've found the support community to be a lot friendlier than of Linux.

I generally sit in a lot of different communities, Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD and Solaris etc.

Here is my overall experience with certain BSD communities.

Note: OS X is not considered by most a BSD community.

was also tried of dealing with the "If you don't like it, code your own" mentality that I kept running across.

That's pretty much the OpenBSD answer to a lot of things, they also say "donate your hardware".

OS X 10.2 was out. That got me my Unix development stack AND commercial applications such as Adobe's apps and *gasp* MS Office and no hardware compatibility issues.

I'm guessing you were not a Windows power user if you didn't know of Windows' native POSIX subsystem or the POSIX alternative implementations under Windows.

That said, I've never really had a problem running commercial applications under Linux. That includes my games.

A lot of people arent taking into account the resale value and usability of older macs.

I don't sell my old computers. As for usability, I don't really see how they're more usable than my regular x86 systems.

*looks over at 14 year old x86 system still running fine and doing useful tasks*

Can you imagine what you can do with a four year old pc? exactly. Nothing.

My six year old desktop PC is my gaming system, the only thing I've upgraded in the recent years is the graphics card, it runs all my games at maximum settings. So, I'm pretty confused as to how you got to your "nothing" statement.

could easily have bought a wintel box new that has 'faster' processors, but then i would have to use windows.

What utter non-sense, you can run a Linux variant or even Solaris on that hardware.

For me the four year old mac is still more appealing than a new pc.

I can tell you're a old Mac user, because you used the term "wintel" earlier. Wintel was a silly joke Mac fans made about Intel processors and Windows, back when they made fun of x86 being inferior, despite the fact benchmarks often showed x86 performed far better in most instances that did not involve ALTEC. I have come to the conclusion that you're a Apple zealot.

Do you mean specific apps or specific tasks? Can you name one task you have to do that a Mac can't?

• Steam games - while they have a tendency to work quite well in crossover games for Linux, on Crossover for Mac, the officially unsupported games which work 100% fine on Linux on the same hardware tend to be completely broken.
• Decent Amateur radio software and no, the software listed on http://www.machamradio.com/ is not good enough.
• x11 that supports drag and drop properly, so I can use x11 applications as they should be used.
• x11 that supports clipboards properly, so I can use x11 applications as they should be used.
• Stuff like fink, macports which isn't hopelessly broken - I don't want standard tools segfaulting on me, like finf and macports do. I don't get this with Windows Services for Unix, Cygwin, regular Linux distros etc.

I could go on, but meh.

I'll be the one laughing at you while I just double click.

As a Steam user, I have this to say about double clicking.

"Steam Servers Are Currently Unavailable or Too Busy."