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Why Valve Wants To Port Games To Linux: Because Windows 8 Is a Catastrophe
An anonymous reader writes "Gabe Newell wants to support Linux because he think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in PC space. He wants to move away from a closed ecosystem of Microsoft Windows 8. He recently made a rare appearance at Casual Connect, an annual videogame conference in Seattle. From the allthingsd article: 'The big problem that is holding back Linux is games. People don't realize how critical games are in driving consumer purchasing behavior. We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality.' Some Linux users think that this is a win-win situation for Linux users as it will brings good game titles on the Linux system that haven't been there and it will protect steam business model from both Apple and Microsoft."
Windows 8 is a catastrophe only for those who use it with a keyboard and mouse. For the rest of us, it is the greatest desktop operating system.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I think a lot of people will stay at Windows 7 and just skip Windows 8. I don't see how that is a problem for Valve.
Yes Microsoft will have their own app store, but Steam has many people locked in right now...
Most of the games on Steam will be DirectX, not OpenGL.
No sig today...
I serve the Newell
Look no further than iOS and Android. No matter what the fanbois of each platform say, games invariably are among the top downloads.
Would a clean room implementation of DirectX for Steam on Linux be impossible?
enough said.
Speculation has it that one of the reasons Valve is bringing Steam to Linux is that they are developing a "Steambox" PC-based game console that would run Linux and Steam. Valve has also been confirmed to be working on a version of Steam that plays well with TV screens and gamepad controllers so Steambox would be a natural extension of that. Though I forget whether there were any rumors on Steambox itself though or whether people just saw the rumors of Linux support and gamepad/TV support and put two and two together...
If they are serious about this, they need to get Dell or HP to start building gaming oriented linux desktops and notebooks. Linux will never gain traction as long as the users have to actively decide to install it.
So the summary is implying that several years ago when Linux Steam work began, somehow Valve knew that Windows 8 would be bad even before Microsoft had done much with it beyond initial planning? TFA actually presents a much more balanced picture: Gabe Newell had an interview, and spoke about many things including wearable computers, open platforms, and Linux support. As usual, the Slashdot submitter posted the most inflammatory piece, and the editors like it that way. TFA only even mentions Windows once, in the quote TFS copied!
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
the real thing holding back Linux is games?
how about the fact that opening MS Office docs on Linux with one of the many "Open Office" solutions is still a nightmare?
Better than the /, summaries that have nothing to do with TFA.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
In my opinion, the biggest hurdle that Valve will face won't be porting Steam itself over to Linux, but porting the library of games over.
While I don't know what the actual facts and figures are, I think that it's a fairly safe bet that most of the games on there will have been coded around Microsoft's DirectX graphics API, making the games themselves Windows-only. Yes, they can be rewritten to use OpenGL instead, but this would require substantial effort -- Valve would have the resources to do this with their own titles, but some of the other publishers on Steam may be of the opinion that it's not worth the effort.
This is as close to a perfect example as one can get as to why vendor lock-in is a bad thing. Arguably, the DirectX lock-in is probably why gaming on OS X hasn't really taken off either.
Still, this move by Valve could well be the snowball that sets off the avalanche...
I don't think it's possible to understate how much of a monumental task this is. Not just for Valve, but for everyone with an interest in the Linux world.
If Valve wants this to succeed, they'll need to do more than just port their games and Steam to the platform. They'll need to really get the likes of AMD and nVidia on board to get better driver support, they'll need to convince the big publishers that it's worth taking the time to port their games and find some way to make WINE and its equivalents run at nearly native speed for the ones that can't be easily ported for whatever reason.
Then you have to deal with all the old DRM schemes that still exist and throw a fit even on newer versions of Windows, never mind a completely different OS. SecuROM rootkits? Yeah, good luck with that.
Still, for all the issues, all the potential pitfalls I really do wish Valve the best of luck with this as it can only be a good thing for everyone. Well, everyone except Microsoft maybe.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Even if games was a major factor in holding Linux back, just making Steam available is not going to fix that.
Steam was launched for Mac two years ago, but other than Valve's own games the only top game that has been made available is Civilization V. Some indie games, sure, and Blizzard's games are available outside Steam, but all the other games are just as absent as they were before Steam was ported.
I think this is a Microsoft strategy to take control more and become a PC OEM theselves like Apple. I think they're success will be limited. If I were a PC OEM, I would be real concerned by The Surface and Xbox.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Considering how few games there are for Linux on Steam right now, how about you stop talking and start porting?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
considering Wine has been trying to achieve that for many MANY years I think the answer to that is yes.
When do normal people at home open office documents? I never have the need or the desire. You do? Well, that says a lot about you that at home on your game machine, you have a burning desire for some edge case document formatting or love that challenge of creating a truly disastrous spreadsheet.
For most people, wordpad is more then enough. The proof? That so few computers are sold with Office installed.
Why don't you try another one? How about CAD software? Financial software?
Come on, surely you can come up with something better then Office for software people don't use on game machines at home?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Probably possible legally. I highly doubt anyone would be able to pull it off, however, and have it be up to date, stable, etc. Maybe Linux can catch the next train with whatever comes after. DirectX is very mature at this point.
for the first time, or at all, BECAUSE of games? I know I did. I know that they taught me lots of things - especially even just programming very rudimentary games on the apple deuce in 7th and 8th grade. That gave me a huge appreciation for computers, what they can do, and what a good product looks like. My text based zork type games were very easy to write, however the pixelized boxing game (that I was creating with the wrong process) took many many lines of code and required mass critical thinking.
And I can relate this to what was supposed to be a huge blockbuster, although I don't know if their programmers are just new, inexperienced, or just don't know what a good game is - or, they were told to dumb it down as the company wanted an incoming stream of income like they had with their graphical chat room (WoW).
Steam has a lot of OpenGl ports for OSX.
I just posted this on my blog...
Steam on Linux is a strategic move for Valve. They have enjoyed success on the Windows and Mac platforms for years and now they have recently announced that the penguin crowd will get to enjoy the games (no, not the Olymic ones).
Why am I even bothering to point this out? Windows 8 is lurking, that's why.. and Gabe Newell, the boss at Valve, knows it. Speaking at the recent Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Gabe expressed his concerns and criticisms of Windows 8 and in particularly the new Windows Store.
Why?
Because in order to make the Windows Store a success, Microsoft needs to block the competition, just like Apple does with its App/Mac stores. As Steam is an online store itself for gamers, this is where its going to hurt Valve as potentially, no more Steam on Windows.
Microsoft could very well only have games that link to its own XBox system. This makes sense as a business and to up-sell to existing Windows customers.
Gabe Newell worked at Microsoft for 13 years before he started up Valve, and its here where they have recently embraced the penguins as a "hedging strategy" to further gain customers. He is worried that potentially losing the Windows customer base will cause lasting damage to their own customer base. I'm sure he thought that when he said "Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space."
Now think about this...
Steam has an average of 4 million users connected at any given time.
Windows has an average desktop market share of, say 80%. That's 3 million gamers.
Now suddenly, Steam is no longer available on Windows, but it is on Linux.
Will those gamers switch? Or even try?
Some will move to a console, some to a Mac. But some, lets say a optimistic 30% or 1 million of those start using Linux, just for Steam? That's a lot.
The Year Of the Linux Desktop? No seriously... stop laughing, it may happen.
Meh. We hear the old refrain every time Microsoft comes out with a new version of Windows. "It's the worst thing ever.". "People will be migrating to OSX/Linux/whatever in droves." The sad fact is that businesses and IT are so heavily invested in the Windows ecosystem that they have no choice but to eventually upgrade. Think of all the specialized apps out there on the Windows platform: banking apps, auto shop diagnostic apps, imaging apps, etc. Even if developers want to switch to another OS, how are they going to migrate their users? Tell them they have to throw out their PCs and buy Macs? Or wipe their drives and set up an Ubuntu partition?
Hell, ATI/AMD has been trying to make working OpenGL drivers for longer than that!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I was well aware of Valve, but not of who this guy is. Now that he picked up a few big headlines in traditional "xyz is doomed" style, I imagine he has a bit more Klout points. Congratulations Gabe.
I hope they get it better than their Mac implementation. Barf. It is practically unusable on my quad core 3.1 Ghz iMac with almost full specs. Unresponsive to the point of making your hair fall out. I am not too impressed with their cross platform record at this point and I will have to see it to believe a stable Steam on a *nix system. Not to say that I would expect it to be easy or anything. Making a mature system cross platform is damn near impossible if you do not plan it from the very beginning. Dependencies, dependencies, dependencies. Most people outside the development world have no clue how difficult porting can be.
... is DRIVERS!!! Good luck getting real open source drivers out of Nvidia, ATI/AMD, and Intel for their graphics hardware.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
The problem for Valve is that Windows 8 is going down the app store route, and the main point of Steam is really to be an easy download and auto-update platform for games. Sure, Steam does other things too, but if it weren't for the distribution channel (which is the only distribution channel for Valve's own big name games) I don't really believe anyone would stick with it just for the minor perks. This leaves only two possibilities:
1. Steam has a powerful lock-in. In this case, a lot of people who have spent a lot of money with them based basically on trust are about to have their faith questioned. Since Steam's standards terms and conditions are a joke as far as guaranteeing anything to anyone but themselves, this leaves two variations:
1a. They will do right by their customers at almost any price, assuming this is even possible with whatever technical and commercial infrastructure MS adopts to go with Windows 8. This might save their reputation and business model, but would surely hurt Valve's bottom line significantly.
1b. They can't or won't pay that price and customers who move to Windows 8 will suffer a worse user experience, limited ability to buy new games, or in the worst case lose access to the existing library they've already paid for. In any case, Steam will take a huge PR hit that will at best severely damage Valve's credibility.
2. Steam's lock-in isn't that powerful. In this case, Microsoft can beat them at their own game (no pun intended) and outright steal their business.
There are exactly zero outcomes in there that are positive for Steam, and some represent an existential threat.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In an era where Apple can patent a fucking rectangle with rounded corners, you can bet pretty much EVERYTHING is patented these days. It's almost guaranteed that the second you achieve any success at all on a given product, reversed engineered or not, you *will* be sued (probably by multiple companies).
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
You don't know much about game programming do you? There are extensive amounts of architecture specific assembly optimization in most games. So, no, they won't be "easily portable".
I have wondered for years why game-makers haven't already started working on writing games for Linux so that they can sell games that boot directly to the game on any system.
To me it seems so obvious. Now you don't have to worry about which version of what a user has on their computer and the user doesn't need to install the game.
Why hasn't this already been done?
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
Steam is an appstore, Windows 8 too.
Yep, it's a catastrophe. For Steam.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
No, Steam has a lot of Windows games wrapped in Cider so as to do the bare minimum effort.
Windows 9? Don't you mean Winix? I hear there is a port on the way. Everyone is jumping ship.
Windows 8 App Store is a catastrophe for Valve business model.
Better than the /, summaries that have nothing to do with TFA.
Slashcomma.org, I love that site!
Clicked pie.
To be fair, the windows client isn't all that hot either. It takes several seconds to switch between tabs, pressing the forward and back buttons takes a while to work (apparently its internal browser has no cache), skips pages, etc. The downloads screen is completely unresponsive, there isn't even visual feedback that you've clicked the pause or resume buttons, you just click then wait for it to decide if it's going to start or stop.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
1. It's immense work.
2. It's even more work to make it efficient, because a would-be reimplementor will have to know why things are the way they are rather than just how it is.
3. It's chasing a moving target. It will never, ever be as good as the latest version from Microsoft.
The only reason to do it is backwards compatibility. That can be a good reason, for a long time it's was easier to run old DOS games in Dosbox than with Window's backwards compatibility stuff.
Better to use openGL. For Android, iOS, mac, and all consoles but xbox it's what you will need anyway. For the rest of the stuff DirectX does - well, Steam has just hired Sam Lantinga. SDL is one of the nicest C libraries I know, but Lantinga has worked for a long time on a rewrite based on what he (and the world) has learned since 2000 - and since he has a damn impressive CV, I expect that's a lot.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Quality business decision making can't occur if there is no data. So how do 99.9% of companies make decisions if they don't have data?
They think. They draw on experience. They hypothesise scenarios and choose the best strategy. They go with their gut instinct honed after years of making millions in profit. The kind of people that make change and earn millions *DON'T* stick in safe industries where data is easily available on every possible aspect and then just pick the safest route. They take risks and gambles and sometimes they pay off (and then they make more millions) and sometimes they don't (and then you'd never have heard of them).
I don't think Gabe is anything special - he's a bit of a self-important loudmouth in my job, like Jon Romero and his kind. But if Gabe thinks something about the gaming industry, specifically the online purchasing parts of the PC gaming industry, you should really listen, whether you agree or not, whether you think his opinion is biased or not. Because he basically owns that industry at the moment.
Pity you didn't think.
Direct3D and OpenGL are basically identical these days. OpenGL is more flexible, but to be honest that flexibility just ends up shooting yourself in the foot. Most GL developers simply create GL wrapper classes that are either based on the D3D classes, or they've grouped relevent items from the GL spec (and ended up with exactly the same result, although they'd have taken much longer to get there). OpenGL doesn't really have an equivalent for D3D FX files, so that ends up being a mammoth chunk of work you could do without. Mind you, if you're also targetting console, you'll be writing your own form of FX in all likelyhood.
Joypads aren't too much of an issue. The AV components of DirectX would be a little bit more involved, but not impossible (OpenAL / fmod / whatever). The biggest problems you're likely to encounter is if people have built their code with heavy dependencies on things like X files, Pix, FX files, game server components, etc. Again, it's not impossible to roll your own (or use a middleware component), it's just a massive ball ache, and a bit of a time sink.....
The problem isn't DirectX support, it is with having the newer DirectX versions be supported, and get proper driver support to make it all work. People complain about driver quality due to games having issues under Windows, so picture how bad a Linux implementation would end up being.
Two possibilities:
Wine has an implementation of DirectX 9 (and a lot of other Windows APIs). It can either be used as an emulator (use it to run windows .EXE files), or you can compile code against it to produce unix native binaries (Write code using microsoft APIs, but get a Linux ELF as an output).
The Gallium3D driver infrastructure (as used by most opensource drivers on Linux - the official Intel, the AMD-helped, and reverse engineered for Nvidia hardware) is modular. There is a 3D DirectX 10/11 front end written for it.
This could be a starting points for providing DirectX APIs for games on Steam.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't understand *why* he thinks Windows 8 is going to be a catastrophe in the way that he says.
Because he (his company), being an important windows developer, has had the possibility to use and develop on pre-release versions of windows 8 for months. While you, you have only read the so-called reviews on MS-sponsored internet magazines.
this post contain no useful information, no need to mod it down
I really wish people would look objectively at windows 8 and stop just repeating the things others have said.
Everyone keeps saying it's enormously different, but here's the truth, other than a ton of reported efficiency improvements under the covers, there's one change that everyone is up in arms about:
The start menu was replaced. Oooo scaarrry... That's the only UI change. Just one, and somehow people act like this OS is so far removed from windows as we know it.
Here's the truth: If you don't think someone is going to have a program out that behaves identical to the current start menu right when windows 8 comes out, you're fooling yourself. It will probably even be better as it will likely be open source and community driven giving even greater customization if you want. Moreover, half of you play around in different window managers whenever you feel like which causes major UI changes. So slashdotters are the last ones that should be griping. Heck, by creating a simple folder menu on your task bar that points to your desktop or wherever else you keep your shortcuts (there's probably still a start menu folder you could just point it at) you can just recreate the same behavior you're used to.
Now the other side of the truth: For non-technical folks like us who aren't extremely tied to their start menu and probably find the menu driven behavior less preferable to their desktop's behavior for choosing items (as icon driven interfaces have by apple been shown to be more usable by the masses), the new start menu is likely quite preferable.
Given that technical folks like us will adjust almost immediately, and chances are the general population will by my wager like the new behavior more (so long as they can avoid their perceptions being tainted by the constant microsoft-is-for-idiots meme), I am going to go out on a limb and say Windows 8 will probably be an extremely successful operating system. There is now one caveat however; there are a fairly significant amount of changes under the covers I am to understand, so as long as they haven't compromised compatibility and stability, I think they'll be in great standing. I suppose only other caveat: The javascript on the desktop as applications approach may result in some horrible programs written for windows 8 that taints people's view of the overall OS.
Now quit spewing what everyone (including me) says, and go read about/try windows 8 yourselves. And longer than just opening the start menu to shout "NO!" and uninstalling it like so many windows->linux converts do. As for the claims of "Shill!", good for you; you are capable of identifying all somewhat positive statements about a thing as being clearly false marketing. Hypocrite, you probably said something good about yourself once. Sucker.
You are behind the times, and should really be firing your complaints at Nvidia. For the last couple of years I've used ATI cards for GL development exclusively. Unlike Nvidia cards they actually implement the GL spec to the letter. With Nvidia cards you can pretty much call any old combination of GL functions, and something will appear on screen. They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product. With ATI, if you pass an invalid arg, or call a method at the wrong time, they will generate the correct error. This sadly leads to a situation where a developer uses an NVidia card for development, ships, and then it won't run on ATI or Intel cards. The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!
This is one strategy. Another is to publish games with a LiveCD option, by which they burn a Fedora or Ubuntu ISO from the game and boot. Fedora or Ubuntu because Debian and CentOS are often behind, and developers will want the latest stuff because hype etc.
It's actually fully possible to boot from an image, too, in which case they could output a $HOME/Valve/Games directory filled with ISOs and put a rudimentary mid-boot-loader in /boot. The mid-boot loader would use syslinux memdisk to load a 64MB hard drive image into RAM and boot from it (you can add a grub entry to do this, yes). That in turn would mount /home or / and scan everything (either under /home/*/Valve/ISO or under /*/Valve/ISO) for games. The user picks a game from the list, the ISO gets mounted, and kexec is used to boot its kernel and begin the process of loading the LiveCD.
From there, a configuration file is loaded based on kernel command line parameters, which points to a directory (like /home/_Valve/) containing all persistent storage (save games, network settings, the like). Hell if you want to get fancy, we can load /etc/passwd and /etc/group from / proper and merge in all UIDs between 500 and 10000 and store saves in the user's $HOME proper, with proper permissions for the user, even make the user log into the system to play. In either case, permanent system settings and game saves are easily accessible. The system could even easily kexec back out into the original loader (or back to the bootloader).
Support my political activism on Patreon.
They are just promoting Linux because they are secretly developing a Linux Gaming Console.... :D
Makes sense, since unlike DirectX, OpenGL doesn't have any OOTB support for sound, the way DirectX does. Are there any DirectX equivalents and OpenGL alternatives in the Unix (i.e. both Linux & BSD) space?
I thought that the biggest thing holding Linux back was drivers in general, and the lack of a device driver ABI in particular. The knowledge that any cool toy that you're supposed to plug into your PC may not work under Linux the way you know it would have under Windows is a strong enough reason to shy away from Windows. But once the market is such that everything you find there is something you know works w/ Linux, and that too any and every distro, Linux would be set.
I doubt that games are the reason for Linux not catching on. If a whole slew of games does get available for Linux, it'll find itself competing w/ PlayStation3, Wii and XBox360.
Wine works usably well for this, enough that there's a subculture of WoW players who use Linux specifically so that people they piss off can't haxx0r their b0x0r. The support is helped by the guys at Codeweavers being gamers.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
There are a lot of games using 3rd party engines.
Valve's own games mostly use the Source engine - which already has an OpenGL backend and is in the process of beinge ported to Linux.
If the engine has a Linux port, that means that the developer could easily make a Linux port of their game.
Also: Given that DirectX exists only on Windows PCs and X-Box, and that OpenGL runs on pretty much everything else (Macs, Linux PCs, other gaming consoles, pretty much any modern smartphone/tablet, other devices....) you would be surprise of how many games and engines *also* have an OpenGL back-end, just to be able to tap into the juicy Mac/iDevice/Android markets.
Last but not least: there are also other APIs popular around. SDL is popular in the indie/homebrew world. I can bet that some of the "2$" games on steam are using it.
So the "Windows games use a Microsoft-only API" isn't that much a problem as some might believe.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
OpenGL is the equivalent of Direct3D (a subset of DirectX), as you've made clear in your post. SDL seems to be the most popular library for doing the "rest" of the stuff that DirectX does for crossplatform programs (and also on Linux in particular), it's pretty low-level, acting just to give a unified-across-platforms interface to the hardware, but entirely usable, and has been observed being used by major companies (e.g. the official Linux port of Neverwinter Nights). (It also integrates well with OpenGL.) There are a couple of alternatives, such as FreeGLUT and Allegro, but they don't really have the same sort of marketshare in Linux gaming as SDL does. (I imagine DirectX is much more full-featured than SDL+OpenGL is, though; it's another issue as to how heavily those features are used, though.)
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
as a long-time ATI fan....
the ATI drivers DO suck. They don't upgrade nicely, often break their own config......which sucks..
but I can deal with that...... no problem....
However killing support of a card when it's 1yr old I can't do. I'm sorry, Fuck you ATI. Give me Driver support for 3 years MINIMUM
I am so pleased to see that today's generation of young gamers are more accepting of linux that this can be a possibility. Id Software tried just over 20 years ago with distribution via lokigames.com but the project failed due to lack of support to PAY for a linux game at the time and the over production of product that left lokigames to go bankrupt. Hopefully Valve has a better business plan. ***SPOILER ALERT*** I have a feeling they do.
If you're successful in marketing a software product built on a proprietary platform, you can expect the proprietor of that platform to attempt a takeover of your market, at some point. If you build on an open platform and are successful, you'll quite possibly have competition sooner, but it will likely be fair competition.
Having used a touchscreen computer (the DTI TouchCom II) as early as 1984, the chief problem with touch screens has always been that your finger gets in the way, and leaves smudges. A tablet or mouse pointer can be small, can even be a hollow "target" pointer, and does not leave greasy prints all over your display. Not to mention, the tactile feedback of an actual keyboard, and a mouse with real buttons, is a huge part of the user experience.
And they'll be reluctant to do that. They Sell Windows boxes largely because Windows is a standard OS that's easy for users and it lets them offload a good chunk of their support costs. Dell doesn't want to help you unfuck your Linux system because too much of the support and warranty costs would fall on Dell.
If they have to go support absolutely any possible Linux distribution out there (including the custom crazy wackos with Gentoo and the like), yup. Maybe.
But if their "Linux machines" means a specific distribution (probably Ubuntu) installed with a specific set of default applications, using the OEM's 3rd party repository for drivers that aren't in mainstream linux yet. Wel... in this case the situation isn't much more complicated than supporting Windows.
(Just expect that most help tips for unfucking the system will be "please re-install the Linux root using the USB install stick which came with your hardware", just like currently most Windows unfucking is "please use the repair function of the DVD recovery that your PC burned on it first run")
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The problems with this idea seem to outmatch the idea. (Not that I'm against it.)
1. API's. Linux is a sea of APIs and they shift like the wind. In the area of drivers, kernel, gfx api's, - its frankly not something I expect Steam to navigate easily.
In windows a lot of development was based on OpenGL, DirectX. OpenGL is certainly doable in Linux, but good luck in having it work in an expectable way - I say that given Intel, ATI, Nvidia drivers..
2. I think it can only happen if someone like steam and perhaps its partners build and define and work with OpenGL, and a directX alike environment. And early on I think to even think about making this work, it would probably need to be a platform idea where steam get hardware makers to make a box that has some fundamental hardware they and their user base would not have to fight. A steambox? Sure. And others could make their hardware 'steambox' ready by supplying hardware that fitted this working model. An early stab would seem to me to require Nvidia - as I think their closed source drivers are the only drivers *today* that would be viable.
3. Other areas like sound and multimedia are just as messy in Linux. Don't see any other way than Steam and partners getting involved in some way to keep some stuff defined.
4. Seems like a good basis to campaign for an open game/source standard.
We`re all equal
and that's the impression one gets from reading Linux-related news sites.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
At least Valve is teaming up with Intel to help Intel create working opensource drivers for Intel IGP, which is getting decently powerful. I would be willing to use an IvyBridge or faster Intel IGP to make a Linux "gaming" box.
"Direct3D and OpenGL are basically identical these days"
/sigh
I want to say "I wish OpenGL supported multiple calling threads", but how many Windows games support DX11 and make use of multiple threads...
First step first. Lets get good opensource drivers, or at least decent binaries.
It ameliorates the chicken-egg problem Linux suffers from:
#1 Missing out on users because there are no games
#2 No games are being made because there are no users
GOTO #1
So seeing Gabe trying to break this cycle by making sure Intel and NVIDIA are on board with his idea is a good first step, this could lead to more and better games, which then could attract more users, developers and publishers to the platform. These events could on their turn entice hardware vendors to upgrade their drivers even more etc. I hope Canonical is working very closely with them, as this surely is no easy feat to pull off
IMO it's extremely anti-competitive and just begging for a lawsuit which could portentially catch Apple, Microsoft and Google in its crosshairs. Doubtless they'd all proclaim their OS is "open", but at the same time if they install their own store by default, that is hardly fair at all. I can see all being compelled to offer consumers something similar to a browser chooser which lets them pick the store they want.
Then there's Windows RT where there won't be a choice AT ALL. Steam isn't even an option on such a device. Even if Valve or its publishers recompiled some games to run on ARM they wouldn't be able to install them because the store wouldn't let them. If Steam appears on Windows RT at all it will likely be in some emasculated form where you can't actually buy or install anything, just look at your achievements and stuff.
I suppose therefore from their standpoint it makes sense to widen their deploy base but equally it could just be a power play to give them some leverage to negotiate themselves a prime position in Windows. It may well be that in return the Linux support gets dropped or de prioritized.
They'll need to really get the likes of AMD and nVidia on board to get better driver support
Already underway. For example, they don't only look for linux game developpers to hire, they are also looking for people with kernel and drivers experience.
Spend some time on Linux-related news sites like Phoronix.
They'll need to convince the big publishers that it's worth taking the time to port their games
The "taking the time" won't be such a huge deal if the game engine can already run on Linux.
- Valve are porting Source to Linux (and as they already have an OpenGL back-end on their Mac version, it's not that much difficult) (specially since employee have already been fooling with Linux for some time).
- Lots of other 3rd party engines have Linux ports.
For games using these engines, porting to Linux won't be that much difficult. And once the Linux market is "seeded" with Valves own games (and the indie games already having a Linux port, like most of the Humble Bundle games) that nascent market could be an incentive to make the "not-so-difficult" port.
Now, for games with their own custom DirectX-only engines without even an OpenGL backend: yup for them it's going to be more difficult, and Valve needs to find a way to persuade them to make the jump.
and find some way to make WINE and its equivalents run at nearly native speed for the ones that can't be easily ported for whatever reason.
Then you have to deal with all the old DRM schemes that still exist and throw a fit even on newer versions of Windows, never mind a completely different OS. SecuROM rootkits? Yeah, good luck with that.
Still, for all the issues, all the potential pitfalls I really do wish Valve the best of luck with this as it can only be a good thing for everyone. Well, everyone except Microsoft maybe.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
And doubtless this is how the vast majority of games will appear on Linux. Not native in the sense of using native APIs, but either recompiled against winelib or a derivative or running over WINE or a derivative directly. I have no problem with this.
Are you kidding me? Most of the people I know heard that they can upgrade from XP, Vista, and Windows 7 to Window 8 PRO for $40, and are planning on converting all their PCs the instant it is available.
Guess we run in different crowds, cause I'm getting told this from even non-tech savvy grandmothers.
If Steam is coming to TVs it seems far more likely to me that they'd do stuff in the cloud. Why bother with all that downloading crap when you can just pipe the video over the internet. It could still have relevance since I expect there are significant cost savings for Valve if game instances could be run on Linux instead of Windows.
I agree.
I read TFA and the summary, and no clue is presented as to why Windows 8 is a catastrophe for games, just that one guy thinks it is.
Someone should dispatch a reporter to find out and summarize that for us.
The sad fact is that businesses and IT are so heavily invested in the Windows ecosystem that they have no choice but to eventually upgrade.
Yup, but were not speaking about the work place here. We're speaking about the machine at home on which you play games.
It has nothing to do with the horrible IE6-only ActiveX ASP/IIS monstruosity in which your workplace is entangled and which is forcing your company to still pay the microsoft tax and reluctantly submit to whatever upgrade Redmond forces upon them once they pull the plug on the support of the previous favourite of the IT department.
It's not about the "Year of the Linux Desktop" at your workplace (that is what the efforts to migrate to Linux and LibreOffirce in european public agencies are).
It's about bringing this Linux Desktop on your gaming machine at home.
(Or on your laptop/netbook while on vacations).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well except that EA/Origin isn't using Gabe's company, and neither is Blizzard/Activision anymore. Last thing Bethesda put on steam was Skyrim which was about a year ago.
Gabe is just scared because if/when the Microsoft App Store goes live, there will be little reason to have steam anymore. Why would you want steam on linux anyway, don't they have package repositories? You can't apt-get games on linux?
I'm sure the answer is "drivers", but I've dreamed of the same for years. These days, it's not even that much of an inconvenience, as game load times are significantly longer than boot times.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
He's right in many more ways than one. Hedging his bets against a future in which Microsoft is his biggest rival is only one reason for doing this. The other big reason is simply to expand the gaming market, and to lead it.
It's no secret that the Linux world is full of endearing geeks and nerds who love to play video games --- there could hardly be a bigger truism! And yet they are totally under-served on their favorite platform, and frequently have to run a Windows box for the sole reason of being able to play their games. That presents an obvious business opportunity.
By supplying Linux gamers with good games on their favorite platform, not only is he expanding his customer base to a whole new audience of Linux-only gamers, but is also making it possible for Linux gamers to avoid running a Windows box at all. And that can remove one of his rivals from the competition entirely. It would be a move of genius.
What's more, if Linux gaming takes off bigtime (his company certainly has every opportunity to make that happen), then he will be the leader in a new gaming frontier, and everyone else will be playing catchup. That is worth a gamble all by itself, and it's not even a high-risk venture.
I think Gabe's business nose can sense a big opportunity here, a huge and almost unexploited market that he can make his own, while at the same time safeguarding his future against Microsoft.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
"a lot"?
Life is great! (as told by Lady Susan)
With Nvidia cards you can pretty much call any old combination of GL functions, and something will appear on screen. They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product. This sadly leads to a situation where a developer uses an NVidia card for development, ships, and then it won't run on ATI or Intel cards. The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!
So you're saying Nvidia is the IE6 of video cards?
Is that Newell originally talked to MS about doing some kind of digital distribution (he used to work for them) and they were interested, so Valve developed their own thing.
So he was fine with MS being the DD store owner back in the day, before he made bank on it, now he's worried. Sorry Gabe, I don't care if you won't be quite as rich, that isn't a disaster.
Now I'd be worried if the Windows store goes on to a monopoly status, if it becomes the One True Way(tm) to buy stuff for Windows. However if it competes with Steam, I see that as good because frankly I'm just as worried about Steam becoming the One Service to Rule Them All.
Steam is pretty well written, easy to use, and has great deals. However it is all about lock-in. For example they'll let companies use their Steamworks protection for free... but then the game REQUIRES Steam to be installed and running to be playable. Even if you buy a Steamworks game from another DD service like Impulse or Amazon, it'll require Steam. Also if you sell a game on Steam, you have to sell all DLC through Steam as well (that's why some things like Minecraft never came to Steam) you can't sell it on your own site.
Thus I'm not sad to see a big competitor to it. Competition keeps services honest. If there's many places to go for your game DD needs, then they'd better be good or you'll go elsewhere. If one becomes the one and only service, then they could well start screwing you.
Windows 8 catastrophic - Sure. Games coming to linux - I hope so. Steam coming to linux - Don't care, i'd rather have the games via the ubuntu store. Steam only has some games you can't buy anywhere else, but for the rest it's just some drm that keeps track of what games you play.
... is DRIVERS!!! Good luck getting real open source drivers out of Nvidia, ATI/AMD, and Intel for their graphics hardware.
Intel - pure real opensource:
Their official driver *IS* real open source. Intel has paid Tungsten graphics (now part of the VMWare people) to develop their Linux drivers as opensource. And this are the guy who are driving most innovation on the linux graphics front (KMS, GEM/TTM, Gallium3D, etc.) They have a good performance. The only limitation is that the current Gallium3D stack has only an OpenGL 3.0 front end (missing more recent 3.x and the whole 4.x family).
AMD - opensource supporter:
- They have an official closed source driver for Linux which is somewhat acceptable. The situation has much improved over the last few years (It's okay for games, even the latest generation and is similar in performance to the Windows version - well it's actually a port of the same Catalyst code base).
- The actively support real open source "radeon" drivers: They release specs (well at a very slow speed as it has to get approved for release from the legal department but still) and even some pieces of example code. They even pay for it (a couple of the paid-for developers working on open source drivers are on AMD's own payroll). For older hardware (for which AMD has dropped support in the latest catalyst) its even the officially recommended drivers by AMD themselves.
Performance varies (on older hardware, it's as good as the closed source, on newer hardware it's slower. The latest generation still missing for now, because the hardware underneath changed radically, but work on the "radeonsi" driver is underway thanks to specs from AMD) but its usable. Again limited on API support.
AMD have pledged to better take open-source into account in future designs. And over time the process is getting more streamlined and faster. It's not as good as Intel's opensource software, but they are definitely heading in a good direction.
Nvidia - blacksheep:
- They only have an official closed source driver for Linux. Also, they don't play nicely with kernel developers, preferring to things their own way instead of trying to collaborate with kernel development and leveraging facilities existing in Linux and in the kernel. They just prefer porting their own code base. As a result of this, some technologies just plain don't work on Linux or require hacks by 3rd party developers (the whole Optimus debacle). And the situation with embed Tegra is even worse. Hence the big "Fuck You!" from Linux Torvalds. But as it is a port of their common code base, performance is good.
- The real open source "Nouveau" driver is entirely a separate 3rd party project done exclusively by reverse engineering. Support and performance is random (depends on which hardware the developers could test it on. Mid-range not-too-old cards are the best bet because that's what the most people are running and thus the most tested hardware). As Nvidia doesn't publish neither specs nor code, support for latest generations is always lagging behind. Given the situation it's a miracle what the Nouveau developers have managed to achieve. And it's currently reached the state where it can be stable enough to work as a out-of-the-box opensource support for a good part of Nvidia hardware, enough to provide desktop compositing, etc. Gallium3D front-end limitation apply too.
in short:
there are opensource drivers out there, the situation is even developing nicely for Intel and AMD.
Valve can even help further by throwing developers at the problems
(and according to some linux-related news site, they are: they are not only hiring Linux game developers, they are also interested in developers with kernel/driver knowledge).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If Gabe realized how much of a killing they could make with a steam-powered console that included kb/mouse/joystick, and a standardized set of hardware, they'd do it and become a HUGE competitive fore in the console market.
Done right, given Valve has a library of titles nobody else can touch right now, Valve could put the PS3 and 360 on their asses.
Hey Gabe, let's get a Project Sauna going!
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
They already decided to support MacOS. So they're already at least half way there. It's not like this is exactly a new direction for them. They have been diversifying for awhile now.
So the fixation on Direct3D may be unwarranted.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Everyone will just skip it like ME and Vista and MS will rush out a new OS that doesn't suck so hard once they realize how bad they fucked up. This isn't the first time MS has given birth to a stillborn and then tried to convince us with the Dead Parrot sketch.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Which board/GPU?
While the "chat client" etc features are nice, they aren't spectacular.
However, being able to easily find my friends in-game, that's great. Remember the old days when *every* game had its own lobby. You had to find create a game, tell your friends the game name (and/or password), kick out the trolls repeated while "slow friend X" tries to join, etc.
Annnd the network issues. 3 people could join but one could not connect.
Or they had to know your IP address.
Or you had to NAT a bunch of crap on your router.
One thing I'm *very* happy with steam for is not having to deal with that shit anymore.
seriously, how many WoW players are actually capable of "haxx0r their b0x0r" no matter how much they piss them off?
They actually wrote their own wrapper for DirectX to OpenGL. The user Rbarris on the Steam forums was / is involved in the development. It performs well according to their testing.
... for the Source engine that is.
In spite of the UI of Windows 8 that takes some getting used to and my verdict is till in deciding if I like it, Windows 8 is Windows as usual.
The desktop still exists in the background, which can run Steam and install any of the "closed ecosystem" provided by Valve. I mean, isn't this at the heart of what Valve does these days? Valve stopped making video games (I mean really one new game every 5 years is not a game development company), and instead promoted a platform which largely whores the Valve gaming engine. Really Gabe, seriously, what is your definition of a closed ecosystem?
Gabe doesn't like the idea of other people selling games on other closed ecosystems, that is all he is shooting his mouth off about. He dissed the PS3 and Xbox 360 because of their game stores and didn't want to ship Valve games using some other companies licensing scheme. The idea of Microsoft selling games on the App Store goes against Gabe's business plan of selling Windows games on the Valve platform. But why no outrage over Apple and their walled garden approach to iOS and OS X? Because its an easy win to bitch about Windows and not about Apple these days.
So fine Gabe, if you want to port Steam to Linux because its the last platform you can't dominate, go ahead. Sony fucked you, Nintendo fucked you, Google fucked you, Apple fucked you, Microsoft fucked you, so why not go to Linux. Just don't be surprised when the banks run dry because people on Linux don't actually like to PAY for anything. A game store on Linux is like asking people to pay for air.
And before you go running off your mouth again take a good hard look at your own company and realize you are doing NOTHING different then everyone else, you are just as much as a greedy schmuck as every other CEO, just too smug to accept it.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
MSI 880GMA-E45 AM3 AMD 880G
ATI Radeon HD 4250. It looks like it originally came out in 2010. The 210/220 was 2008/2009 ish.
True, but if they (as rumoured) make a linux-based console - with better licensing terms than the MS/Sony/Nintendo consoles - then that might make a fairly large blog on the radar...
You have non tech-savvy grandmothers talking to you about Windows 8? Well, I have non tech-savvy grandmothers talking to ME about sharks with lasers. It goes like this:
Me: Gramma, did you hear about Sharks with Lasers?
Gramma: Sharks with fucking LASERS?
In other words ... she didn't know about it until I told her, and my opinion affected hers.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
so that they can sell games that boot directly to the game on any system
Any system with compatible hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I've mangled together a PXE that will load in the appropriate accelerated ATI/nVidia/Intel driver for most hardware I've been able to throw at it, but anything newer than my kernel still isn't going to work. That includes graphics cards, ethernet/wifi, soundcards, and a whole schwack of other things.
Of course 9x/XP don't work on most modern hardware either, and it's hit-and-miss playing old xBox games on a 360... but PC hardware does tend to be rather diverse and can change rather suddenly.
Perhaps if it was a bootable flash device instead it could at least be updated.
First step first. Lets get good opensource drivers, or at least decent binaries.
Intel maybe but for the rest forget it, it's not going to happen. Heck, they don't even know how to write proper drivers for Windows, what do you expect?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
considering Wine has been trying to achieve that for many MANY years I think the answer to that is yes.
I think Wine has been trying to emulate it using OpenGL as middleware.
If there was proper driver support (ie. cutting OpenGL out of the middle) it ought to be possible technically but it would need a lot of work, plus help from people who don't want to annoy Microsoft.
No sig today...
The linux AMD catalyst drivers support the Radeon HD 4x line, is there something special on your card that it doesn't work?
I have a handful of AMD 6x cards from a few bitcoin machines and my only complaint against AMD is they have weird errors pop up. Multi GPU cards may have a 100% CPU bug, fixed one release of catalyst, but then not on the next. But installing the catalyst drivers is as simple on linux as on windows (At least ubuntu and opensuse).
You need to update, my computer loads skyrim so fast I can't read the tips, and it's not even anything special, no SSD.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
In the 20 years prior to the K&M control method I used a joystick rarely - it was almost exclusively the keyboard (QAOPM) on the 8bit machines I owned. Moving from those machines, I had a brief play with 16bits (Amiga, Megadrive)
What did player 2 use on such machines, especially before home Internet access became common?
Not all games are FPS or RTS. Would you rather buy a separate gaming PC and separate copy of each game for each member of your household or one machine that can be used by two to four players at once, holding gamepads and looking at one large screen?
to even install software (on Linux) requires fairly comprehensive computer knowledge.
Laughable. Consider installing a utility, or a Tetris clone or whatever.
Linux (Ubuntu):
1/ Open software center
2/ Search for application by name or function (or browse categories if preferred)
3/ Click to download and install.
Windows:
1/ Open browser
2/ Search for application and decide which one to consider
3/ Search for information about chosen application to find out if it's really malware. Repeat 2,3 until satisfied.
4/ Search for information about download sites to find out if they host malware versions of non-malware applications. Repeat until satisfied.
5/ Download installer.
6/ Run installer.
You picked the one function where Linux is so clearly easier to use than Windows that only a troll, shill or idiot would deny it.
Most of the games on Steam will be DirectX, not OpenGL.
Why will they be? Most of them appear to be OpenGL at the moment.
They could be booting a LiveCD image in the background while they're displaying all of the AMD, ATI, Nvidia, Intel, Dolby Digital, SquareEnix, LucaArts, EA, and other development and production house, etc. full screen ads that come up when you launch any major title these days. I doubt anyone would notice the additional delay of loading an entire operating system.
Would a clean room implementation of DirectX for Steam on Linux be impossible?
I'd think most games these days are programmed against an engine rather than directly against DirectX/OpenGL. So you would probably want to port that engine (if it hasn't been done yet) rather than the game-specific code.
Better to use openGL
In this day and age all decent engines have an abstraction layer so your game will work on DirectX or OpenGl and you don't have re-invent the wheel to accomplish that.
The only reason to do it is backwards compatibility.
No, unfortunately. That's probably the most common reason, but if the Xbox 3 is based on directx 12 doing something awesome then PC games will need to support directx 12 to do the same awesome thing, and then
It's chasing a moving target
Also, I think Mr Newell is jumping the gun a little. Vista was a trainwreck too and it didn't destroy the industry. Windows 8 will probably be a disaster, whether or not Windows 9 is any good will matter a lot. Now Valve, and Steam in particular, ya, they might get screwed hard by the Windows App store, but that won't necessarily be a bad thing for the average consumer, especially not if that is because the App store simply does everything relevant that steam does. But it probably won't, because Steam is first and foremost a DRM and Matchmaking service, and while windows will do the DRM to prevent copying thing, they won't even try and do DRM to prevent cheating or matchmaking.
And yet the on every Humble Indie Bundle linux users pay more on average than the windows users does.
I assure you, when it comes to the point that there is a choice between buying Windows with a computer or installing Linux with money left over for games, many people will consider it. If Linux also got a native version of Photoshop, you would have a pretty big user base covered.
I for one would welcome steam to Linux and be voting with my money.
I run steam on Windows 8, and all the games work just fine. So I'm not sure what this catastrophe is supposed to be other then he doesn't like the look.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This summer, around the time of Catalyst 12.7, AMD will be dropping support for pre-Evergreen hardware from their proprietary graphics driver. This means that the Radeon HD 2000/3000/4000 series will cease to be supported by the mainline driver. The support will live on in a legacy branch of Catalyst, but that branch for Linux users will not be updated with new X.Org Server and Linux kernel support.
You were saying?
I've been using Win8 Release Preview for the past month, and I definitely understand the initial, visceral reaction from many critical of the new UI. However, I've discovered since then that it's nowhere near as bad as people say. In fact, I find navigation to be quite easy. First, the 8 major apps I use are all pinned to the Task Bar. I almost never have to leave the desktop. When I do need to run another app, switching to the start screen and typing the app's name is actually pretty quick. Jarring, yes. I don't like the full context switch, but it's not really time consuming.
The performance improvements are very tangible. The desktop feels quicker, and Metro apps are very fluid. They are also very BUGGY. In fact, there are a LOT of glitches that I hope Microsoft works out before release. Mail is abysmal, and given that Thunderbird is all but being retired, the lack of a great mail client is a major red flag for me. Again, hope Microsoft steps up to the plate and fixes Mail. Music is also abysmal, so I run iTunes (which is 5% less abysmal, but hey).
What I find interesting is that the side-by-side view of a Metro app with the Desktop is actually pretty useful. It kind of fits the 75% working, 25% dicking around model pretty well. The major problem here is that docking IE on the side is all but useless. What they really need to do is have it act like a *mobile* browser in that mode.
Overall, some major issues with it, but I find the overall model to be not bad at all.
Most of the games on Steam will be DirectX, not OpenGL.
You mean, most are DirectX now. Well that's going to change, isn't it? Any game shop pursuing a DirectX-only strategy while the entire non-Microsoft world is OpenGL is going to be road kill on the information superhighway.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Set your steam to offline mode.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
You are behind the times, and should really be firing your complaints at Nvidia.
Discussions on graphics card performance show both suck in different areas.
They never fail! This is a problem because you never find out errors in your GL code until after you've shipped the product.
Or new drivers are released which break things like in Rage.
The upshot is that people incorrectly assume that ATI drivers suck. They don't. Nvidia drivers are the ones that suck!
Perhaps you missed the recent article stating AMD/ATI video drivers are incompatible with system-wide ASLR. 'Always On' DEP combined with 'Always On' ASLR are effective exploit mitigations. However, most people don't know about 'Always On' ASLR since Microsoft had to hide it from EMET with an 'EnableUnsafeSettings' registry key — because AMD/ATI video drivers will cause a BSOD on boot if 'Always On' ASLR is enabled.
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
At best it's just Win7 with a new fancy touch homescreen. The old desktop is still there. And the upgrade price is very good especially for those with XP or Vista.
I don't care if Win8 does come with a Microsoft Store, I'll still go to Steam for games. Unless MS can do a LOT better job than they did with Games for Windows Live!!!!!11!!11!!!
I have Windows 8 Preview at home... I like it. I play modern games on it and they work just as well.
This is just people going. Oh No Change! We don't like change. We will fall back.
This is a lot of the same arguments when we went from DOS to Windows.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If it works and it's officially supported, who cares?
Valve supporting all their new games, starting with HL3, on Linux would be my killer app to ditch Windows entirely.
where the culture doesn't like paying for software
You must have missed out on the Humble Bundle average payment per person when grouped by OS. Linux won by quite a bit.
Unless you have a two-year-old netbook with a Mobility Radeon chip. Then ATI decides to drop you and you're stuck with the choice of a fglrx driver that crashes X when something tries to go full screen, or an open source driver package that forces you to disconnect and reconnect your monitors and then reconfigure your display settings every time you reboot.
Any distro would be nice but is not necessary, the moment a reputable publisher comes out with a competitive set of games (or whatever utility) and points at a certain supported distro that will become the distro of choice for many.
And other distro's can copy the required bits to also appeal to the gamers.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
I've just looked through a bunch of the games I've bought from Steam on my Mac.
Of the dozen or I looked at, only one of them was using cider, that being GTA Vice City.
Of the rest, one was using Mono, and the remainder were all first-class ports.
Although it would be nice any and every distro would run a certain set of good games (or any other desirable application) it is not needed for success.
The moment a publisher releases this set of games with the message it runs best on distro X many will move to that distro.
And as far as it's open source or possible to reverse engineer many other distro's will soon offer similar capabilities.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Soooo... learn the difference between a technology patent and a design patent, mmmkay?
Vista did not destroy the industry because businesses stayed the hell away from it and stuck with XP.
Didn't Bill Gates say you couldn't multitask in less than a meg of RAM, therefore the Amiga never existed. My Amiga 500 came with a half meg of RAM and it multitasked very nicely. But of course it didn't exist.
I also remember the first time I saw "It is now safe to shut down your computer." For some reason I thought that was the funniest computer message I'd ever seen.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
You forgot step 7 for Windows. Click ok for administration mode and next, next, next, and finally make sure to hook off those extraordinary browser bars.
What? None of that is true. Or perhaps it's time to replace that 486DX2.
I'd still be running Linux if it was possible to run the games I want to run in it. I got tired of duel booting Windows so I bought a Mac. It's the closet thing I can get to Linux that has native support for the games I want to run. I would even re-buy the games if I had to as long as I could get it to run on Slack (which I could as long as they don't do something stupid).
I'm in no way an Apple fanboy. Apple is just as evil as Microsoft, but at least their OS is decent. I spend most of my time in iTerm anyway so it's not much different for me.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
Most of the games on Steam will be DirectX, not OpenGL.
And many of those DirectX games work already (at least partially) using Wine. In many cases, it will probably be easier for a developer to get the game working with Wine and/or Winelib than to completely replace all DirectX calls with OpenGL ones. That said, I still don't understand why OpenGL isn't the norm since game development is more cross-platform than it was in the 90s.
This is blatantly false. Anyone who can use iOS or Android could easily use Ubuntu 12.04. Maybe not a distro like Archlinux, but for the kind of things that most ley computer people do on their PC's there are plenty of distros that do it all intuitively.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Explains the sharp corners of Microsoft...
MS is the Anti-Star Trek.
Odd Number Star Trek Movies: Bad
Even Number Star Trek Movies: Good
Odd releases of Windows: Good-ish (grading on a curve only against other versions of MS Windows)
Even releases of Windows: God awful
(Assuming you count Windows 95 and Windows 98 as one release, which is more or less the case since Windows 98 was essentially Windows 95 with better USB support.)
What nobody tells you until you're googling for "Unable to start in offline mode" errors is that you have to be online to go offline. If Comcast suddenly dies (like mine did 2.5 hours ago) you're just fucked. (at least I can amuse myself trying to read slashdot on my smartphone while I wait for someone to fix the damn outage. Support helpfully tells me it affects 300+ units, but hasn't got a clue what's going on or what's being done to fix it or when it'll be done)
I have had machines with both graphics chips. ATI and Nvidia are really the only viable solutions left. The ATI drivers I had for Windows were always problematic. My laptop is an HP/Compaq NX9420 with a dual core processor, 4G ram and an Nvidia Quadro NVS 510M. HP made sure that the only Windows driver which works on this chip is an Nvidia driver that they specially"tweaked". So the last %$^&& Windows driver HP made available was 4 stinking years ago. The generic ones that I can download from the Nvidia website do not work. This is HP's fault. This option cost me $1200 when it was new!!!! Frickin idiots. But.....................All the generic Linux drivers work. YES!!! Really! Heck, I even got the BSD Unix driver to work...All these drivers work awesome. I had another laptop of the same model but the ATI graphics chip. Not so good. I must admit though, I have had better experiences with both chips on a desktop. Nvidia was still better. Intel graphics chips are as slow as a snail. They're awful. OpenGL works great in Linux with all the machines I support, and I like making life easier. So they're all Nvidia, and all Linux whenever possible.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Remind me again, what's IE6?
Newell was saying windows 8 is a trainwreck because Microsoft is closing the ecosystem down so that you need to use their app store to get anything sold. That the PC becomes a loss leader for the app store, is what will push OEMs out of the business. For Valve/Steam, it is the classic case where someone does something for a while and makes a reasonable living until MS notices and they move in and squeeze everyone else out. Whether windows 8 works well or sells well is completely beside Newell's point. He is a third party app store, who figures MS has him in his sights, even though it is really just collateral damage in it's competition with Apple. He's right.
3. enjoy all the cheap games.
Are you saying there aren't cheap games on consoles, because there are. Or are you meaning all the 2nd and 3rd world PC gamer pirates out there.
4. prefer MMOs or casual games.
Are you saying you can't play Angry Birds on a console? or MMO's?
If you were in Valve's position, that is their entire business is 100% dependent on microsoft, wouldn't you want to expand into areas which weren't controlled by ms? Having all your eggs in one basket is never a good situation to be in.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I hate having to crawl back to Windows to run tax software, but the alternatives are worse. I've tried Wine, but every time there's been some problem. I refuse to use web based tax preparation. I do NOT want my tax info sitting on some 3rd party web server.
Also hate having to use tax software from private vendors. They jerk you around with free but crippled versions you can upgrade. Tax should be simpler to figure out. I could do it by hand, but then the vendors have another gotcha: Can't use electronic filing.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Yup, every fucking logoff for me. Windows is sitting there with the "Waiting for programs to exit..." message, and the one blocking it is always "Steam - Servers..." with the subtext "This program is preventing Windows from logging off."
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Try that when you're offline sometime. If Steam cannot connect to Valve when it starts, it will display "Would you like to start in Offline mode?" then immediately error with "Could not connect to the Steam network" and exits.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
No, the internal browser does have a cache. It's just that shit.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Dot com crash.
Loki was on track with their business plan but their investors went away.
. And oh, the crap about joypads, etc is epic bullshit. OpenGL is graphics _only_ and does not provide an interface for getting a window or other system specific crap... or audio for that matter.
It would help if you tried reading. It'll take you what, a day at most to get the linux joystick lib up and running? You'll also note I specified OpenAL or fmod for audio.
Porting D3D code to GL is non-trivial and painful.
To quote my original post, It's a ball ache, and a time sink.
Terminology! Direct3D does 3D graphics, and is more or less the same as OpenGL. DirectX does audio/video/input/server stuff (and includes Direct3D). For those components, there are alternative libraries, and audio is actually one of the easiest to deal with (just use fmod or OpenAL). It's only realy a problem if you're a sloppy developer working on a sloppy codebase. Most people would have wrapped the API dependent layers (eg games that already run on both the PS3 and 360). If you've littered platform specific code through your codebase, then it's going to be a nightmare.
While each thread needs a separate OpenGL context, contexts can share data. The usage mechanism is slightly different, but you can do multithreaded OpenGL just fine using this.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Direct3D and OpenGL are basically identical these days. OpenGL is more flexible, but to be honest that flexibility just ends up shooting yourself in the foot.
Ah.... where is that honesty of which you spoke?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
This is just people going. Oh No Change! We don't like change. We will fall back.
It's really Microsoft shareholders who should be going "oh no!" because as you correctly point out, people don't like change.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
OK, just waiting for the console that boots linux directly to steam now.
YAY!
oldhack: "Security is a waste of money until shit hits the fan. 5 minutes later, it becomes waste of money again. "
I guess at first Steam will start to conversion of games that are running on Mac - those games already unix friendly.
Maybe Steam will create their own Linux distribution.
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
Open the engine source, sell the art/music/map/skins/other data packages.
If the engine source is open, how should the developer discourage users from casually infringing copyright by spreading copies of the non-free "art/music/map/skins/other data packages" through file sharing technologies?
Reap the benefits of not having to support your code on a Linux distro.
I seem to remember that some popular GNU/Linux distributions' primary repositories will not accept a package that relies on a non-free data package.
Please forgive the naysaying; I'm just trying to ask the questions that an investor in such a project would likely ask.
You can just use OpenGL for graphics with OpenAL for sound. The networking bit you can write using BSD sockets. Then SDL is only used for opening a windows and getting inputs.
All they have to do is write support for the most basic parts of a computer everyone uses- video cards and input devices.
I don't understand this. An enormous amount of development goes into all the various Linuii, yet they do not support very many of the devices through which people USE their computers. This should always be have been job #1. I don't use the OS or windowing system or the windowing system's graphics details the way I USE my Logitech or Kensington trackball's driver software which gives me access to more than just three measly buttons.... I am sure people with other input devices have their own list of stuff Linux distro X doesn't *do*. What's with this? I am not a device driver authoer, so this is meant as a serious question. Why no Kensington SlimBlade Trackball Mouseware support or Logitech SetPoint support? This is how I USE my computer. This IS my computer when everything else is working well
By, for example, have a small binary blob for DRM stuff
According to how I read a popular copyleft license and its FAQ, such a binary blob would have to be a separate process, and the program would have to be substantially functional without it: Because it is a separate process, anyone can insert a man-in-the-middle shim that "tees" the decrypted output from the DRM-secured process into another file. And how would one make the engine substantially functional without it? Because otherwise, "packages which are not functional or useful without code or packages from third-party sources are not acceptable for inclusion in Fedora." (Fedora Packaging Guidelines)
This is never a good thing and Apple and Google have both figured this out. This is a result of Steve Ballmer not understanding the definition of a PC vs a tablet. When I use a PC I want a real OS, not some hybrid of windows phone 7 and windows 7. This wouldn't be an issue if on a tablet all operations could be performed within the metro ui and in a PC operation could be performed within the normal windows UI. Sadly this half and half approach will just lead to problems. Even the windows server 2012 ui has metro in it. I predict enterprises skipping windows 8.
You're absolutely correct. I'm developing a game with openGL, and I've found that if I write shaders using my nvidia-based desktop, I'll then have to spend a few hours rewriting them to work on intel integrated laptops and ati-based systems too. The nvidia driver papers over cracks, mistakes and oversights - dividing colours by 0 causes strange, abberant flickering on intel and ati hardware / open source drivers, but either shows nothing or shows a 'sane' colour when using nvidia cards with the proprietary driver (I've not tried nouveau). You get the same behaviour if you forget to initialise a number (float foo; foo += 5; etc.).
This is bad because it means when I make a mistake, the nvidia driver acts like a yes man, silently letting my rubbish, flakey code pass through into production. ATI and intel yells at me "you've fucked up! you've fucked up!" in bright technicolour. This ultimately makes for better, more stable, less buggy graphics for my users.
I don't think that we've got a PC in the house which is less than two years old. OTOH, it's probably over five years since I built a desktop and had to even think about video cards. Then again, my games collection consists of ~1989 Civilisation, ~1993 UFO, and a Doom-a-like, which I gather are hardly cutting edge.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Not so much. I have yet to be able to upgrade the ATI drivers on my current box under either Ubuntu or Mint. And I have horror stories about trying to do driver upgrade under previous Windows installs. ATI drivers have always been nothing but a headache for me.
It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage. - Colonel Henry Walton Jones, Jr., Ph.D.
[citation needed]
Also, consider Steam for Mac clearly doesn't have DirectX
signature is pants
You know that Cedega implemented most of Direct3D for Linux ages ago, right?
http://gametreelinux.com/
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I couldn't make sense of that article. Did you see the part about photoshop being a virtual economy?
Is it the article writer's skills or is Gabe Newell batshit crazy? The text itself seems psychotic.
Hmmm.
Haikus are easy
but sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.