Ask Slashdot: Should Valve Start Their Own Steam Linux Distro?

Duggeek writes "There's been a lot of discussion lately about Valve, Steam and the uncertain future of the Windows platform for gaming. While the effect of these events is unmistakably huge, it raises an interesting question: Would Valve consider putting out its own Linux distro? One advantage of such a dedicated distro would be tighter control over kernel drivers, storage, init processes and managing display(s), but would it be worth all the upstream bickering? Would it be better to start anew, or ride on a mature foundation like Fedora or Debian? Might that be a better option than addressing the myriad differences of today's increasingly fracturing distro-scape?"

Comments

why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst case, static link the binaries.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Frosty Piss]

Exactly. What a stupid idea. Next they will be asking if Valve should make their own architecture.

In that case, why not ask if they should simply market their own game console? Perhaps it should run linux...

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[hairyfeet]

Actually it is NOT a stupid idea, and here is why: If anyone read the comments when it was announced here about Valve putting out a Linux client, what was practically the FIRST thing many posted? "Well as long as they aren't in the repos" and why is that?

Because whether the community wishes to accept it or not there is a LARGE amount of "purists" that believe GPL is law and anything that doesn't have the 4 freedoms is poison. Frankly I would be VERY surprised if some of those vocal members of the kernel team didn't just "accidently" make changes that broke Steam every. damned. time. if for no other reason than to be able to say "See? if you gave us your code then that wouldn't be happening now would it?" to "prove" their way is not only the right way but the ONLY way.

So whether one wishes to acknowledge the truth or not it simply doesn't change the fact that the community is split in two, with the pragmatists that simply want to see Linux grow and as long as the core is free they are happy, and the purists that believe that the four freedoms should be held inviolate and nothing should be allowed to 'contaminate" Linux, especially not DRM which again, like it or not, is EXACTLY what Steam is. Sure its a harmless and pretty hassle free form of DRM, and sure as hell nicer than getting SecuROMed or Starfucked, but nevertheless it IS DRM and the purists simply won't have it, even if it causes Linux to grow.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool story bro

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that some people get crazy-worked-up, but I find the sabotage outcome unlikely.

I expect they'll hang their hats on a reference distro or two like most software that isn't included in official repos. Ubuntu first, Fedora second. They want the biggest audience possible.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[shentino]

Depends on whether Valve tries to use gpl only interfaces or not.

If valve breaks while relying on a public interface, then it's the kernel team's fault for breaking it.

My point is that if the kernel team wants to subtly break things for valve, it can only do so if valve tries to use backdoor apis that aren't designed for external code in the first place.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

All right, everybody, see that? Posts like that are WHY we tell the rest of you not to go off your meds. Let that be a lesson to all of you.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Microlith]

Because whether the community wishes to accept it or not there is a LARGE amount of "purists" that believe GPL is law and anything that doesn't have the 4 freedoms is poison.

Well, you know. Fuck 'em. Valve is targeting Ubuntu which already includes non-free software in some repos. If they have a problem they can go use gNewSense which won't work with most of their hardware.

Frankly I would be VERY surprised if some of those vocal members of the kernel team didn't just "accidently" make changes that broke Steam every. damned. time.

I would. Such malicious changes would have be very, very deliberate to interfere with a userspace application. And then you'd have to account for the hypocrisy of doing that while not interfering with the use of Linux with other proprietary applications. Not that Steam would need a kernel module or anything, since it's an entirely user-space technology.

That said, given your history of childish, insulting, and hateful rhetoric, posting such baseless attacks against the kernel developers is entirely predictable, coming from you.

So whether one wishes to acknowledge the truth or not

I'm sure the truth lies somewhere, but it certainly does not resemble the picture you paint.

nothing should be allowed to 'contaminate" Linux, especially not DRM which again, like it or not, is EXACTLY what Steam is.

Thankfully, Steam does not integrate into the OS in any real fashion.

the purists simply won't have it, even if it causes Linux to grow.

The purists can cause a fuss, but like any other proprietary application that has appeared for Linux the end result will be nothing since it won't impact them should they choose not to use it.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[bky1701]

"there is a LARGE amount of "purists" that believe GPL is law"

Are you implying it isnt't?

"anything that doesn't have the 4 freedoms is poison"

You realize why Linux was made in the first place, right? To be a free and open system. Complaining people want to keep it such kind of strikes me as missing the point entirely, likely intentionally.

You also realize that you CAN, in fact, get proprietary software from repos of varying degrees of officialness in almost every distro? Java, flash, drivers... however, we are not your app store marketing device.

'Frankly I would be VERY surprised if some of those vocal members of the kernel team didn't just "accidently" make changes that broke Steam every. damned. time. if for no other reason than to be able to say "See? if you gave us your code then that wouldn't be happening now would it?" to "prove" their way is not only the right way but the ONLY way.'

Right. Because this has happened... exactly zero times in the past. It is no secret the kernel developers HATE proprietary drivers. Yet this conspiracy has not come to pass.

Making up insane bullshit only makes you look like a lunatic.

"So whether one wishes to acknowledge the truth or not it simply doesn't change the fact that the community is split in two, with the pragmatists that simply want to see Linux grow and as long as the core is free they are happy, and the purists that believe that the four freedoms should be held inviolate and nothing should be allowed to 'contaminate" Linux, especially not DRM which again, like it or not, is EXACTLY what Steam is."

Has it occurred to you that these might actually be, in fact, the same position? Linux exist in spite of repeated corporate attacks, not because of proprietary software.

"Sure its a harmless and pretty hassle free form of DRM"

Phone-home DRM... harmless, yeah, right. Screw your DRM. It does not belong on Linux. It certainly does not belong in any official repo of any respectable distro.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "there is a LARGE amount of "purists" that believe GPL is law" may be true; however many of those folks you are referencing are also those who are coding or maintaining very important or core portions of the Linux kernel or userland. I feel you are inflating or inventing malicious intent held by kernel developers, too. Do they sabatage Oracle database or Websphere or even wine? No, they don't. Quit growing windmills just to have an "enemy" to fight. If you find the gift of a free operating system to be repulsive, perhaps you should go start your own with your own code.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[bky1701]

'Why, you ask? To embed ads in it. They would have to name it "ad-fucked Linux."'

Actually, it is called "Android" last I checked.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[justforgetme]

That's my spin too.
Since the Interfaces can be implemented there is a very distinct separation of responsibility.
I Valve choose the right interfaces for their impementation (and make a good implementation
of them). They shouldn't get any trouble upstream. Interface changes are usually well
documented and if they are not then it's clearly the interface developer that messed up.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[MrKaos]

There are plenty of package management systems that take care of dependencies - just release apt for deb based and yum for fedora based - that covers most. Anyone who is more esoteric in their distro choice has enough skill (or motivation) to sort out the issues themselves

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[sumdumass]

That would be my logical conclusion. It solves the problem of low numbers of Linux on the desktop. Allows them to build to a specific hardware set that if the source is shared will allow the bulk of the work for other distributions to be handled by the community or the distros themselves. I understand that most of the code will be written to hardware intermediates like OpenGL and such but drivers for such hardware can creep issues in sometimes.

If they can produce something relatively cheap compared with a phone or something, they would be in a lot of homes in no time.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[sumdumass]

Heh.. they must have put the N in there to throw us off adroid ads on Steroids.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[flimflammer]

Seriously? You've always been able to disable the deals popup in the options. As for knocking Valve's software, I'm genuinely confused. I'm chalking that up to just being a raging mad person about the first thing you mentioned?

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[rtb61]

Linux is a FOSS operating system. There is more to the question of should Valve start their own distribution. There is how much input they want into that operating system. From examples like what Google is doing with Android with a layer on top to more like Ubuntu focusing on services and support as well as ease of installation, to simply branding. Taking an existing distribution and contributing funds for it's development and just changing branding.

Then you can look a working through the various levels, starting at branding and getting market exposure and working up to a fully internally developed version with a gaming layer on top and ensuring that gaming layer is compatible with the majority of games you distribute. You can even look at making your layer able to work in parallel with Google's Android layer. The real advantage of FOSS you're not forced down one companies lane for the benefit of that company, you can choose a full range options and retain control of those choices.

Valve of course is not really likely to produce a gaming console and far more likely to produce a specification for a gaming console and allow manufacturers some scope of individuality in development and manufacturing of the console. The principle being to take M$'s profit (the windows and xbox tax burden) and distribute it amongst a far wider market.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

"You realize why Linux was made in the first place, right? To be a free and open system."

No, GNU was. Linux started out as some compsci student's OS kernel hobby project and it wasn't really free software initially.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[dbIII]

Refer to the GP post - there's no point for them to do so. If there's a library or two they want on people's systems they can include it with the installer, or just link it right into the binary. Why should they care about anything other than getting their games to work?
It's got nothing to do with android, which is an entire virtual platform that just happens to have linux as it's hardware abstraction layer. While they could do that it seems a bit extreme for a game packaging system.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[dbIII]

Frankly I would be VERY surprised if some of those vocal members of the kernel team didn't just "accidently" make changes that broke Steam every. damned. time

Those vocal people have never been near the kernel, which is why what you've suggested is not happening to the commercial NVIDIA drivers that have been hooked into the kernel for about a decade now.

That split you describe has only ever bothered Debian linux at it's most political and I've got the impression that those who were in Debian for the politics got bored and wandered off to rant at somebody else some years ago.
You should know by know, but I think I'll have to point that even a company that gets those who play politics very angry - Halliburton - have been selling software for the linux platform for over a decade. Your "purist" strawmen would never stand for that, or the NVIDIA drivers, and nothing really resembled them apart from some early gnome people that never had anything to do with the kernal anyway.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Anonymous Coward]

I welcome Steam on Linux! and I would/will pay for L4D2 on Linux, even though I already bought it for Windows.

If Valve gives me the chance I will show them that Linux is not a lost cause like John Carmack said, and I will prove to John that it is a viable market even though he doesn't think it is.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Mormz]

Thumbs up. Although I find GPL good and proper. It is good and proper for some things only. As somebody here said, Valve/Steam should use public APIs to implement DRM and then lay fault on community for breaking the software, in the form of well now, I respect your policies, can't you respect mine.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[davydagger]

better yet, just make the PC into a game console.

bundle a minimal version of linux with kernel + drivers + game, attach controller and boot off a live CD.

Just like a console.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[TheLink]

They could do an "On Live" sort of game service too, but with Linux as an option for the platform.

For people with weaker clients but high bandwidth low latency network connections it might be even faster - level load times can actually be shorter, frame rates could be higher.

If they are playing against other players on the same "cloud", the ping times won't really be that different. There's higher display lag - but that doesn't matter as much for some games/people.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[_Shad0w_]

Steam -> Settings -> Interface -> un-check "Notify Me..."

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[CapuchinSeven]

"Linux" wasn't open or free until Stallman convinced Linus it should be.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[oakgrove]

Hairyfeet, we went through this yesterday with the last Steam on Linux story. You keep saying that the "purists" are going to fuck the whole works up then you get a ton of replies from the pragmatists telling you it isn't so. Where are the replies from the so-called purists backing you up? Let it go, man. You're wrong.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[The MAZZTer]

Rumor has it Valve might be developing their own Steam-based game console. In this case, having their own Linux distro would seem to be a good option for software.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

The problem might be drivers. There have been times that the latest binary blobs are compiled against older versions of X that the distros no longer support. The result of that is the video card won't work with any of the binary drivers, and likely the game won't work as expected ( at least with nvidia). A whole distribution that could control the xorg and kernel versions, with auto updating the binary video drivers might be an easier solution.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[icebraining]

Hairyfeet said there was a "large amount" of purists, and that's obviously not true, judging simply by the number of users of pure distros.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yes, it is now GPLv2. No, it was not always GPL v2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#Linux_under_the_GNU_GPL

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[TheRaven64]

The drivers for gaming-related devices have got to be pretty awful on FreeBSD if nobody seems to use it at all for games, only servers

nVidia ships blob drivers for FreeBSD.

Yet they don't make the (blob) drivers for BSD either

Yes they do, at least for x86 and x86-64.

The way drivers work in Linux and BSD, aren't accommodating to "binary blobs" since they can be broken with even minor updates

FreeBSD guarantees a stable KBI across minor revisions, and we require strong justifications for breaking it between minor revisions (which means that often kernel modules will work between major revisions, we just don't guarantee it). After 10.0, we're looking at providing longer-term support for a subset of KPIs.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[MacGyver2210]

why on earth would they want to do that?

Because the splash screen and Steam client don't provide enough opportunity to throw logos and advertising in your face. They need to be able to do it everywhere from the desktop to the Application Launcher menu icon.

Also, it would let them make sure the games they distribute for 'linux' are compatible with a specific distro. Just picking Ubuntu or the base Debian distro is too mainstream.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Frosty Piss]

better yet, just make the PC into a game console.

Well, yes, that's what I was getting at...

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Sir_Sri]

actually what they're planning.

or at least investigating. Unfortunately that would smash heads directly with Sony. I'm not saying that's a really bad plan, but Sony's PS ecosystem is a hell of a lot bigger than Valve, and it would be an uphill fight.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[jedidiah]

Or they could simply choose a single distribution to target.

That would encapsulate an entire series of system requirements the same as their "custom distro" would without requiring any of the work. Anyone else could simply use that platform as a reference and work from there.

Creating their own distro is extra work they simply don't need to bother with.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[jedidiah]

Steam is no different than any other proprietary game. It's no better and no worse really. While DRM sucks, that's just the state of things when it comes to commercial gaming.

A blob binary for a game is also no worse than a blob binary for any other sort of application like a photo manager or an enterprise database server.

There's really nothing new here.

Must I dredge up 12 year old examples?

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[jedidiah]

No. The Linux Kernel devs are why your sound or wifi works.

Whether or not they work has SQUAT to do with your distro.

All of the relevant mechanisms are very low level (like embedded into the hardware itself) and actually has very little to do with the superficial differences in between distributions.

If they do work then they likely "just work" or they're just not supported.

There really is little in the way of "middle ground" here.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[jedidiah]

The LGPL is law for anyone that chooses to use works thus licensed.

Although that's not at all a problem.

Despite all of the whining and FUD, it is not at all a problem for a libre infasturcture to peacefully coexist with proprietary applications that sit on top of it. This is a long settled "problem".

It is old news.

It's a trollish sort of "Big Lie". They keep on repeating to fool the unwary.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[jedidiah]

> Unless your program is trivial, that doesn't actually work.

I have several games already that do precisely this.

This sounds a lot like the sound and video accleration whining from the likes of Adobe. Some people just bitch and moan while others just take care of business.

You're so busy trying to tell yourself that it can't be done that you never bother to try.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[sourcerror]

Valve still has to recompile all it's catalogue for a new kernel unless there are stable binary interfaces.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[sourcerror]

Sorry, that was stupid. But keeping up with new hardware would certainly need stable binary kernel apis. Or at least good information about what hardware is supported by which version of which distro.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[david.given]

FreeBSD guarantees a stable KBI across minor revisions, and we require strong justifications for breaking it between minor revision...

Should that be '...between major revisions' at the end there?

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...I counted over 2 dozen purists on this very thread, can't you see them? You must be running at +2 or something becauuse there are a shitton of 'em. Of course I've been arguing for years that all ACs should be banned but now nobody makes accounts anymore so if you don't surf at a lower setting frankly you miss most of the insightful comments because the twitter generation don't make accounts anywhere unless forced.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[JWSmythe]

    Sony could be considering a joint venture too. Competition is always good, if you can hold both the #1 and #2 slots.

    I know the PS3 has all kinds of neat functionality, but I'm not well versed in it. From what I understand, it natively runs a BSD fork, with the ability to spawn off others. I know they restricted access from one of the cores with the OtherOS option (when it was available), but I'm sure if they're doing it themselves, they could provide full hardware access.

    Or, maybe the PS4 will be a Linux based box, providing emulation for the PS3 and earlier games.

    I'd still wager it'd be the first guess, having a share in both of the top selling set top boxes.

    I've seen that done in other industries. The same company under different names will "compete" for the customers, and if the customer chooses either one, the company wins. It's better to have 50% of the market, rather than 33%. Well, Sony has 38% right now, but still. 50% sounds much more appealing to any bean counter. It's even better if the Steam box can hit the Microsoft and Nintendo market harder. They could realistically take >50% of the market, and the cash income would be huge for the newer boxes, rather than all the dated boxes that are being sold now.

    The only question would be, can they get it out for Christmas sales? I don't believe Microsoft nor Nintendo are even planning to his this Christmas' shopping crowd. They have about 3 and a half months to do it for this year. Valve itself has the selling power to get to at least 100k homes without much extra advertising.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[davydagger]

your right! my mistake. apologize for the error. Still maintain Linux was always Free software.

and
'Torvalds has stated, “making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.”'

from your own link.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[gmhowell]

That's funny. You complain about Adobe bitching and moaning when it comes to Linux, but you give them a free pass when it comes to updating their software to Cocoa on Macs.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Eric Damron]

So you are accusing the kernel team of unethical behaviour? Really? What proof do you have that they would do something like that? Yes there are purists but it would require someone who had the power to change the API to break things as you suggest and I don't see the kernel team doing that.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[cynyr]

How would kernel changes break steam but nothing else without being obvious? Why isn't that happening to nvidia and android/google?

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[cynyr]

Nothing valve is doing will need that low level access... as long as "read this file from disk" and "do this in opengl" work i'm pretty sure everything will just work. Like how you don't need to re-compile firefox everytime you recompile the kernel.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[lister king of smeg]

Except that there is a movement in the debian community to try and become a fsf approved distro. I find it slightly hypocritical that they will refuse to approve of distros that merely have a none-free section even if it is turned off by default. Is that not in and of itself in interference and inhibiting the freedom of the user to install what ever software they like?

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[lister king of smeg]

if they sabotaged oracle they would lose a lot of devs and code donations. despite How evil oracle is they do donate good amount of code to linux.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[sourcerror]

When I installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, I had a lot of problems with graphics drivers the official binary blob driver install made the whole screen black even after restart, I had to reinstall the OS from scratch, and go with the half assed opensource driver.

If Valve wants to make the the Linux Steam experience as seamless as on Windows, they have to stick to an LTS kernel for a long time.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[TheRaven64]

Yes. That's what I get for posting before coffee...

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Sir_Sri]

I would think this is more of a 2014 project than a 2013 or 2012 project. I don't know any developers with PS4 dev kits yet (I don't even think they exist), so there's no point in even talking about games for that yet. I know teams working on PS4 titles right now are just buying the fastest PC's they can afford and planning to iterate from there, but going from 'on a PC with comparable hardware' to some custom architecture job, with god knows what OpenGl library could take quite a lot longer than 5 or 6 months.

At this rate I wouldn't be surprised to see the Xbox 3 announced next year and launched late in the year or early in the next, and the PS4 following that. The PS3 was a year and half from its announcement to launch date, something similar this time around would make sense because eventually enough studios (including the second tier outsource studios) will have dev kits at which point you can't really hide what it will be.

And ya, Sony might be looking for something to reinvigorate their brand, to capitalize on the digital distribution revolution, and it's clear Valve isn't trying to make friends with microsoft at the moment.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yeah, I think ubuntu or fedora would be the obvious target. Fedora does a lot more upstream development with xorg, mesa, and the open source drivers. Ubuntu just always works with the binary drivers.

So either they could just be 6 mounths to a year behind on the latest xorg/mesa developments and live with that and ubuntu. Or they could prod the graphics card companies to keep up with the various linux developments. I would be in favor of fedora because it would put direct pressure on the graphics card companies to work better with the linux ecosystem.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[allo]

no problem, gpl is gpl.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[JWSmythe]

    We'll see when (or if) they make it to market. I'm still surprised that they haven't really been flogging the possibility of their next generation consoles. They make good money with them. It's probably all financial. They lost money on their consoles, and made money with the games. If they can keep the current consoles in use for as long as possible, they make more money.

    I'm anxious about the PS4 eventually coming out, mostly because there's one game I want to play (Wipeout HD). I can't justify the cost of the console *and* the game, just to play the one silly game. When the newer console comes out, the price on the PS3 will drop. :)

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[AbominousSalad]

Absolutely not. Asking them to get into that mess, basically means asking them not to be so good at games. Let them be good at what they're good at, let them focus their resources on being good at that, let them focus on successful distribution of games on Linux. It is stupid to ask a company to distract themselves in that fashion when they are already working on something which is somewhat foreign to their skill set. Let them have a few years to perfect this, drive-up the market for Linux desktop gaming, and perhaps, instead of drowning in the quagmire as an inferior entrant into an already flooded marketplace, maybe they will focus their efforts on liaising between disparate technologies for the purposes of standardizing gaming on Linux.

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[tlhIngan]

Would also make sense from a multiplayer gaming perspective - think of the VAC and such systems. I'm sure someone creative enough running some Linux can figure out a way to fake out VAC by pretending to be a normal unmodified Linux system even though it's highly customized for cheating.

Or a way to get an edge by hijacking the OpenGL commands used to draw and shoving the commands to another video card rendering in "wireframe" mode or other stuff.

A lot harder to do on Windows, and you can be sure the custom Linux distros with those features enabled would become popular...

Re:why on earth would they want to do that?

[aliquis]

Steam. Now with CDs.

What about letting the user use any OS to fetch and start the game but when it runs write it to a partition of whatever size and boot that one in some way (guess you may not want to change the boot loader.)

Maybe combine it with an USB stick which contain the boot loader and configuration and have the application which start the game write a new configuration to the USB stick and then have the machine reboot booting from the game partition.

Remove stick to stop running the game.

Just what the world needs

[Osgeld]

another distro to fragment the already shattered linux community

Re:Just what the world needs

[theRunicBard]

I'm still a linux noob but isn't the beauty of linux that you can create your own distros? Yes, it does create the problem that there are a lot of distros running around, but if there is demand, there should be supply. I don't think there is anything wrong with Valve making their own distro, if there is the demand for it. But in this case, it seems impractical. Not only would they need to convert Windows/Mac users to Linux, they would need to convert Linux users to their special distro. This is bound to turn some people off, which Valve probably can't afford at this stage. Ubuntu is so popular and user-friendly that it's "good enough" right now.

Re:Just what the world needs

[bky1701]

This distro would not be supported by the Linux community. At least not for long. I wouldn't be worried about THAT aspect of it.

Re:Just what the world needs

[adolf]

Indeed.

When I started with Linux, it seemed the choices were few: Slackware, or Yggdrasil (Red Hat, Suse, and Debian were a few years hence). Matt Welsh's fabulous book "Running Linux" focused on Slackware, and so did the rest of the Linux Documentation Project (is the LDP even still alive?). a.out was still a viable, and used, executable binary format.

Package management was shit: You installed a new package on your existing system with (at best) a "./configure&&make&&make install" as root (WTF is sudo?), ran ldconfig, fixed whatever it broke, and moved on.

Today, there are a myriad of safe (and unsafe) choices. And while the capitalist in me says that choice is good, the pragmatist in me says that it's really a burden.

The reasons for the crop of shit that we've grown are obvious: There is an incongruity between the folks who want to pay for an OS (Red Hat), the folks who want a free (libre) OS (Debian), folks who want an efficient OS (Gentoo FTW), and folks who want an OS that Just Works (Ubuntu).

So I'll be the first to say it: Yes, the community can stand to have a distribution wherein games Just Work. Because in having games Just Work, it's likely that proper low-latency audio will also Just Work. And from there, it's easy to have video Just Work. And at that point, it starts to sound a whole lot like what BeOS was...except it's still *nix, and it works on modern hardware.

Does it route packets? Does it run VMs with seamless precision? Can I do backups on an ancient Travan drive using ftape? Does it speak Arcnet or Token Ring? Who cares! Seriously. (I write this as a geek who has done all of these things, with a love for computing history, who has a thermal teletype, a box of paper, and a dedicated spot in the living room with suitable wire already installed, just waiting for a modernly-useful application that would benefit from such placement, as opposed to the dual-core 1.2GHz Linux box that I carry in my pocket.)

What the world could use right now, in my humble opinion, is a free(ish) OS that can do useful things with games media with great expediency and reliability.

Why?

Traditional user applications have run so fast ("faster than instantaneous" as a someone once told me is a bit of an exaggeration, but does fit with the current user experience) on any new hardware for nearly a decade that it's silly to even consider them as a goal. For all we complain, both Firefox and Open Office work fine even on rather ancient hardware (for instance).

Scientific applications increasingly rely on GPU calculations which rely on drivers for video cards which are primarily written for gamers. And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.

And server apps, well...gosh, Linux has done that very well since nearly day 1. The market needs no relative improvement in this area. It's nailed.

So a focus on low latency, for both video and audio, is a boon for gamers. A focus on making modern graphics, sound, and input hardware work well (through driver and API improvements) is a boon for both gamers and the scientific community. Give these goals a profitable shot in the butt by making games snappier than on other systems, and the rest of the demanding applications that common consumers actually use (AV production, graphic arts, fucking Youtube/Facebook/et al.) will happen naturally -- while also benefiting the rest of the users in the scientific community, and maybe (but not likely) in the sever realm.

(The above is just a dream from me, a random dude, who has used x86 computers for a couple of decades.)

Re:Just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry but after several years using it Ubuntu is not the distro that 'just works'. Thats Debian and Im sorry I didnt discover it sooner.

Re:Just what the world needs

[ShakaUVM]

Agreed. I'd even go a step further and have a Steam distribution throw out a lot of the options that make us nerds salivate. Or at least hide them a bit. Make it so that people can one-click install the OS with all the packages needed for games - including Steam - one click to buy games, and one click to play games, and you've got yourself a killer platform for most gamers.

Re:Just what the world needs

[serviscope_minor]

And while the capitalist in me says that choice is good, the pragmatist in me says that it's really a burden.

Well, the pragmatist in you is wrong, and more than a little foolish, as you covered in the next line:

There is an incongruity between the folks who want to pay for an OS (Red Hat), the folks who want a free (libre) OS (Debian), folks who want an efficient OS (Gentoo FTW), and folks who want an OS that Just Works (Ubuntu).

Well, you forgot my personal favourite, Arch.

Why do you think these all exist?

People didn't wake up one day and go "hey choice is good, let's mak more choice". These exist because different people have different needs.

You might as well argue that there are too many different operating systems out there. After all, there is Windows, OSX, QNX, z/VM (or whatever it is called these days), Solaris, VMS, HP-UX, DOS (still!), and a whole bunch of other obscure ones, most of which are comercial.

The reason they exist is because peopl e have different needs that cannot be served by one OS to rule them all.

The same goes for Linux distributions.

Since you are probably still sure that the world does need one Distro to tule them all, which should it be most like?

And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.

Scientists care for very good reasons. Scientific code lasts for decades sometimes. There's less opportunity to be screwed over by FOSS. Also, scientists tend to operate on the cutting edge and like to tewak things, and again, FOSS is very good for that, because you have all the code.

Re:Just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

2002 (or 1997) called and want its misplaced idealism back. You'll be back to a useful OS in a few weeks, fear not.

Re:Just what the world needs

[equex]

This Valve project is going to backlash so bad when Valve discovers that Ubuntu has big gaps in it's non-gfx driver reportoire as well. Valve actually need to make a distro where they put in shitloads of drivers, just like Windows. For both old, new and medium aged hardware.

Re:Just what the world needs

[Tubal-Cain]

It's a matter of using the right tool for the job. Valve will need to set some standards for their Linux environment, so that developers know what to expect on their customers' machines.
Creating their own distro or targeting an existing distro will accomplish this, though in a rather ham-fisted way (they seem to be going with option 2 atm, targeting Ubuntu). A better alternative may be to define a set of libraries and let the distros create meta-packages.

Re:Just what the world needs

[Mormz]

Cough, cough, user-friendly, popular. Ubuntu is crapware and we only use it because idiots think good marketing = good distro. I'd use SUSE over Ubuntu any day, and I'd use Arch over any of those if I could. Linux = kernel + hardware supporting software + basic user-land tools, distro is a software distribution. A collection of packages that make your life more easy. Valve doesn't need a new distro. That is utter bullshit. Valve needs to find a way to integrate into user-land properly, and refrain from using any proprietary code beyond user-land. And even in user-land be selective what they implement with proprietary code, on what do they use public APIs and so on. Ring 3 DRM and they should not have a problem with anything.

Re:Just what the world needs

[V!NCENT]

another distro to fragment the already shattered linux community

Shattered? We're talking about FLOSS mixtapes variations. In the end all your shit needs to run on a compute unit and that's where the real pain comes from.

An OS is just a fucked up large hardware abstraction framework+driver library, managing execution.

It's Microsoft's fault for making what people wanted: cheap crap for the masses that is just not sucking enough on all fronts for everybody to not hate so much that they refuse to put up with it.

In the end this is what we as a human species are responsable for and the best we can do so far. So pherhaps there is no such thing as a community in actual object terms.

And to add to the list: the community developpers are actually just business programmers, making a living out of collectively writing 80% of the entire damn Linux mainline code.

I'd go with "community" when I'd talk about the GNU project. But sadly it takes a Linux to come to realize how far we might actually need to thank the tinfoil hats in the extremist FLOSS camps. (I added extremist for fun, because it makes something that's perfectly fine, look like they have the mindset of stupid, violent, bored and upstanding ex-civilians, ready to blow up random strangers, while they are in fact helping random strangers acquire the tools to defend themselves in the uprising info economy*)

*Refference to the cypherpunk movement, before this discussion derailes like no tommorow

Re:Just what the world needs

[cp.tar]

This Valve project is going to backlash so bad when Valve discovers that Ubuntu has big gaps in it's non-gfx driver reportoire as well. Valve actually need to make a distro where they put in shitloads of drivers, just like Windows. For both old, new and medium aged hardware.

How does “both” work with three items?

Re:Just what the world needs

[M0j0_j0j0]

old is the new new!

Re:Just what the world needs

[Anonymous Coward]

Valve's not going to make their own distro and really there's no reason for them to. The only thing that doing so would help them with is control, and I doubt that any distro is going to deliberately break things for Valve.

Of course Valve is free to do so if they choose, I just can't imagine it being less costly than just paying a few coders to make sure things work on at least the most common distros.

Re:Just what the world needs

[TheRaven64]

How would that work? Valve isn't going to be writing drivers, they're just going to be bundling third-party ones, and Ubuntu already bundles all of the ones that have redistribution rights. This entire story is moot. There are two possible reasons for Valve to do a Linux port. The first is to appeal to existing Linux users. They won't do this by saying 'we support your OS. Well, actually, we don't, we support a similar OS, but it's like your OS and you can install it for free!' The second is to make it cheaper for companies to make Steam-powered consoles. I suspect this is more likely - I wouldn't be surprised if we see cheap Chinese-made consoles hitting the market running a basic Linux install with Steam set to launch full screen on boot and used as the application manager / installer. In this case, it's also pointless to ship their own distro: OEMs will want to use their own and will strip out everything except the drivers their hardware needs, basic libraries, X, and Steam.

Re:Just what the world needs

[jedidiah]

Sounds a lot like "use Ubuntu 12.04".

All of this whining about "knowing what to expect" is just such a hoot. It's like none of you weenies have ever done Windows software development before. Do you idiots realize what all needs to be sorted out on a Windows machine before an app or a game can be successfuly installed?

You're basically re-creating the work of a proper package manager. Except you aren't really managing anything. There's no "reasonable expectations" on any other platform. Why it be a big problem on Linux?

The main difference on Linux/Unix is that you are expected to not trash/alter the root system files just to install an app.

Re:Just what the world needs

[jedidiah]

> And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.

You mean the like the scientists that created Beowulf?

Some people like to pretend that everyone is just a mindless consumer and that even subject matter experts in a different area gain no advantage from knowing their tools. That's simply nonsense.

Even ARTISTS hack their tools.

The idea that SCIENTISTS can't or would rather not be bothered is kind of obscene really. It's the height of anti-intellectualism and a bit ironic really considering what low regard PhDs have for the rest of us.

In reality, scientists are arrogant to the point of antagonizing their support staff.

Re:Just what the world needs

[deek]

X.org has fixed this up quite significantly in the last few years. For the most part, display and input devices are detected automatically, and it all "just works". All without an xorg.conf file. It's actually quite nice, and makes getting X to work in Debian a breeze.

Even still, if you want a slick desktop interface in Debian, you're going to have to work at it. It's not designed as a convenient desktop system. I use it, but then again, I like to tweak everything to my liking, and configure things from the terminal. Fedora or Ubuntu are definitely much better in this regard. Ubuntu would be my preference, since I think the deb packaging system is the best thing since raisin toast.

Re:Just what the world needs

[ShakaUVM]

Rhetoric aside, it's buying for all intents and purposes. Buy the game, put it into offline mode, and there's nothing Valve can ever do to take the game away from you.

Re:yes

[ctheme]

Would it make things easier for users? Would it inconvenience users already suited to one distro and not another? I'm not really seeing any benefits for their users, and I don't think this would ever happen.

Not a good idea for linux users

[phorm]

I think that xkcd covered this fairly well.

The solution to fracturing is certainly *NOT* to make an existing standard. That just furthers the fracturing. It would be a terrible thing to inflict upon the Linux community.

Pushing out packages for the common distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat) should work well for most Linux users.

On the other hand, one argument for a new distro would be non-Linux users. Just as Android is essentially a Linux fork, a Steam distro could essentially be a "Linux for non-Linux users." More specially, it would be a "Linux for Gamers."
In many ways it would make the PC functionally similar to a console. Boot disk, play game(s).
Of course, some other problems arise:

* How would it be installed? Would it automatically try to make space alongside the likely-existing windows partition?
* Would it run directly from a bootCD? If so, where would it save settings or games, to the HDD or a USB stick?
* If each game is a bootCD, how would they fare with newer hardware?
* What's the upgrade path for installed distros?

Using existing distros would add compatibility work for Valve. However, making their own might - and moreover maintaining it - could very well be a lot more work.

Re:Not a good idea for linux users

[cp.tar]

Precisely so.

Maintaining their own distro would be too much work for a meager reward. Building packages for major distros, with others left to incorporate those packages into their own structure any way they can, should suffice for the vast majority of use cases. Distro maintainers will make sure everything works as long as Valve doesn’t break something. People won’t be forced to reboot to play, or to reinstall their system just because they want Steam.
The whole point in making Steam for Linux is (or should be) setting their foot on Linux in order to be able to break away from Windows, or at least to expand to another existing market. Their own distro would mean more fragmentation, fewer users, and a break into the fairly mature market of Linux distros. Linux gaming is not that mature, and that is where Valve can gain most.

Re:Not a good idea for linux users

[oakgrove]

Yes, developing their own distro would doom this entire initiative from the start. Valve is good at making games and maintaining a distribution platform that runs on top of somebody else's operating system. There is no scenario where them making their own distro makes sense and the concept of some kind of live CD is even more absurd since if you need to reboot anyway to play games you might as well just use WIndows. At worst all they have to do is maintain their own repo's. Google does it with Chrome. You just download the Chrome installer in Linux and the installer sets up the repositories for you behind the scenes and it all Just Works(TM).

Re:yes

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

They could base their distro off of other existing distros (ex: must as Ubuntu is based on Debian) and leverage their packaging system and installers.rather than having to create their own installers as Loki did. They could also test for just one distro instead of testing for many. They can also leverage the software update and distribution system, thus having easier access to the right video drivers, game titles, etc.

WINE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't Valve contribute some patches to WINE so all their games are compatible, and have a steam client that uses wine.

If WINE can ever get to the point of development where anyone can buy a new game and have it work out of the box without having to wait through 2 years worth of patches and hacks to get it working, linux would be the dominate desktop now.

WINE is the key to Linux's widespread adoption, and it's one of the most neglected areas in linux.

Re:WINE?

[Bert64]

Because then noone would bother to make any native linux apps... Look what happened to OS/2.

Incidentally if you target wine when you develop your applications, they will run just fine on windows too whereas the other way round doesn't always work.

Re:WINE?

[Havenwar]

No, it most certainly wouldn't be the "dominate" desktop right now just because of gaming. I've got several PC's, have played around a lot with linux over the years, but for me it's just not worth the effort on a day-to-day basis. It's just not as user-friendly, not as simple to use as say windows 7 that I'm currently running.

Linux would be the dominant desktop if they made a well working and competent desktop system where the majority of users would be able to expect it to just work overall - games or not. This includes support for proprietary formats, a consistent UI that doesn't change drastically from one update to the next, and an immediate cessation on the open source fanboyism. I believe several companies avoid the platform because of the expectation that they share their code, or because certain drivers and such they would need to use requires them to share their code if they use them, and so on. I'm sure there are more examples and reasons, these are just some I've seen myself. All in all linux is not a welcoming platform for those looking to make a buck, which means market forces will NOT be swarming in. Ever.

Which is fine. Keep linux as the special use-case outlier. It's good at what it does, small servers, home-brew routers, net-tops too weak to do anything worthwhile on anyway... That sort of thing. Linux does this job well.

You know that saying "if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail"? Well, the desktop is not a nail. It's a fucking origimi-llama. Hammers need not apply.

Re:WINE?

[Microlith]

It's just not as user-friendly, not as simple to use as say windows 7 that I'm currently running.

I find that a lot of comments like this mistake familiarity with a platform for it being "easy to use."

Linux would be the dominant desktop if they made a well working and competent desktop system where the majority of users would be able to expect it to just work overall - games or not.

AND if it were shipping in volume on PCs, along with the developer of said distro were receiving investments that allowed them to do what Microsoft does and put money into doing such work. Something that's only really begun to happen in the desktop space in the past few years. Prior to that, good luck breaking through Microsoft's lock on the OEMs.

This includes support for proprietary formats

Which ones? Many, even some of Microsoft's own, aren't supported by Windows out of the box.

a consistent UI that doesn't change drastically from one update to the next

Well, Microsoft just lost themselves that one with Windows 8.

an immediate cessation on the open source fanboyism

Hear that? Stop being fans of a social movement! NOW!

I believe several companies avoid the platform because of the expectation that they share their code

That's nice and vague.

All in all linux is not a welcoming platform for those looking to make a buck, which means market forces will NOT be swarming in. Ever.

This is borderline trolling with lots of hearsay, vague suggestions of "hostility," and zero specifics.

. It's good at what it does, small servers, home-brew routers, net-tops too weak to do anything worthwhile on anyway... That sort of thing. Linux does this job well.

It's good for much more than that. Unless you, for some reason, hate it. Then it suddenly becomes worthless except for situations where it's marginalized in favor of whatever other OS you use.

Re:WINE?

[Havenwar]

It's not a case of familiarity with the platform for me, since as I said I've played around quite a lot with Linux, and have repeatedly tried to make the switch completely, using linux exclusively for weeks, months, giving myself plenty of time to get familiar with it. Of course then a new version of the distribution comes out, the colour scheme changes, some programs are changed out, things that used to work doesn't... much like switching from say Windows XP to Windows 7, or next to Windows 8 (Which I will likely skip from what I've seen of it, but for the sake of discussion...)

However Windows XP > Windows 7 was for me one step, while in the same time the larger linux distributions have gone through HOW many major overhauls? The problem here is that linux being so modular and quick moving, it updates quickly and is a moving target. This is its strength in some cases. For desktop use it is also its major weakness. Sure I could go for one of those distributions that promise long term support, but then I'm cut off from many of the new advancements, which on a platform that is still one step behind is sort of crucial to be on top of. After all I don't think I'm alone to on linux find myself often going "Oh, I'm sure someone will fix this... some day soon." Because someone usually will. Except of course if you bring it up, they tell you that if its so important to you, you should fix it yourself. Thanks, I'm an end user, not a programmer.

I agree on the addendum to when linux would be a dominant system on the desktops. Perhaps I should have better phrased it as... Linux would have a CHANCE at a dominant position if they offered a system where the average user could expect it to "just work".

I'd also like to point out that there's a big difference between being a fan of something and an atmosphere of fanboyism. The former is enjoying a product and quite possibly recommending it to the friends, the latter is a bullheaded push of something regardless of facts. Perhaps religion would be a better word for it.

I don't hate linux, but I hate the experience of having it as my only desktop. It's not the tool for the job.

Re:WINE?

[davydagger]

I read that and laughed.

windows 7 has a terrible clunky interface.

Compare that to the sleak lines of GNOME, the future desktop of KDE, and then MATE and cinnamon take the cake.

all are far easier to learn than windows which banks 10+ years of user experiance and familiarity.

Windows lags severely in user interface. They are 2 years behind ubuntu and gnome in replacing the desktop with a dashboard.

Re:WINE?

[davydagger]

I've gotten complete noobs running mint and ubuntu.

They've walked through the installer themselves. They run it themselves. Little instruction mind you. try that on windows.

If your reasonable competitant there is no reason you can't do it. I keep hearing this and I hate it. Its simply not true.

Re:WINE?

[Havenwar]

I've got complete noobs walking through the windows installer, no problems, running things themselves. I don't see what you're getting at here. I've never seen anyone "reasonably competent" (there, fixed that for you) have problems with a windows install. But then an end user use-case doesn't usually include re-installing the system. It might to you and me, we're geeks, but that's not the market here. So as misguided as your point is, it's not even relevant.

But more importantly... Getting people running the system isn't the problem: being able to use it for the sort of thing they do everyday is. Being able to keep chatting, video chatting, audio chatting with people over MSN and other popular networks just as a blatant example. Alternatives exist, but having to change your entire network of friends over to another service is not an option for most people. Video chat works you say? Yeah, I've heard that for years now, and I've gotten it to work too... intermittently, under the perfect circumstances, with a lot of workarounds... It doesn't work? Oh they changed it again? And now it's working? And now not?

I absolutely recommend linux to certain people, it has a lot of use-cases out there. The average desktop user is not one of them with the state it is in today, and in my belief as stated earlier - it never will be.

Re:WINE?

[Ash-Fox]

You realise using the Windows API and implementing it are two very different things, right?

Re:WINE?

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

At the risk of going too far off-topic here, let me say I was an OS/2 user and advocate/evangelist back when it came out. MS helped kill it, yes, but the real culprit was IBM itself. They didn't even pre-load it on their *own* computers. To this day I can't figure out why, but in retrospect it appears IBM never really wanted it to succeed except maybe for that brief period right after the release of Warp. I guess eventually someone who worked there back then will retire and write a tell-all book explaining why. IBM really dropped the ball.

Re:WINE?

[SuspectNumber3]

OS/2 's major victory was in ATMs - at one time ( i am not in a positon to know about now ) it ran >95% of the ATM 's in the field.

Re:WINE?

[davydagger]

I've never gotten complete noons through the windows installer.

I usually do it for them

"But more importantly... Getting people running the system isn't the problem: being able to use it for the sort of thing they do everyday is. Being able to keep chatting, video chatting, audio chatting with people over MSN and other popular networks just as a blatant example."

who fucking uses MSN???? oh, but anyways, there is pidgin, empathy or other libpurple(does MSN quite well) clients which work very very very well, as well as a native skype build.

Oh, and linux works far far far far better, because it will recognize and use every filesystem you are likely to encounter to include some awesome ntfs drivers, great FAT support, and even MAC hfs+.

Then there is gstreamer which has every codec to include ones that MS doesn't ship with that will run every video and audio file under the sun, without installing shady third party players and codecs.

And if you want to install third party, VLC has a great port which plays just as well on linux as windows. day to day activities run smoother in linux with better native driver and codec support.

then there is navigating the filesystem. in windows exploder, its just as clunk as it was in windows 95. in modern linux GUIs you can active type parts of the filename to select them, instead of just the first letter with windows. it goes on and on.

then we have better intergration between apps, like media players and the desktop/interface.

Try that in windows.

Then for the powerusers, linux has a modern CLI, with better integration with the GUI with the terminal to include translucent terminal windows, scroll wheel support, better cut and paste, modern commands. windows is stuck in 1985 with this.

gnome 3 is smooth as butter. I hit the start key, and all my running aps tile-ise so I can just click on them, a shortcut on my dashboard, browse applications, or just type what I am looking for.

windows 7 is clunky as fucking shit. The same crap since NT4

you know nothing about modern linux desktops.

Re:WINE?

[Havenwar]

"who fucking uses MSN???? oh, but anyways, there is pidgin, empathy or other libpurple(does MSN quite well) clients which work very very very well, as well as a native skype build."

And there's YOUR problem. You base what everyone else should believe on your narrow world view. 73 people on my (pidgin) contact list use MSN. They use MSN because most of their friends use MSN, and so on. And a few times a week I have to fire up windows live messenger because pidgin can't do video chat with MSN, nor most other services, which you completely failed to address.

Out of your other examples most are pointless. Filesystems? Most people whose systems I maintain don't even know what that is. Explorer? Many casual users I know have never even opened up 'windows explorer'. They only access their files through dialogues... If I want to watch a film I double-click the file. If they want to watch a film they open VLC and use the "open file" dialogue. Better integration between applications? I am considered a poweruser by the 'normals' and I say 'huh?' to that. From your example of media players and the desktop I'm left even more confused. Is this by any chance some more backend stuff that the average user would never care about, or is it one of those really neat and awesome things that would look really cool and flashy? You know, if it worked right every time out of the box? But that no user actually cares about unless they have it?

Another example of that would be that entire multiple desktop thing and the desktop cube and so on. I used to run that on one of my systems because it looked really cool! Friends that came over were amazed at the graphics of an ordinary desktop... they went ooooh and aaaah... and not a single one of them felt the need to have it themselves. Flashy, but seriously, most users only use one desktop. Not because they don't have 2, but because doing 50 things at once is not a normal user behaviour. It's reserved for us weirdos.

Oh, and amusingly that function stopped working on my setup after a while, and I had to spend hours digging through configuration files to try and get it right again. The internet was a great help here, the linux community that's so fabled. Google made it fairly easy to find a million different things that COULD be wrong with it, and I tried many of them out. Well many might be an exaggeration, most of them were not relevant to the latest version of course. And easy is an exaggeration since I had no idea what I was looking for. But I found help!

I mean, I eventually had to give up and stop using the function because I just couldn't get it to work after the update. That's okay though. I hear someone fixed it a few months later. Probably some typical desktop user, don't you think? The kind of typical desktop user that re-writes video drivers when they are not busy wondering who to send their next catforward to (everyone of course!) or why farmville is looking weird on their linux machine?

Typing names to find files? I know you're not talking about the search function, because in windows 7 I can type any part of a filename or shortcut into the handy little box on the startmenu and it will find it for me, in the blink of an eye. Hell, even I barely touch windows explorer any more because of that handy improvement to the UI. But your ignorance about windows 7 isn't the issue here... no. Your ignorance of PEOPLE is.

YOU are not everyone. Your opinions are not everyone's. You might be one of the outliers who sees windows 7 as clunky as shit, and that's your right and prerogative - for your usecase it might even be clunky as shit. This doesn't mean that point in any way translates to MOST people. Get a taste of real people and life and smell the roses... or pile of shit if you so wish. It might not be a good thing that windows 7 is the best we have, but it is. It's the best option for the average user for day to day desktop use. Which for a lot of people includes for instance video chatting, some level of gaming (from social flash games and up) and so on

Re:WINE?

[IntlHarvester]

> They didn't even pre-load it on their *own* computers. To this day I can't figure out why

Here's why:

I worked at a company which had standardized on DOS/WFW and bought a lot of ThinkPads. One day the ThinkPads show up and surprisingly boot into OS/2. Long-story-short, the company's IT managers flipped out and cancelled all the ThinkPad orders until IBM started shipping them with DOS again.

Oh, and OS/2 was completely worthless on these machines, as unlike WFW, it didn't include any networking software.

PC and Mac

[phorm]

Actually, that brings up a very good point, and one I hadn't thought of in favour of a possible "steam" distro: Mac Users
Allowing a Mac user to play games in the same distro as others might make a much more "consistent" experience for everyone.

Other the other hand, a packaged Steam app for Linux kernels might cross platforms to Android devices easier, allowing a more fluid transition to the tablet/portable market.

Prediction

[bky1701]

They will. Drivers will come to only support its modified kernel, likely with DRM plugs built in.

Embrace, extend, extinguish.

Re:Prediction

[Telvin_3d]

Hey, Linux has had 15 years to get it's own shit together.

It's sort of like the Apple MP3 player thing. When the iPod launched it was far from the first MP3 player. But it was the first MP3 player that wasn't 100% crap to use. Completely took over the market and dominated everyone. But you know what? Five years later all the other MP3 players were still crap to use. Even after Apple showed how to do it right Creative and Sony and everyone else was still trudging along with crappy syncing utilities and even worse UI on the MP3 player itself.

Nothing was preventing them from making a good player and good software before or after Apple entered the market.

Same way, with or without Steam, nothing is preventing Linux and the distros from getting their shit together. Nothing is preventing them now. Nothing was preventing them five years ago. Steam comes out and turns a branch of Linux into RMS's worst nightmare? The rest of Linux will have no more or less opportunity to make a good package than if this whole Steam thing crashes and burns and never gets out of beta.

Re:Prediction

[bky1701]

And if Valve manages to get even 10% of windows users to switch to Valvebrand Linux, what do you suspect will happen then? I suspect exactly what I said: dropping of support for any other distro by hardware manufacturers.

A company like Valve won't simply float around in Linux. It is going to cause problems, and I suspect won't solve a single one of the current problems in the long run. We'll see how it goes, but as far as I care, history repeats.

Re:Prediction

[Truekaiser]

mp3: cowon beats them hands down in battery life and features.

as for the rest, it's spoken like someone who has no clue how long and hard it is to clean room reverse engineer hardware so you 1. don't get dragged into court for breaking laws. 2. can legally distribute the code to anyone.

even when you have the documentation as in the case of ati giving it to the foss world. it takes a long time to build the code base. compare that to the window's driver which is probably choked with legacy code from people who don't even work at $graphics company any more.

as for distro's working together, while you may not see it(go see a eye doctor). it is the same thing as asking 'why can nations get their shit together and tackle X problem?'
it's because each camp has their own philosophic ideals on how things should be and should be run, they view the other's as wrong and they refuse to change.

Re:Prediction

[Alex Belits]

And if Valve manages to get even 10% of windows users to switch to Valvebrand Linux, what do you suspect will happen then? I suspect exactly what I said: dropping of support for any other distro by hardware manufacturers.

That's OK because hardware manufacturers don't support any distributions now, sometimes with rare exception for RHEL that no one really uses. All proprietary software support you see in distributions that people actually use, is ported by distributions maintainers.

Re:Prediction

[Microlith]

Linux has had 15 years to get it's own shit together.

Really? Considering that many of those years were when Microsoft was at its peak anti-competitiveness and laying the foundation for its own prosecution?

Nothing was preventing them from making a good player and good software before or after Apple entered the market.

Yes there was. Microsoft. Apple only managed to succeed because they were completely insular and had an existing loyalist userbase that hated Microsoft.

nothing is preventing Linux and the distros from getting their shit together.

Define getting their shit together in a way that doesn't boil down to "do it my way and no other."

Re:Prediction

[bky1701]

And that's fine, as long as the kernels are all relatively identical. I really do not foresee that remaining true. They will modify the kernel - possibly even fork it eventually - and drivers will be targeted to that. Say goodbye to most hardware support unless you run the Valve distro. After all, why bother supporting a tiny portion of users that insist on using some hippy open kernel? They should just use Valve's....

Again, it's my prediction. It is not like this has not happened in the computing world before. Hell, Valve actually going about moving to Linux in the first place is because of the delayed effects of the LAST time this happened.

Re:Prediction

[Microlith]

That's OK because hardware manufacturers don't support any distributions now, sometimes withrare exception for RHEL that no one really uses

You must not work in IT. SLES and RHEL are explicitly supported by virtually all of the system OEMs out there. Are you referring exclusively to Desktops?

Re:Prediction

[jonwil]

The kernel is GPL and although a few vendors *cough*ATI*cough*NVIDIA*cough* release binary blobs, I doubt Valve would be able to get away with making the kernel changes needed to implement functioning DRM and then not releasing the source as GPL.
If Valve makes kernel changes that benefit Steam or games generally, anyone is free to take those changes and use them on the distro of their choice.

Re:Prediction

[adolf]

It's sort of like the Apple MP3 player thing. When the iPod launched it was far from the first MP3 player. But it was the first MP3 player that wasn't 100% crap to use.

Counterpoint: I hate the way iTunes makes me manage my music collection. I loathe the way that it focuses on playlists, while I want albums. Even though I can hack it to support my (non-Apple) devices, I am loathe to do so.

From my first MP3 player (a CD-based Riovolt SP-250) to my latest (a Motorola Droid 4), I can just put stuff that I want to hear into a directory tree and it works: It works on my phone, it works on my $4.95 dollar store solid-state player, it works in my cars, it works on the TVs and audio gear I have with USB ports, and it works when streaming away from home or from many random devices (including the PS3 and Xbox) on my local network, and it also works with any other random gear via an analog output (which, too often, Apple gear seems to fall back on).

With Apple products and the iTunes environment, not so much: I can plug my Droid into my TV and play music (with remote control!) over my stereo using a $1 cable, but it's impossible with an iPhone.

The situation is a little bit better on the cars that I have which actually do support Apple's proprietarity protocols, but even then it is no improvement over any of the generic devices that I have on-hand.

So what were you going on about, again? (Oh, right. The new shiny that doesn't do anything useful unless you subside within the walls of the Apple oligarchy, whereas everything else just tends to be able to work. Got it.)

Re:Prediction

[Alex Belits]

I am talking about hardware manufacturers. Desktop OEMs never make their own software, they just take whatever comes with distributions, and may post packages maintained by the real components manufacturers if distributions aren't sufficient.

Re:Prediction

[Alex Belits]

(and server OEMs do exactly the same)

Re:Prediction

[smallfries]

What do you mean focus on playlists rather than albums? The only thing that I use playlists for in iTunes is overlapping sets of genres, I use albums the rest of the time.

Re:Prediction

[Ash-Fox]

If you want him to shut up, why don't you refute the Halloween documents, patent licensing seeking, open document format poisoning attempts, FUD spread by Balmer etc?

If he clearly has no point, then you shouldn't have a problem refuting some of those major arguments, guy.

Re:Prediction

[Blakey Rat]

Really? Considering that many of those years were when Microsoft was at its peak anti-competitiveness and laying the foundation for its own prosecution?

But... but... but... but Microsoft!

Yes there was. Microsoft. Apple only managed to succeed because they were completely insular and had an existing loyalist userbase that hated Microsoft.

But... but... but... but Microsoft!

Define getting their shit together in a way that doesn't boil down to "do it my way and no other."

How about creating an identity that isn't based entirely on not being Microsoft? You don't see Apple users whining "but but but Microsoft!" in every goddamned thread, so why do Linux users do it?

Get your shit together.

Re:Prediction

[antdude]

"Hey, Linux has had 15 years to get IT IS own shit together."? :P

Sure, Valve can do its own distro but still support non-Steam distro!

Re:Prediction

[Rich0]

Hey, Linux has had 15 years to get it's own shit together.

What exactly is wrong with it? Works fine for me. Frankly, that's all I really care about.

It's sort of like the Apple MP3 player thing. When the iPod launched it was far from the first MP3 player. But it was the first MP3 player that wasn't 100% crap to use. Completely took over the market and dominated everyone. But you know what? Five years later all the other MP3 players were still crap to use.

Can't say I agree. My current mp3 player (my phone) works the same as my last one - you plug it into a USB port, it mounts as a usb storage drive, and you copy onto it whatever you want. I have a choice of at least 100 different applications on several operating systems capable of doing this. That means that I can use whatever works for me.

I could care less if 90% of the US population thinks I'm doing it wrong. And that is what I like about open standards and FOSS - I get to choose what works for me, and if 90% of the population hates it chances are it will suit me just fine. People get all concerned that unpopular linux distros and such will die out from lack of contributions. However, I've found that there is only a tenuous association between popularity and contribution, unless you're talking about a commercially-backed distro. If only 10 people really like a piece of FOSS software and all 10 of them are solid contributors and the scope is reasonable, the project can be very successful even if it never grows. A piece of software can be successful even if I write it for myself and never distribute it to anyone.

Re:Prediction

[Alex Belits]

lol wut

FInancials

[lordfoul]

One upside of Valve creating their own Linux distro, is we may finally get to see some financials / sales numbers when Microsoft sues them. Another upside is Valve may actually put up a fight and get some of these patents invalidated.

Re:Neither

[bky1701]

"Hardware support sucks on Linux. Sorry slashdotters but more than half use crappy intel graphics with 2002 era performance and can't run any modern games unless they dumb the graphics down big time."

I think you're talking out your ass to suit your obvious agenda.

Can I run $newgame? Probably not. That's not because of drivers, though; that's because the vast majority of demanding programs made use DirectX, and the best we have to make up for that is wine's reverse engineered interfaces to translate DirectX to OpenGL. They are astoundingly good for what they are, but obviously, are about 2 years behind in support and somewhat touchy.

I might have some graphical glitches and update issues from time to time, but even using a fairly new ATI card (generally regarded as the worst possible situation to be in), I still have perfectly and fully functioning 3D acceleration, including shaders. Performance of what I can run is effectively identical to that of the same programs on windows. Native OpenGL applications (try the Ogre demos) in fact run substantially better.

As for lowering the quality to make it run better? That basically proves you are clueless. Anyone who has actually run into driver issues on Linux can identify that speed is not an issue unless it is an extreme issue, ie, it is not that the drivers are magically slower (think about it...), but that sometimes they do cause issues that drag the system into the dirt. These are rare. The common driver problems are generally visual corruption and general failure, NEVER performance.

Don't let the facts get in the way of your screed, though.

Yes!

[meburke]

As mentioned, they only have to make it work on one distribution. They can concentrate on maximizing performance for this distro, and, by making the source available, open the doors for independent game developers and other enhancements.

The distro fragmentation argument is not relevant; those looking for linux distros for work or other production are unlikely to consider a specialized platform. (How often have you seen Morphix installed as the compny-wide platform?

Re:Jeez, not ANOTHER question....

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone saying slashdot is dying. That's original. Oh, wait, no. That's been going on for at least 10 years.

Re:Neither

[Bert64]

Plenty of windows users use intel graphics too, you can't blame the os if the underlying hardware is low-end...

As for ATI/nVidia, their drivers on linux are every bit as quick as the windows versions if not faster..

Supporting windows is also a nightmare, how many games come with a readme saying "dont use version xxx of ati drivers, dont use yyy of nvidia, known problems etc"... I've seen lots of games which have glitches with certain driver versions.

But here's the thing, on windows Valve have absolutely no control over the drivers or the underlying system..
On Linux, they have already started working with Intel, and likely will do the same with AMD, to ensure that the open graphics stack and their games run well together.
So while they have no control over the hardware, they can at least influence the entire software stack. And hardware is not so diverse today as it used to be, 2 types of processor, 3 types of video...

Of course, I have to say no.

[toygeek]

Its the law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines

Should Valve advance Linux gaming by creating a distro optimized for it? sure, why not. The world needs more distros. Besides, I hear that UbuFedorIanWare is getting behind on their latest release.

"Windows" is trademarked, call it "Portals"

[perpenso]

A platform suited to playing the newest DRM games? They should call it Windows.

No. Call it "Portals". "Windows" is already trademarked.

Re:Well...

[Bert64]

Linux users are used to getting software for free, but then so are pirates... The difference is that the pirates couldn't care less about copyrights and license terms, while many linux users do respect them and wouldn't download any software that wasn't intentionally offered to them for free.

Now things like the core os, browsers, etc are absolutely essential tools that noone should be without... They should be free, so that they are as accessible as possible to everyone.
Games on the other hand, are a purely optional form of entertainment... They are not necessities, they are luxuries and so many people have no issues paying for games, and can easily do without if necessary.

Re:Well...

[Microlith]

Right now, just about every distro is free to download and install. No 'keys' and such you gotta enter. For somebody who's used to getting their software for free, why would they pay for a game, especially one that kinda sorta runs more or less ok, but crashes and burns with disturbing regularity?

Nice strawman. Oh and baseless attack on Linux users as a whole.

Let's face it, driver support in Linux is ok for things like word processing, surfing the web, and playing media files. Outrageous frame rates so you get that genuine 'blood in the face' experience? Not happening.

Are you deliberately being full of shit, or only accidentally?

By doing their own distro, Steam gets muscle to twist arms at the hardware shops and instant respectability to help develop the drivers needed for high frame rate games.

How does that give them muscle or respectability? It would be them reinventing the wheel when they could be working on making it work very well on an existing distro.

Re:Betteridges Law..

[bky1701]

Tell that to Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Google....

There are many reasons for a large company to want to control its own platform. None of the major distros are going to sign up to take marching orders from Valve, which is what anyone paying attention ought to expect. That leaves them either being just another software developer, or starting a distro to leverage the whole OS.

ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if they really wanted to create one, sure go right ahead. We don't need it though. What we do need is for Valve to use it's clout to beat the daylights out of Nvidia and AMD/ATI and any other company like them who are either not making linux/bsd drivers, not providing proper documentation or sufficient api code, or just plain "half-assing" it. There should not be much reason why the linux/bsd driver in many cases can be several revisions behind the windows driver, sometimes lagging behind by a year or more... sometimes less.

We need them to kick these companies in the ass until we start seeing some major improvement in the graphical system and proprietary(or hopefully open source, but hell I'll deal with proprietary) drivers. This will allow alternative systems or distros to have a solid base upon which games can run fast and smooth. As long as we can get that I'll be happy and valve can do it's own distro. I would not like, however if they made it so that it was the only distro capable of running whatever new drivers or code needed to become a gaming powerhouse.

all new developments should be pushed back up to the rest of the community. even if the drivers stay proprietary blobs. just make them work.

WINE! Yay!

[rve]

Wine is a fantastic tool! It allows me to run the sort of windows applications for which there already is a fine native Linux alternative available. Of course the Windows applications that Linux still lacks a native alternative for (my choice: games, visual studio) either won't(*) work or don't make sense in that setting, but still, very useful.

(*) Yeah, I know that with days of tinkering, a bit of luck and just the right hw configuration it can probably be done

Re:Betteridges Law..

[detain]

They have no need to control a gaming platform like those companies. As they are going for multi-platform (they already have all their content on windows) the advantages of a single closed platform become a moot point. Maintaining a linux distribution requires a ton of money for very little payoff. Security updates alone require alot of work not to mention keeping your platform updated with new hardware. Gaming systems like you are talking about run on a single hardware set and a minimalistic set of applications loaded on the system. Why would valve go away from its current model of making games that work on a variety of hardware and systems.

There is already such a thing.

[DerFlob]

There is already such a thing. It's called Windows. I want Steam on _my_ installation of whatever distro I prefer. If I had to reboot whenever I want to play, it would negate the advantages of having Steam on Linux (for me), because I already do it this way with Linux & Windows.

Re:There is already such a thing.

[kfx]

BTW - don't blame the application because every full screen application appears to be mishandled in that way.

All that requires is that the developers implement a borderless display-sized window option (aka fullscreen windowed or fullwindowed), which about half of them already do. I use this whenever available for reasons very similar to what you describe.

Windowed 3D apps will happily switch just like normal app windows do. As I understand it (I only develop business apps personally), Windows/DirectX full screen mode involves an enormous amount of additional resource management when relinquishing and re-assuming exclusive display control, and that's where the problems tend to occur.

Re:There is already such a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not mismanaged, that's working as designed. Have you any idea how annoying it is to have the an entire edge unusable because somebody might quickly leave the window on accident? It's almost on par with accidentally hitting the windows key and losing the game as a result.

Re:There is already such a thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

This actually does work fine on Windows. You just have to run the game in Windowed mode (Full screen). Any modern game has this in the graphics options nowadays.

Re:There is already such a thing.

[dbIII]

NO - read beyond the bit about the mouse.

Re:There is already such a thing.

[dbIII]

Only it doesn't, as shown in the example above.

Re:There is already such a thing.

[dbIII]

Well that makes sense - but it pisses me off that relatively low end hardware (pentium60) in 2000 could handle switching between fairly complex openGL stuff in different windows, from across a network no less, but a Win7 machine on high end hardware twelve years later can't reliably handle switching between such tasks.

As a Mac user and Windows gamer

[AHuxley]

My past wasted on waiting for expensive Mac 'ports' and now seeing Windows 8 GUI efforts -
All I can say is yes do this distro thing.
Apple showed what a weak opengl effort, slow gpu hardware support can do to great code.
MS shows what a desktop split by the needs of MS console and MS tablets can do.
A distro allows Valve to break free from the 'no good gpu for you' of an Apple or the X box first demands of a M$ desperate for branding locked onto very old hardware.
One big encrypted, ad serving, updating/healing, easy to back up download is a very positive step.
A virtual console for your PC on a dynamic, free OS. Free of Apple and free of MS.

bleh. whatever.

[atlasdropperofworlds]

Just because valve and blizzard aren't fans of windows 8, doesn't mean that suddenly windows is going to fall off the map for gamers. They will just continue to use Win7, and wait until Win9. The problem valve/blizzard have is that damned win8 app store, which could possibly erode their business over time.

Personally, I think win8 is fine, but the start screen is pretty bad on the desktop. The rest of the OS has good things going on, good enough for me to forgive the metro crap.

Re:bleh. whatever.

[oakgrove]

I don't think very many people are under any illusions about what's motivating this move. Gabe Newell sees the app store in Windows 8 as an existential threat and its not some new-found love for butterflies and Freedom on Valve's part. Fine, let's get past that as it is a distraction anyway. When we're all done politicizing this maybe it'll come to pass that Linux on the desktop is an underserved market that might, heaven forbid, make money for Valve and friends. This reminds me of the iOS vs. Android debate where applications slowly but surely move over. The fanboy furor on both sides is just ridiculous. The devs make money on iOS now they're making money on Android and Android users have more apps. The end. Hopefully the same happens with Linux and Windows gamers can keep right on using their platform of choice and Linux users will have some cool games to play.

Re:Well...

[isCreeper($('Ssss'))]

Let's face it, driver support in Linux is ok for things like word processing, surfing the web, and playing media files. Outrageous frame rates so you get that genuine 'blood in the face' experience? Not happening.

Valve had L4D2 running better under Linux than Windows, and on NVidia hardware too. Decent framerates are not impossible.

Steambox

[fr0dicus]

I think they are gearing up to make their own fixed-target hardware spec. They talked a lot recently about working with Intel on drivers. It wouldn't be a stretch for them to partner up with Asus or someone like that to make an Ivy-bridge or newer spec system that's mac mini sized to go under the tv. Remember their fabled big-screen mode? It all fits in my mind. Big screen+mini box+Linux.

Ubuntu

[jones_supa]

My prediction is that no, they wouldn't set up a distro only for Steam. Much rather they limit the official compatibility only for Ubuntu.

However it was expected to discussions like this to come. Steam games are a great test for how desktop Linux can handle third party stuff. Closed-source software, DLL compatibility, audio interface, graphics card drivers.

Even if everything doesn't go completely smoothly from the get-go, the whole project will give various benefits to the Linux ecosystem and, for sure we will get some great new titles to the very lacking collection of Linux games.

At least on the NVIDIA side

[dbIII]

At least on the NVIDIA side the drivers perform about the same across platforms so you've picked a very bad example.

Duggeek doesn't know what he's talking about

[erroneus]

"Mature" and "Fedora" do not belong together. A new Fedora is released in less than a year on most cases. Also, they are not afraid of pissing off their users until they leave in massive numbers because they haven't been listening to them. Not what I would call a mature distro in any sense of the word.

But the answer is "yes" they should make their own optimized Linux distro so that a user can have a LiveCD or LiveDVD. As for a whole general purpose distro? No. Maybe not.

Linux is not going to be a viable gaming platform

[dell623]

Valve would be better off building their own console, or partnering with Google on an Android based console. Linux is too fragmented and lacks even rudimentary support for so many graphics cards. Even if we get drivers, getting something working on the wide range of distributions and versions will dwarf even Android fragmentation problems. Mainstream gamers are not techies in any way, and even techies don't want to deal with a bunch of compatibility issues when they want to just play games. Linux can't even get support for printers, how on earth is it going to support all the gaming peripherals out there?

Their best hope is that people will reject Windows 8 outright, which is not entirely impossible

I don't know why no one is going all anti trust on Microsoft for Windows 8. Their own bundled app store, libraries that Microsoft apps including their browser are able to use exclusively, the tight integration of Windows Live (now outlook.com I guess) into Windows, and a history of anti trust abuse.

The other option is to undercut Microsoft, take a smaller percentage of the sale price than Microsoft does from their App store.

Re:Well...

[DarkXale]

And even then, the free-to-play model has been gaining popularity in recent years.

They don't need a distro...

[TellarHK]

Perhaps what Valve need to do isn't create a replacement distribution of Linux, but simply a replacement interface for it. Ditch X11 and all its window management software, and just run it all inside a Valve-designed user interface created to make things nice and simple. They could create a UI with consistent and familiar rules, publish API's to allow developers to create applications that use Valve's hardware-accelerated and streamlined system natively, and allow X11 to be run alongside this new primary user interface just like any other application.

On second thought, I could swear I've heard of something like this before...

Re:They don't need a distro...

[Junta]

Given that they more than *anyone* need nVidia and ATI proprietary drivers, trying to start from scratch with no proprietary vendor support (a la Wayland), ditching Xorg would be an ill-advised move.

Now in terms of layers *above* Xorg, I could see them writing a very minimalist fullscreen oriented window manager. In terms of published APIs, they do effectively control SDL now. With SDL/OpenGL in hand, a game developer mostly doesn't need to know/care that Xorg is the backend (in fact, the vast majority of modern Linux graphical source code lacks any direct Xlib API calls in it). They may want to endorse either GTK or Qt as their recommended Toolkit for out-of-game interfaces to make it more comprehensive.

Re:They don't need a distro...

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps what Valve need to do isn't create a replacement distribution of Linux, but simply a replacement interface for it. Ditch X11 and all its window management software, and just run it all inside a Valve-designed user interface created to make things nice and simple. They could create a UI with consistent and familiar rules, publish API's to allow developers to create applications that use Valve's hardware-accelerated and streamlined system natively, and allow X11 to be run alongside this new primary user interface just like any other application.

Why would Valve want to waste time and resources on any of that? They already have their games running on X11, and they are performing better on X11 than they do on Windows. It is pretty fucking obvious from this fact that X11 is not a problem.

Extremely bad idea

[cyberpunkrocker]

I definitely wouldn't switch distros for just to play games via Steam. If Valve chooses that route, I will not use Steam, ever!

Re:valve should fuck off and die

[davydagger]

most of the "industry standard" apps are fucking shit.

use audacity, I think its the new standard when people work on their own.

Re:YES!

[ThePhilips]

because they only have to make it work for one Linux distro.

And I'm pretty sure they will and the distro would be called "Ubuntu."

I'm pretty sure that Canonical would do anything (and already does) to ensure that Steam on Linux would be first class citizen on Ubuntu.

Also, Steam would likely keep a private copy of every system library used - like the matryoshka doll, it would be a distro of its own anyway. (Because you want to make sure that system update for security reasons or whatever will not suddenly render every game unusable.) With that in mind, I doubt there would be much problem of Steam portability across the distros.

It is easier for non-Linux people to build gaming machines. YES, DO IT!

Why? Games need not much of H/W - quantitatively. And the support for the H/W is pretty much universally is out of hands of the distros (and Valve): GPUs, audio, input devices.

Huh?

[Kimomaru]

Not sure how we came to the conclusion that it would be a good idea for Valve to make their own distro - a huge jump in reasoning. As if Half-Life 3 wasn't taking long enough to make, I don't think this would speed things up ;) Honestly, I think that the Ubuntu distro is so well done and managed that I don't think Valve could improve things by throwing their hat in.

Please don't

[fa2k]

"System requirements:

Steam OS, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 8, Apple Mac OS X"

This doesn't help me as a Linux user. I don't want to reboot every time I want to play a game, and even if I found that acceptable, I could just boot into windows.

After 5 years: "System requirements:
SteamBox, Microsoft Windows 8, Apple iOS"
  They'll end up making a "box" like everyone else. Is it really that hard to make a fucking general purpose software platform ?

Probably....

[Junta]

-Steambox. If they exploit this as a way to actually own the platform in their own console, then pretty much by definition they have to have their 'own' distro.
-*If* they really want to make a ballsy move and try to move people off of Windows by doing something like releasing a very anticipated game Linux-only, packaging it with a LiveUSB steam platform would be a way to facilitate less savvy users getting into it.

This does *not* mean they support their own distro to the exclusion of others, it just means they have some particular strategies that could strongly suggest their own flavor of a distro.

This would probably not be a brand new distro that's particularly different. This could very likely be a partnership with the likes of Canonical ('Steambuntu'), where the OSS pieces pretty match verbatim the upstream distro, just different configuration choices to get you to Steam's set-top like interface quicker.

A Valve-Canonical partnership could also have very interesting long-term ambitions. For now, the obvious implications are Valve getting some logistics assistance in exchange for dramatically increasing the value of Ubuntu's desktop offering.
In the medium term, this could be a way of Valve getting into the console space (which they have had an inconsistent experience trying to do so atop other vendor hardware). Keep in mind that in recent years Canonical has also expressed a dream of getting into TV (pretty highly criticized for showing a pretty vanilla SamyGO and making it seem they did it all on their own). A steambox would be a way for them to get there.

Now in the long term, Ubuntu has also expressed strong desire for uptake in the tablet space (presumably phone space too). I don't know if Valve has mentioned it explicitly, but they probably also are very concerned if Android and IOS tablets erode the desktop space away. There is an incredible long shot that success on desktop and set-top box world could translate into tablets, since that market still seems uncertain outside of Apple. They could also find themselves in an interestingly advantageous position should Apple start doing an integrated television offering to enable other television vendors a viable answer. Google pushed it to some degree, but I think the vendors are disinterested because they aren't particularly threatened so each has a pretty half-assed platform rather than embracing any google offering. If Steambox is established, a TV vendor might see the game catalog as more befitting 60" screens than Android offerings.

short answer is No

[fast turtle]

Due to Torvalds active refusal to establish stable API's, he's managed to prevent the active adoption of Linux on the desktop. Many folks think the issue is the GPL when that has nothing to do with it.

They'd be better off using BSD as the base due to the stable API's provided. Another reason is the BSD license. It has no problems with binary only blobs, thus device makers are more likely to cooperate in releasing drivers instead of actively refusing due to fears of the GPL requiring source code release. Sorry kids but from a business standpoint, BSD wins in the two area's that companies look at

1. Stable API's
2. Retention of Private IP Assets

Linus got it right.

[westlake]

Without mass market OEM Linux systems in general retail distribution Linux on the desktop is going nowhere,

The sensible thing for Valve to do would be to partner with Canonical, which has OEM partnerships, a willingness to be flexible about things like H.264 abd secure boot, and measurable market share in the home market --- no more than a bare 1/2 of 1% perhaps,, but still visible.

 

Re:Valve-Steam-OS

[Ash-Fox]

Are these the same competent programmers that had authentication systems for the source engine handled client side, which allowed me to skip password logins on server by changing a file that dealt with the UI?

Re:Well...

[Ash-Fox]

You do realise installing proprietary driver in major distros like Ubuntu is rather painless, it's easier than windows. Just start the driver manager application, and check the driver you want to run.

Having to install a proprietary driver for games on Linux like windows really isn't as big of a deal like you make it out to be.

Re:valve should fuck off and die

[Ash-Fox]

Why do you make the assumption people only run Linux for the ability to not run proprietary software? It seems like a very narrow view of the world you got there.

The best option

[Yfrwlf]

is to make distros irrelevant by pushing devs to release cross-distro packages and push for cross-distro package formats so distros are only nice bundles to get up and going quickly and nothing else.

Re:The best option

[cgt]

http://xkcd.com/927/

Re:The best option

[Yfrwlf]

With Zero Install you can install programs on any distro, making it the only package manager that is cross-distro-capable currently that I know of. This means it is the only current potential universal Linux packaging standard. I'm interested in seeing a distro made just from Zero Install packages. It is not just another package format. Also, this does not address the reason why distros don't integrate and make compatible their package managers with an actual standardized format. The reason they don't is because every distro company wants an Apple iStore. They want it proprietary, just like the old Unixes. This behavior is NOT pro-freedom and pro-standards.

Re:The best option

[Yfrwlf]

Yeah well Portage isn't cross-distro, and Zero Install is being de-coupled from GTK depedencies already.

Re:Neither

[jedidiah]

> but more than half use crappy intel graphics with 2002 era performance and can't run any modern games unless they dumb the graphics down big time

You just described two of my Mac Minis you big fat idiot.

In your example: it's not the "hardware support", it's the hardware. People don't have over-hyped gaming cards becaues there is little over-hyped gaming to be had.

On the other hand, a cheap upgrade can give Linux a very respectable gaming experience. If people want to play games on Linux they can do the same thing they have to do on Windows: spec their gear to match the games.

Running monpolyware doesn't solve the problem of having a lame Intel GPU because you didn't think about over-hyped gaming when you bought your PC.

Valve can do the same thing that any other game publisher does. They tell you the system requirements. Even your WinDOS PC may not be up to the task.

Connect this with TPM modules

[BlueCoder]

Of course Valve will create their own Linux distribution. It might even be just a live USB drive. Valve has enough clout to force hardware manufactures to provide drivers, open or closed. It can set it's own standard for DRM and everyone will follow.

You can see where Windows is going. It's going the app store model. Valve is it's own app store. Valve doesn't want to be subject to the Microsoft tax at the MS app store where all software will eventually have to come from. Valve is a publisher so it's not looking split it's margin with Microsoft.

Valve provides it's own evolving DRM and QA for game development companies. It's provides the support. It only makes sense, they could do even more for Linux than they have done with Windows. With TPM modules on every motherboard it means they could use it just like Microsoft. They will compile and sign their own packages for their own Ubuntu like distribution. If you want to use another Linux distribution you can dual boot it or run it in a VM. With the Valve Linux kernel being TPM'd you might even be able to boot a TMP'd Windows 8 in a virtual machine eventually.

With VT-d and AMD IOMMU which makes hardware PCI passthrough possible as Valve I might even create a dedicated micro distribution for a hypervisor or two. Something that could boot in a second that could then boot anything else in a VM. They could then make this hypervisor really efficient with PCI passthrough then their Linux distribution would always run in a VM. Modern machines could then run Windows 8 and Linux efficiently side by side. Want to play a game of quake real quick, switch to the valve VM. Want to run any other closed Linux app, run it from the valve VM. Want to run open source Linux apps, switch to the Ubuntu or BSD VM. The valve VM becomes it's own environment and platform separate from Microsoft. Closed source games and open Linux apps running side by side.

Sounds like a coup against Microsoft to me. It won't be perfect overnight and likely it will evolve for a couple generations. But it will give them clout over Microsoft should MS try to strongarm them. Lets not forget how much money is involved. Computer games pull in more money than the movie industry.

Re:short answer is Not so obvious

[deek]

Due to Torvalds active refusal to establish stable APIs, the Linux kernel is more nimble and able to adapt to issues and changes in the hardware horizon. It can also be compiled using a number of different compilers, and with a huge number of compiler and kernel options. This would not be possible with a static binary API. I like it, and think that Linus has made a good choice.

In the long term, an active API will end up being more efficient and less crufty. For guaranteed support, all it takes is the hardware driver to be included with the kernel source, or the developer of the driver to manage possible changes when a new kernel is released. I can say for certain that it takes _much_ less effort to change code, than it does to create it in the first place. Quality code base assumed.

From a business standpoint, if you want to sell something to a market, you go with what is used by that market. For the alternative OS desktop crowd, you would not choose BSD, regardless of whether they have a stable binary API or not. The choice would be Fedora, Ubuntu, or Suse, because they have crafted their systems for general desktop usage, and because they have that market.

Why not a windowing system?

[beastofburdon]

I don't see why Valve would need its own distro aside from one tailor made for a single device. A simple window manager would be sufficient, kind of the way xbmc does.

yes

[KingBenny]

if that means a solid system where you don't get unity doing its own thing when it feels like it, i say yes, wholeheartedly yes. i've been suggesting micro$hit make a $50 stripped down version of windows-for-gamers to cut down piracy and get you a system that's not loaded with a thousand things you dont need but no one seems to listen either
nobody listens to poor zathrass 't'k t'k