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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?"
Worst case, static link the binaries.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Great Intellect...
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.
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...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
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.)
Kid-proof tablet..
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.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
A platform suited to playing the newest DRM games? They should call it Windows.
No. Call it "Portals". "Windows" is already trademarked.
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.
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.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
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.
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.
Can I light a sig ?
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...
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
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.
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.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Having both makes one a genius.
I definitely wouldn't switch distros for just to play games via Steam. If Valve chooses that route, I will not use Steam, ever!
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?
Ignore this signature. By order.
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.
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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.
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.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.