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?

[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?

[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?

[CapuchinSeven]

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

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.)

"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.

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.