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Valve: Linux Better Than Windows 8 for Gaming
dartttt writes "In a presentation at Ubuntu Developer Summit currently going on in Denmark, Drew Bliss from Valve said that Linux is more viable than Windows 8 for gaming. Windows 8 ships with its own app store and it is not an open platform anymore and Linux has everything they need: good OpenGL, pulseaudio, OpenAL and input support."
He's just angry that Windows Marketplace is going to cut into his donut funds.
I've read alot about companies saying win8 is bad for gaming yet very few are actually willing to put their money where their mouth is and actually produce linux native games (or at least games that work perfectly well under wine). Couple that with the lack of installed userbase with capable hardware and the commercial aspects of linux don't really stack up. As much as I'd love to run mint full time its stuck on its vm currently or on underpowered hardware (where linux really shines as a desktop making old/low powered hardware useable!) neither of which are gaming capable.
The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming. With how much I hate the new ModernUI, I've been taking another look at going back to Linux as a main O/S.
bullshit.
...but Windows 9 might well not be. Valve has seen the writing on the wall and is hedging its bets. Personally, if Windows 9 does end up being a walled garden, I can see desktop Linux or OS X (assuming it remains open) getting popular with developers awfully fast.
"We're deeply upset that Microsoft is moving into our turf".
Look, I love Linux. It's fantastic at a lot of things. But its not one operating system. That's a good thing for a lot of things (No, Microsoft, I don't think my AD server should have the same interface as a tablet...), but it still makes it a pain in the ass for game developers.
This is just Valve being pissed off that they won't be able to take a cut of game sales forever.
What I fear is that Valve will dive deep into Linux, and then suddenly realize that supporting software like steam and games on Linux may be a bit more challenging than they thought it would.
The myriad hardware types out there with myriad sets of less-than-optimal drivers might present myriad problems, even if Valve does master the video-card/opengl end of things. I know I get vastly different experiences with Ubuntu depending on if I install it on one desktop versus another versus my laptop. They all have their own sets of issues, and none of them are remotely perfect.
This whole affair with valve just reminds me of some computer user adopting a new platform with vim and vigor...and then realizing it's not all it's cracked up to be a few weeks or months later. I myself did this with mac, but it took a couple years for me to come to my senses, unfortunately.
There are MANY legitimate reasons why Linux on the desktop has not taken off. I fear that Valve just hasn't encountered the right set of those reasons yet.
I think the reason is because Windows 8 to me seems more like a tablet OS instead of a PC OS. But i would love to see a push towards Linux as the new platform for gaming. But it would require more big names to push that direction also as Valve seems to be pushing.
Windows 8 isn't had for gaming, it's just bad for Valve. Vale has wanted Steam to be a general App Store for a long while, and if regular plebes start using the Windows Marketplace, they'll lose that battle before they even begin. Valve's just concerned with their potential market being at risk.
I'm getting sick of Windows, sick of its crap, sick of Microsoft ditching pros for complete morons and non-business uses almost entirely.
Unless I absolutely have to get Windows WhateverNextCrap version, Windows XP will remain the last one I will use.
Vista is terrible, 7 is literally Vista with less features and slightly faster, 8 is a tablet OS thrown on top of 7 and slightly faster, oh did I mention less features and even more obtuse to use as well?
I've used Linux on and off over the years, and I am a programmer so any possible missing features will be pretty trivial to port over.
Gaming is pretty much the only reason I remain, and laze.
I'm making a new computer now. What becomes the main OS is another question.
I know Linux tends to have noticeably faster graphics in games, and usually better speeds overall because memory.
One day.
Linux has everything they need: good OpenGL, pulseaudio, OpenAL and input support
I think it's always been true that there have been alternatives to DOS and Windows that were superior based on technology and price.
>> Linux has everything they need
except driver support from nvidia
Steam works the same in Windows 8 as in Windows 7 from what I've seen thus far. There is no way most gamers would buy a game in the Microsoft app store if the same game was available on Steam. Seems like Valve is more concerned about the competition from the Microsoft App Store than about how open Windows 8 as an O/S is.
If they move to Linux they will fail. I myself am a gamer and all my friends who also game aren't techies. There is no way in hell they will be installing Linux on their computers.
If they focus their product dev to Linux it will sink the company.
Just so long as you don't have an nVidia, AMD, or intel graphics card.
Or want sound that's in sync and in more than 2 channels.
And as long as you don't need HD full screen video cutscenes.
I guess if you consider editting .conf files to be a game, it's the best gaming platform out there.
Ubuntu has an app store too, as does OSX, so I guess those aren't open platforms either.
Good luck to you, Valve! One day we'll look back and remember when you were relevant, sort of.
Unless I am mistaken, you can install apps on Windows 8 outside of the app store - how is this closed?
It seems that Valve is just bitching about competition in the 'one-stop-download-shop' market. Unless MS prevent valve from installing Steam on Windows 8, I can't see this being anything else.
Valve is one of the most influential companies in the gaming world. If they speak people will listen.
This single statement will cause thousands of gamers to check out Linux.
This is a market that is willing to spend hundreds of dollars and hours of tweaking to gain a few percent more performance. Any rumour about a better system will cause a flood of gamers that want to be the first to get the advantage.
Maybe only Windows 8 is better on Windows 8 than on Linux.
Maybe Unless specifically designed to be the other way around.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
You make a good point, but Valve has the clout to pull this off and negate your argument.
sig: sauer
Now the interesting question is if Valve will release a standardized system specs and the a steam linux release creating a de facto "Valve Box".
The idea that Windows 8 is bad for gaming is plain bullshit, period.
In this case, Valve's agenda is the lesser of two evils. Either MS gets their way and Linux desktops continue with the relatively sparse gaming library compared to Windows systems, or Valve gets their way and at least Linux gets a lot of the titles that were formerly Windows-only.
I'd rather a viable company scheme be one that operates within the structure of the general structure of Linux based desktops than requiring Windows or wine. Purists can still run their desktop with the same (or even better) selection of truly free software, and the rest of us can use a free desktop without compromising or dual boot to get at a few titles we really would enjoy.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The problem with Windows 8 is that it isn't the best choice for anything anymore. Want to run old Windows apps? Want to run old games? Want to develop new games (as in TFA)? Want to run current Windows apps? Want a tested, stable Windows platform? Want a minimal hardware Windows platform? Whatever your question, there are better alternatives than Windows 8. Microsoft has really dug themselves into a deep hole at the moment...and the implications for the future are breathtaking.
The heading is somewhat misleading. I think that this should be clarified that Linux provides a better environment for game development. Linux has not actually hit that tipping point of having more available games.
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html
Steam is already an effective and popular app store on Windows. And they hope to become the proprietary app store on Linux. That's why Valve is so dead against Windows 8 - Microsoft could take away their status as the app store.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Roll another Debian-a-like, tailor it to games, market it through Steam to Windows users and say "Why update to Windows 8? Here's a free OS. Live boot it and see if you like it."
Disclaimer: the author is tired of keeping a creaking XP partition going just for Steam, and would bite their hand off to get in on a beta and help out.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Valve is already releasing their game. When will you be releasing yours Mr. AC? And when do you expect to surpass Valve in revenue?
-- Linux user #369862
I was there for the talk. He didn't really say that "Linux is better for gaming." Given the current user base, state of drivers and various flux in the stack, nobody in their right mind would say such a thing.
What he did say is that Ubuntu is an "open platform." Not really the same thing as "better," unless you're a writer at an Ubuntu fanboy site.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What the fuck are you talking about? I'm running windows 8 right now with with your piece of shit bloatware steam running constantly in the background. If that's not an open platform maybe I don't understand what an open platform is. Just because MS has a program exactly like your program, but not as intrusive, you have to go around name calling? I'm not a fan of the Win8 market program, and I'll most likely never use it, but that doesn't "close" the OS. The OS works just like every other windows OS. You can install still anything you like on it.
Oh good! It's the Year Of The Linux Desktop all over again!
Or rather, here we see Valve trashing Windows 8 but not genuinely because it's worse than Windows 7 for games (because it's not, as it basically supports everything Windows 7 did) - but because it challenges Steam's revenue stream. Windows 8 has it's own app deployment store which could theoretically challenge Steam as a method for emptying people's bank accounts. That's what this is about - money, not platforms and how good they are or aren't. In any case, Windows 8 is no more open or closed than Windows 7 - there's nothing seeming to stop me running Steam on my copy, anyway.
Windows has inertia and incumbency behind it and this cannot be underestimated. Linux has, let's be generous and say a few million gamers, World Wide, absolute tops (wikipedia seems to think there's about 13 million Ubuntu installs, not all of which are game rigs by a long shot - Windows has like 1.5 billion installed systems). Which platform are gaming companies going to code for, first, do you think? *Even* if Valve makes games for Linux (and they probably will), what's the bet they will make more money on Windows for the next generation or two *at least* (if not forever - unless we include Android in the Linux camp). If you don't include mobile OSs and stick to desktops, Windows remains at about 92% of the install base (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows#Usage_share).
Not that I particularly care which platform "wins" - if games start coming out on Linux, I will happily use Linux to play the games I play (which admittedly, isn't a lot). I just cannot see the hundreds of millions of kid gamers out there switching to Linux on their gaming rigs (some of which are shared family PCs) and losing their back catalogue of games. A lot of these guys aren't as computer literate / adventurous as they like to think they are.
One of the things I'm worried about is that Windows has traditionally had better backwards compatibility, from the point of view that you may well want to fire them up again in a decade or so. For instance, Rune (Lokisoft) and RTCW (Id/Raven) from 10 years ago are a pain to make work and in the case of Rune do very odd things like the trees being bent over or upside-down.
On the other hand, I had a far easier time making Morrowind, SS2 and even Thief 2 run inside WINE than I did in Windows.
I get to add another OS to my MacBook. It was so difficult to find games worth playing on OSX that I installed Win7 with bootcamp. Now I'll feel morally obliged to install Linux too.
Interesting that Windows 7 continues to be the most stable operating system on my early 2012 MBP since I upgraded OSX to Mountain Lion. I wonder if I'll have as much luck with a Linux install? I wish them every luck, and will certainly show my support as I do my best to stay away from awful walled gardens, but it seems like a big ask compatibility-wise for Steam, which on both OSX and Win7 is already a programme with multiple bugs and infuriating crashing habits in my experience.
There's no good gaming APIs to use. Where is the DirectX equivalent?
If you think developers are going to spend the resources to learn entirely new set of APIs in a completely unfamiliar environment, then you need to get out of your basement more. The guys from Valve need not worry about the Windows app store, because the only thing in there will be casual games that run on ARM. Your shit has to run on ARM (WindowsRT) to get in the app store. That excludes like 99% of Steam games.
So where will I go for my non-casual x86 games on my Windows 8 box? Steam. The Windows 8 app store and Steam are completely different gaming markets. Valve needs to stop getting all the nerds' hopes up acting like all the great games are going to get ported to Linux. Most of their shit will just run Win32 in wine or whatever you call your Win32 subsystem these days. Who knows how fucking many forks and versions and different recursive acronyms of that shit you have now. It's sad, really. Like a guy showing up with a ram mascot head at a Microsoft product launch.
My guess is they will do exactly that, plus in addition setting up dual boot linux from steam and probably also an OpenGL-based API for developers as a replacement for DirectX. Whether they succeed depends on how many developers they can move away from DirectX.
A console could also succeed right now (before PS4 and next XBox come out), but its very risky business.
If you want to make tons of money, just ship another AAA game.
Windows 8 people will buy it and they will pay for it whether it is on Steam, Xbox live, Windows Store, what have you.
Put your resources and talent where it belongs.
Half-life was the bees knees way back when. I remember when the first head crab jumped out at me. almost shat meself, me did.
HL2 was rip-roarin fun.
HL episodes were like dancing naked in a filed of posies.
Focus all of your resources on HL3. Make it epic. Why are you still reading this, Valve? Off with you, then...
-badford
Everything I have heard is that win8 desktop mode will run programs the same way that win7 does. So....steam will run and games will run same as they always have. It SEEMS (and please correct me if I'm wrong) is that the only large change is that Microsoft is introducing a competing digital store for games. So it sounds like win8 isn't bad for gaming as much as it could be bad for Valve since they will now have competition. That opens a whole new issue: Is it unethical / Illegal for Microsoft to support their own store over valve's store? But isn't that the current state of macOS, which Valve is currently moving into?
If only they had realized that everyone uses mice and they're faster than touchscreens.
I agree with you that a mouse is superior to a capacitive multitouch screen for some applications, such as those requiring pixel precision. But how is, say, zooming or rotating faster on a mouse than on a capacitive multitouch screen that can use two-finger gestures?
As soon as there is a single fully working audio stack for linux that doesn't require fidgetting with configuration like crazy to get it to work, and it's compatible with *all* games, then you're a step closer to being viable.
Except the fact that getting bluetooth mouse/keyboard to work is a huge pain unless you buy one of the specifically linux supported bluetooth sets, but I pick my hardware based on quality/price, not OS support because I shouldn't have to (and don't with windows).
Yes, open is great, but until every hardware company is ensuring a simple fully functional driver for their devices on it and there is a common interface for software to all of those drivers ala directX/directSound, windows will be a better gaming platform even for linux enthusiasts. Unfortunate, as all the software stacks that do exist for linux tend to outperform windows by a fair margin, because of significantly better OS architecture.
Simply put, it's a problem of robustness and consistency. When I want to shoot zombies I don't want to have to restart my sound system or HID system and re-enter pin codes and set defaults again, nor do I want to spend weeks configuring and scripting auto-configuration setup for such a thing. So it's a waste of game developers time to try and target linux when they live a crunch-mode life as it is with huge risk of flop resulting in practically no money-back for the effort even when they're focussed on only one OS.
They have had for years, and yet they still haven't done it. What is so different about now? That people are predicting *gasp* that the new Windows OS isn't great? Never heard that one before. But somehow Windows is still the #1 gaming platform by a margin so big it isn't even a close race.
"But this one goes to 11!"
By 2016, Android will outsell windows.
Provided Microsoft's and Apple's patent lawyers don't kill it first. GNU/Linux with X11 has been around longer than Android, long enough to trigger laches (estoppel on grounds that a patent holder has delayed legal action specifically to harm the alleged infringer), and it implements an API that's been around long enough for patents on many of its core concepts to have expired.
And you need to recompile the kernel for each game you install!!!!!!!
The last time this happened Microsoft was accused of being a monopoly, of tying, and managed to secure 5 nice years of growth-stunting dominance with IE6.
With the highly glaring exception of WinRT applications, which must come from Microsoft's store.
I see all the Microsoft fans who are terrified at the thought that Linux could become a viable platform for gaming and draw users away from Windows are here, defending Windows 8 and Microsoft's future roadmap (and their leverage of their monopoly) from its detractors.
Valve is a big fish in a small pond, now they're seeing a blue whale heading their way and they are desperately looking for a new small pond. Who needs Steam when there is the Windows Store?
The only thing Steam needs a hard drive for is storing cached game data, savegames, and profile data cache.
There's no reason why they couldn't just set up a "SteamOS" LiveCD to mount and troll all attached storage for their Steam cache. It shouldn't matter if it's on NTFS (and thus available from Windows as well) or ext4 or zfs for that matter.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Steam does not make games "run in Linux". Steam does not offer an API to construct games upon. Steam is just front end DRM for launching games that can be easily installed without steam. There's nothing magical about Steam that's going to make major publishers all of a sudden start supporting Linux. If dozens of actual game creators started supporting Linux, that might be a story. It seems to me that all Valve has is their tired "source" engine games, and source is nothing but a modified Quake 2 engine. Quake 2! Seriously? So I guess we can all play L4D7, TF Comicon edition and Half Life 2 on Linux, great. But if you want to play the latest ID engine, you had better ask ID what platform they're going to support, because Steam has nothing to do with it.
It's kinda odd this hasn't been explicitly said yet. But while Linux has everything for developing games, what it DOESN'T have is a massive library of games to play on it. As opposed to Windows, which does. Every windows gamer out there owns a pile of games that only runs on windows. More than likely, those simply won't run on Linux. And historically, gaming meant Windows. Now, Windows might not have as big of a library as you might think. A LOT of older games need to be run in DosBox or other emulation, which is frankly above the heads of most gamers. Same goes with Wine. Linux has a much larger library of games if you include Wine, but that's really only an option to geeks. Last I saw, it takes a lot of tweaking and fiddling. (And personally, fuck the non-geeks. I'm really not that motivated to help gamers who won't help themselves.)
If Valve is serious about pushing games on Linux, they need to make some serious contributions to the usability of Wine for gaming. Even though every hour played on Wine is an hour people aren't paying Valve. Which, come on, companies don't do that.
They also need to lay down the law and state that they (and their LinuxSteam games) only care about a limited set of hardware. With new hardware being added as it comes out. That would help a lot.
I don't understand, as you do, why they wouldn't put steam in the store. It'll redirect to their servers where customers can download the client and pay for games without issue, and without taking 30% Seems like they're ignoring a major vehicle to get steam even more exposure.
Now, Microsoft is focussing on providing a strongly-preferred application distribution system for Windows and extracting a share of the revenues that go to application distributors (on top of what it already gets from them by charging for dev tools, and from the fact that application distributors who target Windows preferentially are what drives demand for Windows and enables Microsoft to sell it at the prices it does.) That's a pretty big change, and it makes it much more worthwhile for firms that currently make money distributing applications to put their own efforts behind platforms where the platform vendor isn't doing that.
Yes, it is. That doesn't mean it will be in the future, particular if firms like Valve decide that its not where they want to focus their efforts. Being the #1 gaming platform is a result of where game developers focus their efforts, after all.
First, Windows 8 is just as open as Windows 7. The only difference this time is that it ships with a built-in competitor to Valve's Steam platform.
Second, while Linux gaming may or may not be as good as PC gaming, Valve alone isn't going to make up the market, and they will continue to support Windows regardless. They have only a handful of games nowadays; Counterstrike, DOTA 2, Team Fortress, Portal, and Half Life (though everybody has already beaten those).
They have to convince everybody else to do the same thing. So they need to get Call of Duty, Battlefield, and all the other big franchise games to port to Linux. This likely won't happen unless they see a monetary gain in doing so. The only company that truly benefits is Valve, because of their platform. Porting to Linux is their hedge against the MS App Store. While I could see that down the road in Windows 9 or 10 that the app store becomes the primary way to deliver apps, most developers are going to embrace that model. The developers don't make money on the distribution, unless they are a distribution platform like Valve. What EA has done with Origin is more a DRM scheme than a distribution model, and I don't think they will mind switching.
Ultimately while Valve and I'm sure a few other major developers will hate this model change, a lot of people are going to embrace it, and be successful with it as well. You don't think Angry Birds did so well because it was a Triple A title distributed through Steam, do you? It was an indie title distributed through the Apple App Store. And with the dev tools for MS software being pretty easy to use and learn, I think we will see some more success stories of people adopting the "new way" of doing things vis a vis MS's OSes.
And if they don't.... we'll see what the future holds. But Valve isn't a big enough player to corner this market on their own, and right now, there's no indication of any open support for them to make this move either.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
So why am I getting cognitive dissonance about the tune that John Carmack sings these days? Judging from the repeated success of Humble Bundle on Linux and Valve's credible statements, it would seem that, to put it bluntly, than John is wrong. So what's up? Intentionally wrong or inadvertently wrong? If inadvertently wrong, maybe the effect John detects is, not much interest from Linux gamers in yet another marginally playable Quake sequel. If intentionally wrong then what's up? Is John a closet Apple fan?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I was as upset about the loss of the start button as anyone, but having come across a list of the new windows key shortcuts, I'm now able to get things done faster than ever.
Good, that means Windows is now almost at Ubuntu level.
You've created a false dichotomy. There are a lot more choices than Windows and Linux. Even if Windows fails (no evidence it will other than Gabe's wishful thinking) it doesn't mean Linux will then succeed. Developers might just go to all-console.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
In a presentation at Ubuntu Developer Summit currently going on in Denmark,
Wake me when he says the same things at a Windows conference. Until then, I'll file it under "saying what your audience wants to hear".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Now, Microsoft is focussing on providing a strongly-preferred application distribution system for Windows and extracting a share of the revenues that go to application distributors
Hmm, so similar to Apple's strategy. And nobody is developing apps for iOS huh?
"But this one goes to 11!"
Apparently, the special cases of maps and image manipulation are common enough that touch screen fans consider them important. If image manipulation were not common on a PC, why would there be GNU Image Manipulation Program, Inkscape, Adobe Lightroom, and the entire Adobe Creative Suite?
With the highly glaring exception of WinRT applications, which must come from Microsoft's store.
WinRT is a tablet-OS. Windows 8 is as open and free as Windows 7 ever was.
I've been running the windows 8 consumer preview for a while now. Every application that I used on windows 7 is working just fine.
From my point of view, Windows 8 is just as open as the last decade of Windows OSes. I think the "windows store only" nature of Windows RT is being abused to imply that Windows 8 will not run your old applications. Windows 8 and Windows RT have the same code base but are separate products.
As of now, I prefer windows because of the choice it offers. On Windows I can run FOSS or I can buy an application. Either way, I can run most of the software on XP, Vista, Windows 7 and YES, Windows 8.
If Microsoft chooses to make the next installment of Windows a walled garden and only support the new application format, that choice will disappear. At that point one of the main benefits of running "windows" would be gone. Apple and Linux would be much easier to consider, because the loss of the application library has already occurred. Might as well try it out.
The right gaming portal in the wrong OS can make all the difffffference in the world...
Yeah, more fucking distros, that's all we need. Please no.
... the man who's the epitomy of taking away gamers rights and pusher of permission based software and closed platforms, dislikes Microsoft copying his business model. If anything the game industry is like the pot calling the kettle black. They and apple are the ones who first pushed the model (MMO's, free2play, steam DRM crapware).
Given that I need pixel perfect precision, why won't I just zoom with the scroll wheel on the mouse and keep my hand comfortably rested on the desk, instead of lifting it all the way up (and I got 3 30inch monitors) to touch my screen, then wipe it off finger marks and rest it again on the mouse?
As for rotating... you might be amazed at how often I have felt no need or desire to rotate anything whatsoever on a computer screen. I have however felt the need to hit small links, select text quickly and easily and right-click on stuff.
Please, can one of the people with a touch screen and a screen setup that is NOT on laptop heights but work-safety recommended heights with large multiple monitors (and there are no affordable large resolution touch screens or even "oh my god I could buy a car for that" ones) tell me how holding my hand above eye height for input is easier, faster and more comfortable?
I will even accept that lots of smudges on your screen might have some kind of desirability to some.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
And as long as you don't need HD full screen video cutscenes.
For one thing, since when does 1080p video not work on a PC? I thought even YouTube got that to work. For another, a lot of games especially from Valve do cut scenes with the game engine, so if the game works in 1080p, so do the cut scenes.
Ubuntu has an app store too
Unlike Windows RT and the WinRT environment of Windows 8, Ubuntu does not prohibit home users from permanently adding third-party PPAs.
Last time I checked, IE6 was the reason people stopped using IE. It's was never a monopoly, and it should have never been even accused of being one. I'm curious, without IEx how you would even go about getting another browser? Thank goodness it's on there or how would you ever even replace it!
Well, that's just false. You don't have to use the app store to install a WinRT program. So either you're ignorant or a liar. There is no third option.
You keep saying in other posts that WinRT will replace Win32. If you have some sort of citation that proves that Win32 will be phased out, I'd love to see it. But knowing it doesn't exist, please stop stating it as if it was a well known fact. Since Win32 isn't going anywhere I don't know how you get off contradicting me that Win8 isn't an open platform. It's not like game publishers are going to start using WinRT as a replacement for Win32. And even if they did, it's still an open platform.
The most important thing that this article just glosses over is the fact that Steam isn't a game API. It doesn't help run games in any way on Linux. The people responible for creating the game must make the game work in Linux. Steam is nothing but a DRMed front end launcher. I would much rather launch my games by running the game's executable and not have some TSR bloatware that acts as some sort of shortcut to the game executable.
Gaming companies need to release titles for Linux, and this will greatly help. The problem is, Windows is still the most popular OS even though Linux can do a lot of things better. More market share is where the software will be developed for now. The Wine project has made many milestones which have helped closed this gap of Windows & Linux game titles. Let's hope it continues this way.
My knee-jerk reaction to that would be 'yeah, right, MS isn't that dumb'
What about "Microsoft is dumb enough to have it already be the case on ARM"? The only applications that run in the desktop part of Windows RT are IE and Office.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1
The thing I hated about Linux Desktop, is that the lesser things did not work. Wifi didn't work for quite a long time, I never expected sound to work, printing was troublesome, and I never tried to get webcams or scanners to work. Linux was great for programming. For all that extraneous stuff, let Windows take care of it.
That is why when I installed steam recently for the first time, I encountered two errors, both with extensive user provided workarounds involving rebooting in special mode to get around rights issues. On perfectly normal PC with perfectly normal Windows 7 64 bit.
Companies like Valve maintain expensive banks of PC's just to test all the countless configurations possible and STILL fail to deal with all of them as the extensive work arounds available to deal with a INSTALLER show.
Compared with that, Linux is FAR easier. With Linux Valve gets EXTENSIVE support from volunteers eager to help Valve out. With MS they can go die.
The fact that Ubuntu for FREE just works so often when paid for Windows so often does not, shows this. Linux sure has its moments but I can always find help to fix it and so can Valve. With windows? re-install. That is your payed for MS support.
I think Valve will be smart enough to create a default distro which works on listed hardware and for everything else, the community will find an answer. If they can get Linux running on a GBA, everything else is simple. Linux community is one who takes "doesn't work, can't work, the universe will explode if you try" as a challenge. Hell, right now, with no official support, you can run many games just fine with just Wine thanks to users helping users.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That's why they are doing it. They aren't concerned about Windows 8 as it is now but what it will be after a service pack or three. Suppose DirectX 13 (as part of Windows 8 SP2) and other features are restricted to RT applications only because win32 is being slowly depreciated over the life of Windows 8 so that 9 will be RT only. Given the lead time required why wouldn't Valve want to start working on Linux support now? They could even start doing "cross-buy" deals (i.e. buy the Windows/Mac version, get the Linux one free) to make it easier to work out any issues.
Think about it this way, if by Windows 8 SP3 all win32 code ends up running under virtualization through Microsoft's VirtualPC technology (updated to include Direct3D/OpenGL passthrough) would you want to use it for gaming given the huge performance hit?
I haven't seen a lot of Windows 8 action, but Linux is awesome. More games need to support it.
If you have some sort of citation that proves that Win32 will be phased out, I'd love to see it.
It could just be Valve building a backup plan in case Windows 9 actually does this.
It's not like game publishers are going to start using WinRT as a replacement for Win32.
They are if they want to reach Surface and other Windows RT tablets.
Steam had already won my trust. Windows Store hasn't.
Windows 8 isn't a walled garden. It has a walled garden, but you get a choice. I haven't heard anything that says that you have to release applications through the Windows app store or else it won't run on Windows 8
Look, great on expanding the platforms you're on (I commend putting Steam on Linux), but I'm pretty amazed at the complete lie being told about Windows 8. It makes you look like, well, a liar. Steam is going to do just fine on Windows 8. I'm on Windows 8 now and except for a hiccup with one game, I've had no problems.
....that Novell acted in pretty much the same way - don't offer something better, just bitch about the competition. And watch your market disappear whilst doing it.
In this case, there's even a bonus - unless MS go beyong Steam's fuck-you-we've-got-your-money policy, it's game over; another example of a company resting on their laurels for years (Commodore, Blackberry etc) and then acting butthurt when they might just have to design something new to compete.
But what do I know? I'm sure Linux will actually become common instead occupying the niche it's lived in for twenty years just because Gabe says so.
Now, Microsoft is focussing on providing a strongly-preferred application distribution system for Windows and extracting a share of the revenues that go to application distributors
Hmm, so similar to Apple's strategy. And nobody is developing apps for iOS huh?
Apple extracts a minimal fee used just to cover costs because they can make up their money in hardware sales. Apple on the desktop does not prefer App store apps by limiting access to APIs based upon whether or not the developer paid a fee to Apple. Apple on mobile devices is not dominant in the industry such that ignoring that market means not having a viable market, so Apple can't jerk developers around as much or they just go to Android.
Value: Great
Linux: Great
AMD Graphics on Linux: Arg
You don't have to use the app store to install a WinRT program.
If you're not using Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise on a domain, you do if you don't want to have to get a new developer license every month and re-sign and re-install all your sideloaded applications every month, as I understand it.
This should be at the fucking top. This whole submission is just bullshit that caters to the completely illogical misunderstandings that slashdot users have with windows 8. Ad revenue and all that.
Because lots of computers don't have optical media drives any more, because that would be a shitty place for saves?
A better idea would be a 32 or 64 gig memory stick.
So when can I install steam and download my gaming library onto my linux gaming box?
"Windows 8 ships with its own app store and it is not an open platform anymore"
So Microsoft is blocking out Steam as a distributor?
Yay!!!!
All the games now force you to have a live internet connection. This forced online to play and be monitored is crap.
I've been reading Slashdot from the beginning, and this story is one of the most ridiculous. What does viable mean in this context. Might it have anything to do with market penetration? Whatever issues Windows 8 might have with gaming it will be fixed.
What about customers?
WinRT is the new API that was introduced with Windows 8 and Windows RT. WinRT is locked down on all platforms. I have to keep reiterating this to enraged Microsoft fanboys because they miss it every time.
The app store isn't competition for Steam. Steam is more than just a store, it bundles all of your multiplayer handles, friends lists, server preferences, etc. into one sign-in. Games for Windows Live tried to be like Steam but was absolutely terrible, and people hated it enough to both avoid games which required it and lambast developers which included it. People LIKE Steam, and Valve. Nobody except shills and fanboys LIKE Microsoft. At best, people just don't care about them. And how do you figure that Valve is lying about the performance benefits of Linux + OpenGL vs Windows + Direct3D?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
They have everything except for the games.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Bring them on, please! And no Steam DRM bullshit either, thanks. Give me a Buy-And-Download like how the humble bundle stuff works or ship me the game on a DVD! I can't wait to buy my first real Linux game!
Windows lost the monopoly case because they were using hidden APIs to ensure that their browser ran better than competitors, not because they preinstalled it in the OS. Because of the nature of how shopping for programs works, I don' t think that is a valid comparison (the marketplace performance is not really a concern, the purchased application is what matters.)
I do belive the the WinRT is still by deffinition closing the system. If it becomes their only method for accessing features of the OS, then it is indeen becomming a closed platform. For now, as I understand it, it's still Open ... for now. However, I won't be touching Win8 with a 10 foot pole precisely because of the threat of locking it down in the future.
Yay Linux! I have been meaning to switch from Windows to Linux for months. Now I have an even better reason to do so.
I wrote this. Please don't hate me.
IE6 had over 90% adoption and sat unchanged for 5 years, it took the slow rise of competition that users pushed by word of mouth to get Microsoft to actually create the turd that was IE7, something I doubt they would have done if they had been able to suppress Firefox. That's the definition of a monopoly, and a perfect example of the damage they can do.
Oh, are you going to call in the special Enterprise exemption? Or are you going to show me how it's possible to install a WinRT application without being a developer or enterprise user?
Except on WindowsRT it's already gone. There's more evidence in my favor than there is in yours at this point; and given how much Microsoft has wanted this level of control over end-users for a long time, I don't see any reason to believe they won't pursue it as hard as they can.
The most important thing that this article just glosses over is the fact that Steam isn't a game API. It doesn't help run games in any way on Linux. The people responible for creating the game must make the game work in Linux. Steam is nothing but a DRMed front end launcher. I would much rather launch my games by running the game's executable and not have some TSR bloatware that acts as some sort of shortcut to the game executable.
No, it's not an API. It's a store front-end and distribution service with a minor DRM component. But Valve is also a game studio and are willing to put their money where their mouth is and port their games AND distribution platform to Linux. And if they can draw enough users over to Linux as their primary platform, they could probably draw publishers as well. I imagine they'll have more success with that than OS X, given that users don't need to buy all new hardware to adopt it.
Same here pretty much.
Again we hear Valve bemoaning Windows 8, yet the breakdown of relevant points comes down to "Gaming Companies" wanting to be stores and not a gaming company. Electronic Farts with their Origin debacle or Valve with their mixed pressure Steam offering aren't focusing on Gamers, they're focusing on Wallstreet investors who want a return. They put their "Stores" ahead of their customers, then limit their offerings through their Store, DRM their content, break up products to those that use their store and those that don't - who won't get the "premium" downloadable content.
Companies like this and spokesmen like this should be driven out of the industry to make way for Startups focused on actual customers - no matter what platform they want to play on.
Since you're probably equipped with a mouse and a keyboard, you can just hold a key while moving the mouse for any special actions
GIMP already does this, but users have enough problems figuring out click and Shift+click to draw a straight line segment with the current brush. How should a program let the user know what modifier keys are available at any given moment?
similar to how some Linux distros let you move and resize windows by holding Alt+[L][R]Click and moving the mouse
Which I always disable where possible because it interferes with GIMP's use of Alt+click.
>Valve is already releasing their game.
Oh yeah? Wake me up once they get around to releasing Episode 3. So far I have surpassed Valve's ep3 revenue by about infinity percent.
Come on, don't you miss the good ol' days of DOS gaming?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It is pretty much identical to Windows 7's gaming performance, with some minor exceptions (which will likely be fixed with driver updates or game patches over time). Don't just take my word for it either, check out the conclusion to this article from TomsHardware:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-8-gaming-performance,3331-13.html
William George
Personally, I do not want to see "the year of the linux desktop." I want to see the year where there are more than two desktops with no one having a monopolistic advantage. The year of many desktops sounds like a much better world than the year of two desktops.
Seems like this sets the stage and draw a thin gray line between fair competition and anticompetitive practices. Guess since Apple has gotten away with it for so long and justice $, DoJ will look the other way. Of course, I haven't played with Windows 8 yet, but Appstores and app reviews leave a sour taste in my mouth.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
greed is good
Now, Microsoft is focussing on providing a strongly-preferred application distribution system for Windows and extracting a share of the revenues that go to application distributors
Hmm, so similar to Apple's strategy. And nobody is developing apps for iOS huh?
Apple extracts a minimal fee used just to cover costs because they can make up their money in hardware sales. Apple on the desktop does not prefer App store apps by limiting access to APIs based upon whether or not the developer paid a fee to Apple. Apple on mobile devices is not dominant in the industry such that ignoring that market means not having a viable market, so Apple can't jerk developers around as much or they just go to Android.
You'd like to think that Apples dominance is in question, but at least in the states, you can pretty safely bet that if it's a smart phone, it's an iDevice. The developers are listening to the market, and many things are iDevice only. Here's one example that's relevant to me: Irig: http://www.ikmultimedia.com/products/irig/
I pick my hardware based on quality/price, not OS support because I shouldn't have to (and don't with windows).
You're buying hardware that works on Windows.
...comes when Windows destroys itself? Hardly feels like an achievement...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
There is and it has been in there for years. It's called ALSA. I haven't had problems with it since about 2005. Just remove that pulseaudio crap and open your ears.
Gaming is one of the few activities on a computer that requires Windows. Getting support from a high profile Developer and buisness like Valve seems like what is needed to finally break that requirement, or at least to get the process going. It seems like a lot of people are skeptical of the viability of this, but I certainly am happy to support a move away from Windows, especially given the direction Windows 8 is taking the OS. Valve is probrably one of the most respected companies and leaders in the gaming industry, and hearing them promote Linux like this is really fantastic. Steam moving to mac is great and all, but it would be a shame if valve put a lot of effort into getting onto such a restrictive platform after taking the effort to get off of another restrictive platform. I really hope Linux becomes their primary focus to move people too. Linux for desktop still may have a future after all!
This day was a long time coming.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
I think they are just mad because the cannot get their beloved (and big cashcow) steam on the Windows RT platform.. I'll bet you a dollar that they turn a 180 when they can sell Windows RT games through their steam.. (mind you, it's not Windows 8 games that's the problem, it's the windows rt games that are the problem, for windows 8 itself there is no need for windows store as it's a regular windows application..
You'd like to think that Apples dominance is in question, but at least in the states, you can pretty safely bet that if it's a smart phone, it's an iDevice.
With about 34% of the US smartphone market I'll take those odds any day. The probability is it's not an iDevice; two to one odds. Don't ever go to Vegas.
You can get a Wacom Cintiq 24HD touch for $2600.
Yes, it's only 24" and 1920x1200, so you could argue if it counts as "large".
They claim something like 98.5% piracy rates on PC as well, so if you were to take both statements as true, the numbers still look far better.
Of course Win8 have a Metro app store that Valve don't like, but it don't prevent to still keep going with a Steam desktop app as before. Valve did test with an old engine running in DirectX9. OpenGL is not better than DX10-11. Source engine is now too old to count. Linux is also not a platform that have "everything we need". It just don't. Valve, don't go crazy. You have a good fanbase, stick with it, don't do stupidities.
I must have some weird Chinese knock-off version of Windows 8, it seems to run Steam exactly as well as Windows 7.
hi
You do realize that the "fully locked down store" of Win8 supports such horrific lock-in features as unrestricted app sideloading, right? Even with the RT versions (such as on Surface) where third-party desktop apps are supposedly banned (people have already worked around that), you can sideload apps to your heart's content, using nothing but official functionality.
Valve is nothing but a crybaby whining that Microsoft is re-creating the benefits of Steam without making people go get Steam. It's not as if Valve has ever been in support non-lockdown. Steam is a fucking DRM platform! It's more locked down than even Windows RT, much less Win8...
Slashdot seems to be giving them a pass, even supporting them, because they're saying good things about Linux and bad things about Windows. OK, I like seeing more games for Linux, and more commercial support in general. But you don't think they're going to drop the DRM just because it's on a "free" OS, do you?
Some serious reality distortion going on here. I wouldn't have picked Gabe Newell as a likely heir of Steve Jobs, but apparently I'd have been wrong.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Of course they're going to complain. The Windows app store pretty much does away with the need for Valve, Steam, etc.
I don't get it, NVIDIA release proprietary software on Linux and the community react like someone shit on their living room carpet, but when Valve do it, it's great news?
DX8, 9, 9a, 9b, 10, 11, 12.
Oh, by the way, running a game on OpenGL on Linux was 20% faster than the same game run on DX and Windows.
I think what Valve is really trying to say is that the Windows Store is terrible for the Steam business model and their revenue stream.
I guess that is easy to conflate that with terrible for gaming in their minds. ;)
It's not games that keep Windows as a dual boot on my computer. It's Adobe's DRM for ebooks. When the publishers adopted it, Adobe promised to implement it on the major platforms, including Linux. But the Linux one never materialized. Anyone know why?
Publishers like TOR and Baen have a significant advantage when they're trying to sell me ebooks -- I don't have to reboot to Windows to buy them.
What the fuck are you talking about? I'm running windows 8 right now with with your piece of shit bloatware steam running constantly in the background. If that's not an open platform maybe I don't understand what an open platform is.
Windows 8-style apps use different APIs than traditional Windows applications, so Windows 8 actually consists of two "platforms". One of these platforms is still open, the other is definitely not: Apps using the new APIs have to be distributed to end users through the Windows Store.
Right now Steam will of course run fine on Windows 8, like any other legacy application. And we will probably not see major games written as Windows 8-style apps anytime soon. But I believe that you would be mistaken to expect that Microsoft will continue to develop two sets of APIs in parallel forever. Eventually, avoiding the new APIs will be no longer be a viable solution - not unlike like the transition from "no developer in their right mind would develop any game except Solitaire using the Windows APIs" to "no developer in their right mind would still develop a game for DOS".
At that point, Steam for Windows and all other distribution models for Windows applications except Windows Store will be dead.
From my experience with Windows users, many have a completely irrational attachment to Windows. They use it because they "know" it and they don't want Linux because they "don't know" it, even though their Windows installations are full of crapware and they could be fooled by any random Linux distribution with a Windows-themed splash screen.
Try telling that to Walmart which spent the better part of ten years trying to make a go of OEM Linux ---- a merry-go-round of Linux desktop hardware and software bundles which supposedly had mass market appeal and a Windows-like UI.
None struck a spark.
Apple sells an upscale urban lifestyle. Microsoft solid middle class values.
That is why MS Office Home ---a first tier productivity app which consistently tops the retail software bestseller charts --- is bundled with Windows 8 on the ARM platform.
Linux tends to project a geek's ideal of technological perfection, ideological purity and political correctness, no matter how poor a fit they may be to the needs and values of other users.
The difference is that basically everything worth a damn works with Windows and OS X. Linux, on the other hand, is a quality control nightmare with constantly changing APIs.
Exactly!,As a Linux gamer, managing Linux servers, sitting next to an Android phone, I couldn't agree more. The audio stack is a complete mess. Not to mention the X Windows situation.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/12/10/25/2339223/a-proposal-to-fix-the-full-screen-x11-window-mess
http://insanecoding.blogspot.hk/2009/06/state-of-sound-in-linux-not-so-sorry.html
I would love to see Linux a viable alternative to Windows, but first the Kernel devs need to get their heads out of their asses and put in a proper audio subsystem, like the free and GLP'd OSSv4 that every other UNIX uses. Also X11 had it's day, back in the 70's, but it's time for a modern windows manager that won't freeze or crash when a game or app tries to run full screen. I don't know if Wayland is the answer, but Linux needs something.
Or maybe you just keep re-iterating it because you're wrong, and are nonetheless trying your hardest to spread FUD.
It's entirely possible for "Metro"-style apps to use the normal Win32 APIs; developers figured out how to do this long before Win8 even went RTM. That's just the nature of C++, which is what WinRT is actually written in (although it has bindings in all the supported languages). Microsoft may (or may not; I haven't checked) prevent any app which does so from appearing in the store, but that's not a huge problem. Windows 8 and even Windows RT fully support sideloading of Metro-style apps; it's free and requires no hacks of any kind (official, though rather quiet, feature).
Of course, the apps still run in a low-permission sandbox. That's hardly a problem for games, though. In fact, it's by far the preferred behavior; most games have absolute shit for security. For things like productivity apps, you'd probably want to use the WinRT file open and file save APIs, although you don't need to; there are other ways to get acess to the rest of the filesystem if you don't mind having the user run a script (which since an automatically-built Powershell script is how you sideload "Metro"-style apps, could be easily done by just adding to that script). Just change the ACLs to give the app access to whatever locations it wants.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
The title should be 'Valve declares Windows 8 store is a better opportunity for distribution than Steam'.
For the majority of games, the optimisations we are talking about aren't required. The Windows 8 store doesn't require installing separately to the OS, meaning mainstream users now have a store and brand they trust with their credit card, leading to more downloads. There is a reason why games on Steam are already in the Windows 8 store, being marketed by those brands above their Steam presence. Broader reach, zero barriers for Windows 8 users.
It wasn't a pleasure for me. Kylix was a slow, unworkable mess. And Borland made the mistake of targeting particular versions of WineLib and QT and then not committing themselves to the necessary maintenance when those libraries changed. Borland did a half-assed job and then dropped it immediately instead of nurturing it. Not that there was ever much of market for it. QT was already in place and a wonderful development tool. To compete, Borland needed to have been as smart as Trolltech.
The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming.
A lot? According to this interview with Ubisoft representatives, only 7% of Ubi's 2011 revenue was generated on PC and 5% of Activision's revenue:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/09/05/ubisoft-drm-piracy-interview/
That means that >90% of gaming happens on other platforms anyway (consoles, smartphones) and for those users gaming is not what's keeping them on Windows.
Erm 100% of Blizzard's revenue is generated by PC Gamers, so therefore I extrapolate from my dataset that 0% of gaming must be happening on other platforms.
Picking Activision or Ubisoft are bad examples as they primarily produce console games with PC as an afterthought. Fortunately they are not the only game manufacturers, nor are they representative of the gaming industry in general.
You may wish to become better informed.
PC game revenues have been higher for over 2 years now despite selling fewer units. Per unit, PC games sell at a lower price point than console games and make more money. PC gamers play more than console gamers and there's also a lot more people with PC's that can play games than people with consoles.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
For one thing, Valve is porting Steam to Linux, along with some of their games. This has not been done before. I think this is the obvious reason -- they weren't even trying before. Now they are.
sig: sauer
Win8 is no more closed than Win7. You can still build / sell Win32 apps. Win8 *adds* a new way to distribute software. Regardless of whether the Windows Marketplace / Store / whatever is good or bad, that's completely independent of the fact that Win8 is still *Windows*, so you can still install Steam, Firefox, or whatever other software you want to download or create.
Linux isn't a popular gaming platform because it lacks capability or features to support great gaming. It's not a popular gaming platform because game developers can't economically support the myriad of Linux distros in a way the consumer expects to be supported. Supporting even the "most popular" or "most common" Linux (however you want to define it) is a developer death by a 100 paper cuts spending time, effort and money fixing all the little edge cases.
Mainstream consumers want to "get Linux", then "play games" that "just works" not fiddle around recompiling source code or waiting for a package maintainer to get around to creating the package for their particular strain of Linux only to have it stop working 6 months later when the next 0.0.0.1 release comes out of Linux Distro XYZ. Imagine waiting two weeks for a yum update of you favorite MMO game client while everyone on Windows simply clicked an icon the moment the game update was released from the developer, the game updated itself auto-magically and connected and you were playing that evening.
It stands to be seen how well Windows 8 actually turns out as a gaming platform, but, from a veteran MMO developer's perspective, Windows has been a dream to develop, distribute and support games for compared to Linux. Windows prior to Win8 may not have been open source but it was open in the way consumers and developers care: you could build and distribute anything you wanted without approval from anyone.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
Microsoft hindered the potential of browsing with Internet Explorer.
We have learned from that mistake.
Microsoft hindered the potential of gaming with DirectX.
We have yet to learn from that mistake.
Which combination of APIs am I supposed to use again on Linux? Which distro am I targetting again? Unless they are aiming at selling you a locked down console, it won't work. And none of the freetards will want a locked down console even if it is Linux-based, will they?
Wow windows 8 is like steam - they both suck . and are simple chains to bind the user ,looking in the mirror can be quite a shock indeed. Which reminds me to remove the bathroom mirror
There's always someone who says "sound has worked just fine for years!"
Obviously it works well for some people. It probably works well for the developers, since they can fix their problems, and it probably for some people who coincidentally have similar hardware...
It seems my copy of Linux Mint has no OSS support whatsoever by default. I was trying to play some NSF files the other day, but my NSF player wouldn't work as there's no "/dev/dsp" for it to access. So I tried to find another. Couldn't find one that worked. Eventually had to just use my Windows laptop to play the files. ...and while one might say that I'd have no problem if my NSF player used ALSA instead, I have to point out that there are a lot of simple little utilities that prefer OSS simply because the ABI is far simpler to learn and use than ALSA. Indeed, I used OSS from some simple little things I did in assembly language. (ASM is no good for large projects.) It isn't even possible to use ALSA from assembly language as it doesn't have a documented ABI, only a C library API.
Honestly, if they'd just start doing audio mixing in kernel space instead of treating the idea like it's some sort of sin (for fuck's sake, it isn't like Linux is a microkernel), and simply create an API (or better yet an ABI) that doesn't require so much effort to learn that the few people who successfully learn it immediately think "I should create a wrapper for this" while the ones who find it to be too complex simply use one of the many (typically broken) wrappers, Linux audio would be a lot less painful.
If you don't believe ALSA is just too complicated, look at this "simple" example:
http://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/alsa-lib/_2test_2pcm_8c-example.html
I can hear people now saying "so what if it's complex, people can always write wrapper libraries to create simpler interfaces." ...but the problem is that that is exactly what's happened. There are far too many wrapper libraries for audio in Linux and they cause a lot of problems. So one has to ask, why should playing a simple bit of PCM data require hundreds of lines of code?
Why do you keep an XP partition for games and Steam? I use windows 7 and it works fine. It doesn't creak at all. I'm definitely not pro-windows, but there is no reason to keep XP around anymore, just upgrade to 7.
Ah crap. I knew I should have told my father not to buy that bluetooth mouse and keyboard set. I'll just send him an ICQ message to let him know that his new gear won't work.
Wait a minute... I used it the other day! It just worked! He's not a programmer, he can't set his TV up without my assistance and he managed to do this by plugging it in!
Yeah, I agree with you: that Linux shit is just awful. Nothing ever works.
Linux could be a good gaming platform .... but unless we are talking about simple games, it will never be.
The main reason: X-11 is a HORRIBLE performance hog. On top of that, you have crapware for video drivers (even the ones developed by the vendor).
So NO. It is not better than anything else. It's not even at the bottom of the list. It is not even in the list. There is very little chance Linux can be a good gaming platform the way it is today. It has LOTS of things to fix and replace before it can even make it into the list.
I guess quite Valve will sell quite some games to Linux gamers, but it will not change anything about Windows being the main gaming platform for PC gaming.
First, there is the HUGE amount of previous games, which still won't work correctly on Linux. That would mean gamers would have to set up a separate Linux installation, maybe by dual booting or getting another PC, just to be able to play both new and old games - which would also mean having to reboot if you want to play a game only installed under the other OS. Combine this with the second point - that game developers will not suddenly switch to "Linux only", because they still want to sell games to all those WIndows users, and there really is no incentive for gamers to switch to Linux. They still have their Windows OS which can play all old and new games, so what REASON would there be to switch to Linux? There would have to be an IMMENSE advantage to using Linux to play newer games, like either some new AAA games only available for Linux (which won't happen), or the performance difference between the two OS so big that you could get away with a PC a generation or two older than on Windows to play the newest games - and even that would only interest the hardcore gamers, normal people do not really care about benchmark numbers.
Your type of *NIX supporters can suck a ****, you're nothing but fanbois. Your loyalties do nothing but destroy the OS and the distros to the point where you can't even release something worth using. As a Slackware user since ver. 2.5, I've seen how destructive you assholes are on a regular basis. It's getting grating and annoying, it's been nearly 20 years now, drop the hostility.
Yes, I said it.
I don't get it, NVIDIA release proprietary software on Linux and the community react like someone shit on their living room carpet, but when Valve do it, it's great news?
I think the Free Software purists won't be happy about Steam in any way shape or form. And the community is made up of a lot of different opinions and you'll see that people have varied opinions about Steam. However, they have certain redeeming factors: They have been hiring people for fixing not only bugs in AMDs and nVidias driver, but also in the kernel and in OpenGL. They are actually contributing more than nVidia already.
I'd also like to point out that there's a difference between a userspace program, and a driver that's needed to make your computer run as good as it possibly can. nVidias driver has been better than a lot of others, but it's been problematic to get them to follow stuff like for instance KMS, or get them to release drivers for their Optimus technology. They are appearantly horrendously bad at communicating with Linux vendors and open source guys, and Valve is already better than them in that department.
-- Linux user #369862
Oh yeah? Wake me up once they get around to releasing Episode 3. So far I have surpassed Valve's ep3 revenue by about infinity percent.
This has nothing to do with the original argument. It went from "they're not gonna make money off Linux" to "Boo hoo they haven't released EP3 yet". You are aware that they have other games?
-- Linux user #369862
Did I insult a Linux fanboy or a Windows shill? Inquiring minds think you're a punk.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm using steam with wine http://www.winehq.org/ ... No stupid MS OS here, no sir.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Windows 8, on my old c2quad processor and my GTX 570 video card, gives me 5-7 more fps than Windows 7 does.
Valve will make money with OpenGL games, etc, under Linux, for those that decide to code their stuff for it and make it compatible - simply because there's no real alternative other than WINE (and it's ilk)
Would be awesome if Windows users stopped buying their games to show em who's boss...
Since you don't have to choose hardware depending upon OS support on Windows then I assume that you somehow have found a way to make for example iPhone appliences to work with your Windows computer?
I have a feeling that this will be a really good thing for Linux, gaming and the community. Valve are at least focusing on an Ubuntu LTS release and they might have a few bugs/issues to start with, but the biggest thing that will drive this forward is that the community itself will rally round and help too and the possible standardising that Valve can bring to the table, as well as the games themselves. Other Linux distros will jump on board as it gets more popular and the big question of "does it run Steam?" will hopefully be another incentive to drive Linux forward.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
I can't recall needing to change my audio configuration for games. Changing it many years ago to get it to work with Flash? Yes, I remember that. But, I also had problems with Flash under Windows back then too (couldn't watch videos on Windows without it stuttering like hell).
Eh? I just launch "Left 4 Dead" from the Steam window or from the "Windows Games" menu under the crossover games menu?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
That's great but; and be completely honest here, how much time did you put into getting your linux distro working with all your hardware? Did you buy hardware specifically because it had known compatibility with linux? It's not like I'm a linux noob (only OS I used 1999 - 2004) or haven't tried recently (little over a year ago tried ubuntu and a few others) but every time I tried, I found everything just worked, and then I would install something from a package manager and it would need a completely different audio or bluetooth stack than the one that I had working and then nothing worked until I'm rooting around in config files to get everything sequenced right and it just wasn't worth my time.
As for people saying I'm buying hardware for windows; be honest here, pretty much all consumer PC hardware has solid windows compatibility. There's the occasional mac-only hardware but most mac hardware has windows drivers out there as well, and software in windows doesn't have to be configured to support particular driver interfaces because windows presents only one.
So really, how much time did you spend getting your *nix just right so that you don't have issues with graphics/audio/bluetooth for any apps/games? I have a wife and kid, if I want to play a game windows gives it to me without hesitation or struggle so I can enjoy the 20 minute free times I have between life. And if I want to nerd out and apply my mind I pull up emacs and write some haskell rather than digging through config files in *nix.
I'm a Lniux/Unix user, enthusiast, evangelist etc etc but I must say this guy from Valve is clearly misunderstanding what Windows 8 is. Yes, the RT (formerly "Metro") side of windows 8 has its own app-store for WinRT-based apps, and is less of an open platform, but such is not the case for the "classic desktop" mode which is where the .NET, Win32 and COM based binaries run. The RT 'experience' only supports apps written in the Win8 RT sdk, packaged for WinRT kernel, distributed via their app store and subject to their UX and performance rules & guidelines. All "traditional" windows applications run in the desktop mode, are NOT distributable through the windows app store, and are not subject to the rules & guidelines of the RT apps.
Now, that said, ARM based devices will only be able to run the "lightest" version of Windows 8 which supports only the RT mode, no 'classic desktop'. Of course, this being the first Windows OS supporting ARM, this can be seen as an 'additional' windows platform, not a shift from one to another.
I think more than anything, this shows that Microsoft hasn't done the best possible job in making the RT/"classic" distinction clear to the consumers. Being sued and having to drop the "Metro" title after consumer previews were out in the wild probably didn't help either.
I can't remember ever spending more than an hour or two to get audio working in Linux, and that was the exception. Once it's working it's working. With Windows however, I have waited months and months at times for new drivers when going from 2000 to XP and from XP to 7, for instance. I've also had cases where mfr's drivers simply did not work, and there was little I could do to get around that. Sometimes Linux takes a little tinkering in regard to drivers, but at least you have a viable option of doing the tinkering and making it work, whereas with windows you're pretty much at the mercy of the vendor to give you support.
Unfortunately, I do. I have a fairly large collection of games on their platform and am not about to give them all up. I could do without a good portion of them, but there are others I play fairly regularly, so I'm pretty much locked in at this point unless I want to re-purchase all of those games all over again.
Since i see more androids than iphones, my guess is it's a circle of friends thing.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Installed Kubuntu, then checked the box in the driver manager for the proprietary nvidia drivers. I think Kubuntu took 20 minutes (including downloading updates while installing), proprietary driver about three minutes, including the reboot. That was it... Now, getting Windows 7 working on it... That requires me to download a whole bunch of drivers and install in different ways. Some stuff I have to navigate to an inf file (the card reader), others have an installer (graphics card) etc. I'm pretty certain getting a 'base' system takes me a few hours on Windows.
I guess Linux OEMs like System76 would count as a 'yes'? And stuff from Arbico and PCSpecialist would count as a no?
Except it doesn't. I've had to deal with imaging numerous systems and every big move performed for a Windows upgrade (ie: XP > Vista > 7) just made a subset of hardware useless. I can't say I had the same experience with Linux (SuSE 9 > SuSE 10 > SusE 11). This was both from respective major OEMs that support those operating systems officially.
I guess if I installed from scratch, under two hours, including download time for the ISO, burning, installing Kubuntu, checking a box in the driver manager, installing crossover games, installing steam and then downloading (where about an hour is eaten) and installing left 4 dead.
No configuration files or terminal prompt, just running installers.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I'll bite, I have ever habitted to keep ~100gb of unpartitioned space on every system I install in case I want to pop another OS on. I'll give kubuntu a try tonight when I get home. How's dual-video card (one on mobo) ati support these days?
"the desktop" -- you mean the thing that MS got rid of and put
a push-button smart-phone interface in place of? That thing that MS made impossible to boot into?
Yeah, MS was forced to leave Win8 booting up in "unlocked mode" as an option for Win8-ready computers, *this time*... but win9?... Windows will be about as viable of a gaming platform as an iphone or a closed console.
While game manufacturers are currently ripping off Win customers by subsidizing console licensing fees, don't think that MS isn't going to notice this and -- well, since the fee is already being charged, it makes sense that MS will start charging a PC-licensing fee in order to run a program on the PC -- Win9, win10? Everything is setup to turn the PC into the same closed model as a verizon phone. The new UEFI bios checks the serial numbers of each part and checks whether or not you bought a license to upgrade that part -- and rejects parts you didn't buy a license to upgrade! This feature is ALREADY in the current UEFI bios's it's just not activated -- I know this due to a fault bios in one of my machines that randomly fails to boot due to my having upgraded the memory in my machine from the 4G it came with to 48G. Now it complains half the time when I boot about one of those chips having a serial number that has changed (they've ALL changed -- I said it was a faulty bios) and refuses to enable the memory chip preventing the machine from booting. The computer and bios are under warrantee, and the license check code, I've been told is being run due to a fault BIOS -- it's not suppose to be active "yet".... But all the pieces are being put in place so that you won't be able to upgrade your PC, let alone boot a non-approved OS, in the future.
Of course this all is kept with encrypted keys in the 'paladium' TCM chip that will ensure no HW/SW tampering has been done in a machine before allowing it to boot in secure mode (if it allows it to boot at all).
All the pieces are being put in place to take complete control of our PC remotely by multiple players who buy into the corporate control structure.
BTW -- the memory chip error comes up from the BIOS -- and disallows any boot -- (the machine currently runs linux, NOT windows).
Everybody knows Windows is bloated beyond comprehension.
This is funny, you got it completely backwards. Leaked Windows code on bittorrent shows it to be of very high quality, says those who looked at it. Whereas Linux code is of bad quality, as several developers say (including Linux developers).
Linus Torvalds:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/22/linus_torvalds_linux_bloated_huge/
Citing an internal Intel Corp, study that tracked kernel releases, Bottomley said Linux performance had dropped about two per centage points at every release, for a cumulative drop of about 12 per cent over the last ten releases. "Is this a problem?" he asked.
"We're getting bloated and huge. Yes, it's a problem," said Torvalds.
"The kernel is huge and bloated, and our icache footprint is scary. I mean, there is no question about that. And whenever we add a new feature, it only gets worse."
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Linux-Linus-Torvalds-kernel-too-complex-code,14495.html
"Torvalds recently stated that Linux has become "too complex" and he was concerned that developers would not be able to find their way through the software anymore. He complained that even subsystems have become very complex and he told the publication that he is "afraid of the day" when there will be an error that "cannot be evaluated anymore."
Andrew Morton, Linux kernel hacker:
http://lwn.net/Articles/285088/
Q: Is it your opinion that the quality of the kernel is in decline? Most developers seem to be pretty sanguine about the overall quality problem. Assuming there's a difference of opinion here, where do you think it comes from? How can we resolve it?
A: I used to think it was in decline, and I think that I might think that it still is. I see so many regressions which we never fix.
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Active_Merge_Windows
"the tree breaks every day, and it's becoming an extremely non-fun environment to work in. We need to slow down the merging, we need to review things more, we need people to test their [...] changes!"
BSD developer Theo de Raadt
http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo.html
"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"
Lok Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based maker of networking gear, started out using Linux in its equipment but switched to OpenBSD four years ago after company founder Simon Lok, who holds a doctorate in computer science, took a close look at the Linux source code.
"You know what I found? Right in the kernel, in the heart of the operating system, I found a developer's comment that said, 'Does this belong here?' "Lok says. "What kind of confidence does that inspire? Right then I knew it was time to switch."
Linus Torvalds yells at Alan Cox for complaining about Linux being broken making it difficult to write software:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2009/7/28/375
"You should have tried to fix the problem immediately, without arguing against fixing the kernel. Without blaming user space. Without making idiotic excuses for bad kernel behavior."
http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/ols_2006_keynote.html
"Last year Dave Jones told everyone that the kernel was going to pieces, with loads of bugs being found and no end in sight"
Regarding the "superior" Linux design:
Well, it has no design, it evolves randomly, rewriting large parts all the time just at biological evolution where Homo Sapiens come from. Surely that must be better than a design plan? New fresh bugridden code are always present in Linux.
http://www.datamation.com/open-source/linus-torvalds-tells-all-as-linux-hits-20.html
"Kroah-Hartman noted that Linux has taken an evolutionary approach as opposed to some kind of intelligent design approach."
The problem with Windows, is that until recently the design was a huge mess (b
Maybe HL3 will be used to force steam users on linux, just like HL2 was used to move people on to steam.
Umm, I'm pretty sure it was Disney who bought LucasArts, not Valve.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Ditto.
HDMI audio works like a charm in ALSA. I did have to choose the right HDMI channel for my surround type, but that was it.
Pulse... well I never did get more than stereo to work and it came out rather screechy.
I also had a lot of issues with Pulse and Wine, particularly with microphones and input devices. ALSA worked fine.
Pulse used to be good if you needed to mix multiple input sources without having one monopolize your sound device, but ALSA hasn't had issues with that in years on any device I've used. Pulse may still be useful for some bluetooth or distributed-audio stuff, but for most people it seems to be just excess baggage.
SDL?
Sound is a PITA in linux, but much of that is because some stuff was made with Alsa in mind, others with Pulse, etc. If Valve picks one or sets it up properly to allow user-choice, it shouldn't be so much of an issue.
Doesn't really matter because as it turns out I found out after giving a try last week, ATI has shit support in linux. I tried a variety of ubuntu's and all I got was the open-source drivers to work which don't have usable 3D performance for gaming, so right out of the gate linux lacks support for half of all available gaming video cards.
Luckily I have a choice, it's called windows, and in it I get solid 50fps in crysis on high and every other game I manage to play at a decent level of quality, so while linux may not support my system at all because I chose the cheapest ($500 !) system that would perform well, windows is more than happy to meet my demands.
Unfortunate though, as I mentioned, I'm sure if linux did have support the performance would be far better than windows because everything else being equal linux has a simply better kernel architecture.
How did it go?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Lost nights for a week trying to get it working, the only support I could get for ATI was the open-source drivers which are not capable of any 3d intensive applications. Tried Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, a minimal ubuntu to apt-get in only compatible packages, and gentoo. Each one failed with the closed source ATI driver, which I presumed due to what I read of the ATI driver requiring the kernel to have DRI/KMS turned off so I recompiled kernels in all of those distributions with the DRI/KMS off and each one had the same result, upon boot it couldn't even render frame buffer. Perhaps I need to give some kernel parameters at boot about how to initialize my frame buffer since the KMS is off but in any event that was a week lost with no benefits.
My take away: linux still doesn't support 50% of all video cards made for gaming (ati)
I'm sure if I had focussed my purchasing on hardware compatible with linux I would have had a different result but as it stands, I have a machine I spent $500 on that performs great for games in windows and all I had to do was pay attention to the price and hardware component performance with no attention to hardware component compatibility. Probably would have cost me more if I added the 3rd criteria of *nix compatibility.
So as I said earlier, it's a problem of robustness and consistency.. Linux has never had issues with quality, quite the opposite. But until it can serve that quality to a majority it has no chance on desktops for gaming or anything else short of development.
Considering that the basic open-source ATi drivers provide limited 3D acceleration (but still 3d acceleration), I'm just not believing you. I really don't.
What the fuck man, why didn't you just untick the 'DRI' option or KMS option in the configuration GUIs?
I wouldn't expect Windows to work any better if I was replacing random Windows system files from other versions of Windows in hope I could get some driver working.
And, in the worst case scenario where you can't even get x.org up (which I don't think is even possible not to happen these days because of VGA fallback?), could have modified the xorg.conf to disable DRI or told the bootloader not to start with KMS support. No recompiling, ever.
I think the problem is that you're just going against any normal way of doing things.
I sincerely doubt you even used the driver manager in Ubuntu/Kubuntu etc. at this point and instead manually installed drivers from the ATi website.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
*every* tutorial said the kernel needed all traces of DRI/KMS removed by compilation for the closed-source drivers to work, and for all my searching I could not find the "Driver Manager" it was mentioned in tutorial after tutorial but I guess the current version of ubuntu replaced it with something else? Searching the software package manager thing it had came up with no such thing, it's not like I didn't google enough I couldn't find anyone instructing to where it actually is or how to get to it, it was even mentioned in the built-in help but the built-in help gave no allusions as to where it was or how I get to it.
To be sure, ubuntu was horrible for actually finding *anything* also what's with everything having firefox to start? Performance on it was shit. Chrome on windows outperforms that and I'm sure Chrome on linux outperforms Chrome on windows, but oh wait, Chrome wasn't in the software manager program in ubuntu either so I couldn't just switch to Chrome while Firefox kept locking up.
You say I did things in non-standard ways, but all the instructions for normal ways to do things which I could find were mostly for older versions and couldn't be followed or assumed that I could find things that weren't plainly on the screen such as they should have been if they were important.
And I should have just changed the bootflags to turn off KMS? Really? You want me to have to go fiddle with grub and know the arcane syntax of kernel bootflags just to get working something that ATI provides as well as they can, to which the *nix community is apparently taking a dump on them by choosing open-source drivers instead (why not just present the bloody ATI EULA and install their drivers for ATI hardware??)
And your "the open source drivers are good enoguh" argument is crap. Seriously, look up the 3d performance of the open-source radeon drivers, it's well known they *support* some 3d operations on the hardware, but at absolutely no playable performance. The folks who made them really only did it because they wanted to use the 2d acceleration facilities.
Much like a Windows user, I don't use tutorials.
So, I did a fresh install of Kubuntu.
On Kubuntu by hand:
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Searching 'driver' in Kubuntu:
Step 1
I don't really use Ubuntu, I spend more time in Kubuntu, hence why my posts have been more Kubuntu centric.
It's not included with Kubuntu by default, but starting it from the menu should bring the installer up?
Which pretty much just uses the system package manager to automatically download and install it. The initial start was relatively instant too.
I don't know how putting the drivers manager in the system menu, at the top, really could be any more on screen importance when looking for it. Really. On Windows, it's buried in:
Start -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager
The work flow is practically the same for accessing the system's driver management.
It's harder on Windows, try disabling the signature verification on the bootloader so you can use unsigned drivers on a 64bit Windows Vista+ system. No GUI to do so like on Kubuntu and on top of that.
Sir, you are putting words into my mouth. You stated that you had no 3D acceleration, in which case, I determined that you verified there was NO 3D ACCELERATION ON YOUR SYSTEM. Considering that the opensource drivers OFFER 3D ACCELERATION, perhaps not great, but still SUPPORT does not equal NO 3D ACCELERATION. I didn't say it was good enough, I called you essentially a liar in regards to using the opensource drivers, no where did I state "the open source drivers are good enoguh".
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I messed up my images:
Manual by hand:
step 1: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58565/Web/Kubuntu%2012.10-2012-11-09-18-22-34.PNG
step 2: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58565/Web/Kubuntu%2012.10-2012-11-09-18-22-44.PNG
Search:
Step 1: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/58565/Web/Kubuntu%2012.10-2012-11-09-18-23-36.PNG
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.