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Valve Reveals First Month of Steam Linux Gains
An anonymous reader writes with news that Valve has updated its Hardware & Software Survey for December 2012, which reflects the first month of the platform being available for Linux. Even though the project is still in a beta test, players on Ubuntu already account for 0.8% of Steam usage. The 64-bit clients for Ubuntu 12.10 and 12.04.1 showed about double the share of the 32-bit versions. MacOS use also showed growth, rising to about 3.7%. Windows 7's usage share dropped by over 2%, but balanced by the growth of Windows 8, which is now at just under 7%. The total share for Windows is still about 95%.
Games on Linux is good, but DRM is not. Hopefully Steam will stop using DRM one day.
At least on a Mac, I've found the client to be slow, frequently, unresponsive, and unintuitive.
Maybe Mac and Linux users just have higher standards, and won't put up with such poorly written software?
... and neither should you. Many of the games available via Steam are proprietary software. Proprietary software, as Richard Stallman (peace be upon him) has reminded us time and time again, is immoral and thus wrong for society. Who knows what games could by spying on you and subverting your freedom? Why would any right-minded GNU/Linux user defile themselves with such filth? Protect your freedom. Boycott Steam!
I wonder how many of the "Windows" users are actually just Linux users using Wine. Despite the Beta, I still do that for games (e.g. Civ 5) that don't have a Linux version.
That was my impression. I've tried the Linux Steam beta and it is terrible. It's slow, clunky and navigating it is a pain. it doesn't integrate into the desktop either, so the app looks out of place. At the moment there is only one demo (free) game for testing purposes and it doesn't run. While it is just a beta, this isn't a very good first impression.
Did you even read the summary? Linux is "debuting" at 0.8% and Mac use rises, so what exactly are you replying to?
I would add that the library of games currently available is very small, so I guess this figure is really quite impressive. Annecdata: most Linux gamers I know still use stream on wine because of whatever their current addiction is (dota2, counterstrike, skyrim, whatever)
And this is why we look like retards -- spelling and grammar mistakes in both the title and text.
I have been using Steam with wine for years and looking forward to the native client.
I DO have it running and it runs great on my machine: fast and bug-free on a Linux Mint 14 (KDE) system. (Mint 14 is based on Ubuntu.)
Of course I had to migrate from another distribution that is not yet well supported, but that is not a thing to expect sympathy about, nor do I ask for any.
The only thing I look forward to at this point is more games being ported over: I made one purchase of a supported linux-native game but have an OLD library that will still not work unless I go back to wine.
I think Valve has done a great job so far and hope for more improvements in the future.
I think getting the older stuff running as well will be critical for adoption- many of us have games we already paid for and want to be able to play natively.
They might show even better results if their client were designed to run on _any_ modern Linux. Perhaps their engineers are not that skilled?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
The Mac version tends to lose windows quite often as well. The news, library, game windows, etc. will be active (including the odd duplicate) and not appear on screen. Sometimes it just takes an extra five minutes for the news to load to tell you the latest deal.
Hopefully that's not the case for the Linux users as well.
Even if the number of Mac users is growing it doesn't mean the client doesn't suck. Steam on Mac is worst than iTunes+Quicktime+Safari on Windows.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
That was my impression. I've tried the Linux Steam beta and it is terrible. It's slow, clunky and navigating it is a pain. it doesn't integrate into the desktop either, so the app looks out of place.
Which is surprising since the Windows client runs pretty well using WINE.
Perhaps the sluggishness is the result of additional DRM enforcement in the client?
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
That's a very good point made by the parent, and it has plenty of precedent outside of the Valve/Steam games space. I appear in the statistics as a "Windows User" for Guild Wars 2 (and for many years previously for Guild Wars 1), yet there hasn't been a Windows box at home for years and years. This is sure to be happening for Steam "Windows" games as well.
Wine works perfectly for gaming these days. Beware the "Windows User" statistics!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Moderators, please explain which part of "Steam is a distribution system that uses DRM. They could choose to stop using it and still be a distribution system" is a troll. Steam is a distribution system. Steam uses DRM. The DRM is not an integral part of Steam; some titles on Steam don't actually use it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Nothing is worse than iTunes on Windows. It's literally the worst program in the entire world.
That was my impression. I've tried the Linux Steam beta and it is terrible. It's slow, clunky and navigating it is a pain. it doesn't integrate into the desktop either, so the app looks out of place.
Which is surprising since the Windows client runs pretty well using WINE.
I have both installed, and you are full of crap. Steam is slow, clunky and navigating it is a pain on both Windows and Linux. I suppose you could laud Valve for providing the same experience on both platforms, but that's really not much of an accolade considering how crap Steam on Windows is. Regardless, it takes just about as long for either Steam to connect, but it actually takes longer for Steam for Windows on Wine to display its interface after the nigh-interminable login process.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You've gone to far. RealPlayer is literally the worst program in the entire world.
That was my impression. I've tried the Linux Steam beta and it is terrible. It's slow, clunky and navigating it is a pain. it doesn't integrate into the desktop either, so the app looks out of place.
Sounds exactly like Steam on Windows, and people seem happy with that.
You can spend all your time fighting extraordinarily un-restraining DRM, or you can play games.
Stop looking a gift horse in the mouth. From the numbers, having Steam support linux games at all is pretty silly from the business perspective.
It's an act of good will that it exists at all.
So, keep complaining, if you think that's getting you anywhere. I'm going back to playing games
The survey contains a list of commonly installed software. How come the Java isn't on that list? Microsoft Office FrontPage is at the bottom of the list at 0.69%. Could it be that even fewer than that have Java installed?
The quality of the Steam client is the biggest issue I'd have with Valve. On the Mac I've found the following:
1) It's not uncommon for it to crash on quit.
2) Online/offline mode is flakey. On most launches it fails first time to go online, but on second try will. No other games or applications have issues here.
3) Initially the UI was buggy as hell. I think it's improved, or I just got used to a UI that appears to have been modelled on tacky MP3 player software from the 90s, or a game mods website. Another example is in how it does weird things when flicking between sections. I go to Greenlight and begin playing a trailer. If I switch to Library the audio continues, and if I return to Greenlight I see the trailer playing away. If I click on News, and then go to Greenlight it returns to the main Greenlight page. That's typical of the odd quirks of Steam.
In all, I find the benefits outweighing the issues.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Are we running the same Steam? I've been using it for years, and never encountered anything just described. It's quick and gets out of the way as soon as I tell it I want to play a game. In fact, my only irritation is that it has to install the DirectX runtime or VC RED (whichever it is) for each new game, but I sort of understand why it's doing that, and it only happens once.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
The Steam client itself works just fine. The problem is Valve's distribution system. I had 4 games that were listed as supported. Of those, two of them would not install (as in you can click the install button and it would give a message that it was installed but there would be nothing downloaded). One of them installed but would not launch. The last is TF2, and I really don't care to play that.
I'm not faulting them, it's still beta after all. I'm just not excited about a new platform to play games that are mostly available outside of Steam already with the added bonus of more TF2.
30% of Steam users have uTorrent.
You obviously haven't used Excel for Mac.
1) No multi-threading, which is a problem when the application pretty easily maxes out a core.
2) Bizarre keyboard shortcuts that don't match the standard ones used in most applications
3) Piss poor support for multiple displays, with a resizing bug that's been around for way too long
4) Excel documents don't show up in recent items in Finder
5) Excel addresses files using a path - not a reference to the file, meaning that it doesn't notice when open files are renamed or moved. It also gets confused if you have two mounted volumes (including the home folder) with the same name.
6) Very buggy AppleScript support. I know of no other application that so easily crashes while scripted to do fairly mundane things.
7) Uses its own internal clipboard, meaning that copying and pasting can be pretty bizarre. Copying something, and then closing a document alters the contents of the clipboard. It's also slow as hell. It's not unusual for me to sit there waiting 5 seconds to put a value from a cell in to the clipboard. I could understand this if it's pasting in to a cell that is referenced in heavy calculations, but for just copying a value?
iMovie 3.0 was pretty bad. I'd take Steam of that any day.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
?????
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
From the numbers, having Steam support linux games at all is pretty silly from the business perspective.
Steam is supporting games *from* a business perspective. Its very existence is being threatened. In future steam may only exist OS X and Linux. Its mistake was not expecting this sooner, and not supporting Linux earlier. The reality is Windows is going to be overtaken by Android this year...it actually makes sense to produce games for Linux first, and cross platform is a must in today's new world.
I buy a large number of games, most are cross-platform; DRM free and pretty cheap. I don't use steam because of DRM.
That's funny because I have been playing that free demo that doesn't run.
I have been also been playing other games. I bought them because they were cheap and thus represented little risk even in the worst case.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> 3) Piss poor support for multiple displays, with a resizing bug that's been around for way too long
Why would this ever be a problem? This is something that should be transparent to applications.
What happened to this great multi-monitor support in Macs and Windows that's supposed to make Linux look so shameful?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's definitely a bit on the clunky side with a Mac... Never mind that half the games they advertise to you don't run on your current system. Look at all these games on sale! XCOM: Enemy Unknown is on sale. You click it. Oh look, this doesn't work on your system. Want to discover a RPG or strategy game? Well you can't filter by OS X client and RPG. I'm sure you'd get less windows users if you treated them the same way. 342 games supporting OS X, unsortable... 1859 PC games, 38 Linux games.
a few things that hit me (with a grain of salt) : :D
more of the users (at least the gamers) are using microsoft works than openoffice!
very few like the 1200 horizontal resolution, 1080 is much prefered.
powerpoint is more popular than word
only 19% have internet explorer installed??
gimp is more popular than paint.net
all things that amaze me, bring the popcorn (to the salt) !
Agreed. And at least on my 2.6ghz Core 2 duo MBP, it uses up half a core idle with all windows closed. I have steam running on my Windows box idle with all windows closed and it's not even cracking 0%. Why should I play games on steam when the client eats up a full quarter of my CPU while it's supposed to be doing nothing. No downloading. Nothing. I haven't tested out the Linux client yet (I use Windows for games), but I hope there aren't the same issues. I would expect a more technically minded Linux audience to be less tolerant of such inefficiency.
I don't know what you meant with Steam not integrating "into the desktop", but Steam runs perfectly on my KDE. It minimizes to system tray and otherwise it is a good, well-behaved windowed app, not different from Firefox or Chromium.
Coding etudes
Works great on my MBA
The person you're replying too is trolling.
I can't speak to #1 as I don't have any spreadsheets complex enough to max out the processor long enough for me to notice.
#2 is false.
#3 is false.
#4 is false, his system is fucked if thats the case as its not up to excel to support the feature, its built into the OS.
#5 may be true, I've not yet noticed, but I wouldn't call that a bug, I'd call it a feature. Nothing is more annoying that moving a document to the trash, replacing a backup at the old location, then opening an app and having it edit the document in the trash rather than the one you restored, only to discover the problem after you delete the trash.
#6 not sure of.
#7 So do a lot of apps that provide functionality that the built in clipboard doesn't provide. Closing the app gets you a prompt that asks if you want to store the actual data on the clip board or clear it. If you tell it to store on the clipboard it renders to a more generic format and places it there, which is the same thing that happens when you copy from an office app to a non-office app anyway. While office apps are open, they don't store ALL the data from a copy on the clipboard, just the required reference to the data so it can be pulled up as needed. This is the EXACT SAME WAY it works on Windows.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I'm guessing Excel handles it poorly because it does things its own way, which just happens to be a wrong way. It has the resize bug, it places pop-up windows on the main display when the invoking window is on the secondary display, and the progress window for opening files is squished in to the top left corner because it doesn't know how to centre its position. My guess is that it gets confused when trying to manually determine screen sizes, which it really shouldn't have to do anyway on its own. It's as like as if Valve decided to include their own HFS+ driver with L4D2, so it can load support files. It's as pointless as it is dangerous.
Aside from only being able to the menu bar on one display, Mac support for multiple displays works very nicely. It's not the fault of the system when a bunch of cowboys ignore APIs in favour of using their own botched approach.
Oh, and modal dialogues for find operations? Batshit crazy!
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Why is it that they fix the case sensitive issue (I assume, since Linux is case sensitive by default) for Linux, but the Mac client still refuses to work on a case sensistive volume?
WHAT THE FUCK?
I could ramble on about how you actively have to do something stupid to not support case sensitive, but I'll leave that for another day.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Nah, I agree with GP... the Windows Steam client seems to have gotten much slower over the past year or so, at least with respect to browsing the store. Launching games you already have installed is pretty swift, though.
Speaking of which, what are the good Linux games in the Linux store? I played with the Steam Linux Beta a little bit last week, but their Linux section is kinda full of indie stuff, and using search seems to return results for all platforms. Couldn't even find L4D2 for Linux, and not really interested in Serious Sam 3.
Esp. interested in games for children, since I have this multiseat Linux box I built for my kids to run Minecraft, but I'm sure they'd love to have access to a little Steam library, and I sure as hell am not going to invest in a second machine and two Windows licenses for a gaming box for them :P
I'm not a stream user but your report mirrors most every account I've ever heard about Steam. Which is to say, a good to excellent user experience. Granted, I'm parroting. Furthermore, aside from select few users during the very early days of initial Steam on Linux closed alpha, I've never heard anyone report such an experience as the GP does on Linux. I expect he's an idiot, a troll, or an astroturfing. Given this is slashdot, take your pick.
"In future steam may only exist OS X and Linux."
Considering the amount of stupid things a person can read here I don't lightly say this, but this is one of the dumbest things I've read in quite a long time. Second only to some asshat spewing racist remarks in a different thread I read a couple days ago.
You need to pay attention, I am sorry that Microsoft is not the dominant Gaming Platform any more, Microsoft has been shitting on gamers for some time, and the after years of it playing second fiddle to its console, Today it tries to bad Adult games on the PC platform. Microsoft is Also unashamedly chasing Apple profits by locking down its platform to its store & Microsoft signed binaries this is not a secret...its common knowledge, its the whole reason for steam being offered on Linux (in my opinion all reason in the first place)..optional now...mandatory later. Windows is being locked down and Microsoft, not you have the key. Its not a secret. Stream entire business model is looking shaky.
The reality is its Windows being removed at being the No.1 gaming platform, Currently having 1.25Billion users with Android having 625Million last quarter, with activations of 1.3Million daily. The figure currently being passed around is 1.5Million ignoring the Christmas surge, its set to overtake Windows this year...its top downloads...Games. Considering the thrust of your less offensive argument is market share...its Linux that is becoming the dominant platform.
The reality is cross platform is becoming the norm, with Android becoming the goto platform, Linux is already benefiting for both the Massive Growth of Android...and the Abuse monopolist practices of Microsoft.
Implying I am a racist rather than providing a compelling argument is a little sad.
There are a lot of us out here still working on migrating from the wonderful Ubuntu 10.04 to something newer before the end of 10.04's long term support in April 2012.
In my own family, soon after April expect three brand new Steam customers shortly thereafter. We can't wait. Thank you Valve for finally accommodating families like ours.
Is their Office for Android in the works? Sounds to me like you're greatly overestimating the potential demise of Windows, just like Linux users have been doing for the decade I've been on /..
Did I say windows is going anywhere!?...Microsoft are going to continue to be the horrible abusive monopoly on Desktop they always have been, The evil fucks are locking windows into General purpose machines making them glorified electronics, but those are being outnumbered by these smart devices from the likes of Amazon; Google; Apple.
Well, Cubemen is a very nice tower defense game and should be fun for kids.
There is also a Linux version of Team Fortress 2, which you might be interested about.
more of the users (at least the gamers) are using microsoft works than openoffice! :D
very few like the 1200 horizontal resolution, 1080 is much prefered.
powerpoint is more popular than word
only 19% have internet explorer installed??
gimp is more popular than paint.net
The Office Stuff is confusing, but in reality I suspect this is more about how the questions were asked but Office 60% OpenOffice 15% Works 15% ...with the rest on Docs/Live with a little overlap seems about right.
For Internet Explorer Safari 9% Chrome 12% IE 20%...with a massive Firefox win at 64% again interesting as although Firefox/Chrome was expected to do well in this demographic The heavy bias to Firefox maybe a little surprising, but not unexplainable.
You can picture how this survey was done, but you have listed nothing than unusual.
Although off-topic GIMP(name aside) has always been a great program on every platform, and part of my stock install. Lately though the project has become amazing, check it out.
I'm pretty sure you two are running the same version of Steam. The thing is, different people will have different expectations as to how their system should perform and so the definiton of slow and clunky will vary greatly.
I expect application to respond immediately, without any delay (especially visual) when I browse through their menus and access content stored locally. For me, the Steam client has always been too slow for what it's suppoed to do, especially with the introduction of Chromium. It's nice having a library of cheap games that I can buy easily, the holiday deals are awesome too, but it's just a frontend for buying and running some games. It should be light, it shouldn't be gobbling up this many resources. It's shoddy programming, unfortunately, but since most people think it's ok for the whole thing to function the way it does, Valve doesn't care.
I was disappointed that i could get Dungeon Defenders for Linux from the Humble Bundle, but not Steam.
Good-bye
Same steam... Perhaps different hardware.
Is that something new? I don't remember agreeing to that and find it to be a gross invasion of privacy.
You obviously haven't used Steam on Mac. I'd choose iTunes on Windows over Steam on Mac any day.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
There have been a handful of Linux versions making their debut as part of a HumbleBundle (or for that matter, HumbleStore launch) that later end up on Steam, including the Linux version. Amnesia, Superbros:Sword and Sworcery, and Trine/Trine2 come to mind. However, you're right that there are quite a few Linux versions of new titles that need to be ported to Steam. I'd suggest if we write to the Dungeon Defenders crew and ask them to offer the Linux version on Steam, they'll likely do so. Steam for Linux just came out of private beta recently (note: I have to commend Steam for permitting the hack allowing users not in the invite-only beta program to still use the Linux beta client, prior to the open beta) so there is a long way to go
A reminder for all that although Ubuntu is the only one on the list, you can run it on other platforms.
Valve has native binaries for Gentoo, SUSE, Fedora, and Arch
You can read more here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_under_Linux
On a personal note, while extremely happy that linux is finally gaining gaming ground, it sorrows me that they decided to put emphasis on Ubuntu, given its current questionable vision
I take it you never used Lotus Notes then...
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
I have one more irritation, at the moment it uses 130MB of memory just sitting in the tray. Now I have 16GB of RAM, but seriously?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
So many games are a pain in the ass on 2 monitors. Would probably play a lot more games there if it was fixed. I've bought quite a few games on steam. Got 51 there, which isn't that much, but not that few either. Would really love it if game developers stopped being incompetent asshats about dual screen. It's really the only reason I play so much WoW.
sounds like somebody's suck in the 90s.
Excel on WIndows has poor multi-monitor support, at least with some versions. It defaults to the older MDI few Windows applications use anymore, which only likes a single monitor. So to get two spreadsheets side-by-side on multiple monitors you have to fool it into opening a second instance and play games with opening files.
Note that comparing two spreadsheets is a pretty common task you'd want to do, not a fringe use-case.
Would you mind explaining to me why Steam has to install DirectX or VC Runtime with each game? I'm honestly curious and tried googling for an answer before and couldn't find one.
I always thought that one of the appeals of DirectX was that you install the latest one which all your games then use.
Yes. Itunes on Windows is the spawn of satan. I do own an iphone but I have never connected it to itunes and never will.
It's not Steam that installs DX with every game, the publishers write poor installation scripts that doesn't check for an existing DX version. Plenty of games doesn't run the DX installer, for instance Valves own games doesn't do it.
While I agree that the Steam client is purely written, often unresponsive and sometimes unintuitive, it's actually extremely functional. Steam is the only client I know that doesn't need to install games, that can verify local disk content and fix it without redownloading the whole game, that downloads the latest version of a game without needing manual patches later, that supports well working backup and restore of games and that offers you multiple languages per game. Most other clients fail at most or all of this. Uplay and Origin might seem a little more polished on the outside, but their internals are all fucked up.
What about Apple's maps software. That must be up there for the worst software.
I been using Linux Steam for about a month now, and it's running just as well as Windows does.
I'm not in the beta program, but found out how to set it up in Ubuntu. - Pretty easy.
Closer and closer to leaving Windows for good.
Valve MUST make Linux a viable gamming plataform, or they are out of the game.
That said, they get the same result whatever market share Linux gets. The reason they must run on Linux is not because everybody will sudenly switch, it is because they can use it to threaten Microsoft in the case MS extends their PC monopoly into the game distribution market.
The Mac simply doesn't enable such kind of "deal".
Rethinking email
...lets have a look at your waffle. First off gaming platforms xbox/ps3 are kind of small markets about 70Million give or take a few red rings of death. The Windows Market is 1.25 Billion.
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/12/latest-mobile-numbers-for-end-of-year-2012-this-is-getting-humongous.html On mobile phones "Gamers playing downloaded or networked games (ignoring pre-installed games that came with the handset) now number 1.2 Billion globally"
I'm not going to get in a discussion about what constitutes a gamer and what doesn't when your stupid point is your outdated notion that Windows is the dominant games platform. Its not true anymore, Hell it wasn't true the second Microsoft brought out the Xbox
I'm bored I'm going to play a little "Need for Speed Most Wanted" The top selling paid game on Android right now. (I'm actually doing Legend of Grimrock on Linux)
You must be new here. The post you replied to is none other than Twitter. Apparently he is now posting anonymously since all of his accounts are now in the shitter. Twitter is well beyond being a simple open source advocate, he is a fanboy and a lapdog of Richard Stallman. His paranoia has him thinking that everyone that doesn't agree with him are either an astroturfer or a shill. The real identity of Twitter has been revealed to be William Hill.
If you seriously consider installing packages for another distro, you are the Windows target market and should probably switch.
a .deb is the extension of the Debian software package format and will not work on windows. This is a link to a description of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_management_system. Its one of the many major advantages over Windows, its why linux is trivial to maintain, and windows isn't.
All it takes is a little bit of Windows bashing and good chunk of /. instantly becomes DRM apologists, eh? So much for ideological purity.
Right now they only have TF2 on Steam for free. If they can boost that with a few more, especially if they can get a big title like Dungeons and Dragons (which does a decent job of capture the pen and paper mechanics us old schoolers used), DC, Champions, or Star Trek they would probably see a significant uptake of Linux clients.
Why stop at Lotus? Pretty much anything that comes out of IBM is a monstrosity... even Eclipse!
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
They have a serious problem to real Linux acceptance. Besides all the chatter of DRM.
Here's the numbers at the moment, for games per platform. I'm just doing this by clicking the search without any search text,then selecting Games and then the OS. No text criteria used.
1,858 PC games
341 Mac games
38 Linux games.
Right now, they show 41 Linux games on the Linux link. I don't know what the difference is, and haven't bothered to look. :)
If my late night math is right, that gives 4,889% more games for Windows than Linux.
When we were discussing the Steam set-top boxes a little bit back, they had just about as many Linux games.
I love that they're embracing Linux. It would be nice if they actually had a lot of games.
I'll install it, just so there will be more in the numbers. I don't know how much I'll play. Just like the rest of the market, if there aren't enough games that people like, it won't be viable. The set-top box will help encourage developers, if it actually ends up in homes. At least they have a budget to push for it, but all the advertising in the world doesn't give you a high volume product.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Get the quote wright, eh?
( :
Valve wants their form of 30% rape to beat out MS's future 30% rape marketplace. I wish internationally laws would ban providers from taking more than a 5% cut on apps, music, and movies, books, magazines. It's too much power for Apple, Microsoft, Steam, or Google to be grabbing 30% of all intellectual properties. 5% is still too much but a bit more reasonable. Also, laws must mandate alternate marketplaces that can be selected by the user. Valve is really grasping at straws. Remember how a few months ago they boasted that a many years-old version of DirectX (version 9?) was slower than the latest OpenGL? They're just on a smear campaign to boost the last hope of 30% rape they can hang on to: Linux.
It better not be a case of hardware. The Steam client is slow and irritating on a quad-core i7 with 8GB. This is on Windows 7, so maybe things are different on another OS... but I doubt it. It's more likely a different level of tolerance for slow and shitty, or related to internet connectivity (the Steam client is basically just a really crappy browser). I have trained myself to always click-and-wait with Steam because of how slow it is to display anything.
Also, I frequently find that buying a game fails the first time with a timeout/unknown error message, but it works fine if I go back and try again.
Valve doesn't have 64-bit steam clients under any platform. The summary seems to imply that it does.
Maybe it meant to say that people with 64-bit linux installations, installing the 32-bit steam client.
I could be wrong.
Liberty.
Well, I installed it as a test and after a slight trouble caused by my 64bit OS I got it working. Easy enough, for me at least.
So, I browsed through the games and most of them weren't very interesting, but then I noticed Serious Sam 3 which looked like fun as hell.
And then I noticed one unexpected downside of being a Linux user: my hardware too old. In fact, I had to run an identification software because I had simply forgotten, what the hell I have in my machine anyway. It's just that, as I have been a non-gamer for many years, aside from adding more memory or a bigger monitor, I don't really buy new hardware unless something breaks. And when I do, I usually have to buy new everything because anything sold at that time usually doesn't play well together with my old hardware.
Console gamers have it easy.
I'll check back to Steam sometime in the future.
Not that this experience was in any way harmful to me, I waste enough time on perfectly unproductive things (such as procrastination, revisiting web sites to see if there's anything new and trying to choose a movie to watch) anyway, so it's not probably a bad thing that I don't play games too.
The person you're replying too is trolling.
Okay, I've been using Excel for Mac for about 15 years, and prior to that Excel on Windows for about 5 during college. I'm certainly not someone using Excel as an RDBMS and wondering why it goes slowly with hundreds of thousands of rows of data and thousands of lookups. I know when to switch to something like FileMaker, PostgreSQL, Business Objects or Tableaux. I've been using Macs since the system 7 days. And yes, I do send detailed bug reports and performance suggestions via the MS website. That doesn't mean I'm right, so I'll give you steps to recreate these issues and behaviours. All of the steps are performed in Excel 14.2.5 on Mac OS X 10.8.2.
I can't speak to #1 as I don't have any spreadsheets complex enough to max out the processor long enough for me to notice.
Build something reasonably complex. Doesn't have to be an insane spreadsheet that clearly should be done more efficiently or in another application all together. I see it all of the time, and I'm running a 2.53 i5 with 8GB of RAM. For example, creating 40,000 rows of three columns of random text (no more than 12 characters long), will max out Excel if I select all and copy. A lot of time when I'm scripting Excel, it's the only application where I have to add special delays, or write handlers to monitor its state, so my scripts don't cause Excel to die on me. In fairness to Microsoft, the current version of Excel 2011 is way more stable than the earlier 14.x releases, but still while it's not multi-threaded I'm seeing a lot wasted cycles that could be used to speed up my work. In my example, we're talking about a 1.2 MB xlsx file, with no calculations. That's pretty small.
2)#2 is false.
Command A is the keyboard shortcut for "select all". This is true in the vast majority of applications, and indeed Excel uses this in most places. Try, it. Open a spreadsheet and press Command+A. Okay, now press Command+F to open a find dialogue. Type something in to the box and press Command+A. Yeah, it selects all the text - just as we'd expect. Now press the Replace button, then click back to the text box and press Command+A. Oh, it doesn't select all. Command+A in that context is a shortcut to replace all. That's one example. Now return to your spreadsheet and click in to a cell. Type some text, then press Command+A.
#3 is false.
Connect an external display, with a resolution different to your main display. I generally use the 15" built-in (1490x900), with a 20" external display at 1680 Ã-- 1050. Open two spreadsheets, and place one spreadsheet on each screen (ensuring they don't overlap). Resize the spreadsheet on one display so it occupies maybe a third of the screen. Do the same to the other sheet. Now press the green button to maximise one of the sheets, and then go back and click in to the other sheet. Notice how it then either gathers the documents in to one screen, or resizes the other document in some nonsensical way. Okay, another test. While the spreadsheet on the external display is active, open an existing Excel document that had previously been saved while open on the main display. Note the loading progress bar is appearing towards the top left of your screen?
Also, open a spreadsheet on your secondary display and press Command+F. The find dialogue will probably appear on the primary display. I've seen the same happening for pivot table builder windows. One other annoyance of the find is that it's modal, so if I'm sweeping through a file to find things and change them, I have to close the find window to make changes. If performing the same find, I can of course use Command+G, but to a different find I must re-open the find window. Modal dialogues are so 90s, and really should only be used when changes made elsewhere would break the function being performed in the dialogue.
#4 is false, his system is fucked if thats the
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Why would this ever be a problem? This is something that should be transparent to applications.
What happened to this great multi-monitor support in Macs and Windows that's supposed to make Linux look so shameful?
Step 1: Install Windows XP on system with nVidia card and multiple outputs
Step 2: Install Office 97 Pro
Step 3: Put any Office application on the second display, and click on a pull-down menu.
Step 4: Laugh and laugh as the menu appears with the proper X and Y offset, but on the wrong display
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Mac version tends to lose windows quite often as well. The news, library, game windows, etc. will be active (including the odd duplicate) and not appear on screen. Sometimes it just takes an extra five minutes for the news to load to tell you the latest deal.
Hopefully that's not the case for the Linux users as well.
So far, actually, I haven't had this problem, and I launch the client every couple of days to see if anything in my library has been ported. I launched the Windows client (under Wine) for laughs today and it shit itself, and it actually has only been a week or so since I last launched it and let it update. It took even longer to log in than the Linux client has been taking, and when I accidentally clicked close instead of quit I was rewarded with an unresponsive taskbar icon, and I had to kill Steam.exe manually. But to be fair, Steam's performance on Wine is a poor indicator of performance on Windows.
The login does still take much longer than can be justified. What fucking year is it, Valve? Lay on some capacity, or come up with a login technology that worked as well as the stuff we had in the eighties...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
2) Online/offline mode is flakey. On most launches it fails first time to go online, but on second try will. No other games or applications have issues here.
On Windows there is the opposite problem. After Steam crashes (it does that there, too) it will often start up in online mode even if it was in offline mode when it crashed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Anything from BMC gives Lotus Notes a run for its money in sheer horribleness.
Are we running the same Steam? I've been using it for years, and never encountered anything just described.
Lucky you. I have no idea why it takes half of forever to log in but I always assumed it was a poor network connection... until I arrived home and it still acted the same way. *shrug* Maybe Comcast is doing deep packet inspection and delaying the traffic as much as a poor network connection would?
In fact, my only irritation is that it has to install the DirectX runtime or VC RED (whichever it is) for each new game
That is not a Steam thing. It is an game installer issue. It is easier to run the installer for DX/VC than it is to check the versions of all the required libs (which is what the DX/VC installers do).
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
At least on a Mac, I've found the client to be slow, frequently, unresponsive, and unintuitive.
Maybe Mac and Linux users just have higher standards, and won't put up with such poorly written software?
If this was true, they wouldn't be Mac or Linux users.
Because every version of DirectX has its own quirks and the game is only garanteed to work with one specifik version.
Thanks for the explanation. Seems kinda wasteful, eh?