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Steam For Linux: A Respectable Showing
An anonymous reader writes "Valve has just released its February, 2013 Steam Hardware & Software Survey, and the results are absolutely mind blowing. Linux is now standing strong as a legitimate gaming platform. It now represents 2.02% of all active Steam users."
That's in keeping with what new submitter lars_doucet found. Lars writes: "I'm an independent game developer lucky enough to be on Steam. Recently, the Steam Linux client officially went public and was accompanied by a site-wide sale. The Linux sale featured every single Linux-compatible game on the service, including our cross-platform game Defender's Quest. .... Bottom line: during the sale we saw nearly 3 times as many Linux sales of the game as Mac (Windows still dominated overall)."
http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
Not a bad showing for Linux, all things considered. The top variant of Linux is nearly tied with Windows 8.
Yes 2% share in a few weeks VS a gigantic company that has thrown billions into advertising.
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
If that happens Steam may end up with the equivalent of the ASUS tradeshow lunch with Microsoft after which the CEO of ASUS publicly apologised for linux on netbooks and discontinued selling them. Microsoft probably have Steam by the balls almost as much as they have ASUS.
While there's certainly some indie games, games like Counter-Strike (standard and Source), Half-Life, and Team Fortress 2 are available and are quite popular. Not bad for starting out for a new platform. I'm sure that'll increase in time.
You buy the indie bundle... humble bundles for example and you are entitled to a DRM free copy. Awesome.
You use the steam key anyway because its as easy as using any other linux package manager. You select what you want, you click play and a few minutes later your playing. You switch to your laptop up stairs, launch steam, click what you want ... and start playing.
The DRM free direct downloads are great in the event steam fails or is down or something. But honestly, for all that I dislike about steam, it is easy to use. I use GoG a lot too, but find myself wishing that I could download and install those games via steam as well. Its just nice not to have all the clutter of manual downloads, manual patches, expansion packs, etc.
What is your point, and what exactly are you talking about? Bing *or* Windows Phone?
And this is not "Linux 2%," it is "Steam for Linux 2%." Big difference.
I think Valve (the owner of Steam) are going for Linux because they are afraid Microsoft will eventually turn Windows into a "walled garden" like Apple's iOS, introduce their own application store and force out competitors like Steam.
Gabe Newell said:
We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It is a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.
quoted from http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/07/26/gabe-newell-windows-8-is-a-catastrophe
C - the footgun of programming languages
He's not confusing iOS w/ OS-X. He's stated the facts about OS-X - that its numbers are static. However, the least that can be said for OS-X is that it at least makes margins that continue to fund the development of the Mac platform. Which unfortunately can't be said for Linux.
For Windows Phone, it's just been out, as opposed to Linux, which has now been there for more than a decade. When you're stuck at 2% of the market year after year, it's worth looking into what you are doing wrong. If in a year or 2 Windows Phone hasn't moved (as it probably won't), it would be valid to call it a failure.
Problems w/ Linux have been that it's based on a license whose copyleft requirement prevents any distro from being profitable (w/ some rare exceptions such as Red Hat) and whose lack of compatibility b/w versions has meant that even if an application is developed for one version of a Linux distro, there is no guarantee that it will be easily installed and run on a subsequent version of the same distro. That, coupled w/ a lack of drivers in the first place, make Linux tough to adapt even for those who genuinely want to give it a try, but are not whizzes in bash or any other *sh. Linux could have used someone like Apple doing what it could to completely hide its Unix underpinnings from the user, so that both installation and usage would be seamless.
Sooo let me get this straight...you installed an OS that came out FIVE YEARS before the hardware was made...and are bitching it didn't have a driver? Really? I doubt Win95 would have drivers for that new Core 2 Duo which just proves Linux is the best evar!
Do you see ANY B&M stores carry your product? No. Do you see any small shops like mine carry your product? No. Well why? We don't get ANY breaks on Windows pricing so by carrying your product we could raise our profits by a good 40% or undercut the competition, so why?
Again I DARE you to take the Hairyfeet challenge. take ANY distro that comes out on what Linux considers a normal release schedule, which seems to be 6 months to a year and a half (No LTS because Canonical has abandoned it for a rolling release), now download the one from 5 years ago (Again I'm rigging the test IN YOUR FAVOR by making your product only support HALF the length of Windows support) and then update to current using ONLY the GUI, as a normal user would. Go ahead, I'll wait...what was that? Your drivers broke? Well there you go friend, now you see the problem.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have actually used it since the beta invite popped into my inbox. For those of you who havn't tried it here is a short summary:
I run Arch Linux, which is not supported. Valve only supports Ubuntu and provides the software as a .deb file which contains the "bootstrapper", basically a "netinstall" version if you were to make a comparision to the average Linux distro. The bootstrapper is easily taken apart via a script in the custom installer program that some of the Arch Linux folks whipped up and ends up installed system-wide by default.
This caused some problems for people like me, who are too paranoid to install untrusted software system-wide or even in my own home directory. I gave it a separate user account and denied the installer root access (which it asked for every time it tried to auto-update). It cried and bugged out, but you could run TF2 from day one. As they continued to improve the software they actually listened to the complaints at github (where they keep their Linux issue tracker) and made the software runnable as a regular user. It now resides completely inside my 'steam' users directory and the bootstrapper is long gone from the system-wide install.
If you are like me, and only run ALSA, hating PulseAudio's tentacle guts, you can actually run Steam anyway. They are using SDL as the backend, so when launching Steam you just export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa before running it, and you'll get sound! Even in-game voice is operational, but you still can't permanently disable it to get rid of all the jackasses screaming into the microphones.
Steam itself still uses the look from it's Windows roots, the ugly custom-skinned UI. And it can't be resized on my machine, which runs PekWM. It is also slow as molasses to start, and so is TF2. That might be in part to me using ONLY a 3G modem for my gaming though. The store also works like a charm.
An interesting feature is that you can actually switch between the OpenGL game window and the rest of your desktops seamlessly, with no apparent bugs or performance loss. Faster and more painless than on Windows. This wasn't always the case though, as early versions would switch to your desktop as soon as you got an archievement and completely screw up your mouse input once you switched back. This has been long since fixed though.
The only recent bug I came across was an apparent lack of support for multi-user environments, where I once started the bootstrapper as my regular user by mistake and let it install, thinking it was an regular update. Once it was up I figured what was wrong, uninstalling it and starting up as the 'steam' user, whereas it sefaulted hard. It took several hours and a lot of support ticket reading to figure out that leftover temporary file descriptors left from the first session screwed up the second one. Kinda stupid bug for a modern software, but that's what beta testing is for I suppose.
For me, Valve has really made my Linux experience a lot better. Hat's off to them. Now I just need to find some TF2 servers with players that are as beligerent and offensive as me!
Know what is fucking sad? That you consider that acceptable, that is fucking sad. So here you are ADMITTING that your drivers are only good for 2 years MAX, is that correct? With the average lifespan of a modern PC being 5-8 years, did I read you right?
Until a manufacturer can release a product with a driver on the disc and know that driver will work for the lifetime of the product? I'm sorry but your OS isn't ready for the masses, its not. And tell me friend, what makes you think Linux Toravlds is smarter than the devs of BSD, Solaris, OSX and iOS, Windows, and even OS/2? because they ALL HAVE A DRIVER ABI and Linux does not. I'm sorry but when that many development teams go left and you go right its not "cool" or trendy, its you being an arrogant ass just for the sake of it. Linus, like too many of the devs, don't give a shit how much pain he causes the end users as long as it "Works for me (TM)" and it is THAT kind of attitude that has left Linux flatline.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.