Torvalds: SteamOS Will 'Really Help' Linux On the Desktop

nk497 writes "Linus Torvalds has welcomed the arrival of Valve's Linux-based platform, SteamOS, and said it could boost Linux on desktops. The Linux creator praised Valve's 'vision' and suggested its momentum would force other manufacturers to take Linux seriously — especially if game developers start to ditch Windows. Should SteamOS gain traction among gamers and developers, that could force more hardware manufacturers to extend driver support beyond Windows. That's a sore point for Torvalds, who slammed Nvidia last year for failing to support open-source driver development for its graphics chips. Now that SteamOS is on the way, Nvidia has opened up to the Linux community, something Torvalds predicts is a sign of things to come. 'I'm not just saying it'll help us get traction with the graphics guys,' he said. 'It'll also force different distributors to realize if this is how Steam is going, they need to do the same thing because they can't afford to be different in this respect. They want people to play games on their platform too.'"

Comments

Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't help GNU/Linux on the desktop. It will only lure people into using non-free programs distributed through Steam.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[MightyMartian]

It certainly will help Linux on the desktop if more optimized graphics drivers are made available. That's the whole point of this article.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

The gamers are still exposed to much more open source software than they would when playing the games on Windows. This, in turn, creates more interest to the open source ecosystem which then creates more commercial incentive to improve it.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[blahplusplus]

"This doesn't help GNU/Linux on the desktop. It will only lure people into using non-free programs distributed through Steam."

The problem with stallman is that he doesn't grasp that anything requiring years of education and basically amounts to a time commitment of a full time job needs to get paid for. The reason many free programs suck is because no sane programmer in their right mind can produce and maintain a project of non-trivial size that doesn't have a sizable community of tinkerers and paid experts from which to draw from like linux has.

GNU/Linux would be helped if they would allow some commercialization IMHO without any ability to make revenue, who can afford to maintain/update applications which more often then not require a serious amount of time and hard work?

The problem becomes as problems become non-trivial (aka beyond the realm of part-timers both amateur and pro) you simply can't maintain a project of any reasonable size and complexity for any given length of time because people have lives, get old, get sick, die, etc. That is why there needs to be some kind of income coming in to maintain any project beyond the trivial.

While I agree with many of stallman's principles, his allergies to commercialization show how naive he is. If he was serious he'd be rallying the open source community to invest in GOG.COM and get them to make an app that competes with steam that allows users to own their own games for instance. People like stallman don't get that the world doesn't work on hardcore morality, it works on time, energy, effort and what is required to maintain it.

A better idea would be instead of going against the grain of the world, intelligently build cultures that promote at least some of your ideals. The whole gaming world is going F2P/MMO/Walled garden. I'm sure Nintendo, Sony and MS are chomping at the bit to make every game 'online only' eventually after the smashing success of diablo 3 in terms of sales (the march of gaming morons continues).

A better idea would be to fund and protect those people who are at least selling products to have a compelling reason to use software you own. Steam won because it added a huge tonne of features sits like GOG.COM lack (Friends list, etc). It has all you gaming in one place, you can see when you friends are online, what game they are playing, can message them, etc.

The moral crusaders never got the message that they need to act more rationally and intelligently if they want any of their values to survive the onslaught of greed.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[DuckDodgers]

The counter-argument to your point about The reason many free programs suck is because no sane programmer in their right mind can produce and maintain a project of non-trivial size that doesn't have a sizable community of tinkerers and paid experts from which to draw from like linux has. is that many people - in fact, most of humanity - can't afford the technologically superior or more user-friendly proprietary alternatives.

The GIMP doesn't match up in features or usability to Adobe Photoshop. But if you don't have the money for Photoshop, GIMP is much better than nothing. Developing software for Windows on Visual Studio beats using Mingw - but that only makes sense if you're a professional developer planning to make a living by writing software for Windows. If you're trying to teach yourself software development, or you're a kid, or you just don't have $500 or $800 or whatever the hell it costs, then Mingw is the only thing that lets you even try. Most of our planet, most of humanity, are poor people. The successful IT professional can buy any proprietary program he or she needs - but we are not the typical human being. If they're going to reach our level, they have to do it through extremely cheap tools.

In the realm of encryption, it is increasingly difficult to trust proprietary products. With the Linux kernel, or Truecrypt, or any of the OpenPGP implementations, you can read the code yourself or hope that someone else trustworthy and skilled enough to detect backdoors has read it. With proprietary security products, how do you know?

But maybe most important of all, the competition against open source products continually forces the proprietary vendors to compete on features and price. If Linux didn't exist, maybe a copy of Windows 7 would be $600 instead of $200 and a cohttp://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/10/23/184236/torvalds-steamos-will-really-help-linux-on-the-desktop#py of Windows 2012 Server Standard Edition would be $8000 instead of $800 and Solaris or AIX would be $100,000 per core instead of whatever it is now. They keep the prices where they are for fear that people will decide an inferior free alternative and the extra work it involves is more cost-effective than their closed alternative.

Even if you only ever use proprietary software, you benefit tremendously from the existence of free software and its moral crusaders.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[twocows]

The problem with stallman is that he doesn't grasp that anything requiring years of education and basically amounts to a time commitment of a full time job needs to get paid for.

I hear this myth perpetuated a lot and it's not really true. Stallman has said on several occasions he believes developers can and should be compensated for their work and he believes this is perfectly feasible within a free software ecosystem. The problem is that many traditional methods of monetization don't hold up in a free software world and it would require people to rethink how they plan to monetize. That said, I don't think a lot of large scale development (especially from big devs who have been doing things with the normal model for years) can switch over without a lot of effort (and effort means money), especially when the end result may very likely lead to less income. Businesses don't work that way.

Stallman (and the FSF in general) also believes that any proprietary software is immoral and it should be shunned and not used ever. I agree that this is the right ideal, but I think the long road to it may require some sacrifices along the way. If SteamOS leads to a significant trend away from current ingrained non-free systems (like Windows), that in turn makes devs (like Nvidia's) play nicer with free software devs and creates a positive feedback loop. I believe that's a good thing, even if the fact that SteamOS is closed is not. I think the correct course of action is to urge Valve to try and free the software or to develop a fully free alternative rather than simply urging people not to use it at all, and I think this applies to other parts of a mixed-freedom environment. For instance, the FSF encourages the use of what it deems fully free GNU/Linux distributions, which are often just forks of popular distributions with any non-free software removed. I don't like this approach; I think a better one would be to make it transparent what parts are non-free and simply make it a top priority to free or rewrite these portions.

Stallman and the FSF are very interesting and make a lot of good points (if you read the literature they put out, it really does make a lot of sense), but it's always best to think for yourself and not blindly adhere to any ideology. What Stallman thinks and says is often interesting and insightful, but it shouldn't be the only metric you use to make a decision. I don't disagree with the FSF very often, but in this case, I do think SteamOS is good for the long-term prospects of GNU/Linux and free software primarily because of the politics involved.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[Belial6]

This isn't a problem. We need Stallman, and his extreme view on the subject. If he went pragmatic, the pragmatic view would be considered the extreme. The center would shift farther towards lock down and rent seeking. It is Torvalds that plays the part you would place Stallman in. We need both types.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[ausekilis]

It will only lure people into using non-free programs distributed through Steam.

It will also allow you to run free programs.

This point exactly. So with steamOS (and the right hardware) I can play Left 4 Dead 2 at a blazing 300 fps. Well, what happens when I just paid my rent and don't have the $50 to blow on Arkham Origins? Maybe I'll start looking at what I can get for free. That's when your normal (i.e. non linux nerd) folks will start to notice Tremulous or any of the other Id Tech derived games. They may even dig deeper and find some reborn classics like FreeDOOM. I doubt seriously that any of the free offerings will cause some uprising in gamers, but in the search of free through the SteamOS "software center", they'll be sure to stumble on all sorts of things they didn't realize had free/open alternatives. Maybe word will spread that LibreOffice will save that $90 for a student (read: Limited) version of Office or $400 for the full thing.
Gamers are a picky and often very vocal group. Once some catch on to something, they can start an avalanche.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[sayfawa]

A person makes the argument that if it weren't for open-source software, proprietary products would likely cost more. You point out that a limited version of Visual Studio is free. How is that a counter-argument? If it weren't for open-source compilers and IDEs (which have existed since before 2003), do you think Visual Studio would still have a free version?

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[Urza9814]

Most developers make at least $120K every year. And that is simply the net salary.

No, they don't. Perhaps you're thinking of the *top 10%* of software developers.

Re:Stallman ain't gonna be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

Paint.NET may not have as many features as GIMP, but it's equally free and not even close to as painful to use.

I can't seem to find the source code for the current version of Paint.Net

So no, it is not "equally" as free as GIMP.

Visual Studio is gimped version of proprietary IDE. Likely only made available to get people hooked on the platform, else they'd have to turn to open source compilers. It's competition driven by OSS/FSF.

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

That Linux runs on smartphones and tablets, as well TVs and many other appliances, does not a damn thing for its desktop adoption. Neither will Steam's little toy. What will get Linux on desktops is if software shops man the fuck up and port something like Photoshop, or any big-name video game, for that matter. Come on, Linus...if you're gonna say something amusing, then at least belittle one of your developers -- and with a racial slur this time.

-- Ethanol-fueled

Really huge

[faragon]

I hope this mean not only first class graphics API porting (e.g. OpenGL), but also production-grade computing API (e.g. OpenCL) without vendor-specific crap (try to rebuild OpenCL stuff with the AMD """""SDK""""").

Re:Not happening

[i kan reed]

No, it doesn't count as a linux desktop, but it makes certain that linux will be a target platform for PC developers. It pleases me, becaues games were pretty much all that keep me on windows.

Not so sure about SteamOS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not so sure SteamOS is going to be such a good thing for Linux.

Yeah, you'll get AAA games on Linux (probably), but if they start tying everything to proprietary APIs and specific environments (say, Ubuntu/Unity/Mir, or worse, some entirely proprietary stack built from the ground up on top of the kernel), that's a loss for Linux. Your freedom is gone and it's Windows all over again.

Corporations don't care about Linux and free software. We already have Google tightening its grip on the "open" Android. SteamOS will probably be more of the same: a corporation using the argument of "Open-Source" to lock users into their closed-source solution.

Re:This won't do anything for Linux on desktops

[icebike]

I'm guessing you haven't tried a Fresh install of any version of Linux lately.
Its no harder than windows. There is actually less tinkering required than with windows.
Especially for those distributions that have aimed their packaging at the new users.

The obstacle is that it was difficult to buy a pre-configured Linux machine. Nobody installs windows these days either. They buy it pre-installed.

Re:Taking Linux seriously

[gman003]

Slowly.

Valve plays an incredibly long game compared to most tech companies (hell, most companies, period). They started Steam because they could see where constantly-increasing bandwidth was leading. They missed on some of the particulars, but by getting the main point correct early on, they were able to gather the momentum to overcome minor obstacles before anyone else could seize initiative. So not only did they avoid being tied down to another company's proprietary platform, but they managed to become the de facto digital distribution system while still being a relatively minor player.

SteamOS is a defensive move. They're concerned that Microsoft may lose its Windows dominance, or might try to move it to an Apple-like locked store (they sort of have, with RT). So they ported Steam and their own games to both OS X and Linux.

That was enough to spur an initial kick of OS X games following after them. It's not nearly universal now, but it's respectable, and growing.

Linux didn't get the same kick, mainly because they don't have as much market share. So Valve is giving it more support, and perhaps more importantly, lending it a more prestigious (among gamers) brand name.

Will it be a success? Perhaps. At the very least, it's enough a threat to Microsoft that they're not going to try to take over the digital distribution market, because if they do, Valve will just drop Steam on Windows and enough publishers will follow them to wherever they lead that Microsoft will ultimately have lost. So in one sense, it's a deterrent. But it could become a legitimate gaming platform in its own right, particularly if they get enough console-like games for Steam Machines to go up against the PS4/Xb1 in the coming generation.