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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.'"
This doesn't help GNU/Linux on the desktop. It will only lure people into using non-free programs distributed through Steam.
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""""").
I would be extremely surprised if anything but an infinitesimal minority of people who buy this are not favourably biased towards Linux already, and may similarly be already running it on a desktop anyways.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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I only have windows to play games on....So if your telling me my next PC can play all the games I want and not require me to play for a operating system I'm all excited!
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.
Gaming driving the serious train.....wooooowooooo.
THIS will be the thing that will really help Linux on the Desktop as desktops slowly disappear. It's always something, and it so far hasn't happened.
Well, the folks who only play games on Windows might. Or they might dual boot, and use Steam on Linux. And a lot of people cite the absence of Triple-A games on Linux as being the big thing stopping them from migrating.
Certainly, it isn't going to hurt anything :)
Seems to me that Steam is already an "app store". Distributing non game software through it shouldn't be a problem, really.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
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.
Linus specifically stated (RTFS idiots) that this may have been what pushed Nvidia to finally begin supporting the Nouveua project (open source) and that helps Linux on the Desktop as we gain more traction for stable drivers - be them video, audio or networking.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Steam already does sell non-game software: Steam Software
steam works pefect in GNOME shell in archlinux. unity is not a requeriment.
nobody is going to buy steam OS
Well, considering Steam OS itself will be free...
His point is people won't see the steambox as a desktop.
If Linux is gathering Steam then it can't just be vaporware.
Why not? Increasingly games are using standard APIs and getting multi-platform releases. They're not tied to an OS anymore. A Windows license is a huge, unnecessary expense for PC gamers. Gamers worship hardware and entertainment software, not operating systems. They're going to go with whatever has support for the hardware they have and the games they want to play. With Valve pushing Linux and GPU makers joining them, all the pieces are in place to dethrone Windows or at the very least drum up some competition.
If Valve can help resolve whatever problems you think still require documentation, then that will yield a positive result for distributions that aren't SteamOS.
If there isn't any need to consult the M, then there won't be any motivation to tell people to RTFM.
Although if Microsoft was dependent on people installing Windows on their own they would have been dead a long time ago.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
At best it will force the hand of Intel, nVidia and AMD to make it so their drivers work on Linux, but everyone else, unlikely.
Well Intel and AMD are much better community players than is nVidia.
With the focus of Windows slowly shifting to tablets, and web based versions of their Cash Cow Office, and with Ubuntu's minimalist desktop or KDE's robust one covering just about anyone's needs for home computing, and small business computing.
IBM and Intel seem to have a different opinion of OpenOffice and OfficeLibre than you do.
The last thing holding home users to windows is TurboTax Quickbooks.
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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.
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Taking the platform "seriously" really hasn't anything to do with it. The game industry has always been a chicken-or-the-egg problem with Linux: Games spur adoption, but adoption is abysmal without the games. I'm not quite sure how Steam figures they will work around this inherent problem.
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Half a brain?
ESR is a pontificating whack job, who's only contribution to opensource was an open mouth and a single program so horribly written it was virtually unmaintainable.
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and that's why he was marked troll. Simply put, the problem that Linux has is a lack of open source support from Nvidia and other companies in regards to drivers. If the Steambox is what finally got Nvidia off the fucking fence about opening any of their information (at least in regards to the Nouveua project) it's a win for us. Hell look at the quality of the Nouveua driver - it certainly works almost as well as the god damn binary blob crap from Nvidia while not puking each and every time you update the system.
Anthing that Valve does to get the hardware working in Linux is a win for the community as that's what'll finally get some of the hardware vendors off their asses. As to your comment about the XBOne and PS4 - they'll run Linux but Valve isn't pushing Linux other then as an OS. They're going to offer an IDE and set of API's that leverage STEAM's DRM to the max while running that on Windows, Linux and what ever other OS they feel like. The advantage to them is that if ARM takes off like it could, they'll already have invested the time/effort to ensure they're STEAM application runs on that hardware instead of being dependent on Microsoft to continue selling games. In that case, it's simply CYA (covering yon ass) in case MS goes under or what pisses off their OEM computer makes badly enough that no one sells Windows based systems anymore. Could it happen? Maybe if Balmer gets out of the fucking way. Corporations wouldn't have an issue as MS would be like Apple then - providing the entire eco-system from desktops through Servers. What IBM tried to do.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I'd just be happy to see some decent development suites on the Linux side. Given that eclipse is one of the biggest, and it's still terrible in terms of stability and speed, I'm convinced that 99% (1% is the Linux kernel) that "high quality open source" is really just an oxymoron.
Because the Troll is missing the entire point of the story.
If Intel, Nvidia and AMD start releasing they're top tier drivers for Linux, it makes Linux as a desktop more viable for more people. That's what Torvalds is saying.
Not everyone is going to go and replace their Windows desktop with a Linux right away, but when it's time to buy their next PC, and they can get one for $100 cheaper (same specs) that will play their games, run their office suite, etc. That's where Linux can take a bigger bite out of the home desktop market.
The driver improvements are actually what Linus is talking about if you RTFA. That's how desktop Linux will benefit.
As for why SteamOS: about a year ago (I think) Valve demonstrated that you could get superior performance on Linux because the code was open. It's a lot easier to do optimizations on a platform when you have comprehensive documentation on how it works—and where the bugs are. Valve's devs were also greatly elated to discover that they could actually fix said bugs instead of just working around them, like they had to do on Windows.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Still, let's not completely forget the pretty login screens either. They especially give a nice and professional experience to new users.
For example, when you restart a Windows computer, you get this smooth transition to a screen showing "Restarting" with the spinning pearls animation. In Linux, on restart you might get the distro logo screen, which is nice, but it might not work 100% smooth: the animation might not be playing, or the screen is going black and coming back...maybe you even see some lines of console text in a framebuffer.
Not crucial things, but not impossible to get right either. Wayland will probably help too. In my perfect vision of Linux, it would be nice if these kind of purely aesthetic things would feel good from begin to end. Of course, in some terms Ubuntu is ahead of Windows 8 already, as the graphics of its colorful desktop look quite pro, instead of the harsh puke of colors in Win8.
Why mod Troll?
AC is dead on on this one. If you have an Xbox a PS3 and a desktop (Windows) why on earth would you want to run Linux on your Desktop just so you can game?
You wouldn't.
HOWEVER, if you didn't want to have to pay almost $200 for a proprietary OS that's so locked down and filled with trash it makes the Georgia State prison system look like an all-inclusive Hawaiian resort, then the fact that gaming on Linux is finally getting some respect would be a very good thing for you.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Torvalds is ESR with half a brain. If all he cares about is driver support why doesn't he just install Cygwin on a Windows 8 tablet and be done with it.
Um... because that's not all he cares about?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Simply put, the problem that Linux has is a lack of open source support from Nvidia and other companies in regards to drivers
While it's true that drivers are a problem, you won't get Linux on the desktop until AAA titles are released simultaneously on Linux.
When CoD:Ghosts comes out on Windows and consoles in a month, you'll know what kept Linux off the desktop.
The OP isn't trolling, despite the moderation. Nobody likes his truth.
One part of it is the gamers, but the other part of it is tools. The tools on windows are better. The only safety you have in the FOSS tools world is a potential to solve a tool bug yourself, which is not something people do on a practical level - it's hard to justify the time and cost to do so to an employer. This is actually a non-trivial hurdle: Why would companies build AAA titles for a platform with minimal adoption, all the while using a hodge-podge of tools with massive variation in quality to build it? Game devs are on windows because they generally don't have to fight the toolset to get things done. It's bad when you can say Emacs or Vim (with all the necessary plugins) is about the best "IDE" you can get on Linux. Anyone who thinks Eclipse is fantastic, I don't want to hear it - I've just had my workspace file corrupted - again - because Eclipse had an "error" while I modified some project settings. Fucking pile of garbage.
steam works pefect in GNOME shell in archlinux. unity is not a requeriment.
To add to this, I don't think SteamOS will use unity period. I suspect they'll use a custom window manager or perhaps full screen mode for steam os will be the window manager. I personally run steam in KDE without issues.
Yeah, great, but.... you have run silverlight based app via Wine, so it is kind of wierdly possible.. SteamOS can bring native Linux Netflix, at least there's hope.
Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? Let it play out. If you think it's going to fail, don't bother with it. Maybe you'll be right, and you can celebrate your rightness with another post on a /. story about it. If you're wrong, I think you'll probably agree that's also a victory of sorts.
As much as I want to see this happen, I still can't imagine it. Even with Valve throwing it's weight behind Linux, it's the same chicken-and-egg problem that stopped Linux desktop from taking over the world for the last fifteen years:
1. Every time a person is looking to buy a Steam OS box, he's going to ask himself whether there's a game he really wants on the horizon that is currently Windows-only. The answer is always yes, so he won't buy.
2. Every time a company looks to port a game to Steam OS, they're going to check the market penetration of Steam OS to see if the port is worth the engineering effort. The answer is sometimes yes, but sometimes no - and that's all it takes to keep a handful of games most buyers want off the Steam OS list.
End of story. I think the real "Linux on the Desktop" will be Android on x86_64. Touch screen laptops and monitors are becoming more common and cheaper, and in turn Android is getting more and more desktop user interface features and an ever-growing selection of applications. I think if Linux will ever own a significant portion of the desktop, that will be the route - not through the gamers, but through casual users. My kids already know how to use Android better than they know how to use Windows 7. If, five years from now, I give them a choice between a Windows laptop or the ASUS Transformer Prime or Android equivalent of the day, I think they'd opt for Android.
Perhaps drivers have little to do with low rates of adoption, but they -- specifically graphics drivers -- are 99% of my frustrations as a linux user (it's not just when there is no driver or getting the proprietary driver installed, it's little random bugs like the whole OS freezing on maximizing a konsole window that happen to be due to graphics driver bugs). I couldn't care less whether it draws more people to desktop linux as long as it makes my life easier.
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Don't forget that they have also gotten Steam running on more traditional distros (well, Ubuntu) as well. SteamOS could help them to iron out the kinks, generate greater driver availability get more game binaries made for Linux. With all of that worked out, you could start playing these games smoothly on your distro of choice.
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What this will do is encourage people to make their own HTPC. With Steam's new game pad and hopefully AAA game titles throwing something like XBMC along side it would make a pretty decent living room PC for a lot less than paying the Windows license. The drivers could be added to desktop distributions making those who already use Linux on the desktop happier and those sitting on the fence more likely to make the jump. Game developers already don't care about Windows but the PC game market is profitable and if Valve makes porting from console to SteamOS simple (which shouldn't be that bad since next gen consoles are x86 based) then more titles will show up on SteamOS before Windows. It's basically a role your own console. You can cheap out and put together an AMD APU setup with a couple GB RAM for a bit over $100 and play most games a mid to low res. When you consider that Xbox360 maxes out at 1080i/720p you could easily get that on AMDs next chips. Or you can just carry over all your Steam library and buy a card like the Radeon 7850 going for
TL;DR It will be better than you think.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Qt and Qt Creator is more than "decent". It's excellent. Especially when compared to Visual Studio -- and yes, I use both, professionally.
M$, with every iteration of xbox, has been subconsciously trying to diminish the viability of windows as a gaming platform, this is mostly due to the 10 dollar royalty they get for each xbox game, compared to no royalty for each windows game. Games are the last reason for many technically minded people to retain a windows machine. Dev's won't take linux over windows yet, but in three months...if it's easy to port from ps4 to linux...then gamedevs may start to view windows as "not a worthwhile endeavor". Though allot of how that will turn out depends on the ps4 vs xbone face-off that's going to happen soon.
The console crowd doesn't get to take advantage of PC hardware the way PC games do. Have you ever seen an Xbox hooked up to two or three monitors?
This is an alternative for PC gamers who might like to dump Windows and use an OS better suited for their games, coming from a company that already makes a lot of popular games. The people who will buy this thing are people who use PCs and are fans of Valve games.
The Linux fanboys don't need to buy the SteamBox; they'll just use their existing custom PC and run Steam on that, like they're already doing. This will merely help improve support for Steam on the Linux platform by getting the gfx card makers to better support Linux.
Look at all the Linux users...
As a Linux user, I have to say, you're seriously overestimating the market there.
How much of the gamer market would ditch Windows in the blink of an eye if they could play the same games on Linux
Even if every member of the intersection of "Gamer" and "Linux user" switched, devs would have to be shirt-soaking drooling stupid to "ditch Windows" for that tiny slice of the pie.
You might want to go read about it some more; what you're talking about is preemption. The kernel has been preemptible for years now. Here's an article about it from 2002: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5600
I like to bash Miguel de Icaza as much as the next guy, but he hasn't been involved with GNOME for many years now, so you can't blame the current state of GNOME on him. He left the project long before GNOME 3 was envisioned, more like back during the GNOME 1.x days or perhaps early early 2.x days IIRC.
The sad fact is, GNOME is largely under the control of Red Hat, as they employ several of the most prominent GNOME developers including Jon McCann. So if you want to blame someone for attempting to ruin desktop Linux with the abomination that is GNOME3, blame Red Hat.
Yes I already knew that Windows had moved graphics drivers out of kernel mode, and the loss in graphics performance because of it. That isn't what I was getting at. Windows is always interruptable and always preemptible no matter what ring it is executing in, no matter what ring drivers execute in. Is that true of Linux or not?
I reckon the degree to which SteamOS "converts" Windows people to Linux will depend on whether SteamOS allows for general-purpose computing. Take the scenario that boxes running SteamOS are just games consoles. People will be able to use them for games but not much else, in which case they'll still keep their Windows PC or partition for writing letters to the bank, or what have you. In this scenario, Linux would benefit from driver improvements but won't see much increase in user base. On the other hand, if SteamOS allows you quit Big Picture and enter a fully functional and feature-complete desktop then people may start to switch from Windows. Why boot into Windows if you can write your bank letter on Steam OS whilst taking a break from HL3? With an increased user base and a ready to go "app store" in the form of Steam, we might see more productivity software (e.g. Photoshop) appear for Linux. If Steam allows people to make money writing Linux software then that's got to be a positive thing. I know the die-hard free software guys shudder at the thought, but let's face it: the reason Linux is struggling on the desktop is because few developers think they can make money on the platform.
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Never mind. Kernel preemption was added in 2.6. Good for them.
They are not ditching Windows. They are making Linux a viable option. This is the first step on making Linux an equivalent platform. This is the next step on making Linux the preferred platform. THEN they can consider ditching Windows. Valve believes that Windows is currently the leading PC gaming platform. They also don't think it is a viable long term platform. Given those to assumptions, you neither ditch Windows today, nor do you just wait for your platform to collapse. You do just what Valve is doing, and build an alternative platform that is ready to take over when Windows fails. The best part for Valve is that if Windows stays as the dominant platform, they lose very little.
Sure I have. Installer crashed. Doesn't like my nvidia card. The windows 7 install was fine.
And I'll go as far as to say Linus is a "Desktop Idiot". Like the kernel devs at any Microsoft or Apple, he hasn't a clue what it really takes to make a decent desktop platform. The rest of the folks at the Linux Foundation seem to struggle with the question in a manner that is both half-hearted and hamfisted.
The first rule for them should be not to shove piles of 'packages' bereft of vertical integration (and unifying design) at consumers... Do not throw the products of server-room culture at them and expect that to be more than good enough. Second, do not automatically defer to "upstream" when something needs to be fixed... take responsibility. Third, don't wait 8 years to offer a coherent SDK to app developers (yes... we know it took 8 years because it never occurred to LF for a long time, but from that we can conclude they're out of their depth). Fourth, do not expect a putsch to coat the above 'mis-givings' with candy-inspired graphics to solve the underlying problems.
Finally (because this is as far as I'll go right now), don't look to DRM schemes as a way to advance Linux within personal computing.
What to do:
* Feature-stability for both app developers (APIs) and consumers (GUI); Holistic design vertically integrating both, because your #1 job is to bring software authors and users together on the same predictable platform.
* Make consumers feel like the GUI provides ultimate control over their hardware, even if that's not what they want to do most of the time.
* Enable consumers to get software directly from whomever they want.
* Run a hardware certification program with a logo that vendors can license.
I doubt Google ever made a profit from their hardware ,
but they paved the way for others to step in.
Valve is it's own carrier in this respect.
And it will find producers and marketing to sell something other than a hacked-together pc clone
Avoid your fears , or wonder at the past
Games are the only thing keeping me from moving. And (as pointed out earlier), NetFlix, but that's less of a problem. Everything else on my linux install is fine. I have used OpenOffice and now Libre nearly exclusively since 2003 (I say nearly because work still requires Office and file formats still don't perfectly interchange, but there's nothing I need out of Office or any other windows apps that aren't available to me in Linux, with the exception of high end gaming support).
I spent a few hours trying to get that to work on Debian, and I couldn't. I'm a rank amateur, but usually I can get stuff working, given enough time and Google. Part of the problem was that I wasn't starting from scratch; I tried using the Netflix app that some guy rolled together with WineSkin, targetting Ubuntu. Still...
And his point stands: if they can get Netflix working on Android, there's really no good reason they couldn't put something together for Linux in general.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Just to put it out there, i have seen 3 xbox360s hooked up playing a single game across 3 monitors. Here is another example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhdCsvsvA0 Im firmly PC master race all the way, but yes i have seen xboxes force multiply like PCs can, albeit in a very limited way.
Good-bye
Linux beats Windows.
Order of easiest OS installs I did the last 2 years:
- Debian (about 6 times pressing [enter], and once a down button or something, takes about 20 minutes between second to last [enter] and the [enter] to reboot)
- Ubuntu (needed a few more down buttons and [enter], so, a couple of more minutes before the download+install happens)
- Windows pre-install on a Dell system (takes about 10 minutes, reboot, 15 more minutes, reboot, 10 more minutes, reboot, 20 more minutes, etc.)
- MS-DOS 4 on a modern PC using magnets
- Windows pre-install on a HP business system
There is netflix for linux.....it just matters who is willing to pay the licensing fee.... the WDTV Live+ is a linux device and supports netflix...western digital was willing to pay the licensing fee....your major distros however probably arent willing to bear that cost.....
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.
Yes, the install is easy in most cases but what about the post-install experience? I like Linux and just got my SO back onto it following a Win7 fuck-up, but if I wasn't around she likely wouldn't have a system that functions as she needs it to. She's Chinese and wants Chinese input in Kubuntu. There is no obvious setting that adds pinyin as there is in, say, OS X. I had to install the ibus stuff then figure out by trial and error what the config was called as it's not part of the KDE settings (as far as I could see, but then again the KDE settings are an untuitive cluster fuck so perhaps it's there somewhere). All seemed good and I was happy to give her working pinyin after only 5 minutes of tinkering. It could well have taken her half a day to get where I did on her own. A little while later she logs out and logs back in to KDE: no Chinese input. Ah, the ibus stuff needs to be told to start on login. So I stick a one-line script in .kde/Autostart and that fixes that problem. Again, would she have figured that out quickly on her own? I really doubt it. A little while later a new problem: no Chinese input in Firefox. Huh? Oh, I see: must install ibus-gtk. No way she'd have figured that out. The next day she asked me what this "dolphin thing" is and why it keeps crashing. I don't know why it keeps crashing but I'm placed in the position of explaining why the "file manager" is called "dolphin." So it's awesome that Linux is easy to install but a new user either needs to be motivated by geekery or they need a support person for certain basic tasks.
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What you pointed out is that Linux appliances are on the rise. A Steam Machine really shouldnt be a general purpose workstation. It CAN be, but it introduces insane amounts of complexity.
Good-bye
Had you let her do the original install in Chinese, you would not be in this mess.
Seems YOU are the problem here.
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When people have a nice steambox already there and running, they will want to run other apps on it too. Check facebook, read webmail, play youtube, soundcloud, stuff like that. That's a web browser that will most certainly be running a lot on those steamboxes. Next thing you know it, they'll be running XBMC for media too. Once they have all that, why have a PC for only office stuff, if you can run it on the steambox? Even if you have a PC for desktop use, you already know how to use linux, it's cheaper (free) than Windows and practically all your apps run on it anyway.
This is how home users will learn about linux on the desktop and use it without much thinking about it. Once it's commonplace in the home, BYOD and other business uses will follow. They will do that anyway, since only supporting windows won't ever work with the plethora of web clients and mobile devices people use these days, regardless of the client will be Linux on the desktop.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Its far from normal. Its a corner case.
Changing language in Windows is not perfectly straightforward either. There are a lot of fiddly things that need changing after the fact.
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Had you let her do the original install in Chinese, you would not be in this mess. Seems YOU are the problem here.
She wants to switch input languages on the fly not have a Chinese OS.
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Almost every gamer I know couldnt care less what o/s they are using as long as their games and "game related" programs run properly (Teamspeak, etc). They use Windows cause there is no other viable option now. With SteamOS all this would change. They would most likely prefer to run Linux and spend the money saved on more games. Bring it on!!
Its far from normal. Its a corner case.
Changing language in Windows is not perfectly straightforward either. There are a lot of fiddly things that need changing after the fact.
I know what you mean--not everyone needs it--but honestly, switching keyboard input (not OS language) shouldn't be considered a corner case. Tens of millions of people need to do it. It's piss-easy in OS X and it's piss-easy in Windows (at least for pinyin, which is all I've seen). In fact, I too sometimes need it to switch between Greek and English. A while ago I wasted hours and hours trying to get this to work in XFCE (turned out it wasn't even supported on the older version I had). I know Linux is *way* better than it used to be in terms of usability for beginners, but there are still issues that need solving. Perhaps some of these are merely in the presentation, such as naming software in a sane way or better laying out the desktop config settings.
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Android has a DRM (digital restriction management) subsystem. The linux standard based does not.
Not that i know where heathen was coming from specifically or anything but technically he didn't mention an open/closed/any form of specific driver, just that the installer didn't like his card for some reason. Could have an X thing or some unrelated issue that just made it seem as though the card was the culprit. And for the record, regardless of real reason, installer crashing is a valid reason for abandoning an install of something imho...
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
No. :)
Good for us all
aaaaaaa
Restarting Linux? Only a fool would do that. What about my uptime!
Simply put, the problem that Linux has is a lack of open source support from Nvidia and other companies in regards to drivers.
Really? The problem is just that people wanted to use open source nvidia drivers instead of their closed source ones?
You can do it, it's called VGA passthrough using an IOMMU, need two graphics cards, the right CPU (any AMD, any Intel where it isn't disabled on purpose by Intel) and the right motherboard (compatible chipset, mobo vendor serious about supporting their BIOS like Asrock and Gigabyte)
You have to use a bare metal hypervisor too (Xen or VMWare ESXi), and at worst you'll fail to have the other graphics card in the linux VM (which would require you to use second display or KVM or a monitor's second input, anyway) so you can be forced, or choose to have the Windows desktop as your primary/only desktop and accessing your linux VM by ssh-ing into it (or VNC, xrdp, whatever). That sucks a bit but on the plus side you can reboot your Windows while leaving your linux alone.
Not a single good desktop distro.. Yeah I agree. I still long for a damn start menu where it's easy to create shortcuts, folders and move stuff around like we could in frigging Windows 98 and XP. And have it be *fast*. And have a special, sluggish menu editing interface as an option, not an obligation. And really, creating shortcuts was easier in Windows 95. Why can't I just right-click or drag any binary, folder, script whatever to add it to the start menu, no instead I first have to go in one of three special interfaces where I can create a "launcher", then create it, with no hope of being able to sensibly browse the available icons unless I was lucky to use the right piece of software.
They do use the nouveau by default, which is pretty good for an open source driver but maybe not very usable on latest gen hardware. Funnily nvidia recommends you to use the VESA driver, then install the proprietary driver if you want something better than that. That's what they officially support. But the distro knows better, it takes all such decisions for you. That shit was probably fixable, if you know about the CLI.. and experience about configuring Xorg.
ROFL, then what, you learn Chinese to be able to fix the computer?
Languages issues is also a pain, where you install a modern distro in French and half the software still is in English, notably Firefox. So I have to do apt-cache search firefox, followed by apt-get install firefox-locale-fr. Then there's libreoffice, which language it was in I don't remember. Installing the translation is more complicated, which of the eight packages do I really need?
I install inkscape and scribus : one is in French and the other one in English.
On my own PC I install the whole OS in English to escape such problems (this can be better anyway as all man pages and command line error messages are in English then, stuff is easier to find or reference, no mixed languages, no bad or varying translations)
I tried Xubuntu 13.10 a few days ago : it comes with Abiword and Gnumeric (to me, that's diminished software you install on a computer with 128MB RAM). The "System" entry on the start menu has two entries I think, one of them is "Gigolo". This means a male whore in my language. Is that a program I can use to order paid-for gay sex?, or do the male prostitutes accept women customers only.
I thought they would have that little "Gigolo" thing fixed by now. Imagine you install and demo this to a vital business client, to your grandma, a battered women shelter, an influent, old and very pious catholic italian family or as a solution for all of a country's school libraries. On the login screen you can click on "login", "reboot", "shutdown", "change user" etc., "get your dick sucked", "get your pussy lick", "click this to get fucked in the ass".
There's a problem LOL. Xubuntu is ruined. They risk even endangering Xfce's reputation. In fact, I'll forget about every official Ubuntu derivate from now (I tried Lubuntu 13.10, it's still ugly and still comes with games that look like they were rejected from Windows 3.1). It's a shame as I won't try Kubuntu then, which was maybe interesting - I'm too ignorant about KDE.
Yeah, I've had plenty of issues with the "nouveau" driver not playing nice with various nVidia cards. Using the binary driver works fine, but when you're booting a liveCD and/or doing an install, you may be stuck with the sometimes-flakey nouveau driver.
The problem is that your LiveCD is also trying to both be a usable environment (with all the acceleration etc) as well as an installation environment accessible via the desktop icon.
To be noob-friendly, a better way might be to have the "installation mode" accessible via the boot menu, and have it go directly to the installer in a basic X with something like just VESA video, as most non-power-users aren't going to know to add "nouveau.modeset=0" into the boot params.
Honestly, linux on set tops and stuff is great. But Linux on the desktop is a pipedream I stopped believing long ago. If I need Linux on the desktop, I have an SSH client.
As for games on PC, that's worthwhile. I like games and I want more games on the PC and would love it if Nintendo would give up on hardware and go the Sega way. I haven't found any Playstation games worthy of investing in a BIG BULKY PLAYSTATION for. I mean that beast is a burden to the eyes. Who honestly needs better graphics when it comes at a visual cost like that?
XBox is ok, I have one and even bought a game for it.
I have a Steam account. I have about 100 games I bought through steam. I have all my apps on Windows and have SSH into my Linux box. I don't see the point of games on Linux... but ok. I guess someone wants them.
Now making a game console which runs Linux is nifty. Hope it works out... but I don't see this as a Linux box, I see this as just another console. Who cares what the OS is? The games on it are what matters.
You want Linux on the desktop? Get a Chrome OS device. Done. Lots of games, lots of support.
Do you really need another Linux desktop? Why not get one to work first?
Watch again Gabe Newell's presentations about Steam on Linux.
The whole point of Steam of Linux is to avoid the loss of freedom that Windows is taking a path.
They don't want to move to a proprietary stack, and thus replace Microsoft with Canonical (if they depend on Ubuntu's specific quirks) or with Nvidia (if they depend on a precise graphical stack thighly controlled by them). They need a not tighly controlled platform on which to develop.
That means at least several independent companies collaborating, which means an open standard, which in the FLOSS means we'll always end up with at least 2 different implementation of said standard.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There is no reason users should stick with Windows, other than exactly what the article states... hardware support and software support. GNU/Linux is an excellent and extremely stable platform (the Linux kernel runs most datacenters -- VMware, KVM, etc... all run on the Linux kernel ... and if it's good enough there you can bet it's good enough to run a gaming PC with ease). I have used GNU/Linux on all of my desktops, and Wine has picked up some of the slack for software where vendors refuse to write native GNU/Linux versions. But, migrating software to run on GNU/Linux natively is a huge win. Let's hope this stays on course.
Seems YOU are the problem here.
And they say Linux advocates are rude...
;-)
Yes, this article is similar to others I saw back in those days, it is talking about experimental preemptable kernels. But it did not make it into any official kernel release until 2004. Still, it's there now, so good on the kernel developers for taking care of that. Question answered, thanks guys. (Except for the comedian that modded my OP as flamebait)
Decent development suite? I use xterms with vim, gcc, gdb, and gprof. Hey, at least it isn't as ugly as Visual Studio 2012 or 2013.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
hey, Rome2 Total War will show up in SteamOS... so i'm happy.
For others, is battlefield4 (that they said they want to port it)
Some like Football manager... it's already released
there are already some very good games in linux, with even more to come, but what you are not seeing is another thing:
Some engines are already ported, others are being ported (like cryengine ), opening other games to be able to run in linux just by pressing a checkbox.
Several game companies are looking at the tools used internally and are migrating to a more compatible solution, to help any possible migration.
Developers have now a more open mind when building a game, they don't want to be the one that is blocking any possible port.
this is the biggest change steam made, they manage to put linux in the radar for many key persons, specially after many game companies lost the android race by not even acknowledge it soon enough or important enough.
Higuita
But what if your killer game is Starcraft 2? Or Halo? Bioshock? League of Legends?
You can get them to work on Linux, but it's not supported and if you're not already an IT geek (which is 98% of the population) it's not a possibility you'll seriously consider. So that giant portion of the population has an incentive not to buy a SteamBox... which means Blizzard, Microsoft, etc... have fewer incentives to port the games to Steam OS... the same momentum that put us where we are today continues indefinitely.
I prefer the new VS aesthetic to the old one. The only issues I have with VS are that for new developers some of the configuration options are buried a bit too deeply. However, it's that much harder setting up emacs (or vim) to even approach what VS does, and still in the end the toolset is less robust. I've been waiting for gdb to stop it's random segfaulting for almost 20 years now...
OSX doesn't really have that much market share. It's lost market share in the mobile space and I suspect that average consumers won't keep buying over-priced junk (brushed aluminium and proprietary connectors people don't use are not features).