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Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

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Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#151

Post by antihero »

apl wrote: post #150
jiggy2011 wrote: post #146

I see a few things to think about here: Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start running AAA games, or will it in fact be something highly proprietary which is designed for a specific subset of devices which happen to run Linux kernels? I see a lot of people here discussing "market share" but as has been proved by Apple market share is certainly not e…

> As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned > with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less > if I am the only the person that uses it. That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time. > Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just > apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start > running AAA g…

I don't see why Steam couldn't be distributed as a .deb package (and put in the repos), much as is existing proprietary software.

I mean it probably isn't going to happen for the games, but Steam is pretty decent at managing them anyway.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#152

Post by jiggy2011 »

apl wrote: post #150
jiggy2011 wrote: post #146

I see a few things to think about here: Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start running AAA games, or will it in fact be something highly proprietary which is designed for a specific subset of devices which happen to run Linux kernels? I see a lot of people here discussing "market share" but as has been proved by Apple market share is certainly not e…

> As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned > with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less > if I am the only the person that uses it. That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time. > Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just > apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start > running AAA g…

That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time.

Of course it does, I do not deny this. My point is that I don't think in terms of "Great, now there is X for Linux this will cause 1000 people to switch over" I only really care if it helps me in someway. Of course I understand that there are network effects at work.

Obviously not going to happen.

Why not? This is obviously going to incur some significant cost to Valve, I doubt they would do it just so they can run a store with a handful of $5 indie games or free games.

Either they imagine there will be a significant enough untapped market for Linux games now/in the near future or they have some other plan (such as a Linux based Steam Console).

If the latter is the case, then what will this mean for "traditional" Linux users? Will they be locked out of Steam or will they be able to ride the bandwagon and get access to all/most/some of the games that the console does?

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#153

Post by jiggy2011 »

antihero wrote: post #151
apl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned > with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less > if I am the only the person that uses it. That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time. > Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just > apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start > running AAA g…

I don't see why Steam couldn't be distributed as a .deb package (and put in the repos), much as is existing proprietary software. I mean it probably isn't going to happen for the games, but Steam is pretty decent at managing them anyway.

I'd actually rather keep apt-get out of my games installation process. Obviously it would make sense for steam to call apt-get etc to install core libraries required etc. I'd rather not have some sort of dependency jungle whereby I have my system dependencies overwritten by some steam specific version.

The reason apt-get scares me for games is that it can sometimes get very carried away and start doing things like installing mailservers + alternative Windows managers + different java versions when I try and install a relatively small program.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#155

Post by LeafStorm »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #152
apl wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a Desktop Linux user myself I am not too concerned > with "market share" , to an extent I couldn't care less > if I am the only the person that uses it. That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time. > Will "Steam for Linux" be something that you can just > apt-get into your free as in freedom Distro and start > running AAA g…

That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time. Of course it does, I do not deny this. My point is that I don't think in terms of "Great, now there is X for Linux this will cause 1000 people to switch over" I only really care if it helps me in someway. Of course I understand that there are network effects at work. Obviously not goi…

>> Obviously not going to happen.

> Why not? This is obviously going to incur some significant cost to Valve, I doubt they would do it just so they can run a store with a handful of $5 indie games or free games.

No, they will definitely have AAA games. (Or at least AA games...not sure how many A's Left 4 Dead rates.) The thing that's obviously not going to happen is sudo apt-get install steam -- at least, not from the official repositories. They'll probably provide their own debs and rpms, or maybe a straight binary download like they do for the Steam dedicated server.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#156

Post by danssig »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #125
sciurus wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The one problem Linux does have in regards to businesses is integration with Exchange" You're forgetting active directory and group policy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_Policy

If you grill people hard on "why do you need all that complex, expensive crap anyway?" you can switch them over to Google Apps, or Zimbra, or LibreOffice + Evolution + SLES and have all the same functionality. Share point? What does share point do that WebDAV + Samba + Apache + some kind of CMS + MediaWiki can't, besides requiring an expensive share point admin and lots of licensing fees? LDAP and kerberos have Linux…

>but throwing the nix way of doing this out the window in favor of the AD route is a really silly idea unless you need to integrate with existing windows crap.

This betrays a lack of experience with a large organization. The "nix way" is every program having their own configuration file with its own syntax and needing a signal (or restart the process) to change said configuration. Directories are far superior for this and it isn't a "windows" thing. It was Novell who first got serious with directory services.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#157

Post by jiggy2011 »

LeafStorm wrote: post #155
jiggy2011 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's rather shortsighted. After all, you being able to "just apt-get" depends on a large number of people sacrificing a lot of time. Of course it does, I do not deny this. My point is that I don't think in terms of "Great, now there is X for Linux this will cause 1000 people to switch over" I only really care if it helps me in someway. Of course I understand that there are network effects at work. Obviously not goi…

>> Obviously not going to happen. > Why not? This is obviously going to incur some significant cost to Valve, I doubt they would do it just so they can run a store with a handful of $5 indie games or free games. No, they will definitely have AAA games. (Or at least AA games...not sure how many A's Left 4 Dead rates.) The thing that's obviously not going to happen is sudo apt-get install steam -- at least, not from th…

I didn't necessarily mean to suggest that it would necessarily be available directly from official repos (although perhaps it could be, being able to easily install steam would be a good selling point of a distro that was not intended to be 100% free software). I wonder how ubuntu would feel as this could be competition for their own app store.

What I meant was will this be targeting the traditional distributions (Fedora/Ubuntu) and be installed in a relatively normal "Linux way" (like dropbox or spotify).

They could of course create their own Distro which would essentially be minimal WM + Steam + Other basic apps (Chrome,thunderbird,openoffice).

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#158

Post by danssig »

b0rsuk wrote: post #113
danssig wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this post strikes me as fantasy. Your social circle must be vastly different from mine. >and with the recent news that will be the end of GIMP complaints What news is this? Photoshop is still on a complete other plane of existence and that gap gets further every year, not closer. If you're playing with cat pictures then GIMP is probably ok, but if you're a professional who's livelihood depends on your p…

>I'm sorry but this post strikes me as fantasy. Your social circle must be vastly different from mine. No, you are not sorry. It's one of those phrases that, like "good game" has evolved to function as an insult. It's a flammable material warning sign. >What news is this? Photoshop is still on a complete other plane of existence and that gap gets further every year, not closer. The first 90% of GIMP has been ported t…

>No, you are not sorry.

Actually I meant "I'm sorry" to the forum since the sentence was a bit direct.

>The first 90% of GIMP has been ported to GEGL, the new core.

Well, that's interesting. They continue to chase and that's good but Photoshop isn't staying still. By the time they get moved over to GEGL Photoshop will probably be on CS6 which is a whole new, improved interface. Adobe already has deblurring working in the labs (wouldn't expect it before a CS6.5 though).

>Linux is less likely to appeal to conservative people.

No, I think the difference is: the people I spend most of my time with aren't conservative but they're busy. They need a computer to just work and not require reading online, touching config files, etc. The computer should be as invisible as possible. Even today, that still makes Linux a no-go.

>Linux appeals more to power users and various enthusiasts, while OSX - hard to say as I know no one using it.

Well, I'm a software developer and am pretty comfortable with unix administration but I got a mac (switched from Windows) because I just don't have time for mess with the computer. Between my job, commute and family there is no time to work on problems I don't care about (e.g. getting the wireless driver to work).

>Convenient package management, and a culture of it.

This is the main advantage Linux has over other platforms at the moment, but Steam has nothing to do with that.

>It's almost like no two people use the same Linux distro

I personally think this has hurt Linux desktop adoption and keeps it mostly with an audience who is willing to spend time on such things (i.e. never the mainstream).

> I admit many Debian users act arrogant and grumpy, but I consider these flaws less annoying.

I run Debian on my servers since I trust their test cycle more, like their installer and hate RPM (I recently tried Fedora again but it would have taken me more time to remove all the packages I didn't want than to just install Debian).

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#159

Post by StavrosK »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #157
LeafStorm wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Obviously not going to happen. > Why not? This is obviously going to incur some significant cost to Valve, I doubt they would do it just so they can run a store with a handful of $5 indie games or free games. No, they will definitely have AAA games. (Or at least AA games...not sure how many A's Left 4 Dead rates.) The thing that's obviously not going to happen is sudo apt-get install steam -- at least, not from th…

I didn't necessarily mean to suggest that it would necessarily be available directly from official repos (although perhaps it could be, being able to easily install steam would be a good selling point of a distro that was not intended to be 100% free software). I wonder how ubuntu would feel as this could be competition for their own app store. What I meant was will this be targeting the traditional distributions (Fe…

As I see it, it will be an app (if it ever happens, I'm not sure how much I can trust these "omg Steam is coming to Linux!" posts any more) that you can just install, exactly like Dropbox or Spotify.

It will then download your games whenever you tell it to and you can play them, just like Steam on any other plaform. Of course, which games those are will depend on availability of each individual game.

Re: Valve is developing Steam for Linux, says Michael Larabel of Phoronix

#160

Post by StavrosK »

Splines wrote: post #127
patricklynch wrote: post #121

That would be cool. Video games are the only reason I even have a Windows partition.

Makes me wonder if this is too little, too late. Anyone who is an avid steam user already has a Windows partition for their games, and probably has a large library of games that will not work in Linux. It's great that Valve games will work on Linux, and it'll likely unify the Linux gaming experience, but Windows is the #1 OS for PC gaming and that isn't going to change anytime soon. Heck, look at OS X. They've been a…

Nope, I think Steam will be the best thing to happen to gaming on Linux. Ostensibly, people will get Linux versions of their games (even their old games) for free (didn't they do that with the Mac version?), and developers can get up-to-date statistics of how many Linux users they have exactly.

I know I sure would like Steam on Linux so I can stop having to reboot to play a short game. I'd play quite a bit more if Steam were available.

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