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Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

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Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#31

Post by barrkel »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #20
prezjordan wrote: post #8

Sort of off-topic, is there a reason Steam on windows is so unresponsive? Mac, too, but I think that's because it's a port. It seems to me that Steam is not written in native windows code and that's why it runs so sluggishly. Some say they have no idea what I'm talking about, while others agree. What does HN think?

Define "so unresponsive". Recently (less than a year ago), I had a switch in hardware from a Athlon X2 3200+, 4GB RAM machine to an i5-2500K, 8GB RAM and 2 SSDs. Sure there was a noticeable difference in responsiveness, but never on either machine would I consider Steam "so unresponsive".

My last machine was an i7 920 with 12GB and Intel 80GB SSD; I now have an i7-3770K with 16GB and Samsung 256GB SSD; and Steam has always been fairly unresponsive.

Specifically, it's most unresponsive on the "preparing disk space" page when installing games. It takes multiple seconds for no apparent reason. There's no high CPU usage and no high I/O usage. It's also very slow to start, and very slow to let me play a game.

My theory is it's due to some degree of online activity, that it's gated on my internet bandwidth. Since I only play single-player games, that's a huge annoyance to me, and I often don't start playing games because I know I'll have to sit through Steam startup for several seconds.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#32

Post by jlgreco »

Keyframe wrote: post #30

I don't use linux as my desktop OS for quite some time (now it's windows and osx, used to have Redhat and later fedora workstations). My question is, is it possible to target 'linux' in general as a single platform at all? I thought heterogeneous nature of linux distros is what would hinder that effort. Something like when you buy certain graphics programs, you get to have only this and that linux variant with this a…

In the 'enterprise' market, targeting 'Linux' means targeting RHEL. I don't think that would be the way for Valve to go though. If they are really going to release anything to the public for Linux I imagine they will just officially target Ubuntu.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#33

Post by koko775 »

prezjordan wrote: post #8

Sort of off-topic, is there a reason Steam on windows is so unresponsive? Mac, too, but I think that's because it's a port. It seems to me that Steam is not written in native windows code and that's why it runs so sluggishly. Some say they have no idea what I'm talking about, while others agree. What does HN think?

I would rather put my money on not threaded well. The application thread seems to get blocked whenever it's chugging on something important, which locks up the UI.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#34

Post by truncate »

moistgorilla wrote: post #7
shazow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best tools in the industry (Audacity, Blender, Inkscape, others?) are already free, open source, and native on Linux.

Sadly, some people refuse to work if they aren't using photoshop/illustrator/autocad/etc. But yeah, I'm with you, I use gimp and inkscape but I'm no professional.

Professionals have spent considerable time learning their tools (PS, Illustrator...), hence while these tools are not available on Linux they will always refrain from shifting to Linux and that is quite understandable. After all every need their work done best possible way with least obstructions.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#35

Post by shazow »

Keyframe wrote: post #30

I don't use linux as my desktop OS for quite some time (now it's windows and osx, used to have Redhat and later fedora workstations). My question is, is it possible to target 'linux' in general as a single platform at all? I thought heterogeneous nature of linux distros is what would hinder that effort. Something like when you buy certain graphics programs, you get to have only this and that linux variant with this a…

You don't need to ship distro-specific packages. You could ship a tarball with a statically linked executable. Take a look at the Humble Bundle, for example. Every game published in the bundles is cross-platform, and work great Linux regardless of distro choice.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#36

Post by Keyframe »

shazow wrote: post #35
Keyframe wrote: post #30

I don't use linux as my desktop OS for quite some time (now it's windows and osx, used to have Redhat and later fedora workstations). My question is, is it possible to target 'linux' in general as a single platform at all? I thought heterogeneous nature of linux distros is what would hinder that effort. Something like when you buy certain graphics programs, you get to have only this and that linux variant with this a…

You don't need to ship distro-specific packages. You could ship a tarball with a statically linked executable. Take a look at the Humble Bundle, for example. Every game published in the bundles is cross-platform, and work great Linux regardless of distro choice.

Ah, never thought about that. As good old DOS games were, everything contained within program/directory itself. Interesting, makes using some of the external code a bit harder due to licenses though.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#37

Post by shazow »

VMG wrote: post #12
shazow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best tools in the industry (Audacity, Blender, Inkscape, others?) are already free, open source, and native on Linux.

None of these you mention qualify as being "the best in the industry". Neither do Gimp and Kdenlive or any other video editing software on Linux.

By whose qualifications?

I much prefer Inkscape over Illustrator for my vector art. I much prefer Audacity over... actually I'm not sure what's considered the direct commercial competitor here for post-processing audio. I mildly prefer Photoshop over Gimp for graphics design and tablet drawing, but after almost a decade of using each, they're practically interchangeable for me. I mildly prefer Blender over 3DS Max for making game models (though I admit it has been a while for me—I hear the recent Blender releases have amazing improvements). And that's not even taking into account the difference in license costs.

I'm not claiming to be an expert in any of these industries, but I don't think I'm completely naive here either. I can imagine there is a strong majority of experts who would never considere free/open source alternatives to things they've been using since they graduated their respective art school and paid thousands of dollars in licensing fees. I feel they're missing out, even though I'm biased towards open source.

P.S. I said "some of the best."

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#38

Post by forrestthewoods »

barrkel wrote: post #31
ineedtosleep wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "so unresponsive". Recently (less than a year ago), I had a switch in hardware from a Athlon X2 3200+, 4GB RAM machine to an i5-2500K, 8GB RAM and 2 SSDs. Sure there was a noticeable difference in responsiveness, but never on either machine would I consider Steam "so unresponsive".

My last machine was an i7 920 with 12GB and Intel 80GB SSD; I now have an i7-3770K with 16GB and Samsung 256GB SSD; and Steam has always been fairly unresponsive. Specifically, it's most unresponsive on the "preparing disk space" page when installing games. It takes multiple seconds for no apparent reason. There's no high CPU usage and no high I/O usage. It's also very slow to start, and very slow to let me play a ga…

Steam does have a very slow boot time, but the expected behavior is that Steam is always running in the background so I can't imagine it's a priority. I can't fathom a ~3 second wait when installing and launching a game being a real problem. Minor annoyance sure but that's less time than you'll be forced to see stupid splash screens for!

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#39

Post by jasonlotito »

moistgorilla wrote: post #7
shazow wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best tools in the industry (Audacity, Blender, Inkscape, others?) are already free, open source, and native on Linux.

Sadly, some people refuse to work if they aren't using photoshop/illustrator/autocad/etc. But yeah, I'm with you, I use gimp and inkscape but I'm no professional.

It's not just the tools, but all the additional plugins that are built on top of those tools. Professionals don't just use Illustrator and Photoshop.

Re: Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

#40

Post by dman »

gillianseed wrote: post #13
moistgorilla wrote: post #2

Great news! Honestly, the only software that will be holding people back from switching fully to linux now will be creative tools (audio, 3d + 2d design, video editing). I think this can be solved by us. If we show them that there is a demand for these tools on linux someone will move to supply. Open operating systems provide too many advantages to ignore.

Well when it comes to 3D Linux is actually well off due to it's strong position in SFX, you have the latest Maya, XSI, Mudbox, Renderman, Houdini, Lightwave, 3D-Coat etc available in native Linux form. And as others have stated there's also great free solutions like Blender.

This is what XSI has to say about Linux - "Softimage 2013 is also capable of running on other configurations, such as boutique distributions of Linux. However, enumerating systems that are not tested and cannot be supported or that fall below the requirements for a productive user experience is beyond the scope of the online certification charts.".

Lightwave isnt available for Linux either.

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