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Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

phoronix.com

41–50 of 88 posts

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

#42
post #37
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

actually I'm not sure what's considered the direct commercial competitor here for post-processing audio.

Audio is an interesting market. Sound Forge comes to mind, but based on the time I've spent in studios, I'm going to speculate that professional audio is either done with hardware, or really old software.

The particular example I'm thinking of was a MacOS9 computer (in 2009 or so). The tech told me two things kept him back; he had all the plugins he needed for the software he used (and that many were not available in newer suites), and something about realtime recording.

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

#43
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I just quit Steam (so it was fresh in cache, never mind relying on SSD etc.), and started a Steam game. It took 20 seconds before the game launched (not playable, just started).

That's massive. Pretty much any of my non-steam games will be launched and playable within 10 seconds.

(I also hate unskippable intro videos; I'm fairly sure I've collectively spent much longer searching for ways to delete / skip such videos than I have ever lost watching them.)

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

#44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, I was under the impression that Lightwave 10 was released for Linux last summer, granted it's not really on my radar. Looking at their site now showcasing version 11 there's no mention of Linux so it seems you are right. Still, Wine's AppDB page for Lightwave mentions a Linux native Lightwave 10 CORE under development.

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

#45
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fo…

actually I'm not sure what's considered the direct commercial competitor here for post-processing audio. Audio is an interesting market. Sound Forge comes to mind, but based on the time I've spent in studios, I'm going to speculate that professional audio is either done with hardware, or really old software. The particular example I'm thinking of was a MacOS9 computer (in 2009 or so). The tech told me two things kept…

Most commercial studios would be running either Pro Tools, Cubase/Nuendo or Logic. There is nothing in the open-source world that comes even remotely close to rivaling any of these packages at the moment.

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

#46

This will be welcome by me, steam on Linux that is. I've bought a number of games from steam when they have been on sale, games that have a Linux port available. Of course I am unable to run them without buying the Linux copy separately at present but once this is implemented I will already be able to play a fair cross-section of my games on Windows and Linux. Of course this could be a net negative for my productivit…

Linux developers doesn't necessarily imply there'll be Steam for Linux Desktop™. It may be that Valve is looking to finally build their Steam Console and base it on Linux.

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

#48

This will be welcome by me, steam on Linux that is. I've bought a number of games from steam when they have been on sale, games that have a Linux port available. Of course I am unable to run them without buying the Linux copy separately at present but once this is implemented I will already be able to play a fair cross-section of my games on Windows and Linux. Of course this could be a net negative for my productivit…

Linux developers doesn't necessarily imply there'll be Steam for Linux Desktop™. It may be that Valve is looking to finally build their Steam Console and base it on Linux.

steam for linux is coming http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve...

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

#49

This will be welcome by me, steam on Linux that is. I've bought a number of games from steam when they have been on sale, games that have a Linux port available. Of course I am unable to run them without buying the Linux copy separately at present but once this is implemented I will already be able to play a fair cross-section of my games on Windows and Linux. Of course this could be a net negative for my productivit…

Linux developers doesn't necessarily imply there'll be Steam for Linux Desktop™. It may be that Valve is looking to finally build their Steam Console and base it on Linux.

That's true, but this article seems to indicate that it will be there for the regular "desktop".

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve...

It is of course possible that they are planning a console and that this is why they are focusing their efforts.

If they do develop a Linux based console then hopefully it will still make sense for them to support "proper" Linux as part of that.

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

#50
So that thing that this very same site has insisted is in full development and is near ready to go... is going through a hiring round for devs to build the thing? Right.

I'm so sick of these articles. Ever since the Mac version came out this site and other Linux focused blogs have insisted Steam for Linux is minutes away. Every single time they've been proven wrong or miss their timeframe.

It probably is being built, but the last person who has legitimate up to date info on the project is Phoronix. They seem to just be making things up.

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