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Valve hired their first wave of Linux developers, hiring more

phoronix.com

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

#71

Post by forrestthewoods »

barrkel wrote: post #63
forrestthewoods wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Steam already running the moment I double-click an installed game from my list it's taking about 2-3 seconds before they pop open full screen. If you're taking 20 seconds then it may or may not be Steam's fault, but it certainly isn't an intrinsic property of the software.

Sure, but my point is that I tried it without Steam running (most of the time seems spent on logging in to my account). I don't run Steam by default - it'll be updating, downloading patches, popping up notifications and all sorts interfering with my daily life.

That is neither the expected nor the standard use case. If you use a product in a way it's not designed to be used you shouldn't be surprised when it's behaves in a non-ideal fashion. Notifications and auto-update can be disabled.

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

#72

Post by SkyMarshal »

loboman wrote: post #57
jiggy2011 wrote: post #25

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…

For some games, you can just run Steam in Wine, and the game in Wine, and everything runs out of the box. Check the Wine documentation for each game before buying to ensure it works.

Yup, Portal ran perfectly for me on Ubuntu ( 9.10 or 10.04 iirc) that way a few years ago. Was brilliant.

Even though I don't game anymore, this still makes me very happy. A big step for Linux on the way to becoming a first class citizen in gaming, one of the last big moats to its general acceptance.

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

#73

Post by nitrogen »

jsprinkles wrote: post #62
nitrogen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ardour is probably the most similar Open Source project.

Having used both, Ardour has a long way to go before it's remotely close to Pro Tools, even SE. I think you might see interest in the platform develop if there weren't dozens of distributions to worry about. The distributions hamper Linux development, because you have dozens of different variants to try on, all with different versions of things and different bugs. As another commenter said, I bet you could get someth…

I don't disagree. I still do all my music using Sony (formerly Sonic Foundry) ACID, despite being a nearly full-time Linux desktop user.

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

#74

Post by CamperBob2 »

AJ007 wrote: post #59
icebraining wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm going to take a guess that Valve is hedging their bets on a Windows 8 flop. I think it is very possible that Linux and OS X will become the two dominant desktop platforms over the next 5 years. Valve can not really enter the mobile marketplace in a meaningful way. Both Microsoft and Apple will likely try to put the squeeze on Valve with their own respective OS marketplaces. (I think neither will successfully be a…

It's a bit more complicated than that. Valve is hedging their bets against a Windows 8 win.

Microsoft is playing a longer game than most people can see. So is Valve.

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

#75

Post by sjwright »

icebraining wrote: post #46
jiggy2011 wrote: post #25

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.

There's a lot of overlap between Steam/Linux and Steam/LinuxConsole so it wouldn't surprise me if both strategies were being run in parallel.

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

#76

Post by pjmlp »

shazow wrote: post #4
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.

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

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

Best to whom? None of the listed ones are used at all by professional game studios.

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

#77

Post by s_kilk »

nitrogen wrote: post #60
s_kilk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ardour is probably the most similar Open Source project.

Ardour is a cool project but again, it's not remotely close to Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, or even REAPER. It's like comparing a military aircraft carrier with a canoe, sure they both float on water but they're not even in the same league.

I've kept up with Ardour progress over the past 6 years and it has consistently gone nowhere while the major players innovate continuously. The assertion that Ardour has a chance at competing with the professional packages is absurd given that they've been promising basic MIDI support for years now, a feature that was present in software packages on the Atari. Add to that the fact that the project doesn't even have a roadmap for future development and it all looks pretty grim.

My previous career was audio engineering, and I can't help but laugh when the FOSS crowd insist that Ardour and Audacity are capable of replacing the industry leading software packages.

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

#78

Post by barrkel »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #71
barrkel wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but my point is that I tried it without Steam running (most of the time seems spent on logging in to my account). I don't run Steam by default - it'll be updating, downloading patches, popping up notifications and all sorts interfering with my daily life.

That is neither the expected nor the standard use case. If you use a product in a way it's not designed to be used you shouldn't be surprised when it's behaves in a non-ideal fashion. Notifications and auto-update can be disabled.

That's completely unacceptable - the idea that I need to keep a background app running at all times just so I can play a game once or twice a month. Imagine if all apps took such an arrogant approach; our machines would barely run under the weight of the cruft. I similarly avoid Intel installers when using their drivers because they also like to install and keep running a half dozen services and widgets. Same thing with iTunes - I use a shell script to start it up so it can start up all the extra services and kill them later after iTunes exits.

There's a lot of entitled software out there that arrogantly assumes sovereignty over your machine. I don't accept it.

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

#79

Post by pyre »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #49
icebraining wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that if they support 'proper' Linux might also depend on the architecture of the console. If it's PowerPC or ARM, then we might not see x86 desktop support.

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

#80

Post by sandGorgon »

I have a Dell Vostro with an ATI 6600m card running ubuntu 12.04.

Putting "echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch" effectively boosts my battery time from 1 hour to 3 hours.

What I'm seriously hoping from Valve is not a game per se, but a linux distro (or a standard) that is compatible with my drivers, multimedia devices (dual hdmi monitors - I'm looking at you) and audio/video.

I would pay serious money for that kind of a distro.

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