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Valve joins the Linux Foundation

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Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#91

Post by malandrew »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #84
casca wrote: post #6

It will be interesting to see whether Valve can encourage the move to Linux gaming. Their biggest asset at this time is the distribution model of Steam, but that's not sufficient to get the big publishers to develop for OSX, never mind Linux. Edit: Valve's game list: http://www.valvesoftware.com/games/

You shouldn't think of OS X and Linux as two completely separate platforms in this regard, since they share a lot of relevant tech. I would imagine the work put in to making OS X ports translates well to Linux and vice versa and it's the combined sales that people will consider when deciding whether to port (or what base technologies to build on for brand new projects). As SteamOS takes off there's also the possibili…

On that note are there any changes or improvements on the horizon that would let you fast user switch between two or more booted and running operating systems. It'd be great in the future if you could allocate a small chunk of your RAM to keeping the background machine in a chunk of RSm so it switches faster than you can switch between users on the same OS. E.g. Of 16GB of RAM, 12GBis allocated to the foreground OS and 4GB to the background. Then when you switch you get a near instantaneous switch and the 8GB difference is allocated to the now current foreground system as necessary.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#92

Post by Mikeb85 »

edoloughlin wrote: post #88
Mikeb85 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware. > As an aside, Lin…

Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (although it does work on 13.04).

Your problem is using Linux Mint...

Both Steam and Wine work perfectly on Ubuntu 13.10 (I'm running both on my 13.10 laptop).

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#93

Post by maccard »

skriticos2 wrote: post #75
Trufa wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it's seriously lacking a competitor in that sense. I would say that GIMP is in top 5 of worst software ever made, what made me think of that is this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_considered_the_wo... I quote: Paradoxically, a piece of music needs to have been noticeable, popular or memorable to be deemed the "worst ever." A piece that was unpopular and quickly forgotten is unlikely to top all-ti…

I would hardly call it worst. It does not have the most intuitive UX, but once you get used to it it's quite nice and gets the job done. And it's open source (royalty free). I like it. I'd call it PS-incompatible. Would be nice to see a study on two control groups who each either start learning PS or GIMP for a few weeks and see how they get common tasks accomplished and how they feel about their control group softwa…

Started with Paint.net, went to Gimp, then to Photoshop and currently jumping between Gimp and Photoshop. Bear in mind, I'm a developer who sometimes has to dabble in graphics. I only use GIMP because I can't afford the license on my home computer, and my university supplies my Photoshop license.

While I think gimp has the potential to be great, the UI and workflow is painful in comparison to PS. For instance, take creating a rectangle with a gradient on it (with curved corners), and a border that fades from one color to transparent (thinking a rectangular button here). Photoshop: Choose foreground colour and bg color to be the two points on your gradient. Pick curved rectangle tool. Drag rectangle, and change fill type in the top bar to be radial gradient. Click Stroke, and change fill type to gradient. adjust the color.

GIMP. Select the selection tool(why???) Drag the selection to your desired state. Apply a gradient to the stroke by... I don't know actually. then go to slect, and choose rounded rectangle, and choose the border radius (in %??? what the hell sort of measurement is this). Click Ok. Go to edit, and choose stroke selection, and choose stroke with Paint Brush. (This creates an empty border with a stroke around it). Use Gradient fill tool to create the centre of the rounded rectangle, then resize to fit within the border because I can't figure out how to not apply the gradient to the border which is in the selection.

In the end, you get the same result. But PS's workflow makes more sense. to draw a rectangle, you use... a rectangle tool. In gimp, you select the shape you want and draw a stroke around your selection. I also find gimps export a pain in the ass. Why can't I click save as, and save as a PNG rather than having to export? It's clunky, and a pain to use. No matter how powerful a tool is, it's useless if the interface is non-intuitive. I know they don't want to go the adobe route, but they may consider taking some inspiration from one of the most researched products in the world.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#94

Post by Nikker »

kayoone wrote: post #7

While this is great, its a bit sad that Valve is mostly doing all of this now, because they fear losing their dominance on windows to the native Store in Win 8.x In the end its a win-win for everyone if it works out, just their motives are questionable.

If I to play some fantasy football here I might go as far as to say the Win8.x Stores might actually be the reason Valve is ditching it. Microsoft could be aiming for a cut of each game sale a la App Store and try tactics to make it difficult for them to run a parallel store on their platform. When you have a business model like Steam running on essentially the same Win8 store the margins get razor thin.

Of course I don't know for sure but for Valve to back out of Windows the way they did it's definitely a strong possibility. Don't forget "embrace,extend,extinguish".

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#95

Post by neckro23 »

stinkytaco wrote: post #50
terabytest wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X is not a good platform for gaming. It has a significantly smaller user base of which only an even more significantly smaller are gamers. Playing on a MacBook (or at least on my MacBook) is impossible, and I wouldn't buy an iMac for gaming. On the other hand, you can put Linux on anything (for free!), from your mom's 2002 pc to the latest generation hot stuff. This means there is indeed a potential, and somebody…

You seem to be contradicting yourself. Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. Playing on a Macbook is impossible (presumably for performance reasons?), but you talk about putting Linux on a 2002 PC for gaming. And Linux may or may not run on the latest generation hot stuff, depending on how much time you want to spend to get your newest graphics card w…

Gaming on Mac has gotten a lot better, mainly thanks to Steam.

I'm a huge gamer type, but for assorted reasons my "real" gaming PC isn't actually at home so I'm usually "stuck" with my Macbook. SteamPlay has therefore has been a huge boon to me -- I apparently have 272 games on my Steam account, and of those 121 run on Mac. That's a really impressive batting average.

Of course, a bunch of those I can't actually play due to the absolutely terrible Intel HD 3000 GPU in this thing (Witcher 2? Yeah, right!), but most indie games run fine because they're usually 2D or light 3D.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#96

Post by modeless »

Nikker wrote: post #94
kayoone wrote: post #7

While this is great, its a bit sad that Valve is mostly doing all of this now, because they fear losing their dominance on windows to the native Store in Win 8.x In the end its a win-win for everyone if it works out, just their motives are questionable.

If I to play some fantasy football here I might go as far as to say the Win8.x Stores might actually be the reason Valve is ditching it. Microsoft could be aiming for a cut of each game sale a la App Store and try tactics to make it difficult for them to run a parallel store on their platform. When you have a business model like Steam running on essentially the same Win8 store the margins get razor thin. Of course I…

We do know for sure. Gabe has explicitly stated that the Win8 store with its closed ecosystem model is the reason they hate Win8 and are making SteamOS.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#97

Post by stinkytaco »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #92
edoloughlin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (although it does work on 13.04).

Your problem is using Linux Mint... Both Steam and Wine work perfectly on Ubuntu 13.10 (I'm running both on my 13.10 laptop).

> Your problem is using Linux Mint...

I think you just provided a shining example of the potential problems linux gaming faces...

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#98

Post by VintageCool »

Yuioup wrote: post #83
nly wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean about video and sound. OpenGL is first class on Linux distros, sound is almost exclusively pulseaudio now...and X11 is on its way out, hopefully it'll be dead to most desktop users within a small number of years.

Video on dual-screen setups is a bit wonky. Yes it's my fault for using crappy proprietary ATI drivers but try to explain that to someone new to Linux. I have two issues with sound: 1) Sticking my headphone connector to my laptop's headphone jack does not work. I have to reboot in order to get headphone sound (works on Windows). 2) Connecting my PC to my TV via HDMI and playing a YouTube video ... Last time I heard a…

For the headphones issue, try using pavucontrol. It allowed me to direct audio output to headphones or speakers on an app-by-app basis.

Alternatively, it's possible that you might need to reload pulseaudio after plugging in the headphones.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#99

Post by njbooher »

edoloughlin wrote: post #88
Mikeb85 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware. > As an aside, Lin…

Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10 (although it does work on 13.04).

Works fine on Arch.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#100

Post by stinkytaco »

zanny wrote: post #90
stinkytaco wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. Playing on a Macbook is impossible (presumably for performance reasons?), but you talk about putting Linux on a 2002 PC for gaming. And Linux may or may not run on the latest generation hot stuff, depending on how much time you want to spend to get your newest graphics card w…

> because it has too small a user base Maybe we should instead speak to potential user base. For OSX, the potential userbase is always whoever has the money to buy extremely pricey Apple hardware, at least if you want to game on it, since getting a competent gpu almost always requires the rest of the components be really pricey. For Linux, it is the sum total of all PCs out there with compatible hardware and firmware…

>For OSX, the potential userbase is always whoever has the money to buy extremely pricey Apple hardware, at least if you want to game on it, since getting a competent gpu almost always requires the rest of the components be really pricey.

But the kind of gaming that Linux lacks is the kind that need pricey components. I can play Organ Trail or World of Goo on Linux right now. If I want to play COD, I'm going to need something substantial. That narrows the user base even more.

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