Valve joins the Linux Foundation • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#131

Post by erifneerg » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:17 PM UTC

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.

I saw this reasoning flying around a lot when Valve started working on linux. I saw the move from linux initially as a natural extension of developing for the Mac OS. GabeN was quoted saying something on the lines of how the games were running much more stable on OSX then windows and said the problem they had wasn't related to there code.

Then I heard how performance issues. Using games performed (slightly?) better on Linux then on Windows. There was talk about mouse issues on Windows 8 and how some bench marks could be faked.

All this sounded to me was Valve wanted a better gaming environment.

Side note, I don't know how many people would be switching to Windows' store and gaming social features over Steam.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#132

Post by zurn » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:18 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #118

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…

> It's not like every Windows PC has the same screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform... No, but it has excellent binary compatibility, long term game APIs, and stable 3D and audio driver APIs. Which is what matters for desktop gaming, and what Linux does not have. As for screen resolution and hardware capabilities, those matter on mobile (e.g iOS vs Android), and mostly for applications,…

Someone needs to dig up pre-ELF binaries for NetHack and XPilot and we can have a backwards compatiblity race, on latest versions of Ubuntu and Windows. Linux has a better chance now that Windows has dropped 16-bit support :)

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#133

Post by lloeki » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:21 PM UTC

girvo wrote: post #77

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…

I game on my iMac. Currently just played through BioShock Infinite, and play StarCraft 2 daily, and really should get back to Guild Wars 2 at some point... but yeah, I'm considered odd by my friends for doing so.

Throw in Diablo 3 and Portal 2 into the mix and you've got what I'm playing these times around on my rMBP13's HD4000. I've actually run through both SC2:LW and D3 on a '09 MBP. Sure you don't get all the bells and whistles, but a steady 25fps (capped through INI settings) matters more to me than shiny effects and had the games be perfectly enjoyable.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#134

Post by phaemon » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

Yuioup wrote: post #30

ds_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's broken about it?

Video, sound, competing standards (which will hinder adoption), antiquated X11. Also when a full-screen X11 overlay (like a game) freezes then the whole desktop freezes (CTRL+ALT+F1 doesn't help). A Linux enthousiast will forgive these mistakes and find a way around them but Linux noobs wouldn't know what to do.

> antiquated X11

What does that mean? X11R7.7 was only released last year! How is that antiquated?

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#135

Post by erifneerg » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:24 PM UTC

neckro23 wrote: post #95

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…

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…

I'd like to say that with Mavericks adding OpenGL 4.1, I can play a number of games much better on my Macbook Pro (early 2008).

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#136

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

Kurtz79 wrote: post #112

pjmlp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which cost almost three times the average salary of most European countries.

I bought mine refurbished for 1300 euros, which is comparable to the price of similarly specced PCs (and about the average salary of most European countries). Even if it was three times this price, what has that to do with its ability to play games ?

So lets see on my home country, Portugal. where the minimum wage is around 380€ netto.

The cheapest iMac with dedicated GPU costs 1549€.

The cheapest Macbook with dedicated GPU costs 2649€.

A gaming rig that outperforms any Mac hardware can be obtained around 1000€, or even lower if a local OEM is used.

So why pay 1300€ for a refurbished Mac, when a brand new computer can be obtained for much less, given the saving effort one needs to do?

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#137

Post by Aardwolf » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:27 PM UTC

DOSBox and Wine make Linux quite perfect for gaming.

Interestingly, for some games, running the Windows version in Wine works better than running a native Linux version they've made of the game. E.g. the native Linux version will complain that some library .so is not the correct version, or that it cannot connect to X, etc...

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#138

Post by gagege » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

Aardwolf wrote: post #137

DOSBox and Wine make Linux quite perfect for gaming. Interestingly, for some games, running the Windows version in Wine works better than running a native Linux version they've made of the game. E.g. the native Linux version will complain that some library .so is not the correct version, or that it cannot connect to X, etc...

I appreciate and use Wine quite a bit, but it's far from perfect. A lot of things just plain crash from the get go.

Also, I wish that Steam on Linux would attempt to install and run Windows games via Wine. If I want to play, for instance, Spelunky, I need to close Linux Steam (can't log in in multiple clients, last time I checked) and open Windows Steam in Wine. Maybe there's a way to get Wine games to run in Linux Steam, I don't know. It would just be cool if it did it by default.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#139

Post by adamors » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

stinkytaco wrote: post #103

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…

I'm curious what the user base of gaming focused users in for linux world wide. Linux tends to attract developers rather than users who spend a great deal of money on their gaming hobby. Perhaps I am wrong. Don't get me wrong, I'd love this to work, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to say it will work better than a platform that is already successful at getting people to spend money on games (see Mac App Store, i…

Another thing that is not mentioned, is that Steam on OS X is kinda bad. Tends to freeze often etc.

In the case of Linux, Valve has the incentive to ship a better version because they'd be running that version on their Steamboxes as well.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#140

Post by Groxx » Wed, Dec 04, 2013, 5:37 PM UTC

gagege wrote: post #138

Aardwolf wrote: post #137

DOSBox and Wine make Linux quite perfect for gaming. Interestingly, for some games, running the Windows version in Wine works better than running a native Linux version they've made of the game. E.g. the native Linux version will complain that some library .so is not the correct version, or that it cannot connect to X, etc...

I appreciate and use Wine quite a bit, but it's far from perfect. A lot of things just plain crash from the get go. Also, I wish that Steam on Linux would attempt to install and run Windows games via Wine. If I want to play, for instance, Spelunky, I need to close Linux Steam (can't log in in multiple clients, last time I checked) and open Windows Steam in Wine. Maybe there's a way to get Wine games to run in Linux S…

Yeah, I've only had success about 3/4 of the time I've used Wine. Maybe less. That's still 3/4 more than 0, so I absolutely love it, but it's definitely not perfect.