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Valve joins the Linux Foundation

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Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#141

Post by gagege »

daddykotex wrote: post #4
FridayWithJohn wrote: post #2

The one thing that has forced me keep Windows on my PC is the fact that most games require it. Hearing that such a large player in the gaming industry wants to move to Linux is really fantastic news.

I stopped playing games when I started using Linux. I've been part of the Steam Beta on Linux and things are going really fast. This is great news.

I had to switch to mostly indie games with I switched to Linux, which is great, there are a ton of awesome indie games. There are some mainstream Windows titles that I can get to run in Steam via Wine, but it's a pain. I really hope Valve can get the big mainstream studios on board.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#142

Post by adamors »

gareim wrote: post #123
Mikeb85 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'd wager a good portion of Linux devs are gamers, and likely just dual-boot, have a console, an iPad, etc... Seeing as how the barrier to using Linux is lower than either Windows or OSX, it doesn't really matte…

Barrier to using Linux is not lower than Windows. Windows comes installed on almost every PC sold. Linux does not. Therefore more work is required to use Linux. I love Linux, but "if a program works on every single other distro.." is disingenuous. I have not once had 100% success with Linux on initial install. There has always been something that needed to be tweaked (usually sound or graphics). No, Windows isn't 100…

> Windows comes installed on almost every PC sold. Linux does not. Therefore more work is required to use Linux.

Keep in mind that most people who play games (and I'm not talking about Angry Birds or Facebook games but people who use Steam) tend to build their own PCs.

And installing Linux is just as easy as installing Windows, if not easier (you won't have to go on a driver hunt most of the time for instance).

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#143

Post by Yuioup »

phaemon wrote: post #134
Yuioup wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Wayland is being developed to specifically replace X11 the latter being based on antiquated principles.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#144

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

yukkurishite wrote: post #52
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.

Agreed, I'm get the idea Valve doesn't actually care much about linux. For example, in their presentation highlighting some stuff about porting games from win to linux, every screenshot was made in windows

Well, their development workflow is likely highly Windows-based.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#145

Post by binarycrusader »

Yuioup wrote: post #143
phaemon wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> antiquated X11 What does that mean? X11R7.7 was only released last year! How is that antiquated?

Wayland is being developed to specifically replace X11 the latter being based on antiquated principles.

The vast majority of successful software is arguably based on antiquated principles.

People seem to continually blame X11 as the source of all of Linux's woes, completely ignoring the history of computing.

Most high-end workstations were UNIX-based at one time, and the graphical interface ran on X11. People forget that Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and Adobe Acrobat Reader used to be produced for UNIX and UNIX-like systems.

X11 is not the primary issue at hand with Linux; nVidia has proven that repeatedly.

At most, I'd be willing to agree that X11 is not optimally architected for local rendering context, but again, I don't think that's going to make the huge difference that people seem to imply.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#146

Post by PhasmaFelis »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #82
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 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…

> There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros.

And there's 60 million Mac users worldwide, and it was asserted that that's not enough for a good gaming platform.

You can't have it both ways. If Linux is a good platform for games (and it may be), then OSX necessarily is as well.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#147

Post by scott_karana »

phaemon wrote: post #129
maccard wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> GIMP. Select the selection tool(why???) Mainly because 99% of learning Gimp is learning how to use selections properly. Gimp is for image manipulation , not drawing buttons. If that's the kind of stuff you're doing, use Inkscape. Do the Tutorials under the Help menu. They're really excellent and it sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

Does Inkscape have any raster modification capabilities? Not all "buttons" are composed solely of vectors.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#148

Post by sliverstorm »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #146
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…

> There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. And there's 60 million Mac users worldwide, and it was asserted that that's not enough for a good gaming platform. You can't have it both ways. If Linux is a good platform for games (and it may be), then OSX necessarily is as well.

Nah, his points go like this:

- There is a pretty sizable Linux userbase compared to OS X. Not larger, but the same league.

- Any existing Windows PC can be installed with Linux, and many other non-desktop devices already run Linux, so the potential for growth in userbase given the right trigger (i.e. games) is much larger

- A significant portion of machines that run OS X have very low performance hardware. The Macbook is one of Apple's top-selling computers, and it has always lagged in graphics.

So, to wrap it up, both Linux and OS X currently have small share, but Linux has the potential for rapid marketshare growth on capable hardware, while OS X has neither.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#149

Post by Aardwolf »

Groxx wrote: post #140
gagege wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Often if something doesn't work, winetricks helps get the right components, and sometimes also settings like the one where Wine creates a "desktop" window inside of which the game gets ran.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#150

Post by sliverstorm »

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.

Well, their motives aren't sinister, which is all you can really want or hope for. In a capitalistic market, vanishingly few players will switch to Linux out of altruism.

Which is perfectly fine, in my opinion. Everything is more predictable when each player acts in their own best interests. Then it's just a matter of understanding their incentives.

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