171–180 of 220 posts
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Hopefully Wayland will fix some of this and make it easier for video card drivers to be written.
What will Wayland do to make video drivers easier to write? Perhaps you're thinking of Gallium3D?
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Doesn't ALSA have some pretty big limitations?
ALSA as the only thing running on your system does. But if your game supports ALSA then it can plug into ALSA which plugs into PulseAudio and you still get all the benefits of PulseAudio.
I have always noticed a latency between the time that a sound is supposed to be played and when it is actually played with pulse. This doesn't matter so much when listening to an MP3 or whatever but if you are trying to use a sequencer or play a game it becomes a deal breaker.
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Point: there isn't much malware for Linux (and the virus scanners for it scan for /windows viruses/), and there is no easy dtrace/strace/lsof for Windows (afaik...sysinternals tools aside kinda.) If all you really need is a web browser, mail client, IM client/Skype, a PDF reader, and libreOffice (try it before you knock it)...Linux is great for non-techies in office environments, and can be locked down very easily.
* dtrace/strace/lsof for Windows (afaik...sysinternals tools aside kinda.)* StraceNT Point: there isn't much malware for Linux Windows 7 is probably more secure than vanilla Linux. iptables comes with no default configuration or configuration utility. POSIX.1e ACLs are less flexible than Windows ACEs. Desktop Linux isn't targeted very often, but Linux servers are targeted and exploited all the time.
Maybe this will finally motivate one of the distributions to start providing things like stable ABIs like Windows developers have had for years.
In general you are going to have mostly same compatibility problems as on Windows with mostly same solution for proprietary software: package known versions of your dependencies together with your application. When done in this way, distributing of binary-only software for Linux is often even easier than on windows, because you don't have to deal with windows-specific ABI compatibility issues (like multiple instances of C runtime in same address space or interactions between SEH and C++ exceptions)
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WoW runs fine on linux with wine
Actually most Blizzard games run fine on wine. I've played games like: Diablo 3 beta(game run out of the box, but there are problems with installing), Starcraft 2 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&... Starcraft http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&... Warcraft 3 http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application... I guess that porting to Mac made them fix mo…
Also some games have DRM which does not work with Wine, so the only way to get it to work is to run a cracked version. Steam should fix that.
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yes it will - Steam is a juggernaut which will trigger purchase/usage decisions. Creators of libraries and frameworks will have to comply with the standards that Valve will come up with (and come up they will). For example what audio framework will your distro use - Jack? OSS? Pulseaudio? They will have to use what Valve wants you to use, if you want to play their games. Multimonitor support ? HDMI? use the toolkits…
What you're talking about is the Linux desktop world and you could be right about that; maybe it will finally become more standardized but I don't see mainstream desktop markets really noticing. Linux desktop is, what, maybe 1.5% or so? This won't be the magic ingredient that suddenly makes them take over the desktop.
Remember that a significant number of Windows users are either corporate users and corporate use numbers could take a significant fall if 3 or 4 big corporations decided to switch away from it. Many of the other windows users are people who bought they cheapest PC/Laptop they could get and spend as little as possible on software for it.
If Desktop Linux had 4% but that included a significant portion of developers , games enthusiasts and other people who spend serious money on software etc..
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Doesn't ALSA have some pretty big limitations?
ALSA as the only thing running on your system does. But if your game supports ALSA then it can plug into ALSA which plugs into PulseAudio and you still get all the benefits of PulseAudio.
Even though Steam invites its own problems (it's ultimately a form of DRM, a closed platform, and a closed-source application), as a FOSS developer I can't help but feel excited about this prospect. I know many, many people in the 15-35 age bracket who are open to and curious about Linux, even tried it, but ultimately didn't stick with it because of the lack of high-end native games and because rebooting or setting u…
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>Studios will have more incentive to make games portable from the get-go What incentive? 1.5% of the desktop market? If the ~13% Mac market share isn't enough to get most of them to consider it, why would a group nearly 10 times smaller matter suddenly?
And that ~13% of the market that have a Mac are willing to spend money on apps whereas most of the 1 or 1.5% of the market on Linux have a philosophical objection to proprietary applications and to DRM.
There are already a number of companies selling proprietary software for Linux.
I'm sure one of the reasons for a Linux client (and even a Steam console) is Windows 8 with its App Store. Soon potential customers are going to buy their software through these integrated stores rather than using dedicated clients. And since Microsoft is giving the Desktop a legacy feeling Valve has no choice but expand the reach of Steam. Which is of course good for us customers.
As a longtime PC gamer, any Microsoft store is roughly 0 threat to Steam from my perspective unless publishers stop publishing on Steam, which would seems very unlikely unless Microsoft took much less of a cut and Valve refused to follow suit, or Microsoft decided to pay publishers off for exclusives. Microsoft's past attempts to make Steam-like services have been completely laughable/extremely frustrating (see Games…
So there is the possibility that MS could turn around and say "No, Steam is banned from Windows" in the same way that apple would with the iPad.
This at least gives Valve the power to threaten MS with "FU, we're going to Linux and taking HL3 , Portal 3 and CS:GA with us"