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Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

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Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#31

Post by klodolph »

forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #14
slacka wrote: post #6

I'm an IT pro,so I run Linux servers for my job, but I'm also a gamer, and dual booting is a pain in the ass. Trust me, I would love to make Linux my primary desktop, and every few months when I have some time, I give it another serious shot. But I always end up back to dual booting. Years ago, I was happy with OSS audio system, but that is controlled by one company so the FOSSies have done their best to replace it w…

1)No need for that, ALSA works fine now. Windows sound system is not better than ALSA in latency terms and it works just right, they(MS) even removed some hardware acceleration for sound as they considered it was not worth the complexity pain. 2) This will come naturally if Linux becomes an option for gamers and 3D professionals(like architects and engineers). It is not that FOSS are breaking the drivers, but that Wi…

Do you write code that uses ALSA? I do. It is not "fine". It is maddening. By comparison, Core Audio is a dream. Windows is a bit of a zoo but all the pieces are there.

Replacing X isn't so dependent on drivers as you might think. A big part of what makes X so horrible is unrelated to how X interacts with the graphics card -- most of the nasty bits actually sit between the X server and the client application. The protocol was invented in 1987 and was designed around assumptions that just simply aren't true any more. These days, you want to shuffle pixmaps around or get a GL/DirectX context, and you want to do it locally. X is optimized for sending pixel operations over a network.

Let me make an analogy for X: imagine designing a protocol for making phone calls over an email system. That's what doing anything modern on X feels like, most of the time.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#32

Post by rmk2 »

wreckimnaked wrote: post #30
rmk2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a hen-and-egg-problem. No games for Linux are published, hence no market exists. And since no market exists, no games are published. However, the Humble Bundles strongly suggest that there is in fact a market for Linux gaming, considering the Linux users consistently paid the most for the bundles[1], often significantly more than the Windows users and more than even OS X users usually perceived to readily pay…

And still the Linux ports on the Humble Bundle are buggy and painful to play (some examples here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=154932 )

That makes it even more interesting, doesn't it? They are willing to pay for having something at all, even if it is somewhat bug-ridden or not quite as fast or not quite as perfect as it could be.

That should emphasise even more that it might be worth pouring additional resources into development. Whether it will be done is another question, steered by corporate politics, risk-assessment etc. etc.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#33

Post by rplnt »

slacka wrote: post #6

I'm an IT pro,so I run Linux servers for my job, but I'm also a gamer, and dual booting is a pain in the ass. Trust me, I would love to make Linux my primary desktop, and every few months when I have some time, I give it another serious shot. But I always end up back to dual booting. Years ago, I was happy with OSS audio system, but that is controlled by one company so the FOSSies have done their best to replace it w…

What I found works for me is having Windows as primary installation and running Linux in the VM. Then I can just alt-tab between these two OSs as I desire.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#34

Post by coldpie »

klodolph wrote: post #31
forgottenpaswrd wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1)No need for that, ALSA works fine now. Windows sound system is not better than ALSA in latency terms and it works just right, they(MS) even removed some hardware acceleration for sound as they considered it was not worth the complexity pain. 2) This will come naturally if Linux becomes an option for gamers and 3D professionals(like architects and engineers). It is not that FOSS are breaking the drivers, but that Wi…

Do you write code that uses ALSA? I do. It is not "fine". It is maddening. By comparison, Core Audio is a dream. Windows is a bit of a zoo but all the pieces are there. Replacing X isn't so dependent on drivers as you might think. A big part of what makes X so horrible is unrelated to how X interacts with the graphics card -- most of the nasty bits actually sit between the X server and the client application. The pro…

Agree on the ALSA comment. I wouldn't wish ALSA development tasks on my worst enemy. Developers these days should target PulseAudio, and tell users without it to get lost. The Pulse API is a poorly thought-out mess, but it at least behaves fairly consistently. ALSA's behavior is a complete crapshoot.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#35

Post by kabdib »

Isn't the Sony PS3 operating system largely based on Linux?

This is much more about what you let customers do with machines. There's a tension between "anything goes" (and rampant piracy and cheating) and total lockdown. Big companies seem to go the route of sealing everything up. It's unclear that this is totally necessary.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#36

Post by mpyne »

kabdib wrote: post #35

Isn't the Sony PS3 operating system largely based on Linux? This is much more about what you let customers do with machines. There's a tension between "anything goes" (and rampant piracy and cheating) and total lockdown. Big companies seem to go the route of sealing everything up. It's unclear that this is totally necessary.

AFAIK no, but it did have an option to install a gimped Linux OS for some time, before Sony took that away.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#37

Post by Aissen »

kabdib wrote: post #35

Isn't the Sony PS3 operating system largely based on Linux? This is much more about what you let customers do with machines. There's a tension between "anything goes" (and rampant piracy and cheating) and total lockdown. Big companies seem to go the route of sealing everything up. It's unclear that this is totally necessary.

Nope, it's a custom OS. So is the Wii (U)'s or xbox's; they might use some BSD's parts (network stack ?) but I'm not sure.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS to clear the confusion.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#38

Post by Aissen »

moistgorilla wrote: post #5
doctorpangloss wrote: post #3

We should all applaud the huge advance gaming will bring to Linux. Just the side effects from the engineering are huge—nevermind the enormous political and financial benefits that gaming brings to Linux. Next up, naturally: Steam for Android.

They already have an app, now they just need to actually sell stuff with it.

They do sell stuff with it, just not for Android.

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#39

Post by billsix »

FaddiCat wrote: post #11
charonn0 wrote: post #9

The explosion of Android as a platform has shown quite clearly both the power and flexibility of the Linux kernel, and the usefulness of hiding the complexity and providing a platform-neutral API. The VM-backed programming environment is what Valve perceive as the new gaming market here: they don't want just a console, they want their own iDevice or Kindle Fire. Mr. Newell mentioned that Valve's games were shifting t…

Would game developers really want to make games for a VM? Don't most big games usually try to squeeze as much out of the hardware as possible? (Genuinely curious... I know next to nothing about the gaming world.)

Android NDK. http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

Re: Gabe Newell: Linux is a “Get-out-of-jail free pass for our industry”

#40

Post by frendiversity »

I'd love to see Valve bankroll some hefty Wine development and/or buy out Cedega/WineX/Transgaming, in my opinion that's the holy grail for what needs to be done.

Getting 99% of the games on Steam working out of the box with DirectX compatibility layer with in-house testing can and should be done, and is a better step than providing a VM layer right now.

I'd also like to see them contribute to OpenGL and get it up to DirectX standards in terms of API ease of use and maturity. It simply isn't as good, and until it is developers will continue to target DirectX.

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