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

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

#41

Post by Shorel » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 3:43 PM UTC

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.)

They want to maximize performance and installed user base.

A huge installed user base like Android maximizes one variable so much that the other gets a free pass.

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

#42

Post by nitrogen » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 3:53 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #34

klodolph wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Strongly disagree on the ALSA comment. PulseAudio is the primary cause for most latency in Linux audio. I've written sound playback and recording code in ALSA and achieved low latency without difficulty. I wouldn't wish PulseAudio on my worst enemy.

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

#43

Post by cdh » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:22 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #19

bobsy wrote: post #15

I have heard a number of times about how great Gabe is for bringing Steam to Linux. Isn't it just the case that the only reason Steam is on Linux is because Valve are making a console? Would Steam for Linux really exist without this console? Windows 8 is a fine gaming platform and the Windows store is... useless. It brings crappy tablet games to the PC. I think he is over reacting to the damage Windows 8 will do to h…

> I think he is over reacting to the damage Windows 8 will do to his business. He's not worried about everyone buying Windows 8, he's worried about no one buying it: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/display/20130204235238_Gl... Windows 8 isn't an existential threat to Valve because there are some UI tweaks, it's a threat because Valve is tethered to Microsoft, and for some, Windows 8 has not inspired much confidenc…

Thankfully, we don't have to guess about this particular metric, or use silly results based on web-surfing of certain websites. Almost 9% of Steam users are already on Windows 8:

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey#cat0

8.76% is much higher than 2.26%.

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

#44

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:45 PM UTC

krautsourced wrote: post #22

FaddiCat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

And what would the point be? Massive loss of performance by going through a VM - only to save 30 bucks on licence cost for e.g. Windows? Any game dev wants the most performance they can get their hands on.

It all depends on the type of game.

Not everyone does AAA games.

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

#45

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:46 PM UTC

billsix wrote: post #39

FaddiCat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are certain restrictions thought.

If you need to interact with Android, all APIs are done via JNI and certain audio APIs have only Java APIs available.

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

#46

Post by phaus » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

Ygg2 wrote: post #25

FaddiCat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Game developers are fundamentally human. They care about people playing games, nothing more nothing less. You don't need to necessarily make your game have the latest and greatest graphical glitz. If they can make their game run smoothly on your hardware, they won't care if it's in a VM inside a Virtual Box on a cloud server, under the sea. Minecraft is written in Java. There were games written in (at least partially…

While developers surely are, game development companies are not fundamentally human. Now that Bobby Kotick has finished running Blizzard and the FPS genre into the ground, Valve is pretty much the only major publisher left that hasn't been overrun by IP lawyers and MBAs. Minecraft is a great game, but it's not a good representative of the average successful game. Developers make games because they want people to play them, but unfortunately, the only ones who have any control over what they are doing are the indie devs.

We already have indie / casual games on Linux. That's not enough to make Linux a legitimate platform.

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

#47

Post by phaus » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 5:00 PM UTC

Expez wrote: post #10

For all my love for Steam, Valve, Linux and Newell himself, I cannot help but gag a little every time he opens his mouth as of late. Not a single fuck was given about Linux prior to the release of Win 8. Then, suddenly, once Valve's profit margins and business model is threatened the company shows some interest. This is all--of course--perfectly rational behavior, but there's no need to be all righteous about it and…

Rumors of Valve's Linux-Based console have been floating around for years.

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

#48

Post by lcampbell » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 5:04 PM UTC

rplnt wrote: post #33

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.

Agreed. I take it a bit further: I have a dual-boot Windows/FreeBSD box, and use VirtualBox to run one OS inside the other, depending on what I'm doing (using a raw VMDK[1]). For me, this is helpful because using Windows as the primary gives me access to games (via working graphics drivers), and FreeBSD as a primary gives me access to a desktop environment that doesn't drive me crazy to work in (XMonad+xterm).

I'm probably risking huge dataloss, though.

--

[1] http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idp13208480

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

#49

Post by phaus » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 5:04 PM UTC

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.)

You are correct. The mainstream gaming industry would have absolutely no interest in developing for a VM, because developing games is kind of like a nuclear arms race.

Unless someone finds a way to get Next-Gen 3d Engines to run in a VM without a performance hit of even 1%, its not going to happen.

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

#50

Post by lenkite » Fri, Feb 08, 2013, 5:16 PM UTC

For your AAA full-fledged games to work on Linux, it's not just Valve - the Big-iron game engines such as RAGE, CryENGINE, FrostBite 2, etc also need to be ported and supported. Only then will AAA game makers be able to support Linux games.