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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”

#51

Post by lifeguard »

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.

BSD wikipedia says. I thought it was linux too!

>>The native operating system of the PlayStation 3 is called CellOS, which is believed to be a branch from the FreeBSD project

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

#52

Post by abrahamsen »

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…

Phoronix have basically reported on Valve's work on "Steam for Linux" since 2008, usually backed up with some kind of evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoronix

It is possible Windows 8/RT was the deciding factor in making Steam for Linux a product, but the interest in Linux is not a new thing.

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

#53

Post by jaegerpicker »

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

I'm not sure if you have used that to do any kind of intensive code. I've used it for real time video processing (H264 encoding/decoding and playing from a custom protocol) and it's not a good development experience in the least. It's extremely hard to get good debugging working, eclipse is a giant pile, most of the other IDE's for Android don't support C/C++ ndk, and there a mountain of little special compiler tricks and options to learn. Not to mention the JNI tricks and hidden issues. It's far from ideal. I REALLY!!! wish google would step up and provide a real solution to the problem there. Compared to how easy the same things is on iOS, Windows mobile 8, or bb10 is fairly frustrating.

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

#54

Post by PeterisP »

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.

If the gatekeeper (apple/ms/whatever) decides to tighten the screws, taking not 30% of your revenue, but, say, 70% revenue - then fsck the performance, it may be quite reasonable to do major changes in art, gameplay and coding practices just to fit to a more lucrative market model.

And, as is well known, simply the existence and theoretical threat of a plan B (in Gabe's case, Linux) ensures a much better negotiation position and a better (more fair?) plan A.

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

#55

Post by klodolph »

nitrogen wrote: post #42
coldpie wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm going to have to agree with this. I was the one complaining about ALSA to begin with, but PulseAudio is just another layer of indirection around ALSA. In other words, ALSA sucks, but it's more widespread than OSS, and it at least gives you some control.

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

#56

Post by binarycrusader »

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…

Sorry, but that's simply not true. I think the real truth is that developing major applications / games on Linux is still sucktastic. No universal package management system, no universal set of dependencies, no guaranteed binary runtime environment, no unified platform API for the desktop, etc.

Windows developers would also like a debugger and IDE equivalent to Visual Studio.

The sad fact of the matter is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, and I think Valve has decided to gamble that if they motivate developers to come to the platform, it will become ready.

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

#57

Post by ralfn »

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…

Some of your statements pretty much contradict what Gabe has been stating in talks and interviews the last few months.

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

#58

Post by brownbat »

cdh wrote: post #43
brownbat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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%.

The salient point isn't "Win 8 adoption is x%."

> silly results

Please don't do this.

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