Ask Slashdot: Should Valve Start Their Own Steam Linux Distro? 316
Duggeek writes "There's been a lot of discussion lately about Valve, Steam and the uncertain future of the Windows platform for gaming. While the effect of these events is unmistakably huge, it raises an interesting question: Would Valve consider putting out its own Linux distro? One advantage of such a dedicated distro would be tighter control over kernel drivers, storage, init processes and managing display(s), but would it be worth all the upstream bickering? Would it be better to start anew, or ride on a mature foundation like Fedora or Debian? Might that be a better option than addressing the myriad differences of today's increasingly fracturing distro-scape?"
why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Worst case, static link the binaries.
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Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. What a stupid idea. Next they will be asking if Valve should make their own architecture.
In that case, why not ask if they should simply market their own game console? Perhaps it should run linux...
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:4, Informative)
bundle a minimal version of linux with kernel + drivers + game, attach controller and boot off a live CD.
Just like a console.
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be my logical conclusion. It solves the problem of low numbers of Linux on the desktop. Allows them to build to a specific hardware set that if the source is shared will allow the bulk of the work for other distributions to be handled by the community or the distros themselves. I understand that most of the code will be written to hardware intermediates like OpenGL and such but drivers for such hardware can creep issues in sometimes.
If they can produce something relatively cheap compared with a phone or something, they would be in a lot of homes in no time.
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux is a FOSS operating system. There is more to the question of should Valve start their own distribution. There is how much input they want into that operating system. From examples like what Google is doing with Android with a layer on top to more like Ubuntu focusing on services and support as well as ease of installation, to simply branding. Taking an existing distribution and contributing funds for it's development and just changing branding.
Then you can look a working through the various levels, starting at branding and getting market exposure and working up to a fully internally developed version with a gaming layer on top and ensuring that gaming layer is compatible with the majority of games you distribute. You can even look at making your layer able to work in parallel with Google's Android layer. The real advantage of FOSS you're not forced down one companies lane for the benefit of that company, you can choose a full range options and retain control of those choices.
Valve of course is not really likely to produce a gaming console and far more likely to produce a specification for a gaming console and allow manufacturers some scope of individuality in development and manufacturing of the console. The principle being to take M$'s profit (the windows and xbox tax burden) and distribute it amongst a far wider market.
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It's got nothing to do with android, which is an entire virtual platform that just happens to have linux as it's hardware abstraction layer. While they could do that it seems a bit extreme for a game packaging system.
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Or they could simply choose a single distribution to target.
That would encapsulate an entire series of system requirements the same as their "custom distro" would without requiring any of the work. Anyone else could simply use that platform as a reference and work from there.
Creating their own distro is extra work they simply don't need to bother with.
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For people with weaker clients but high bandwidth low latency network connections it might be even faster - level load times can actually be shorter, frame rates could be higher.
If they are playing against other players on the same "cloud", the ping times won't really be that different. There's higher display lag - but that doesn't matter as much for some games/people.
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actually what they're planning.
or at least investigating. Unfortunately that would smash heads directly with Sony. I'm not saying that's a really bad plan, but Sony's PS ecosystem is a hell of a lot bigger than Valve, and it would be an uphill fight.
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Sony could be considering a joint venture too. Competition is always good, if you can hold both the #1 and #2 slots.
I know the PS3 has all kinds of neat functionality, but I'm not well versed in it. From what I understand, it natively runs a BSD fork, with the ability to spawn off others. I know they restricted access from one of the cores with the OtherOS option (when it was available), but I'm sure if they're doing it themselves, they could provide full hardware access.
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Cool story bro
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that some people get crazy-worked-up, but I find the sabotage outcome unlikely.
I expect they'll hang their hats on a reference distro or two like most software that isn't included in official repos. Ubuntu first, Fedora second. They want the biggest audience possible.
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on whether Valve tries to use gpl only interfaces or not.
If valve breaks while relying on a public interface, then it's the kernel team's fault for breaking it.
My point is that if the kernel team wants to subtly break things for valve, it can only do so if valve tries to use backdoor apis that aren't designed for external code in the first place.
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That's my spin too.
Since the Interfaces can be implemented there is a very distinct separation of responsibility.
I Valve choose the right interfaces for their impementation (and make a good implementation
of them). They shouldn't get any trouble upstream. Interface changes are usually well
documented and if they are not then it's clearly the interface developer that messed up.
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, you know. Fuck 'em. Valve is targeting Ubuntu which already includes non-free software in some repos. If they have a problem they can go use gNewSense which won't work with most of their hardware.
I would. Such malicious changes would have be very, very deliberate to interfere with a userspace application. And then you'd have to account for the hypocrisy of doing that while not interfering with the use of Linux with other proprietary applications. Not that Steam would need a kernel module or anything, since it's an entirely user-space technology.
That said, given your history of childish, insulting, and hateful rhetoric, posting such baseless attacks against the kernel developers is entirely predictable, coming from you.
I'm sure the truth lies somewhere, but it certainly does not resemble the picture you paint.
Thankfully, Steam does not integrate into the OS in any real fashion.
The purists can cause a fuss, but like any other proprietary application that has appeared for Linux the end result will be nothing since it won't impact them should they choose not to use it.
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Except that there is a movement in the debian community to try and become a fsf approved distro. I find it slightly hypocritical that they will refuse to approve of distros that merely have a none-free section even if it is turned off by default. Is that not in and of itself in interference and inhibiting the freedom of the user to install what ever software they like?
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Hairyfeet said there was a "large amount" of purists, and that's obviously not true, judging simply by the number of users of pure distros.
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you implying it isnt't?
"anything that doesn't have the 4 freedoms is poison"
You realize why Linux was made in the first place, right? To be a free and open system. Complaining people want to keep it such kind of strikes me as missing the point entirely, likely intentionally.
You also realize that you CAN, in fact, get proprietary software from repos of varying degrees of officialness in almost every distro? Java, flash, drivers... however, we are not your app store marketing device.
'Frankly I would be VERY surprised if some of those vocal members of the kernel team didn't just "accidently" make changes that broke Steam every. damned. time. if for no other reason than to be able to say "See? if you gave us your code then that wouldn't be happening now would it?" to "prove" their way is not only the right way but the ONLY way.'
Right. Because this has happened... exactly zero times in the past. It is no secret the kernel developers HATE proprietary drivers. Yet this conspiracy has not come to pass.
Making up insane bullshit only makes you look like a lunatic.
"So whether one wishes to acknowledge the truth or not it simply doesn't change the fact that the community is split in two, with the pragmatists that simply want to see Linux grow and as long as the core is free they are happy, and the purists that believe that the four freedoms should be held inviolate and nothing should be allowed to 'contaminate" Linux, especially not DRM which again, like it or not, is EXACTLY what Steam is."
Has it occurred to you that these might actually be, in fact, the same position? Linux exist in spite of repeated corporate attacks, not because of proprietary software.
"Sure its a harmless and pretty hassle free form of DRM"
Phone-home DRM... harmless, yeah, right. Screw your DRM. It does not belong on Linux. It certainly does not belong in any official repo of any respectable distro.
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"You realize why Linux was made in the first place, right? To be a free and open system."
No, GNU was. Linux started out as some compsci student's OS kernel hobby project and it wasn't really free software initially.
Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Insightful)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#Linux_under_the_GNU_GPL [wikipedia.org]
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Those vocal people have never been near the kernel, which is why what you've suggested is not happening to the commercial NVIDIA drivers that have been hooked into the kernel for about a decade now.
That split you describe has only ever bothered Debian linux at it's most political and I've got the impression that those who were in Debian for the politi
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Re:why on earth would they want to do that? (Score:5, Informative)
The drivers for gaming-related devices have got to be pretty awful on FreeBSD if nobody seems to use it at all for games, only servers
nVidia ships blob drivers for FreeBSD.
Yet they don't make the (blob) drivers for BSD either
Yes they do [nvidia.com], at least for x86 and x86-64.
The way drivers work in Linux and BSD, aren't accommodating to "binary blobs" since they can be broken with even minor updates
FreeBSD guarantees a stable KBI across minor revisions, and we require strong justifications for breaking it between minor revisions (which means that often kernel modules will work between major revisions, we just don't guarantee it). After 10.0, we're looking at providing longer-term support for a subset of KPIs.
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Should that be '...between major revisions' at the end there?
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Actually, it is called "Android" last I checked.
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Heh.. they must have put the N in there to throw us off adroid ads on Steroids.
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Seriously? You've always been able to disable the deals popup in the options. As for knocking Valve's software, I'm genuinely confused. I'm chalking that up to just being a raging mad person about the first thing you mentioned?
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Steam -> Settings -> Interface -> un-check "Notify Me..."
Prediction (Score:2)
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
Re:Prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, Linux has had 15 years to get it's own shit together.
It's sort of like the Apple MP3 player thing. When the iPod launched it was far from the first MP3 player. But it was the first MP3 player that wasn't 100% crap to use. Completely took over the market and dominated everyone. But you know what? Five years later all the other MP3 players were still crap to use. Even after Apple showed how to do it right Creative and Sony and everyone else was still trudging along with crappy syncing utilities and even worse UI on the MP3 player itself.
Nothing was preventing them from making a good player and good software before or after Apple entered the market.
Same way, with or without Steam, nothing is preventing Linux and the distros from getting their shit together. Nothing is preventing them now. Nothing was preventing them five years ago. Steam comes out and turns a branch of Linux into RMS's worst nightmare? The rest of Linux will have no more or less opportunity to make a good package than if this whole Steam thing crashes and burns and never gets out of beta.
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A company like Valve won't simply float around in Linux. It is going to cause problems, and I suspect won't solve a single one of the current problems in the long run. We'll see how it goes, but as far as I care, history repeats.
Re:Prediction (Score:4, Insightful)
And if Valve manages to get even 10% of windows users to switch to Valvebrand Linux, what do you suspect will happen then? I suspect exactly what I said: dropping of support for any other distro by hardware manufacturers.
That's OK because hardware manufacturers don't support any distributions now, sometimes with rare exception for RHEL that no one really uses. All proprietary software support you see in distributions that people actually use, is ported by distributions maintainers.
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Again, it's my prediction. It is not like this has not happened in the computing world
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You must not work in IT. SLES and RHEL are explicitly supported by virtually all of the system OEMs out there. Are you referring exclusively to Desktops?
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I am talking about hardware manufacturers. Desktop OEMs never make their own software, they just take whatever comes with distributions, and may post packages maintained by the real components manufacturers if distributions aren't sufficient.
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(and server OEMs do exactly the same)
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mp3: cowon beats them hands down in battery life and features.
as for the rest, it's spoken like someone who has no clue how long and hard it is to clean room reverse engineer hardware so you 1. don't get dragged into court for breaking laws. 2. can legally distribute the code to anyone.
even when you have the documentation as in the case of ati giving it to the foss world. it takes a long time to build the code base. compare that to the window's driver which is probably choked with legacy code from people wh
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Really? Considering that many of those years were when Microsoft was at its peak anti-competitiveness and laying the foundation for its own prosecution?
Yes there was. Microsoft. Apple only managed to succeed because they were completely insular and had an existing loyalist userbase that hated Microsoft.
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Counterpoint: I hate the way iTunes makes me manage my music collection. I loathe the way that it focuses on playlists, while I want albums. Even though I can hack it to support my (non-Apple) devices, I am loathe to do so.
From my first MP3 player (a CD-based Riovolt SP-250) to my latest (a Motorola Droid 4), I can just put stuff that I wa
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What do you mean focus on playlists rather than albums? The only thing that I use playlists for in iTunes is overlapping sets of genres, I use albums the rest of the time.
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The kernel is GPL and although a few vendors *cough*ATI*cough*NVIDIA*cough* release binary blobs, I doubt Valve would be able to get away with making the kernel changes needed to implement functioning DRM and then not releasing the source as GPL.
If Valve makes kernel changes that benefit Steam or games generally, anyone is free to take those changes and use them on the distro of their choice.
FInancials (Score:2)
One upside of Valve creating their own Linux distro, is we may finally get to see some financials / sales numbers when Microsoft sues them. Another upside is Valve may actually put up a fight and get some of these patents invalidated.
Yes! (Score:2)
As mentioned, they only have to make it work on one distribution. They can concentrate on maximizing performance for this distro, and, by making the source available, open the doors for independent game developers and other enhancements.
The distro fragmentation argument is not relevant; those looking for linux distros for work or other production are unlikely to consider a specialized platform. (How often have you seen Morphix installed as the compny-wide platform?
Of course, I have to say no. (Score:2)
Its the law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines [wikipedia.org]
Should Valve advance Linux gaming by creating a distro optimized for it? sure, why not. The world needs more distros. Besides, I hear that UbuFedorIanWare is getting behind on their latest release.
There is already such a thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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All that requires is that the developers implement a borderless display-sized window option (aka fullscreen windowed or fullwindowed), which about half of them already do. I use this whenever available for reasons very similar to what you describe.
Windowed 3D apps will happily switch just like normal app windows do. As I understand it (I only develop business apps personally), Windows/DirectX full sc
As a Mac user and Windows gamer (Score:3)
All I can say is yes do this distro thing.
Apple showed what a weak opengl effort, slow gpu hardware support can do to great code.
MS shows what a desktop split by the needs of MS console and MS tablets can do.
A distro allows Valve to break free from the 'no good gpu for you' of an Apple or the X box first demands of a M$ desperate for branding locked onto very old hardware.
One big encrypted, ad serving, updating/healing, easy to back up download is a very positive step.
A virtual console for your PC on a dynamic, free OS. Free of Apple and free of MS.
bleh. whatever. (Score:3)
Just because valve and blizzard aren't fans of windows 8, doesn't mean that suddenly windows is going to fall off the map for gamers. They will just continue to use Win7, and wait until Win9. The problem valve/blizzard have is that damned win8 app store, which could possibly erode their business over time.
Personally, I think win8 is fine, but the start screen is pretty bad on the desktop. The rest of the OS has good things going on, good enough for me to forgive the metro crap.
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Steambox (Score:2)
Ubuntu (Score:2)
My prediction is that no, they wouldn't set up a distro only for Steam. Much rather they limit the official compatibility only for Ubuntu.
However it was expected to discussions like this to come. Steam games are a great test for how desktop Linux can handle third party stuff. Closed-source software, DLL compatibility, audio interface, graphics card drivers.
Even if everything doesn't go completely smoothly from the get-go, the whole project will give various benefits to the Linux ecosystem and, for sure we w
Duggeek doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:2)
"Mature" and "Fedora" do not belong together. A new Fedora is released in less than a year on most cases. Also, they are not afraid of pissing off their users until they leave in massive numbers because they haven't been listening to them. Not what I would call a mature distro in any sense of the word.
But the answer is "yes" they should make their own optimized Linux distro so that a user can have a LiveCD or LiveDVD. As for a whole general purpose distro? No. Maybe not.
Linux is not going to be a viable gaming platform (Score:2)
Valve would be better off building their own console, or partnering with Google on an Android based console. Linux is too fragmented and lacks even rudimentary support for so many graphics cards. Even if we get drivers, getting something working on the wide range of distributions and versions will dwarf even Android fragmentation problems. Mainstream gamers are not techies in any way, and even techies don't want to deal with a bunch of compatibility issues when they want to just play games. Linux can't eve
They don't need a distro... (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps what Valve need to do isn't create a replacement distribution of Linux, but simply a replacement interface for it. Ditch X11 and all its window management software, and just run it all inside a Valve-designed user interface created to make things nice and simple. They could create a UI with consistent and familiar rules, publish API's to allow developers to create applications that use Valve's hardware-accelerated and streamlined system natively, and allow X11 to be run alongside this new primary user interface just like any other application.
On second thought, I could swear I've heard of something like this before...
Re:They don't need a distro... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that they more than *anyone* need nVidia and ATI proprietary drivers, trying to start from scratch with no proprietary vendor support (a la Wayland), ditching Xorg would be an ill-advised move.
Now in terms of layers *above* Xorg, I could see them writing a very minimalist fullscreen oriented window manager. In terms of published APIs, they do effectively control SDL now. With SDL/OpenGL in hand, a game developer mostly doesn't need to know/care that Xorg is the backend (in fact, the vast majority of modern Linux graphical source code lacks any direct Xlib API calls in it). They may want to endorse either GTK or Qt as their recommended Toolkit for out-of-game interfaces to make it more comprehensive.
Extremely bad idea (Score:2)
Please don't (Score:2)
"System requirements:
Steam OS, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows 8, Apple Mac OS X"
This doesn't help me as a Linux user. I don't want to reboot every time I want to play a game, and even if I found that acceptable, I could just boot into windows.
After 5 years: "System requirements:
SteamBox, Microsoft Windows 8, Apple iOS"
They'll end up making a "box" like everyone else. Is it really that hard to make a fucking general purpose software platform ?
Probably.... (Score:2)
-Steambox. If they exploit this as a way to actually own the platform in their own console, then pretty much by definition they have to have their 'own' distro.
-*If* they really want to make a ballsy move and try to move people off of Windows by doing something like releasing a very anticipated game Linux-only, packaging it with a LiveUSB steam platform would be a way to facilitate less savvy users getting into it.
This does *not* mean they support their own distro to the exclusion of others, it just means
The best option (Score:3)
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Re:Just what the world needs (Score:4, Interesting)
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This Valve project is going to backlash so bad when Valve discovers that Ubuntu has big gaps in it's non-gfx driver reportoire as well. Valve actually need to make a distro where they put in shitloads of drivers, just like Windows. For both old, new and medium aged hardware.
How does “both” work with three items?
Re:Just what the world needs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Just what the world needs (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a matter of using the right tool for the job. Valve will need to set some standards for their Linux environment, so that developers know what to expect on their customers' machines.
Creating their own distro or targeting an existing distro will accomplish this, though in a rather ham-fisted way (they seem to be going with option 2 atm, targeting Ubuntu). A better alternative may be to define a set of libraries and let the distros create meta-packages.
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Not a good idea for linux users (Score:3, Informative)
I think that xkcd [xkcd.com] covered this fairly well.
The solution to fracturing is certainly *NOT* to make an existing standard. That just furthers the fracturing. It would be a terrible thing to inflict upon the Linux community.
Pushing out packages for the common distros (Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat) should work well for most Linux users.
On the other hand, one argument for a new distro would be non-Linux users. Just as Android is essentially a Linux fork, a Steam distro could essentially be a "Linux for non-Linux users."
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Precisely so.
Maintaining their own distro would be too much work for a meager reward. Building packages for major distros, with others left to incorporate those packages into their own structure any way they can, should suffice for the vast majority of use cases. Distro maintainers will make sure everything works as long as Valve doesn’t break something. People won’t be forced to reboot to play, or to reinstall their system just because they want Steam.
The whole point in making Steam for Linux
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Re:Just what the world needs (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed.
When I started with Linux, it seemed the choices were few: Slackware, or Yggdrasil (Red Hat, Suse, and Debian were a few years hence). Matt Welsh's fabulous book "Running Linux" focused on Slackware, and so did the rest of the Linux Documentation Project (is the LDP even still alive?). a.out was still a viable, and used, executable binary format.
Package management was shit: You installed a new package on your existing system with (at best) a "./configure&&make&&make install" as root (WTF is sudo?), ran ldconfig, fixed whatever it broke, and moved on.
Today, there are a myriad of safe (and unsafe) choices. And while the capitalist in me says that choice is good, the pragmatist in me says that it's really a burden.
The reasons for the crop of shit that we've grown are obvious: There is an incongruity between the folks who want to pay for an OS (Red Hat), the folks who want a free (libre) OS (Debian), folks who want an efficient OS (Gentoo FTW), and folks who want an OS that Just Works (Ubuntu).
So I'll be the first to say it: Yes, the community can stand to have a distribution wherein games Just Work. Because in having games Just Work, it's likely that proper low-latency audio will also Just Work. And from there, it's easy to have video Just Work. And at that point, it starts to sound a whole lot like what BeOS was...except it's still *nix, and it works on modern hardware.
Does it route packets? Does it run VMs with seamless precision? Can I do backups on an ancient Travan drive using ftape? Does it speak Arcnet or Token Ring? Who cares! Seriously. (I write this as a geek who has done all of these things, with a love for computing history, who has a thermal teletype, a box of paper, and a dedicated spot in the living room with suitable wire already installed, just waiting for a modernly-useful application that would benefit from such placement, as opposed to the dual-core 1.2GHz Linux box that I carry in my pocket.)
What the world could use right now, in my humble opinion, is a free(ish) OS that can do useful things with games media with great expediency and reliability.
Why?
Traditional user applications have run so fast ("faster than instantaneous" as a someone once told me is a bit of an exaggeration, but does fit with the current user experience) on any new hardware for nearly a decade that it's silly to even consider them as a goal. For all we complain, both Firefox and Open Office work fine even on rather ancient hardware (for instance).
Scientific applications increasingly rely on GPU calculations which rely on drivers for video cards which are primarily written for gamers. And as a scientist, one shouldn't need to care of the OS is totally free (libre), but whether or not the math is good and fast.
And server apps, well...gosh, Linux has done that very well since nearly day 1. The market needs no relative improvement in this area. It's nailed.
So a focus on low latency, for both video and audio, is a boon for gamers. A focus on making modern graphics, sound, and input hardware work well (through driver and API improvements) is a boon for both gamers and the scientific community. Give these goals a profitable shot in the butt by making games snappier than on other systems, and the rest of the demanding applications that common consumers actually use (AV production, graphic arts, fucking Youtube/Facebook/et al.) will happen naturally -- while also benefiting the rest of the users in the scientific community, and maybe (but not likely) in the sever realm.
(The above is just a dream from me, a random dude, who has used x86 computers for a couple of decades.)
Re:Just what the world needs (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry but after several years using it Ubuntu is not the distro that 'just works'. Thats Debian and Im sorry I didnt discover it sooner.
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Agreed. I'd even go a step further and have a Steam distribution throw out a lot of the options that make us nerds salivate. Or at least hide them a bit. Make it so that people can one-click install the OS with all the packages needed for games - including Steam - one click to buy games, and one click to play games, and you've got yourself a killer platform for most gamers.
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And while the capitalist in me says that choice is good, the pragmatist in me says that it's really a burden.
Well, the pragmatist in you is wrong, and more than a little foolish, as you covered in the next line:
There is an incongruity between the folks who want to pay for an OS (Red Hat), the folks who want a free (libre) OS (Debian), folks who want an efficient OS (Gentoo FTW), and folks who want an OS that Just Works (Ubuntu).
Well, you forgot my personal favourite, Arch.
Why do you think these all exist?
Pe
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another distro to fragment the already shattered linux community
Shattered? We're talking about FLOSS mixtapes variations. In the end all your shit needs to run on a compute unit and that's where the real pain comes from.
An OS is just a fucked up large hardware abstraction framework+driver library, managing execution.
It's Microsoft's fault for making what people wanted: cheap crap for the masses that is just not sucking enough on all fronts for everybody to not hate so much that they refuse to put up with it.
In the end this is what we as a human species are responsable f
Re:Neither (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're talking out your ass to suit your obvious agenda.
Can I run $newgame? Probably not. That's not because of drivers, though; that's because the vast majority of demanding programs made use DirectX, and the best we have to make up for that is wine's reverse engineered interfaces to translate DirectX to OpenGL. They are astoundingly good for what they are, but obviously, are about 2 years behind in support and somewhat touchy.
I might have some graphical glitches and update issues from time to time, but even using a fairly new ATI card (generally regarded as the worst possible situation to be in), I still have perfectly and fully functioning 3D acceleration, including shaders. Performance of what I can run is effectively identical to that of the same programs on windows. Native OpenGL applications (try the Ogre demos) in fact run substantially better.
As for lowering the quality to make it run better? That basically proves you are clueless. Anyone who has actually run into driver issues on Linux can identify that speed is not an issue unless it is an extreme issue, ie, it is not that the drivers are magically slower (think about it...), but that sometimes they do cause issues that drag the system into the dirt. These are rare. The common driver problems are generally visual corruption and general failure, NEVER performance.
Don't let the facts get in the way of your screed, though.
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Plenty of windows users use intel graphics too, you can't blame the os if the underlying hardware is low-end...
As for ATI/nVidia, their drivers on linux are every bit as quick as the windows versions if not faster..
Supporting windows is also a nightmare, how many games come with a readme saying "dont use version xxx of ati drivers, dont use yyy of nvidia, known problems etc"... I've seen lots of games which have glitches with certain driver versions.
But here's the thing, on windows Valve have absolutely no
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Because then noone would bother to make any native linux apps... Look what happened to OS/2.
Incidentally if you target wine when you develop your applications, they will run just fine on windows too whereas the other way round doesn't always work.
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No, it most certainly wouldn't be the "dominate" desktop right now just because of gaming. I've got several PC's, have played around a lot with linux over the years, but for me it's just not worth the effort on a day-to-day basis. It's just not as user-friendly, not as simple to use as say windows 7 that I'm currently running.
Linux would be the dominant desktop if they made a well working and competent desktop system where the majority of users would be able to expect it to just work overall - games or not.
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I find that a lot of comments like this mistake familiarity with a platform for it being "easy to use."
AND if it were shipping in volume on PCs, along with the developer of said distro were receiving investments that allowed them t
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It's not a case of familiarity with the platform for me, since as I said I've played around quite a lot with Linux, and have repeatedly tried to make the switch completely, using linux exclusively for weeks, months, giving myself plenty of time to get familiar with it. Of course then a new version of the distribution comes out, the colour scheme changes, some programs are changed out, things that used to work doesn't... much like switching from say Windows XP to Windows 7, or next to Windows 8 (Which I will
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They've walked through the installer themselves. They run it themselves. Little instruction mind you. try that on windows.
If your reasonable competitant there is no reason you can't do it. I keep hearing this and I hate it. Its simply not true.
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I've got complete noobs walking through the windows installer, no problems, running things themselves. I don't see what you're getting at here. I've never seen anyone "reasonably competent" (there, fixed that for you) have problems with a windows install. But then an end user use-case doesn't usually include re-installing the system. It might to you and me, we're geeks, but that's not the market here. So as misguided as your point is, it's not even relevant.
But more importantly... Getting people running the
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windows 7 has a terrible clunky interface.
Compare that to the sleak lines of GNOME, the future desktop of KDE, and then MATE and cinnamon take the cake.
all are far easier to learn than windows which banks 10+ years of user experiance and familiarity.
Windows lags severely in user interface. They are 2 years behind ubuntu and gnome in replacing the desktop with a dashboard.
WINE! Yay! (Score:2)
Wine is a fantastic tool! It allows me to run the sort of windows applications for which there already is a fine native Linux alternative available. Of course the Windows applications that Linux still lacks a native alternative for (my choice: games, visual studio) either won't(*) work or don't make sense in that setting, but still, very useful.
(*) Yeah, I know that with days of tinkering, a bit of luck and just the right hw configuration it can probably be done
"Windows" is trademarked, call it "Portals" (Score:5, Funny)
A platform suited to playing the newest DRM games? They should call it Windows.
No. Call it "Portals". "Windows" is already trademarked.
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Linux users are used to getting software for free, but then so are pirates... The difference is that the pirates couldn't care less about copyrights and license terms, while many linux users do respect them and wouldn't download any software that wasn't intentionally offered to them for free.
Now things like the core os, browsers, etc are absolutely essential tools that noone should be without... They should be free, so that they are as accessible as possible to everyone.
Games on the other hand, are a purely
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Nice strawman. Oh and baseless attack on Linux users as a whole.
Let's face it, driver support in Linux is ok for things like word processing, surfing the web, and playing media files. Outrageous frame rates so you
At least on the NVIDIA side (Score:2)
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There are many reasons for a large company to want to control its own platform. None of the major distros are going to sign up to take marching orders from Valve, which is what anyone paying attention ought to expect. That leaves them either being just another software developer, or starting a distro to leverage the whole OS.
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use audacity, I think its the new standard when people work on their own.
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because they only have to make it work for one Linux distro.
And I'm pretty sure they will and the distro would be called "Ubuntu."
I'm pretty sure that Canonical would do anything (and already does) to ensure that Steam on Linux would be first class citizen on Ubuntu.
Also, Steam would likely keep a private copy of every system library used - like the matryoshka doll, it would be a distro of its own anyway. (Because you want to make sure that system update for security reasons or whatever will not suddenly render every game unusable.) With that in mind, I doubt