The State of Linux Gaming In the SteamOS Era 199
An anonymous reader writes: It's been over a year since Valve announced its Linux-based SteamOS, the biggest push yet from a huge company to bring mainstream gaming to Linux. In this article, Ars Technica takes a look at how their efforts are panning out. Game developers say making Linux ports has gotten dramatically easier: "There are great games shipping for Linux from development teams with no Linux expertise. They hit the 'export to Linux' button in the Unity editor and shipped it and it worked out alright. We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."
Hardware drivers are still a problem, getting in the way of potential performance gains due to Linux's overall smaller resource footprint than Windows. And while the platform is growing, it's doing so slowly. Major publishers are still hesitant to devote time to Linux, and Valve is taking their time building for it. Their Steam Machine hardware is still in development, and some of their key features are being adopted by other gaming giants, like Microsoft. Still, Valve is sticking with it, and that's huge. It gives developers faith that they can work on supporting Linux without fear that the industry will re-fragment before their game is done.
Hardware drivers are still a problem, getting in the way of potential performance gains due to Linux's overall smaller resource footprint than Windows. And while the platform is growing, it's doing so slowly. Major publishers are still hesitant to devote time to Linux, and Valve is taking their time building for it. Their Steam Machine hardware is still in development, and some of their key features are being adopted by other gaming giants, like Microsoft. Still, Valve is sticking with it, and that's huge. It gives developers faith that they can work on supporting Linux without fear that the industry will re-fragment before their game is done.
Easy of porting over is the key (Score:2)
For this to be successful it needs to be easy. If they're port to Linux button works as well as they claim in this article, it makes sense to think the platform will take off. Otherwise very few will waste time on attempting to gain a minor %% of the market.
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Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:5, Insightful)
This Linux gaming renaissance is most likely a side effect of how every other gaming platform besides Windows uses "something else". That something else is Linux compatible. That reduces the distance between Linux and what has already been ported to.
Android, MacOS, even the PS4 and Wii's are intermediate steps towards Linux.
It's no great surprise that the most interesting ports for Linux are being done by a MacOS porting house.
Beyond the big titles, Linux is a significant part of the market. The indies were already porting to Linux because of this.
Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:5, Funny)
and shipping a title for a platform when it doesn't actually work on that platform, or has issues that nobody ever even bothered to check because they don't want to spend any time on QA for the platform is worse for the company's PR than not shipping the title for that platform in the first place.
Then why is EA shipping games for any platform at all?
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MacOS, PS4, and Wii have one thing in common that Linux doesn't have. They're not moving targets. They don't require a user have expert knowledge. Aside from OS X, they're dedicated to a specific purpose.
OS X has a vested interest in trying to build a gaming ecosystem to bolster Apple's sales, but the stigma of Macs being piss-poor gaming machines will follow them around for a long time to come. Most people can't see a need or a benefit to move away from a Windows PC, but it's very easy to see the drawb
Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't require a user have expert knowledge.
This isn't 1998 anymore. Linux doesn't require "expert knowledge" to run and use. My parents in their 50's are using Linux full-time (even though they don't know they are) as is my sister - who knows it but doesn't really regard the fact as more than an interesting piece of trivia.
Linux works just as simply as any other OS these days. You want a program? Go to Software Center and search for it. It installs. The icon appears in your menu.
Yes, you CAN get technical and in depth with the system if you want, but that's no different than Windows having the registry and Powershell available if you want to tweak things.
Right now Linux just isn't popular with gamers because there are no games for it, and there are no games for it because gamers don't use it. It's chicken and egg problem, but it's changing, albeit slowly. I personally use my Linux system for everything EXCEPT games, though I'll admit that I'd be excited to ditch Windows even for the games if I could (I do have a PS4 that I play some stuff on). It is nice though that Pillars of Eternity will be available for Linux and is coming out very soon. I've been waiting for that one for quite a while and it may be the first "real" game I'm able to play there.
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You are speaking of closed devices correct (tables and phones)? Not desktop and laptop PCs as that's a whole other ball game. The article even states the complications with hardware optimization in Linux environments. Devices such as tablets and smart phones don't suffer the same versatility as desktop PCs hence the stable h/w configuration and drivers.
Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:4, Interesting)
No. I'm speaking of just Ubuntu on a desktop.
Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:5, Interesting)
I bought my 14 year old daughter a new laptop that had Windows 8 on it. She wiped it out and installed Linux. She runs Steam for most games, and WINE for a couple because Steam does not quite work for them.
She is not computer illiterate, but she is not an IT guru either. She googles what she needs to know and follows guides she finds.
Re:Easy of porting over is the key (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, when I was that age I was installing Slackware on a 386... It's about access. When I was a kid, living in a town with a bunch of computer companies was mandatory in order to have cheap computer deals around. In Santa Cruz county we had Borland, Seagate, SCO, Parallel Computing, Sequoia Semiconductor, Plantronics, and piles of other techie or nominally-techie corporations attracted by the college town environment... and internet access brought in through the college. And $1/MB used hard disks for year
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I built a kit for my nontechnical brother and he decided he didn't want to spring for windows and just install ubuntu. I was worried his wife would be mad at me because we didn't install windows {he said he would buy windows if she threw a fit}. I found out all the things she did on it which amounts to checking email, paying bills, youtube, facebook, and a few java game sites. I installed KDE not windows themed but layed out similar and made sure it wasn't missing anything and that she would be able to acce
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My parents in their 50's are using Linux full-time even though they don't know they are
Every Linux conversion story posted to Slashdot reads like this. It has been that way since the site was launched.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's not.
The only people who claim so are, frankly, ignorant.
The ignorance comes because Linux is easier to use for development than the alternatives. You just apt-get install the libraries you need and get hacking.
In order to make something portable you need to do what you have to do on Windows anyway: package all the libraries with your program.
It's just that by default Linux is much easier in that regard.
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It's not that Macs have a stigma of being piss-poor gaming machines, it's that Apple is so obsessed with thin computers, even the desktop models, that they simply can't use half-decent GPUs. If you put aside things like OS X and hardware features which are irrelevant to gaming, the cost of a desktop Mac is much higher than a desktop Windows or Linux PC.
With mods? (Score:2)
What the world is really waiting for is a console that acts like a dedicated PC gaming machine
You could always buy an iBuyPower SBX PC.
If the XBOX or PS4 (as well as game developers) would just take the mouse and keyboard seriously you could transform the entire landscape of console gaming to be much more in line with PC gaming.
Would this include ability to install and use community-developed mods, or would only the vanilla versions of games be available?
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If the XBOX or PS4 (as well as game developers) would just take the mouse and keyboard seriously
Sony takes mice and keyboard seriously with their Playstations. PS2's, PS3's and PS4's have USB ports for a reason. However Sony leaves it up to the developers to decide if they want to support keyboard/mouse and in what way. Requiring mouse/keyboard game control is probably not in their TRC requirements.
PS2: If a game has text chat or text entry, it almost always supports keyboards. That includes the settings disc for the Network adapter, and RPG Maker Keyboards/mice for game control is rarer, a few
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Android, MacOS, even the PS4 and Wii's are intermediate steps towards Linux.
Yes, they are but you can't call Android Linux or PS4 Linux. Linux after all is just the kernel and it doesn't dictate how good the OS is.
PS4 runs *BSD (Score:2)
PlayStation 4 doesn't run Linux. It runs Orbis OS, an operating system based on FreeBSD. The point is that if your company ports a game to OS X and PlayStation 4, those count as ports to environments with a POSIX heritage, and GNU/Linux is another OS that aims for POSIX conformance.
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Driver model (Score:2)
I do NOT want binary blobs running in kernel mode on my machine. They screw up both stability and security of the system. And OEMs who cannot provide open source drivers can go fuck themselves.
If not for MS monopoly and bullying of OEMs, Linux would have had good driver support from OEMs ages ago. Don't blame Linus for problems caused by Microsoft. Any OEM who tries to sell both Microsoft and Linux systems gets visited by Microsoft and stops
Re:Driver model (Score:5, Informative)
Then riddle me this...why does NOBODY, and I do mean nobody, not in FOSS nor in proprietary, support Torvalds driver model? After all if it was good there is absolutely NOTHING stopping them from adopting it, right? And what about BSD, why does it not follow the great Torvalds driver model?
"nobody" migth have been an exageration. Intel does. As do plenty of others (logitech, realtek come to mind, but there's a lot more). But I think naming Intel should prove that it's not just just one man.
Also, BSDs follows an extremely similar model: In the kernel tree. Most OpenBSD don't support binary blobs either, I've no idea about the rest.
The reason why is obvious, its because its shit that just won't scale. Hell basic math will show you that "let the kernel devs handle it" utterly collapses when the number of drivers reaches 5 figures because there simply is not enough kernel devs to keep up with all the hardware that is already out, much less the hundreds of new devices released this and every other quarter. It really VERY simple, in 1993, when the entire OS could fit on a single floppy? Then sure letting the kernel devs handle it made sense, they had MAYBE 30 drivers all told to deal with, now how many is there? 100,000? 200,000? Even if you pumped up the devs on coke and locked them in a room with NOTHING to but but deal with drivers they would have MAYBE 5 minutes every 3 years for each driver!
The devs just check that everything is the tree is ok, The drivers themselves are written by the hardware developers. When I had an issue with a Logitech mouse on PowerPC, it was a Logitech dev that submitted that patch to the linux kernel. That model does scale.
But if you truly believe what you are saying? Then put your money where your mouth is and take the Hairyfeet challenge which just FYI only requires Linux to run HALF, I repeat HALF as long as a Windows lifecycle. Surely your OS can do half of what Windows can, right? I look forward to seeing your video posted here and the complete vid on Dropbox. of course we'll never see it because if you actually attempt to take the challenge you'll see what I saw countless times and that is Torvalds.driver.model.doesn't.work. and it all comes down to his driver model being made of fail.
The hairyfeet challenge is stupid. Is someone is stupid enough to invest money on something without knowing what it is or any previous research to see if it fits their purpose, they deserve what they get. Even if you know nothing about PCs, you can ask someone that does.
The problem is not related to the driver model at all (which is actually far better than the MSFT one), but to the fact that microsoft has a huge amount of money, has held a strong monopoly over a very long time, and there's a lot of money motivating manufacturers to just write windows drivers. It's money, there's nothing technical about that.
Re:Driver model (Score:4, Informative)
I suppose by "nobody" you mean "everybody except nvidia"? Because the nvidia binary blobs are pretty much the only drivers that occasionally have problems with kernel updates due to the way they really mess around deep into the kernel (ie: they implement their own drm code and X api). With Nouveau finally starting to mature, this is thankfully becoming less and less of a problem. But pretty much every other driver (proprietary or otherwise) seems to work just fine with the linux driver model.
Meanwhile a Windows user can buy a PC and have the drivers that come on the system run for the ENTIRE LIFE of the system, I can take a copy of XP RTM, install the drivers, and then run it through the entire life of the OS, 3 service packs and countless patches, know how many drivers will be non functional at the end? NONE, that is how many drivers will be broken at the end and THAT is what you are competing against, and failing miserably!
So, are you saying that over the life time of your system (what is that, say 6-7 yrs?), you never update the drivers? What do you think a service pack is? Nevermind. Anyway, it doesn't matter because you are wrong. SP2 broke a lot of XP drivers (and software for that matter), including the nvidia driver. Yes, you can now download an updated nvidia driver that works, but at the time of the SP2 release the old nvidia driver did not work on SP2.
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However the main problem with that is NOT the driver model. The main problem with that is Microsoft.
OEMs that cannot/do not get bullied by Microsoft DO provide open-source drivers. Intel, Atheros, Realtek, AMD, lots of others.
However Microsoft made sure Linux devices cannot be sold by usual popular vendors like Dell/Asus/Lenovo etc. Anyone who tries selling Linux laptops or desktops gets
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I hope you're wrong, but you make a good argument.
I guess we'll see what happens when they unveil their latest progress next month.
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While Windows remains the dominant platform Valve will continue to see that as a risk. As you stated the decision with 8 to include an app store sparked the rush to develop steam for linux and steam os. However there is no guarantee that win 10 won't come with an app store either pre-installed or pushed. As such it remains a risk profile to Valve.
The only solution to this is to fragment the market enough that steam becomes the only cross platform option. My steam for linux gets updates almost weekly. I
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Well obviously they're going to curse you. I mean you have just single-handedly ensured the demise of SteamOS by virtue of grumpily posting a pessimistic opinion on a nerdy discussion board. Because that's the way Cause And Effect works, right?
Seriously, a bit of perspective here?
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Some of the better tools are currently for Windows and MacOS. It only makes sense that they would only be available for those OSs since they are well defined and popular platforms. Linux for desktop has too much variability for them to offer a product that simply installs and works without question.
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The exact same rationality can be applied to the games themselves.
My point being that if it is worth the effort to even create an export to linux facility, then it should also be worth the effort for the editor itself to run under linux. How is requiring Windows or a Mac to run the editor on what is supposed to be a development platform any better than requiring Windows or Mac to run the g
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Because getting a new windows/mac devbox costs like $500. Not porting to Linux can cost you (conceivably) tens of thousands of dollars.
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So clearly, it's not hurting Unity any that they aren't porting the editor to Linux.... Considering the price of their software compared to the average game, I highly doubt i
WINE (Score:3)
Rather than targeting Windows game studious should just target a wine release. If it works there it will work on Windows version X. If they simply started doing there development to winelib and worked around stuff that is stubbed or does not work on the front end, they probably would get a product that would reliably run on most Linux Distro's and Windows with little added effort.
Wine + the staging patches (RH uses this as their packaged version now) is pretty damn good.
Why VMs suck at Windows 3D (Score:2)
Underworld Ascendant now supports Linux (Score:2)
Flying Cars (Score:2)
"We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."
Flying cars have been produced for the last twenty years. Drivable aircraft for longer than that. The problem isn't technical, it's political. They can't license and regulate them. The Government systems are just too crude.
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"We didn't get flying cars, but the future is turning out OK so far."
Flying cars have been produced for the last twenty years. Drivable aircraft for longer than that. The problem isn't technical, it's political. They can't license and regulate them. The Government systems are just too crude.
That is not the problem. You can fly one if you have a flying license or do it at low altitudes over your own private land. The problem is that they are a stupid idea, the power spend keeping the vehicle hovering is not spend moving it which makes the range ridiculous short, on top of a price set in hundreds if not millions of dollars.
No desire to port (Score:2)
The state here (Score:2)
The state for me is that Steam works on Windows and doesn't work on Ubuntu. I have to use -tcp on windows, but even that won't let me connect on Linux. No firewall rules on this system under Linux, there may be some under Windows. Double-natted, of course, but it works on Windows.
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I can't imagine how that's even possible, something is seriously wrong with your setup. Don't blame Steam for that.
I can't imagine how that is even possible either, since everything else works. I can post to slashdot, stream video, or do anything else from both Windows and Linux. I even installed steam_latest.deb right before posting, including deleting my .steam directory. No good.
Possibly there is something wrong with my Ubuntu install, but I really can't fathom what that might be since everything else works fine. Until something other than Steam fails, though, I'm going to continue to blame Steam.
I'm not going to pos
Re: What about a windows VM? (Score:5, Insightful)
The downside of installing Windows in a VM is that you need to install Windows ...
Unless you pirate it it is not free
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doesn't work. sorry.
Re:What about a windows VM? (Score:4, Interesting)
potential problem:
All the VMs I've tried (well, actually a grand total of one - Virtualbox) don't correctly configure for Direct3D. A yardstick app I use is (conveniently) Homeworld, the original one from 1999 not the reboot which I couldn't run if I mashed all my hardware together. If that doesn't run, then I don't have the DirectX driver in right.
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...in a VM perhaps.
Go beyond that and Windows is a royal pain to get up and running. It's actually far more problematic to get up and running than Linux is.
It's hard to see this if you've never actually installed a proper copy of Windows on bare metal.
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OS pirates far outnumber Steam pirates.
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Nearly one third of my 900+ games on Steam not enough for you?
Hell, the thing isn't even out yet and already it's prompted hundreds of developers to release their games on Linux too.
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Nearly one third of my 900+ games on Steam not enough for you?
Hell, the thing isn't even out yet and already it's prompted hundreds of developers to release their games on Linux too.
Video games are not a commodity like brown sugar. There may be slight differences between brown sugar manufacturers but 99% of people aren't going to notice. There may be "open world third person shooter with grappling hooks" games available for Linux, but I don't want to play "open world third person shooter with grappling hooks", I want to play Just Cause 2. If Just Cause 2 isn't in that 1/3 of games that Linux supports, then no, the progress on games for Linux isn't enough for me.
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Well of the current top 25 sellers on Steam 15 of them are linux compatible. Not yet perfect but over half.
So do you buy every console? (Score:2)
There may be "open world third person shooter with grappling hooks" games available for Linux, but I don't want to play "open world third person shooter with grappling hooks", I want to play Just Cause 2.
So if you want to play one PlayStation 4-exclusive game, one Xbox One-exclusive game, and one Wii U-exclusive game, do you buy all three consoles rather than looking for a same-genre game on the PC you have?
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Let me guess, you're playing a lot of early access indies and "indies in general" that's the only way to have a library that large...and with that many Linux games on Steam.
Sure the small timers can do a Linux build... in fact what they're probably doing is taking their PS4 version and ./configure make make installation-package or whatever for Linux (or vice versa)
But when it comes to games that aren't indies...well Linux is less well represented on Steam.
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Tuxgames was a great site, it seems to have done abunk though and is now placeheld by some fucking slots portal.
Re:where? (Score:4, Informative)
Linux games on Steam?
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
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Here's the list. Seventy-three pages worth.
http://store.steampowered.com/... [steampowered.com]
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Civ V, X-COM, Borderland, Left 4 Dead, Half Life, DOTA 2, CS-GO, EU are just _some_ of my favourite that run on SteamOS. Did you want the full list? It's over 300 games...
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"great games shipping for linux ..." where? i'd love to install some.
Well, I've been playing Creeper World III recently. I loved 1 and 2, and 3 is available native on Linux, where as I had to run 2 in a Windows VM. it's an indie game, so not super fancy but it runs on low-end hardware and the game mechanic is interesting. It also has a lot of built in content, a huge amount of very imaginative user generated content and a remarkably good random level generator.
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Libre Office not good enough for you?
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Not until it can allow me to cut a full row and insert it elsewhere using a reasonable number of mouse clicks as in Excel (two vs seven now!).
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Nope, it's not.
Come back when it has things like Outline View, first requested oooh about 13yrs ago ( https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show... [apache.org] ), been highest voted or second highest bug/request ever since, but not fixed in 13yrs (apparently it required some reworking of the architecture, and apparently this was done back in 2010...). Having a equivalent of Normal View is also highly voted - I don't use that as much but I can see that if you work on certain types of document layouts it would be essential.
Track ch
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I do macro work in Excel
They haven't removed macros from Excel yet? Strange, that's where the trend is headed. Don't worry, there's always next version.
there is no denying that Office is simply the best productivity suite
I deny it.
Specific tool, huh? You mean like the ability to customise toolbars programatically, allowing you to make an add-on that installs its own toolbar button? That feature that got removed with the awesome new ribbon interface?
Let me guess: I'm misjudging the poor ribbon - it's actually awesome, and I'm just too stupid to realise that - they did a bunch of usability tests with
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I've never come across anything I can do in excel with VBA that I can't do with OOBasic. In fact, the opposite is true.
What you actually mean is "I can't be bothered switching from VBA to OOBasic - Learning is hard."
Here's one thing - open your old Excel marco spreadsheets and have them work just the same as in Excel.
Can't do that ? Well then you've got to convert them, take cost of converting them vs. cost of Office licence - are you still saving anything ?
Or you parallel run, do new stuff in OO and use Excel for old ones, probably for several years (7 or more at a guess if it's financial stuff) until the old stuff is no longer needed. Now you're not switching from VBA to OOBasic, you're having to learn both and be
Re:Gaming on Linux will matter... (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but I could live tomorrow on Linux.
I only use Windows because it was "for free" because of my employer buying me a laptop.
But for five years, I managed and supported a 90% Windows network with hundreds of devices primarily using a laptop which had LibreOffice, etc. installed.
OS - sorted.
Office suite - sorted (sorry, but it is. I used to get people envy my LibreOffice setup, as I could do everything they could do, and manage their same files they managed, and also do things like open ancient foreign formats that people emailled us still).
General apps - sorted.
Games - 1/3rd of my Steam account "just works" on Linux.
For years, I didn't have Windows or Office, as an IT professional supporting users on Windows and Office. Sure, it would have been nice to have a native tool occasionally, but for the odd things I needed (e.g. AD admin tools) it was always safer to just remote-desktop into a Windows machine, or use VM's (Samba tools just aren't there yet).
For everyday use, personal and business, I used Linux as the base OS and for the vast majority of tasks. Only when I was doing something very Windows-specific did I have to load up a Windows tool and always did it from a Linux machine.
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Give it another shot (Score:2)
So you might want to give it another try.
On the other hand MS office format is so screwed up that there will always be bugs and warts...
--Coder
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for some metric of "great".
Doesn't work 100% on Linux.
Doesn't work 100% on OSX.
Ports for the above two platforms are not supported by Microsoft. For the simple reason that implementations (eg WineX and Cedega/whatever it's called this week) are 100% entirely guesswork ports on proprietery code.
If DirectX were open as in "we can do something useful with this on an ARM box", we'd *have* an XBox emulator for COTS x86-64.
As it is, we have to "make do" with such projects as Unity (Win64 API is still broken) whic
Re:Gaming on Linux will matter... (Score:4, Informative)
>Worthy Office Competitor
Most people don't need anything more than Google Docs.
>but muh obscure Word function
If you're using something obscure in modern versions of Office, you're going to lose when you try to share the document with /other/ Office users. And don't even get me started on formatting when everyone and his brother has slightly different fonts installed (well, it certainly seems that way).
Most (sane) offices have standardized on Office 97 formats, out of desperation with Microsoft's ever changing formats. Office 97's formats are well known and well handled by Office alternatives.
>Windows 10 looks very good
It does? When the icons look like they've been done in Paint?
The Oxygen icons in KDE are better.
>DirectX
Sorry, OpenGL is still better.
--
BMO
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Windows still has the problem of spyware. Whether that's due to lack of security or its popularity is a matter of debate, but still, to me at this point using the internet on Windows feels like sex without a condom. Relatively safe if you truly trust what's on the other end, but definitely a risk.
On the other hand I surf the internet without so much as a care on my Linux machine. You still have to not be an idiot (ie, don't type your info into phishing sites), but I have no fear that simply visiting a pa
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SteamOS games are mostly the same games you get in steam on windows. also you don't need steam os it works in most linux distros, SteamOS is just geared towards a fullscreen steam ui for using on a tv with a gamepad or what have you.
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A lot of these games don't even need Steam. The big benefit of Valve or SteamOS here is in promoting the idea that Linux is viable for games.
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Alright... 1997-era graphics.
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For me local game streaming effectively kills the notion of the SteamBox. Why have multiple powerful expensive PCs when you can have one and a $99 low power ARM box attached to your TV.
Have you actually tried to use the streaming regularly? For me, the input lag is significant enough to make it a nonstarter. There are a lot of little quirks too. I'm very happy they added the feature, but it isn't usuable for some games.
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Hmm... Steam has actually had in-home streaming out of beta and available to the masses for quite some time. I use it all the time to stream from my desktop computer to my media computer so that I can play games in the living room.
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I've used it fine for quite some time now. But the games I tend to play aren't too twitch intensive so perhaps that is why. I'm not using wireless either and have a managed switch that I put some tweaks into for steam.
I don;t notice the input lag even when playing fps games. But that could just be me getting old.
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1. what's doing the processing?
2. because input latency.
3. because network latency.
4. because bandwidth.
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Latency and bandwidth on a local network should be irrelevant. Sure if stuck using wifi in an apartment you might have issues but in that case invest in a long video cable.
Most controller based games are pretty forgiving for input latency, and I'm certainly not going to sit on a couch with a keyboard and mouse seutp.
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Sorry, input lag is a huge issue for me, even on a controller. I've returned two games to the store for refunds because of it: Shift 2 on the 360 and The Last of Us on the PS3 (though the PS4 version is much more playable).
If you aren't finding input lag a problem, then you are either playing games where it matters less (RPGs etc) or else you aren't playing at the kind of level where fine control matters. For me, playing a game with heavy input lag (which includes almost any PC game with vsync enabled) feel
While the TV is occupied (Score:2)
Why have multiple powerful expensive PCs when you can have one and a $99 low power ARM box attached to your TV.
Can you game while another member of the household is using the family PC for homework, Facebook, YouTube, or whatever else?
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Snap it also doesn't work on ReiserFS.
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who cares its a gaming box not a file server
Re:The state is easy to see. (Score:5, Interesting)
And that's where something like SteamOS can help by being "the definitive Linux". It eliminates all the political power plays, backstabbing and other nastiness that happens over Linux.
Yes, Linux is great - its greatest strength is also its greatest weakness - the diversity.
Developers don't care about fights over systemd or PulseAudio or whatever else stuff powers the modern Linux system. They don't. But with all sorts of distributions doing all sorts of different things, well, it doesn't help in the porting.
But Valve can easily dictate the game environment and say games must work on SteamOS. And SteamOS will (or will not - up to Valve) have services like systemd or PulseAudio or NetworkManager or whatever. So by basically dictatorial dictate, Valve creates a Linux-based OS for games without all the political Linux BS that goes with it. Sure the Linux admins will whine and complain that it's not "their one true Unix" or whatever, but everyone else is happy to have something to code for and work on.
And if it happens to work outside of SteamOS, bonus.
Developers have had decades to get Linux? (Score:2)
NO, the main reason is because the OEMs have been prevented from marketing a Linux Desktop. Mainly by having to pay Microsoft 'Per-system' for every machine shipped, regardless of whether it ships with Linux or without. Microsoft haven't been able to get the same deal in mobile space, which is why they are reduced to charging the phone makers for an 'Android Licence'.
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This is bullshit and we both know it. Take you tinfoil hat off for 5 minutes.
The truth is you'd have a hard time even giving Linux away to the average user because it doesn't run any of the software they want to use, and it doesn't run with half the peripherals out there out of the box. Macs alone are a hard enough sell when it comes to that. You need active education to show users they can get the stuff done that they want to do with software that is either equivalent or better to sell the average user
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It's not great. It's only good for staunch advocates who refuse to run any other operating system. Linux still isn't good enough for joe sixpack to run it as a daily driver. Until they get joe sixpack on board, it'll forever be a niche product without enough inroads to support a gaming ecosystem. (...) OS X has more of a chance at becoming a capable gaming OS than Linux does, and that's really saying something.
Except for cost. That's what powered the Android drive, it wasn't the technical superiority. There's probably more people gaming on phones and tablets than any other platform when you count Angry Birds, Candy Crush and such. Chromebooks running on Linux also seem to sell reasonably well for the same reason. If Valve can get a a range of steamboxes out there to sell to everything from a $99 box to sell freemium + $1-5 games to a $999 gaming rig to people who don't really care about having a desktop anymore w
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It's not great. It's only good for staunch advocates who refuse to run any other operating system. Linux still isn't good enough for joe sixpack to run it as a daily driver. Until they get joe sixpack on board, it'll forever be a niche product without enough inroads to support a gaming ecosystem.
Developers have had decades to get Linux right on the desktop, and they've failed at every turn. Even distros which did a lot more right than the others still aren't as polished and usable as the alternatives. It's time to get your head out of the sand on this, and start examining the reality. OS X has more of a chance at becoming a capable gaming OS than Linux does, and that's really saying something.
What does the typical joe sixpack need?
Web browsing? That works aside from some newer niche Flash stuff
Word processing? That works for a big majority of cases
Email? Works.
Playing Music? No iTunes, but otherwise works.
Games? .... well this is the big one.
For every common usecase there's a fairly generic app you can use to get things done regardless of the OS. Sure there's sometimes warts on Linux, but you get warts on Windows and Mac OS as well. My mother has had trouble with her Mac that take me just as muc
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Have you actually talked to an average user? Have you ever tried to get people to use Firefox over Internet Explorer? Do you remember what an uphill battle that was? Now step back and understand that you're now trying to change their operating system.
How well do you think that will go over if it was virtually impossible to get them to stop using the worst browser in the world?
The problem with arguments like yours is they're made on the basis of rationality. However the people you're talking about aren't
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Have you actually talked to an average user? Have you ever tried to get people to use Firefox over Internet Explorer? Do you remember what an uphill battle that was? Now step back and understand that you're now trying to change their operating system.
How well do you think that will go over if it was virtually impossible to get them to stop using the worst browser in the world?
The problem with arguments like yours is they're made on the basis of rationality. However the people you're talking about aren't rational most of the time.
It's not about changing their operating system. It's about choosing a different operating system when they get a new computer.
Linux is now a viable default.
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What do "desktop users" even want? Do they even have any real desires or do they just mindlessly take whatever is force fed to them by a Microsoft dominated OEM channel?
These are the same "desktop users" that turned their noses up at MacOS in favor of DOS.
The idea that Linux "lost the desktop" is assinine. It was never there to take. It was owned by DOS from day one. Quality of the product accounts for ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
By Lemming-centric market metrics, even MacOS is a failure.
Thankfully most other market
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I am, it's already happening. You're seeing it on steam. When software does get ported, it often gets ported for OS X long before it gets ported for Linux.
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