Valve publishes their own Linux Distribution

[lakedude]

TLDR: Linux is terrible for the desktop and great for servers.

You had me till you said this.

Linux is terrific on a desktop for things a average non-gamer does. If Valve can add gaming to the list of things Linux does well then Linux will be a completely suitable replacement for M$ Windows.

I don't know what distro you use but if you are as smart as you come across you should have no trouble getting Linux to do most anything you want.

Other than gaming what exactly makes Linux "terrible for the desktop"?

I use Linux (not Ubuntu) and it works great for me! Only reason I run Windows is to play games.

 

[brandonb]

You have no idea what you're talking about. Companies around the world pump money into Linux including Microsoft.

I have no idea what I'm talking about? Sure.

Linux has been irrelevant, and will continue to remain irrelevant. Nobody is going to market a game and support a desktop in which less than 1% of the world uses. Sorry! Money talks. I'm 100% correct in that, no matter how many times you want to try to convince me otherwise. Name me a single game company that wants to market their game to the 1%? Other than Valve with this magic console they are making? Valve has been irrelvant as well. The last thing they built was the Gold Box and that is what? 7 years old now? If it wasn't for steam, as someone else mentioned, Valve would be out of business.

Linux OpenGL OpenAL and all these other cross platform libraries and game engines like Unity have been out for 15 years have never produced anything. Ever. Except maybe a few indie titles that nobody wants to play anyways.

 

[Texashiker]

Valve has been irrelvant as well. The last thing they built was the Gold Box and that is what? 7 years old now? If it wasn't for steam, as someone else mentioned, Valve would be out of business.

The last thing they made was gold box?

You never heard of left 4 dead (developed by turtle rock, published by valve), left 4 dead 2, portal 2, DOTA 2 and counter-strike:GO.

I dont guess you heard of those games?

DOTA 2 and TF2 get updates every few days. Who is making those updates?

 

[Red Storm]

I have no idea what I'm talking about? Sure.

Linux has been irrelevant, and will continue to remain irrelevant. Nobody is going to market a game and support a desktop in which less than 1% of the world uses. Sorry! Money talks. I'm 100% correct in that, no matter how many times you want to try to convince me otherwise. Name me a single game company that wants to market their game to the 1%? Other than Valve with this magic console they are making? Valve has been irrelvant as well. The last thing they built was the Gold Box and that is what? 7 years old now? If it wasn't for steam, as someone else mentioned, Valve would be out of business.

Linux OpenGL OpenAL and all these other cross platform libraries and game engines like Unity have been out for 15 years have never produced anything. Ever. Except maybe a few indie titles that nobody wants to play anyways.

Many of the super popular Kickstarter funded games went above and beyond their minimum goals because people wanted to see things like Linux versions. They voted with their wallets.

And lol @ Valve being irrelevant. Clearly if you aren't pumping out annual Call of Duties to milk in money you aren't worth anything. You're either very young or you choose not to remember that true quality games take a while to make.

 

[smackababy]

You had me till you said this.

Linux is terrific on a desktop for things a average non-gamer does. If Valve can add gaming to the list of things Linux does well then Linux will be a completely suitable replacement for M$ Windows.

I don't know what distro you use but if you are as smart as you come across you should have no trouble getting Linux to do most anything you want.

Other than gaming what exactly makes Linux "terrible for the desktop"?

I use Linux (not Ubuntu) and it works great for me! Only reason I run Windows is to play games.

Except people don't want Linux. Laptops were being sold with a flavor of Linux installed for cheaper than the same laptop that came with Windows. People didn't buy them. Nobody who isn't a power user cares about Linux. If all you do is check your email and Facebook, you haven't even heard of Linux and you know Windows.

And to whoever was trying to say Linux has 10's of millions of users, they have 4% of the total PC marketshare. If that is 10's of millions, then I guess so. However, it is such an extremely small sector, and even smaller in the gaming sector, nobody cares to develop for it.

Many of the super popular Kickstarter funded games went above and beyond their minimum goals because people wanted to see things like Linux versions. They voted with their wallets.

And lol @ Valve being irrelevant. Clearly if you aren't pumping out annual Call of Duties to milk in money you aren't worth anything. You're either very young or you choose not to remember that true quality games take a while to make.

The elitism of PC gamers is laughable. "Oh COD isn't a quality game, despite it selling 10x more than <insert 15 year old game that they think is quality>." You don't like Call of Duty or WoW or any of the other extremely popular games? Fine. Does that mean they aren't quality? Well, if we go by the only metric of quality we can (how many people think it is good enough to buy) they are vastly superior to whatever game you think is good and in the bargain bin. And for Kickstarter: have any of these games even come out yet? Sure, they said a lot of stuff they WANT to deliver, but have yet to deliver anything except a page that says "Give us your money." When some of these "amazing" Kickstarter games do come out, we can talk about whether or not they suck.

 

[Red Storm]

The elitism of PC gamers is laughable. "Oh COD isn't a quality game, despite it selling 10x more than <insert 15 year old game that they think is quality>." You don't like Call of Duty or WoW or any of the other extremely popular games? Fine. Does that mean they aren't quality? Well, if we go by the only metric of quality we can (how many people think it is good enough to buy) they are vastly superior to whatever game you think is good and in the bargain bin. And for Kickstarter: have any of these games even come out yet? Sure, they said a lot of stuff they WANT to deliver, but have yet to deliver anything except a page that says "Give us your money." When some of these "amazing" Kickstarter games do come out, we can talk about whether or not they suck.

Ah the old "quantity = quality!" argument. I don't understand where the logic in that lies, so there's no point even addressing it. You're right, clearly the only games I think are good must be bargain bin games because... you pulled that out of your ass?

No these Kickstarter games haven't launched yet... why exactly would they be done so quickly? They aren't hotpockets in your microwave, they're complex software projects that take time. Anyone who appreciates quality products already knows that.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Linux hasn't contended with windows in the gaming arena since forever and not a single thing has changed since the good old days to make the situation any better.

What has changed is that windows has improved its security and stability substantially, and hardware is at a point that ideas such as a "slow" or "bloated" OS simply do not make any sense anymore, the OS overhead is less than negligible.

Linux is great at certain things but gaming isn't one of them, a lot of the things people piss and moan about in windows actually make for a good gaming platform, having a centralized gaming pipeline for input, graphics and audio is actually a good thing, in fact its a great thing.

Valve are doing it so they can build their own platform to launch in to the "console" space and they don't want to blow a bunch of money writing their own gaming OS from the ground up, they want a cheap quick fix which is linux plus some of their own propitiatory stuff on top.

Gabe can bitch about Win8 all he wants but the simple truth is that it's 99% the same as Windows 7 which is a rock solid OS, it's been given a new lick of paint which you can mostly ignore anyway and work on the traditional desktop.

Meanwhile there is still no significant benefit to moving towards linux for the average gamer it offers no significant improvement, only drawbacks. The only people really benefiting from gamers switching to linux is Valve.

 

[darkewaffle]

After reading this thread I can conclude that the most tangible benefit of using Linux is an extreme case of smugness.

 

[smackababy]

Ah the old "quantity = quality!" argument. I don't understand where the logic in that lies, so there's no point even addressing it. You're right, clearly the only games I think are good must be bargain bin games because... you pulled that out of your ass?

No these Kickstarter games haven't launched yet... why exactly would they be done so quickly? They aren't hotpockets in your microwave, they're complex software projects that take time. Anyone who appreciates quality products already knows that.

You're right. My idea that something that is more popular means it must be of higher quality is somehow wrong, but your idea of "Oh this game I don't like is not quality." is a right. I was pointing out people hate on CoD and WoW so much, yet they sell millions of copies. And the only real metric of how good a game is, is how many people voted with their wallet and bought it.

Gabe can bitch about Win8 all he wants but the simple truth is that it's 99% the same as Windows 7 which is a rock solid OS, it's been given a new lick of paint which you can mostly ignore anyway and work on the traditional desktop.

It's not even 99% Windows 7, it is 105%. It improved on the base of Windows 7. They just added a new UI that "gamers" don't like to skip when they restart their computers once a month. It has improved security, memory management, and I am sure quite a few other improvements under the hood.

 

[Red Storm]

And the only real metric of how good a game is, is how many people voted with their wallet and bought it.

Do you honestly believe what you just said?

 

[Texashiker]

And the only real metric of how good a game is, is how many people voted with their wallet and bought it.

And how many games were overhyped and later turned out to be a turd?

Duke nukem forever, brink, diablo iii sold how many preorders, and later received bad reviews?


The only real metric of how good a game is, is the test of time. How many people still play the game 5 years, 7 years, 10 years, 15 years later? Not too many people will play a crap game for a decade.

Didnt Black ops 2 set some kind of record for sales, but only has a 74 rating on metacritic, and a 3.6 user rating.

Why are people still playing counter-strike 1.6, Doom, Team Fortress Classic,,, because they are great games.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

You had me till you said this.

Linux is terrific on a desktop for things a average non-gamer does. If Valve can add gaming to the list of things Linux does well then Linux will be a completely suitable replacement for M$ Windows.

I don't know what distro you use but if you are as smart as you come across you should have no trouble getting Linux to do most anything you want.

Other than gaming what exactly makes Linux "terrible for the desktop"?

I use Linux (not Ubuntu) and it works great for me! Only reason I run Windows is to play games.

Oh man, wanted to like linux, but linux is only free if your time is worth nothing.

I think I spent well over 10 hours trying to get my Wifi to work with my schools enterprise wifi. First few hours were trying to figure out why Arch wasn't detecting my wifi card. For some reason I had to wipe it and reinstall for it to see the wifi. Then wpa_supplicant proved extremely useless. So had to manually type in the stupid 802.1x info into wpa_supp which was a MAJOR pain in the ass. And that didn't work. So I ended up installing GNOME to get at wpa_gui to see what I did wrong.

It sort of worked but it wouldn't keep a stable connection. It couldn't reconnect after it disconnected and I had to manually redo the connection settings each time.

Then while fiddling with some x settings, BAM, xServer crashes and fails, and I can't bootinto x anymore. The window manager works, but x itself refuses to start, which makes no goddamn sense.

I try and reinstall drivers, but apparently, x is missing something that went away when it crashed horribly, which means its missing dependencies that the open AND closed source drivers need.

And of course I can't dl those dependencies because i can't connect to my schools wifi in a dependable way.

Good stuff.

 

[OoteR02]

The last thing they made was gold box?

You never heard of left 4 dead (developed by turtle rock, published by valve), left 4 dead 2, portal 2, DOTA 2 and counter-strike:GO.

I dont guess you heard of those games?

DOTA 2 and TF2 get updates every few days. Who is making those updates?

I agree with this guy..

So far in this thread I've seen linux guys go "can't wait!" and then a bunch of others come in and say "LINUX IS CRAP." I'll admit i've been annoyed at unity, but switching to mint has been a treat at home..

I can only believe that those who are coming out and saying linux is garbage haven't really spent much time using the OS.. I can't really stand Windows - it's very frustrating to use now. I was a windows admin for 5+ years and now love working with OSX/linux on the desktop, and linux on the server.. It's nice. There are issues on occasion with any of the OS's, but I find at home that I fix Window's issues with Linux more often than the other way around.

And yeah, I get it, there is more Windows installed out there than linux, and i'd argue it is only due to momentum - not quality, features, etc. Once a couple of big players make games NOT require windows and push the platform it will probably bring more companies over to do some more development. I find the information http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/...x-driver-performance-slips-steam-release-date on that article to be really interesting.. Some gamedevs are probably very 'wait and see.' But, I've been buying steam linux games to hopefully add a little bit of incentive.

Once DOTA 2 is ported to linux, I will have pretty much 0 reason to boot into Windows anymore (I honestly can't think of a reason why I would need it..) Add me to the "I can't wait!" crowd.

 

[zerogear]

Sometimes I think people just automatically think open source = holy grail without actually looking into pros and cons objectively.

 

[OoteR02]

Oh man, wanted to like linux, but linux is only free if your time is worth nothing.

I think I spent well over 10 hours trying to get my Wifi to work with my schools enterprise wifi. First few hours were trying to figure out why Arch wasn't detecting my wifi card. For some reason I had to wipe it and reinstall for it to see the wifi. Then wpa_supplicant proved extremely useless. So had to manually type in the stupid 802.1x info into wpa_supp which was a MAJOR pain in the ass. And that didn't work. So I ended up installing GNOME to get at wpa_gui to see what I did wrong.

It sort of worked but it wouldn't keep a stable connection. It couldn't reconnect after it disconnected and I had to manually redo the connection settings each time.

Then while fiddling with some x settings, BAM, xServer crashes and fails, and I can't bootinto x anymore. The window manager works, but x itself refuses to start, which makes no goddamn sense.

I try and reinstall drivers, but apparently, x is missing something that went away when it crashed horribly, which means its missing dependencies that the open AND closed source drivers need.

And of course I can't dl those dependencies because i can't connect to my schools wifi in a dependable way.

Good stuff.

I can't guarantee it would have been flawless -- but I wouldn't have started out with Arch... Mint, ubuntu, stock debian... any of those may have been a bit easier to get going with.

 

[Texashiker]

Once DOTA 2 is ported to linux, I will have pretty much 0 reason to boot into Windows anymore (I honestly can't think of a reason why I would need it..) Add me to the "I can't wait!" crowd.

With DOTA2 and TF2 working on linux, valve will be looking at tens of thousands of gamers to introduce linux to.

Steam stats page:

DOTA 2 - peak today 271,136
TF2 - peak today 52,527

Just between those two games that is over 300,000 people, and that is just today.

Sometimes I think people just automatically think open source = holy grail without actually looking into pros and cons objectively.

Valve launching its own form of linux gives open source something it needs, and that is money.

Valve has a financial interest in getting as many games ported to linux as possible.

 

[OoteR02]

Sometimes I think people just automatically think open source = holy grail without actually looking into pros and cons objectively.

There are definitely zealots.. Using nvidia blob drivers to some people is the equivalent of stealing candy from baby jesus... Most have no problem with it however.

I pay attention when buying machines due to hardware issues that crop up (wlan... especially.. intel hardware makes life easier) but, if linux does get a larger following of any sort, some of the hw vendors will probably improve drivers and make life better all around.

I can tell you it bothers me there is no blu-ray ability on linux... but that is how the powers at be want it... so I don't buy dvd's... life goes on! I have to use a hack to get netflix, LAME, but it works.. Did I complain about unity yet? It sucks on many levels. win7's interface is probably 1000x better, 8's default is about on par... Mint with Mate is up there with win7 in my book... kde has it's nice side as well, but yeah.. +/-'s all around.. we aren't all nutjobs.

 

[PingSpike]

theevilsharpie has already said my thoughts on this more or less. Microsoft has never given much of a shit about gaming on PC except when it offered an opportunity to boost their core product lines. This was fine for developers for years, they got a single target to develop for that almost the entire market used. A few people whined but when your goal is to create games and things are working pretty well you just don't focus much on this kind of thing. But as Microsoft looks for new ways to increase revenues in what has become a shrinking market and attempts to break into other markets they've started to rock the boat, create arbitrary platform schisms for marketing reasons and encroach on markets developers were previously left on their own. And with the developers dependent upon Microsoft as both their main platform and a supplier of a lot of the middleware they use they are extremely vulnerable to anything Microsoft chooses to do, as well as having their fate tied to Microsoft's own success. So Microsoft is becoming less an ally or foundation but more a competitor, a competitor with a dangerous amount of control.

I doubt valve is the only company that has had these thoughts, but it is one of the few companies with the financial freedom and clout to attempt to change the status quo. People talk about the steam box being able to compete as a console or linux being better or not but I don't think there's any solid desire to become a console developer or a OS developer by valve. I think they're simply taking steps to bootstrap a competitor ecosystem into existence so that when the merry go round comes to screeching halt they'll have some where to jump too other than their own deaths. Most companies in this space do not have the luxury of being able to concern themselves with things so far in the future.

Time will tell if this has any chance of working. But Valve doesn't need to get 90% of the world running Linux on their desktop or running a steambox to meet their goal here. They just need a large enough demographic that developers start putting out linux/steambox versions of their software to act as a check against Microsoft's decisions and to erode their control in the middleware space.

 

[smackababy]

The problem with that is Microsoft hasn't done anything bad with its OS in terms of limiting game development. Windows 8, aside from the UI, works like Windows 7 and Vista. The public opinion that "gaming sucks on Windows 8" stems from a remake Gabe made and nothing else. There is a desktop mode and everything runs the same or better on Windows 8 than it did on Windows 7. There is no real fundamental difference in the gaming experience except leaving the Metro UI when it starts up. I guess requiring Vista+ for DX10, but I am sure that has something to do with fundamental changes in the Windows kernal and APIs that happened in the like 7 years from XP to Vista.

Valve could just be posturing for when Microsoft does say "hey, let's give up the PC gaming market and all the revenue that generates us by doing something that halts, discontinues, or closes the platform completely." I don't see them doing that. After enterpise and OEM, I'd say gamers are the next biggest buyers of OS's. The average joe uses the OS that game on their Dell, they don't upgrade to the newest Windows because it costs $200.

 

[zerogear]

To me I think the main reason steam is turning to Linux is because of the windows 8 marketplace. Yes, while currently they only offer metro apps, but what's to stop them from offering full fledged desktop applications and games in the future.

That's what steam is thinking right now, its just corporate politics.

 

[Texashiker]

To me I think the main reason steam is turning to Linux is because of the windows 8 marketplace. Yes, while currently they only offer metro apps, but what's to stop them from offering full fledged desktop applications and games in the future.

To be offered in the windows market place an application has to go through a certification process. If the app does not meet certain qualifications, it is denied.

what indie developer wants to go through a certification process for a game they are only going to make a few dollars on?

Is windows 9 and windows 10 going to have the same certification process?

Will a game certified on windows 8 have to be recertified for windows 9, 10, 11,,,?

5 year old game does not pass windows 10 certification, will the developer have to make changes to get it included in the app store?

I think Gabe is looking towards the future, rather then what is happening right now.

 

[theevilsharpie]

The problem with that is Microsoft hasn't done anything bad with its OS in terms of limiting game development.

Here's some examples of what Microsoft has done to limit application development:

• Microsoft clearly intends for Metro to be the premier application environment going forward, yet the only way to publish apps for it is through Microsoft's app store. Sideloading of Metro apps in Windows 8 is only allowed for domain-joined machines in an enterprise environments.
  
• Windows RT has a reasonably feature-complete instance of the Windows desktop, yet Microsoft has intentionally limited it so that the only thing you can run are Windows utilities and Office. Running anything not signed by Microsoft requires jailbreaking the device.
  
• Windows Phone 8 has limited support for sideloading, and regardless of how you load an app, the app has to be signed by Microsoft or a corporate signer

Will traditional applications run on Windows 8? Yes. However, while Microsoft uses its inertia to maintain the dominance of Windows in the desktop space, that same inertia prevents them from making fundamental changes to the product so quickly.

People like Gabe are successful not because they can target where the market is today, but where they market is likely to be in the future. As the market shifts toward the walled garden model that has brought Apple so much success, smart developers are seeing the writing on the wall and planning appropriately. They know that just because Windows is a viable development environment today, doesn't mean that this will continue to be the case, and they don't want to be caught unprepared.

 

[kalrith]

so you want it to go from one monopoly to another?

1 OS choice for gamers = monopoly
2 OS choices for gamers != monopoly

Unless Valve no longer supports Steam for Windows, then I don't see how having an additional option is a bad thing. I have no plans on giving up Windows, but competition is a good thing for the consumer.

It's like people who think the CPU market would be better if AMD went under. Even if you will never buy an AMD processor, the competition is good for the consumers.

 

[FallenHero]

Windows should not be a requirement for gaming. A Linux distro allows Valve (and hopefully other devs) to make their games on a light-weight, secure, bloat-free platform that can be fine tuned specifically for gaming. The only one who should be against this is Microsoft, because they make millions off of gamers who would otherwise be just fine with a free Linux distro. What exactly are the detractors saying, that it's a good thing you have to buy a Windows license to play the majority of games?

Meaning if Valve and everyone else jumps ship to a linux destro, you are now stuck on Linux instead of windows and dependent on Valve for everything, including game releases.

 

[PingSpike]

Linux is open source so you'd be no more stuck on valve linux than you are now stuck on "valve" windows. And the directX equivalent on linux are cross platform.

At any rate, worrying about everyone switching to linux tomorrow or valve shutting off the tap to windows games is silly. Valve will be lucky to create a noticeable minority user base and not releasing windows versions would be suicidal. Plus its not entirely under their control since its not like they develop every game they sell.