How Valve Made L4D2 Faster On Linux Than Windows

[entropy]

Over at the steam forums someone pointed to this new Team Fortress 2 comic

http://www.teamfortress.com/bloodbrothers

It's worth a read IMHO!

"Gray Mann" refers to Linux?
Another man is called "Redmond".
I think it's not too far fetched.

Rather strong pictures/hints in there.
What do you think?

[remst]

And so Linux continues to be a nerd hobbyist OS on the desktop and a Web server in the Enterprise and a barely-recognizable mutated android on mobile devices, despite being so awesome in so many other ways.

I've been managing database servers handling billions of dollars in trading systems on the "web server" OS you mention, for years.
Please, let's talk all talk about what we really know...

[eisbehr]

I think it's not too far fetched.

What is not too far fetched? I don't see your point. The characters Blutarch and Redmond have been part of the TF2 back story for a while, since October 2009 to be precise. TF2 didn't come out for Mac until a year later. Where do you see the "Gray" to Linux connection?

I also don't see any of the other "hints" you're talking about. At least not regarding Linux support for the game.

[gamerk2]

From technical and security standpoint Linux is a terrible OS. As a final product for doing simple tasks it's ok.

See? I can make statements without data points too!

[elanthis]

1. Your first paragraph is irrelevant. I said that OpenGL has parts of the protocol hard-coded inside a GPU (special instructions and other), that can be used """without""" assembly with a GLSL compiler.

Which, again, is simply not true in the way you're phrasing it, and doesn't even make sense. There is no such thing as an OpenGL protocol, and there aren't any special GL-specific opcodes that somehow do something magic that the opcodes used by D3D's shader compiler don't do.

2. I was speaking for shaders (compute or not). PS3 runs with 1 channel on RSX(200macGflops) and 3 channels on CELL(6spes=1.8macTflops). As for general is multi-threaded.

Again, that's not OpenGL. There is no GLSL compiler for the PS3; their GL-derived API uses Cg... which is more or less HLSL. In any case, instruction sets are not a part of OpenGL, GLSL, D3D, or HLSL. Direct3D has all the same properties you're mentioning if you want to stretch things like that, since HLSL is just a high-level language that's compiled into an intermediary and then fed to hardware-specific code generations... just like GLSL.

3. The graphics code is written on GLSL, the general code is for a specific CPU. The difference is that D3D exists only on x86 and in the future for Arm32.

This statement about D3D is simply not true. There is absolutely nothing hardware-specific about the D3D API, and implementations exist for x86/x86_64, arm32/64, ppc32/64, sparc, and so on. Most of those are not from Microsoft, and are generally incomplete (just level every implementation of OpenGL is incomplete), but they exist (Wine, Transgaming, Gallium's D3D state tracker, Valve's custom translation layer, etc.).

1. There is not patents for OpenGL. Maybe you mean third party technologies like S3TC that will eventually be replaced by Open Standards.

Yes, yes there are. You apparently are new here and to the state of Linux graphics in general. Since you obviously don't trust me, why don't you ask the forums in general why OpenGL 3.0 is supported by Mesa but disabled in every distro that ships it?

[kraftman]

See? I can make statements without data points too!

But I actually posted many proves about this and you didn't. Here's some of it:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...ken-microsoft-wont-fix-code-injection-vulnerability/

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/24/unfixable-windows-7-exploit-created-by-security-experts

There's much more, though.

[elanthis]

I've been managing database servers handling billions of dollars in trading systems on the "web server" OS you mention, for years.
Please, let's talk all talk about what we really know...

Web, database, email, nas, etc.; I'm too lazy to write out "Internet-enabled multi-function server application hosting OS" every freaking time I need to mention what Linux does well, and "Web" sums it up easily enough for everyone except the nerdcore pedantics. I am very well aware of Linux's database capabilities, given I also used to manage very large databases for several organizations many years back (auto trade industry and government contracting for the most part).

[gamerk2]

But I actually posted many proves about this and you didn't. Here's some of it:

http://www.istartedsomething.com/200...ken-microsoft-wont-fix-code-injection-vulnerability/

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/04/24/unfixable-windows-7-exploit-created-by-security-experts

There's much more, though.

On the whole, Linux clocks a LOT more security problems, but they tend to get fixed faster. Problem is, in my world [defense], you can't just upgrade your Kernel on demand, you have to get the approval from several organizations [both internal and external] for any software change, especially to the underlying OS. Hence, we end up with tons of unpatched vulnerabilities, long after they are published and fixed.

[curaga]

/me waits for gamerk2 to disclose where he works, and the ensuing lulz.

[gamerk2]

/me waits for gamerk2 to disclose where he works, and the ensuing lulz.

ITT Exelis, Electronic Systems division:

http://www.exelisinc.com/business/electronicsys/Pages/default.aspx