Clear Linux Gets Questions Over Steam Integration, Other Plans For This High-Perf Distro

[duby229]

Having never tried Clear Linux in any capacity, what's holding it back from being a desktop distro? Just the lack of package management that Kjell mentioned?

That, but more specifically that many of the optimizations they use are hardcoded and don't have a patch available. Much of, or even most of the modifications they make would have to be manually duplicated. Clear linux just isn't safe to use in production. The way they make their modifications is just ignorant and selfish.

[ms178]

I have an Ivybridge laptop and I can't use Clear because the UEFI part, when I run their check script to see if your hardware is compatible, I'm filtered out by UEFI

I have the same problem with my Sandy Bridge laptop, so sadly no Clear Linux for us. I also wonder why they brought Ikey Doherty back to Intel but "don't have the ressources" to work on the Linux Steam Initiative. If Gaming were a newfound focus of Clear Linux, this project (or a successor) should get a higher priority.

[Michael]

I have an Ivybridge laptop and I can't use Clear because the UEFI part, when I run their check script to see if your hardware is compatible, I'm filtered out by UEFI

Right so some UEFI obstacles. Basically what I was getting at was for the older CPU support there are UEFI issues like this as opposed to just not wanting to support older CPUs. If your laptop does properly support UEFI with other Linux distros, I guess there's a buggy problem either with your system or somewhere in the kernel.

[andrei_me]

other obstacles, such as Clear being designed exclusively to use UEFI

I have an Ivybridge laptop and I can't use Clear because the UEFI part, when I run their check script to see if your hardware is compatible, I'm filtered out by UEFI

[Michael]

Seeing as Clear offers performance improvements on AMD, I think it's abundantly clear that older hardware is not holding it back. Of course, there could be some exceptions. For example, if Intel didn't put any checks in place as to whether a CPU has a certain instruction set, then that could cause problems on older models.

EDIT:
As for Steam support, I could see that being a real pain in the ass. Since Valve pre-packages Steam with a lot of its own libraries, that would make it difficult for Clear to get their own optimized packages in-place. Of course, not impossible, I'm just saying it's not going to be as easy as it is with other open-source programs. Perhaps it is Valve who should look into optimizing those libraries?

Clear Linux already goes far back to 2nd Gen Core -- further back then most assume. Going back further would introduce other obstacles, such as Clear being designed exclusively to use UEFI, so doing so would introduce new engineering resources not to mention QA,

[schmidtbag]

Seeing as Clear offers performance improvements on AMD, I think it's abundantly clear that older hardware is not holding it back. Of course, there could be some exceptions. For example, if Intel didn't put any checks in place as to whether a CPU has a certain instruction set, then that could cause problems on older models.

EDIT:
As for Steam support, I could see that being a real pain in the ass. Since Valve pre-packages Steam with a lot of its own libraries, that would make it difficult for Clear to get their own optimized packages in-place. Of course, not impossible, I'm just saying it's not going to be as easy as it is with other open-source programs. Perhaps it is Valve who should look into optimizing those libraries?

If that would be the case gentoo (or other distributions which uses LTO) would be as fast - but thats not the case.

I assume they have patches for not only the kernel, so you'd have to grab these and apply them yourself. I also don't know which compiler they use. I wouldn't be surprised if they used their C compiler for user space that doesn't depend on GCC.

[flower]

Being able to take advantage of newer features in x86 chips is one of the biggest reasons why it performs so well.

If that would be the case gentoo (or other distributions which uses LTO) would be as fast - but thats not the case.

[sturmen]

As for whether Intel plans for Clear Linux to become a normal desktop Linux distribution

Having never tried Clear Linux in any capacity, what's holding it back from being a desktop distro? Just the lack of package management that Kjell mentioned?

While it is true that clear Linux excludes older hardware that's not the reason for it being faster than others.

Being able to take advantage of newer features in x86 chips is one of the biggest reasons why it performs so well.