A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[allquixotic]

confirmed: valve send out beta keys to the phoronix members to test the linux games in steam-

the house party starts in 2 weeks.

so we can start a DotA2 linux clan in 2 weeks.

Now I know you're playing an April Fools joke on us.

[Drago]

confirmed: valve send out beta keys to the phoronix members to test the linux games in steam-

the house party starts in 2 weeks.

so we can start a DotA2 linux clan in 2 weeks.

I am a member, and didn't received any beta key.

[Michael]

Now I know you're playing an April Fools joke on us.

You should know to rarely trust Q...

[storma]

For a task as easily-remotable as software engineering, I find this pretty ridiculous, myself

It basically comes down to what do you trust more, the $20 in your wallet or that one you stashed elsewhere for later on?

OS is a different matter. Here's the recipe, maybe later on someone has improved it. Cool.

[ownagefool]

It basically comes down to what do you trust more, the $20 in your wallet or that one you stashed elsewhere for later on?

OS is a different matter. Here's the recipe, maybe later on someone has improved it. Cool.

Eh?

It comes down to managment really. With a lack of anything else, knowing you've shown up and there is the easiest form of considering someone as productive, even though it doesn't actually work. I also agree it's pretty silly if that's the reason.

However, maybe they want someone in an office so they can mentor colleagues? Whilst we have lots of online tools which can help us get on with things, some people probably do learn a bit better face-to-face. I'm sure everyone in valve is spectularly intelligent, but if they're fairly new the type of development they're doing it does make some sense they want to bring in someone who'd help increase internal knowledge.

Who knows though, I'm sure they have their reasons.

[ownagefool]

I'd love to see os x performance in vm. It's a toy OS (like Windows), but with some professional apps available. However, the sky is falling for both MS and Apple, because Linux is gaining one of the most important things to conquer desktops - games. After very positive Linux/(K)Ubuntu/KDE reviews I have noticed there started some FUD campaign at some sites (economic) and this means MS and Apple must spending a lot of $$ to support anti Linux articles. They started to fear, because Linux proven to be faster, safer and in many cases more user friendly.

As for apple's hardware there are sometimes problems running Linux on it. Such problems are much less common on typical PCs.

I'm a fairly hardcore gamer, and there are millions like myself. Each version of windows has it's problems that gamers hate, most typically to do with input lag, or weird mouse ballistics, and perfomance consistantly going downhill. Tell one of these kids that they'll have an advantage playing on a different operating system that is free and they'll switch probably in a heartbeat.

The problem this can't work without momentum, so releasing Q3 only just won't cut it... Add in the source games, valve gold games, call of duty, and blizzard games though, and you'd have a majority in the market, enough so that most of these kids would be happy to switch. Now you just have to make it easy for them.

FUD can be combated fairly easily with fact, you just need to know where to market it, and how. Of course, the linux version would need to be superior for that to actually work, but if it were a couple of million kids using linux wouldn't exactly be a bad thing.

[Veerappan]

It's called hypocrisy. If you keep telling people that you're interested in something, hell you even go so far as to open up a website about it, and then you don't even use it yourself but something else, that makes you a hypocrite. And thus a morally generally suspicious person, whose other statements should also be taken cum grano salis.

I would have no problem using windows myself if I wanted to play games that were written for windows, I find it a much better solution than using wine, it's just that it would be kind of hypocrite of me to support Linux all the time and then go and use something else instead, so I just don't play games for windows. And reading mail isn't even a crapOS exclusive thing.

I name it crapOS for two reasons: first, because I don't like advertising things I despise, and two, because that's what it is for me.

By the way, using 'lol', 'u', and calling other people names doesn't exactly make you come off intelligent.

Thanks for not reading the rest of the thread and then coming in and ranting about things that have already been discussed...

Michael has already responded to this. By running Ubuntu 10.10 in a VM, he gets better battery life on his laptop than running Ubuntu on bare metal. Given personal experience, I believe that. MacOS has amazing power efficiency when run on Apple hardware because they are able to control the entire software/hardware stack, and therefore they can optimize the crap out of it..

As for why Michael has an Apple laptop, I can give 2 possible reasons:
1) The build quality and size/weight/portability of the aluminum Macbooks is pretty good.
2) Michael needed a machine for comparative benchmarking of Linux/Windows/MacOS, and buying a machine that could run all 3 made sense from both a cost and benchmark integrity standpoint.

[allquixotic]

Thanks for not reading the rest of the thread and then coming in and ranting about things that have already been discussed...

Michael has already responded to this. By running Ubuntu 10.10 in a VM, he gets better battery life on his laptop than running Ubuntu on bare metal. Given personal experience, I believe that. MacOS has amazing power efficiency when run on Apple hardware because they are able to control the entire software/hardware stack, and therefore they can optimize the crap out of it..

As for why Michael has an Apple laptop, I can give 2 possible reasons:
1) The build quality and size/weight/portability of the aluminum Macbooks is pretty good.
2) Michael needed a machine for comparative benchmarking of Linux/Windows/MacOS, and buying a machine that could run all 3 made sense from both a cost and benchmark integrity standpoint.

Yeah, that and it probably has better specs than those old ThinkPads he has laying around.

If I were him, and I'm not, I'd want to buy an up-to-date ThinkPad and run native Linux on that as my primary OS... a lot easier than worrying about virtualization.

Then again, since Michael has such a huge variety of hardware, I wonder if he even has a CONCEPT of a "primary OS" -- it must seem ridiculous to think of only one of his computers as being his "main" machine when he must have dozens

[Kristian Joensen]

Similar claims

Someone else is making similar claims.

[Chewi]

For a task as easily-remotable as software engineering, I find this pretty ridiculous, myself -- but a great many software companies still live in the old mentality of "if I'm paying you, I want a warm body in my office". It's not entirely unreasonable (and it'd be downright expected if the position were requiring a national security clearance or somesuch); but for something as low-risk as game development, I really can't see the harm in just letting someone from anywhere in the world work for you. Just have frequent status reports with them and make sure you keep apprised of what work they're doing and what progress they're making, and they should be just as productive as if they were in your office. If you're REALLY paranoid that they will just take your money and not do anything, then get them to set up a webcam for you of their office and share their screen with you so you can watch them work. That's no different than what companies already do to most workers; it's common for certain parts of the company to silently watch your screen and make sure you're on task. Yes, they have nothing better to do all day.

I have worked from home for years and am now so sick of it that I am getting an office job at last. That's not the only reason though. At least in the web development world and probably other areas of software development too, agile development methods are becoming ever more popular as they have proven to be far more productive than the traditional methods. They strongly promote face-to-face communication and collaboration that no amount of technology can truly replace. Having occasionally travelled to offices to work with other developers in person, I have seen first hand how much more productive you can be.