A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[Ancurio]

If Valve are the kinds of asses that would do something designed to be obviously hurtful and insulting to the Linux community, I, for one, would be done with them. A move like the one you're suggesting would be incredibly bad PR for the company, as well as a mightily un-funny joke. I'm reserving judgement on the announcement until tomorrow, but until then Ancurio, I don't think there's any reason to be a dick.

I'm not trying to be a dick. I just don't wanna see people get their hopes smashed to pieces, because I know how much that hurts.

On the other hand, maybe they really are working on it, but don't want to get people's hopes up too high,
in case the oss drivers fail them badly.
I can really understand their position, because once they decide to support Linux,
they'll have to keep on doing it, or it'll look extremely bad on them.
The problem isn't really you guys, because you probably could all hack up something
quickly in case something doesn't work with the game.
The problem will be normal, not tech-savvy people, who might randomly
install a distro that doesn't ship with any proprietary drivers at all,
and who would still expect their Steam games to fully work, because, well,
"It says Linux is supported!", right? And if Valve can't guarantee the games to work
on any distro, there's always the chance of normal people getting upset,
and this would be REALLY bad PR.
There are many risks like these involved in supporting a new platform,
and especially one like Linux, where you can't really take any software library
for granted. Once you start supporting the platform, there's no going back.

One way to tackle some of these risks though would be to clearly state that,
for example, the games are only guaranteed to run on, say, Ubuntu
(I believe Michael received an email saying something like that?).

Anyway, as I was saying, if they were indeed just trying to keep it low,
emailing phoronix was the worst idea ever... and that's exactly why I'm having
all these doubts. It just doesn't add up. These emails. The past experiences.
And also the ricochet2/tf2 jokes.

And why in the world are they talking about L4D2 anyway???
I want my classic CS1.6! With those graphics, it should even run on a RaspberryPI...

[RussianNeuroMancer]

in case the oss drivers fail them badly.

They have problems with proprietary drivers, Mike told me that.

And why in the world are they talking about L4D2 anyway???

Maybe because they track Steam installations in WINE (Steam can detect WINE version and send it to Valve) and see most of Linux users play in L4D2?

[Setlec]

@ancurio: Thanks for trying to protect the guys that might have their hopes up high from a potential crash down by Valve. Though, I'm skeptical about this whole thing... the biggest trolled article here was about valve's steam comming to linux a couple of years ago... now quotes and tweets, screenies point to a very probable source powered games to run on linux. and this is something that i won't hold my breath nor start saying thtis is a BS or lie or troll or april's fool or whatever just be neutral (watch and see). if nothing comes just start trolling valve. i wonder why HL2 run better with wine than on win xp/7???

[RussianNeuroMancer]

the biggest trolled article here was about valve's steam comming to linux a couple of years ago...

Please keep in mind Valve Time.

[susikala]

Please keep in mind this thread has over 27k views, in two days. If that's not a golden egg, I don't know what is.

[Naib]

email sent to [email protected]:



email received back:



Unfortunately Naib (do you play HoN by the way?) there's really no way to "prove" an email. Headers are child's play to fake and he didn't exactly sign it with his private key. I recommend sending an email yourself and seeing if you get a response!

Yes I do play HoN (I do forum moderation for S2, irc op and the occasional tech).

It is precisely because emails can be faked that I am partly doubtful over this instance of Valve+Linux. It also because this is one/around April 1st that I am equally doubtful (more and more sites are priming for their lulz a day before 1st). Likewise it is the farce in how Michael/Phoronix handled the last Valve+Linux which then seals it.

I don't doubt that Michael received an email from valve, but the actual intent of it ??? unknown. He has shown that he extrapolates small things to drive traffic to this site.
It really isn't unreasonable to ask for some independent confirmation.

Also all these people that have "sent an email to Gabe", sorry but if they think the CEO of a large company is going to respond to "little peoples" emails well... Its one thing for Michael to be in communications (linux news site), it is another to expect some random nobody off the internet to be in communications.

All this all adds up to some independent confirmation is required, mainly from Valve on this. Right now this is either an elaborate April 1st, mis-interpretation/mis-representation of a slither of information OR there really is something in this. I wouldn't think requesting some independent confirmation is too much to ask now; and no more ppl saying "I haz email" doesn't count, nor does myself emailing

[RussianNeuroMancer]

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA4MTQ

For the many wondering, yes, we briefly talked about Valve's gaming work on Linux. He's not accepting any offer from Valve to work on their Steam/Source port to Linux because he's not at all willing to relocate from North Carolina to Washington to become a full-time Valve employee. But yes, he has talked with Valve, etc.

[gQuigs]

Perhaps....

Perhaps... We could focus this thread on the two problems "Gabe" mentioned (on steamforlinux.com):
1. L4D2 runs multithreaded at 250 ? 300 fps on my Windows 7 machine. Single threaded it?s ~180 fps. On Linux it runs at 25 ? 30 fps with the same NVidia GTX 580 video card (after getting them to fix some things), and around the same on a ATI 6970.

I've had performance issues with L4D2 on Wine. To the point where I don't try playing it. At the same time CS:S/Portal are both easily playable.

2. Good tools to track down OpenGL performance and help debug rendering issues just don?t exist.

http://www.opengl.org/wiki/Debugging_Tools
Some of these tools, have not yet been mentioned and do run on Linux. Anyone experienced in OpenGL debugging, want to see if these could help?

Of course, if they would release a development version, we might be able to help a lot more...

[Naib]

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTA4MTQ

ok now we are getting somewhere, still sceptical since no specifics (and in light of Phoronix history on this topic). A valve statement would be nice when they are ready ... prob next year...

[kazetsukai]

If this is real (and Michael gets some footage of hanging out with Valve) then I'm psyched. As a community I think the best we can do is take this seriously by giving what advice we can and referring those we think can help make this a reality. Its up to Valve / whoever to follow through.

I'm going to go out, learn C for real this time and start some (at least) basic Linux Driver development... after reading this I'm done sitting on the sidelines.