A Message From Valve's Gabe Newell

[ownagefool]

Do the headers suggest the mail originated from valves office? Would love for this to be true, but I can't help but think the mail will turn out to be fake.

[AnonymousCoward]

[joshuapurcell]

I get tired of April Fools. Every year. Again. Over and Over. And Over. It's one day of the year where old dumb jokes which weren't funny the first time find their way back and there is no damn way you are going to avoid them without unplugging your Internet connection. I think I may try that soon.

[bridgman]

My recollection was that some of the state information affected how the shader was compiled, so the drivers had to do one of :

- precompile multiple flavours of the shader then switch in the appropriate version on state changes,
- recompile shaders when state info is changed,
- patch the shaders instead of recompiling when state info is changed

I'm not sure what the current driver behaviour is, but I imagine *one* of the above has to be happening.

Don't think this is necessarily <insert BUSTED sign from MythBusters> yet.

[Michael]

confirmed. This is not an april fools joke or any other joke.

[Khudsa]

So then this is great news!

Thank you Michael.

[allquixotic]

confirmed. This is not an april fools joke or any other joke.

Dude. How can we just take your word for it? How did you "confirm" it?

Why doesn't Gabe Newell come out himself and say this on the valve blog?

He can't seriously expect that you wouldn't post something like this on the front page, can he? And that it would raise everyone's suspicions that there might be Source engine games coming to Linux (not talking about Steam but the engine itself)?

And if this is the case then why doesn't he just advertise publicly about his decision to support Linux, rather than letting Phoronix be the site to break the news?

Maybe the email is truly from Gabe Newell, but he's just trolling you (and by trolling you, also trolling all of your readers)?

[Michael]

Dude. How can we just take your word for it? How did you "confirm" it?

Why doesn't Gabe Newell come out himself and say this on the valve blog?

He can't seriously expect that you wouldn't post something like this on the front page, can he? And that it would raise everyone's suspicions that there might be Source engine games coming to Linux (not talking about Steam but the engine itself)?

And if this is the case then why doesn't he just advertise publicly about his decision to support Linux, rather than letting Phoronix be the site to break the news?

Maybe the email is truly from Gabe Newell, but he's just trolling you (and by trolling you, also trolling all of your readers)?

Here's some independent confirmation with mail headers from another Valve programmer on the Linux team - https://twitter.com/#!/michaellarabe...89740686118912 - Hoping he will give me some more information today.

After the 1st is over so people aren't confused and the doubters can lay this to rest, will try to convince them to go for it with visuals on Phoronix and/or something on their blog...

[Pickle]

My recollection was that some of the state information affected how the shader was compiled, so the drivers had to do one of :

- precompile multiple flavours of the shader then switch in the appropriate version on state changes,
- recompile shaders when state info is changed,
- patch the shaders instead of recompiling when state info is changed

I'm not sure what the current driver behaviour is, but I imagine *one* of the above has to be happening.

Don't think this is necessarily <insert BUSTED sign from MythBusters> yet.

bridgman what kind of states are you referring to? From my understanding with the programmable pipeline many states are no longer supported (the user is required to load the shader that supports the state change). Most of my experience is with the ES subset, so one case I can where your cases might apply is GL_BLEND. So if i change the blend equation is the driver then required to recompile my shaders? Or is this to support intermixing of old 1.X API with 2.X+ API with desktop drivers?

[allquixotic]

Here's some independent confirmation with mail headers from another Valve programmer on the Linux team - https://twitter.com/#!/michaellarabe...89740686118912 - Hoping he will give me some more information today.

After the 1st is over so people aren't confused and the doubters can lay this to rest, will try to convince them to go for it with visuals on Phoronix and/or something on their blog...

Just Kidding Michael