Gabe Newell Showing Valve On Linux To Partners

[89c51]

From what we know so far, it'll be Ubuntu instead - which, I agree, is a bit unfortunate.

the reason?

[entropy]

If valve is smart, they'll use rhel as the supported target. That's really the only option. No one other linux distribution, aside from, perhaps, Debian, has their QA resources. To be clear, rhel means rhel clones including centis, scientific linux and oracle's linux.

From what we know so far, it'll be Ubuntu instead - which, I agree, is a bit unfortunate.

[liam]

S

Perhaps the tone of my post was a bit on the snarky side -- I guess my frustration cup hath runneth over recently. But I think it is valid to say that Linux is not ready for gaming enthusiasts (Valve's primary market), unless those gamers happen to be familiar with all the idiosyncrasies of Linux (which is a tiny user base to begin with -- Venn diagram and all).

You mentioned the LTS... Shortly after I installed it, a new kernel was pushed out. Install... Reboot... Blinking cursor. Okay, I know what's wrong there (since I'm quite familiar with the problem), and yes, this isn't directly of Valve's concern. But if Valve is looking to move their customers from Windows to Linux (perhaps to avoid the Windows app store), then we can all be sure that newcomers are not going to tolerate blinking-cursors-on-reboot.

While I can handle these kinds of quirks quite easily, I have to admit that even I get frustrated at times... When I'm just looking to do X but a roadblock is thrown up and I have to waste my time fixing something before I can get the job done.

I'm just saying that what we have currently is nowhere near good enough for anything other than hacker and hobbyist adoption... and playing ostrich does not make any of the problems go away.

If stability is your concern you should be running a rhel clone, or perhaps debian stable (though I've not had great luck with Debian)
Since you are running Ubuntu (lts or not) stability isn't your primary concern and you shouldn't make generalizations based on your experience because I can tell you there are some huge companies that deploy linux extensively on the desktop, but they aren't running Ubuntu.
If valve is smart, they'll use rhel as the supported target. That's really the only option. No one other linux distribution, aside from, perhaps, Debian, has their QA resources. To be clear, rhel means rhel clones including centis, scientific linux and oracle's linux.

[MonkeyPaw]

When it occurs nearly as frequently as it occurs in Linux distros, then there would be a valid comparison here.

I have yet to experience one. Then again, I never had the issue with Windows Update either.

[entropy]

Has nobody considered they are targeting Linux because of their Steambox? It's not as though it's going to run on windows.

Old hat.

But who really knows...
If they're talking to "lots" of partners - and they have to - it's hard to believe no information is leaking soon.

[scottishduck]

Has nobody considered they are targeting Linux because of their Steambox? It's not as though it's going to run on windows.

[boot]

Also Valve never targeted high-end system when they release something and that's why they have the Steam Hardware Survey.

[kwahoo]

R600g and a Radeon HD 4670, I somehow doubt that Valve's catalogue will put that much more of a strain on it, especially it's back catalogue.

R600g is enough good for every Source-based game. I done some benchmarks under Wine/R600g and Radeon 6670 http://translate.google.com/translat...ife-2wine.html ...and got ~60 fps in my custom HL2 timedemo in 1920x1080 (highest settings but without AA and AF). The CPU was a bottleneck (Athlon II).

PS Hi everyone!

[Hamish Wilson]

Considering I can play Trine 2 and Amnesia fine with my (now out of date) graphics stack on Fedora 16 with R600g and a Radeon HD 4670, I somehow doubt that Valve's catalogue will put that much more of a strain on it, especially it's back catalogue. It is not like Source is all that graphically advanced an engine anymore, when compared to what is available now.

[kazetsukai]

You mentioned the LTS... Shortly after I installed it, a new kernel was pushed out. Install... Reboot... Blinking cursor.

That is a problem with Ubuntu, and one I've never experienced. Ubuntu annoyed me enough to switch distros, and not because of the Gnome3/Unity fiasco, but because it would FORCE X to start and killed your ability to use the F1-F6 terminals (made X problems very difficult to resolve).

When it occurs nearly as frequently as it occurs in Linux distros, then there would be a valid comparison here.

BSOD is frequent enough a phenomenon that it has long since burned out from meme-dom. Look at all of the people tolerating RROD's on their 360s (its not uncommon for one to be on their 5th+ console). If Linux has killer games, noone will care about having to go to a Wiki now and then.

I run Arch, and there's a new kernel every couple of days. I update, sometimes I have issues admittedly (its almost ALWAYS NVIDIA!!!), but while Arch is a rolling distro I've never been unable to boot. What users need is a preinstalled Linux distro that runs games really well, and has a very highly tested package set.

So we have...

To address these:

- A video driver debacle

The blobs. NVIDIA + scripts to rebuild the modules on updates = a really fast, compliant OpenGL stack.

- A kernel that changes every three minutes

If its an issue that can be experienced with any frequency or reliability, the distro should have caught it in their tests. Distros should move to a dual-repo model (bleed + prod) that allow them to roll cutting edge software out to testers and then put more refined works into the repo with their bulk userbase. Canonical dropped the ball in your case, but the remedy is equally as simple: Use the power of the shell to diagnose the problem and fix it. If a user goes to a forum/wiki, usually all they require are a couple of commands to diagnose and resolve the issue. You could also do the other obvious thing: Don't update.

- A sound system that consistently produces audio skips

OpenAL... Configured correctly this works perfectly on most distros. Combined with ALSA's default dmix implementation... messy, but handles the 90% use case.

- Window managers and desktop environments that simply don't work

Last I checked, KDE and XFCE worked really well (who knows what is happening in Gnome-land) Again, we need preinstalled Linux for most noobs, and when installed/configured correctly, they WORK.

Steam should be expected to do some of the library lifting. Perhaps Valve will go all out and make chrooted sandboxes for each game at runtime.