What Should Valve Do For Linux & Open-Source?

[squirtsoda]

Get over yourselves

AH delete my comment about the sad cold truth that linux is really a broken mess in relation to what valve wants to do with it? Okay then, go on believing what you will, but the fact that valve is going to HAVE to jump through all these hoops is just sad. And whats more unbelievable is how half of u think its what normal devs would do. Hell no, Valve is amazing, but if just about any other company saw the sorry state of software intended for gaming on this platform, it would leave an awful taste in their mouth and they would move on, cold, simple, truth. Its why after all these years we have basically gotten nowhere in terms of gaming, the humble bundles are but a small speck on what is the gaming industry.

[jvillain]

KDevelop should also be cross-platform no? Since Qt is cross-platform. See the "KDE on Windows" project.

Kdevelop is just horrible. When I write some thing I want to use in KDE I write it in Qt with Qt-Developer and then decide whether to port to KDE or not. There has been talk within KDE of moving some of their stuff that isn't Qt compliant into Qt if it makes sense and dropping a lot of their propiatary extensions. I think that is really the right direction to head.

[kiwi_kid_aka_bod]

But What I think they should do is forget the Linux market atleast for now. I see two things comming and neither of them are good for Linux.

And something else that's coming that is really bad for Valve?... Apple and MS App stores baked into the OS installation. Then valve drop back to being a plain engine producer / game publisher. If Valve don't make strategic decisions now Apple and MS are going to literally eat their lunch.

[Figueiredo]

AH delete my comment about the sad cold truth that linux is really a broken mess in relation to what valve wants to do with it? Okay then, go on believing what you will, but the fact that valve is going to HAVE to jump through all these hoops is just sad. And whats more unbelievable is how half of u think its what normal devs would do. Hell no, Valve is amazing, but if just about any other company saw the sorry state of software intended for gaming on this platform, it would leave an awful taste in their mouth and they would move on, cold, simple, truth. Its why after all these years we have basically gotten nowhere in terms of gaming, the humble bundles are but a small speck on what is the gaming industry.

Please consider the following. The desktop as it stands today is probably not going to last for long. It will not go away, but for the vast majority of people it will be completely unatractive in light of new hybrid tablets, ultrabooks, ubuntu for android, etc. For great public which do not use computers to run power hungry workloads, there is no point in desktops. Furthermore, new game controllers are eing developed that do not work well in the desktop (wii, knect, etc...)

Valve cannot ignore this trend, high end gaming is going into the living room, where it should be anyway.

Obviously many of us (myself included) enjoy building our own systems and would like to keep doing it. That is why I cheer for Valve and its initiative. I hope that their "Steam Box" is nothing more than Steam wrapped around a distro that will be preinstalled in many manufacturers boxes (some sort of minimum requirements being stablished) or that we can install ourselfs into our own builds. What would be more awsome than to build your own console? Want to play in a desk with a 21" monitor, keyboard and mouse? no porblem! Want to play with 3 friends in a 60" TV in the living room using kinect-like controller? no problem either!!

[johnc]

First AMD and NVidia keep screwing the open source driver development meaning that any one using those drivers will always have horrible performance. This will translate to "Linux Sucks!!!" Especially when the MS PR departments start showing performance comparisons between the two.

Mehhh, I dunno... after all a default Windows install doesn't even have decent resolution without the proprietary drivers, so how could they criticize? Besides, gamers know the first thing you do is get the latest drivers.

The other thing that will happen is people who other wise don't have the skill to debug some thing as complex as the video stack start installing the blobs and their systems become useless or they get frustrated because it doesn't work at all or it just leaves their machines buggy. This leads to another big black eye for Linux.

But this I agree with. Things are still a disaster for the average user. And when the transition to Wayland finally begins, I predict it's going to be a catastrophe (if the PA transition is any indication).

Bottom line is NVidia and AMD don't want graphics on Linux to suceed as it just makes their lives more difficult if they have to properly support another OS.

?

How do NVIDIA and AMD get the blame for this? The reality is that most OSS projects refuse to take proprietary drivers seriously. Even the lead dev on compiz (the cornerstone of the Ubuntu experience) has said that he's been strictly nouveau for the past two years. And if you have an NVIDIA card and have used the recent compiz (unity 3d), that fact is plainly evident.

There's a race condition between lightdm and NVIDIA drivers that prevents Ubuntu from even booting. I mean seriously... do these people even test this sh!t at all or do they just throw it out there in an LTS release? No average Joe is going to tolerate a system that doesn't even boot 50% of the time.

[F i L]

I've always thought that games like Call Of Duty, which release a new version 3 times a year with slightly modified Multiplayer and a new Single player story (which I rarely play through), will eventually die out to some kind of free (if not open-source) "base" game with in-app sales (for new story modes, etc). But it would of course allow for user created maps & mods (both free and paid for).

The biggest problem (for the users, and eventually the devs) of games like CoD which release so many "new" versions is that you're forced to buy the new games or suffer trying to play online in a ghost town... often old maps aren't ported to the new games, so previous favorites die out. If there was a more open "core game" which was modular, extendable, and able to have community driven content as well, and it was done right... I think that would be a huge success.

I was blown away at how many people where playing Uban Terror when I tried it out... I would log into MW3 and have to wait 5 mins to find an acceptable playlist while Urban Terror (which is far inferior game-play and graphics wise) is flooded with players because it's free and cross-platform.

Just a thought, Valve

[KellyClowers]

The reality is that most OSS projects refuse to take proprietary drivers seriously.

Good, they should not. The binary blobs are a distraction, and irrelevant in the long run.

[johnc]

Good, they should not. The binary blobs are a distraction, and irrelevant in the long run.

That, of course, proposes a problem for gaming on Linux though.

Especially in the short-term.

[Figueiredo]

Buy cedega!!

If Valve is able to wrap most of Steam's catalog into wine in a *quality* fashion (can't stress that enough), hell, buy the damn thing and Wrap all the games!! They could very quickly become a cross platform behemonth and have a pretty nice windows-free Steam Box.

[AJenbo]

Solving S3TC would be my #1, but in general they should just do there very best to solve any issue they run in to when porting there stuff. Improving on open drivers would be lovely but I really don't see it as there headache, not before it has progressed to a performance level that is usable with games they are currently working on any ways. So in short fix any thing you can and write good bug reports for the rest