What Should Valve Do For Linux & Open-Source?

[kraftman]

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.

You should be sorry for them damn troll, because they had to deal with dozen versions of vb, dx and .Net crap. They had to deal with os x brokeness as well. Hard and cold truth about broken mess.

[jvillain]

Any company who wants to do anything with linux has to go full open-source or not do linux at all. The linux community is the most unfriendly community out there for companies.

What a load of shit. Linux is very friendly to companies. What it isn't, is down on it's knees begging it's master to forgive it for what every the master happens to not like at the moment. There is every difference in the world between an application like say Oracles DB being propriatary and a vidoe module that your computer is completly useless with out being propiatary. Personally I couldn't give a damn if steam open souces any of their games or their client. It woiuld be nice if they did but I won't lose a second of sleep over it if they didn't. But then again playing games is completly out of the question because the open source driver has almost no support for AMD SI hardware and the POS blob ( not the the game blob the driver blob) doesn't work at all with with my OS.

[DMJC]

Hamish Wilson +1

You hit the nail on the head buddy, Wine is definately a half measure, It is better at backwards compatibility with Windows than Windows itself is. Yet the wine devs aren't interested in fixing the couple bugs that stop it being magnificent. If wine had a built in glide to opengl renderer, and supported direct3d immediate mode rendering, wine would actually run ALL the old games that noone can play on Windows anymore. That would be a pretty awesome thing. D3D10/11/12 support is going to keep wine chasing Windows well into the next decade.

I've always felt that Linux should be trying to position itself wherever Windows isn't. A couple years ago Microsoft cancelled Flight Sim, with the right effort Linux could have completely taken over the flying game market. Most Wing Commanders, Freespace, X-Wing/Tie Fighter games, X1/2/3, X-Plane, and other flight simulators, already run either in dosbox, wine, or natively. Linux just needs to implement some nice joystick programming guis, and go for the throat of that market Space/Flight sims have loyal followings and people willing to stump up money for the products when they can get them.

Adventure games, are another obvious market for this, combine open source tools for making the games, with the ability to play all the older titles in the genre, and then focus hard on the new titles. Maybe move into something else afterwards like Racing games, similar to flight/space simulators, and grow the market. Make the controllers work perfectly, make it easier to use/better to use than on windows, and then grow the market out. RPGs/FPS games are one of the hardest areas to really impact on because while Linux has a lot of those titles already it doesn't have CoD, and Battlefield, easily the two biggest FPS genre games right now.

[FutureSuture]

This is job for GOG, not for Valve.

It's too much work for GOG.

[Hamish Wilson]

I have had games work in wine that no longer work with windows. Some old Windows 98 games my daughter dug up and wanted to play...

The performance issues are 2 fold. Drivers for Linux aren't as polished and AFAIK don't have the same game optimizations that it's Windows counterpart does.
The second part being you do have to have extra work for the machine to translate as it goes which on a modern system this all equates to ~ a 15% performance penalty.

Linux users with machines capable of knocking out 100+ FPS on new titles, full HD, on a Windows install should have expectable/playable Wine performance assuming the game works with Wine.

Is Wine evil? Yeah it's a double edge sword. Yet, if companies like Valve step up and wrap their catalog, updating Wine for issues along the way, Linux/Mac users win out 2 fold. Native games and the rest of the catalog being official maintained with Wine so we can still play and can expect smooth gameplay. Whats wrong with having your cake and icing too?.

No one said that WINE is evil. It is not evil, it is extremely useful. That said, it should not be treated as something it is not: a platform to target in of itself.

Linux will never be a gaming platform unless we have games. But it will also never be a real gaming platform unless we have actual Linux games. If we allow half-measures now we are simply trading in long term growth for short term gain, and that can only hurt us in the long run. We have a clean slate here and we need to build on it the right way. That is why we need to press our case. Linux could become a great gaming platform - but it has to be a Linux gaming platform. Not some weird hybrid.

I should also point out that I have actually had a lot of bad luck running older titles through WINE. The only games that have run really well for me are 1/3 native anyway - games that heavily use OpenGL and other Linux friendly APIs. I have never had any miracles. I actually wish WINE showed more interest in getting older titles to work, as for me, it has often been hit or miss.

[nightmarex]

The ones that consider that a windows binary wrapped around in WINE is a good idea, you are delusional .

I use WINE for many years (and contributed to bug reports) and no matter the great progresses, it will be ALWAYS a crouch.

There clearly performance issues that will NEVER be solved, compatibility issues, installation issues, audio issues, and graphical issues....

I NEVER saw a game (except maybe really old) that perform same EXACT way than in Windows.

WINE is a good option....as in :last resort to play a game in LINUX.

Any dev to go with it to make a Linux "compatible" game is doomed to fail as for sales goes.

I have had games work in wine that no longer work with windows. Some old Windows 98 games my daughter dug up and wanted to play...

The performance issues are 2 fold. Drivers for Linux aren't as polished and AFAIK don't have the same game optimizations that it's Windows counterpart does.
The second part being you do have to have extra work for the machine to translate as it goes which on a modern system this all equates to ~ a 15% performance penalty.

Linux users with machines capable of knocking out 100+ FPS on new titles, full HD, on a Windows install should have expectable/playable Wine performance assuming the game works with Wine.

Is Wine evil? Yeah it's a double edge sword. Yet, if companies like Valve step up and wrap their catalog, updating Wine for issues along the way, Linux/Mac users win out 2 fold. Native games and the rest of the catalog being official maintained with Wine so we can still play and can expect smooth gameplay. Whats wrong with having your cake and icing too?

are you serious?

Any company who wants to do anything with linux has to go full open-source or not do linux at all. The linux community is the most unfriendly community out there for companies.

IDK if that's true. All platforms have eccentric people who gripe,wine and flame over silly or serious alike. Windows and Mac users can act very entitled and flame like crazy if needed (e.g. Blizzards boards even after a planned outage screaming for fixes). You know what their are also a lot more of them to deal with lol.

[boast]

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

are you serious?

Any company who wants to do anything with linux has to go full open-source or not do linux at all. The linux community is the most unfriendly community out there for companies.

[kazetsukai]

I think the best thing you (Valve) can do for Linux & Open Source is...

• #1, Easily: Show the industry by example that you are making success on the platform.
• #2: Communicate your frustrations and difficulties developing on the platform, and propose solutions.
• #3: Keep an open ear... when you are the topic, don't remain silent!

The rest, like hiring developers to work on open source drivers, etc... is well appreciated. Linux users and developers want Valve to succeed here... If they tell us what they need to succeed, I am sure we'll do our absolute best to deliver.

[Kano]

@kraftman

that 250 hz default is now because i reported that 100 hz was used for 64 bit and 250 for 32 bit. And i did not want to update my patch all the time. Well after that they put the 250 hz in a global config file not per arch...

[enrico.tagliavini]

The best thing Valve can do for Linux is to increase the market interest in this operating system. And I'm talking not about the game market, but the hardware vendor market. A good gaming platform can be a very good starting point if it is successful. In my opinion the goal is always the same and it is not dominate the PC market (it would be nice indeed, but it is not a priority at all in my opinion): have a good diffusion of pc with linux preinstalled in PC stores. And I don't mean second class PC or netbooks. I mean the whole range, from netbooks to the best workstations. This makes hardware vendor better support the OS and this again increase the diffusion.

So if Valve is going to help here, thank you very much! I really hope you will, and I wish you my best luck. Given I'm a steam user (I play Skyrim just to say, on windows sadly), I'm more than happy to see a Steam linux client.