Canonical Recently Visited Valve To Talk About Ubuntu

[blackout23]

[Youtube] SIGGRAPH 2012 OpenGL BoF. Valve starts 32:18

There was probably now way they could have moved the camera a bit to show the actual demo...

[kwahoo]

[Youtube] SIGGRAPH 2012 OpenGL BoF. Valve starts 32:18

[KameZero]

What are you talking about? Yes, I am referring to that GT.TV episode and in that episode he explains a bit that Valve develops ?10 foot UI? for Steam and that hardware vendors (which in this context are Smart TV manufacturers or set-top box manufacturers) can choose between Windows and Linux for their platform.
Do you seriously suggest that he just accidentally forgot to mention that desktop Linux is seen as major area for growth? He only talks about Linux in the context of 10 foot UI and unless either the GT guys deleted all other Linux comments on purpose or Gabe is the most confused guy in the world and he simply forgot, the message is clear.

That part of the interview was ABOUT HARDWARE VENDORS MAKING STEAMBOXES. By your logic we can see that obviously valve only made their windows client for the main purpose of letting hardware vendors make steamboxes with it.

[Awesomeness]

No, those actually... weren't even like his words at all. I'm assuming he's talking about this interview.

What are you talking about? Yes, I am referring to that GT.TV episode and in that episode he explains a bit that Valve develops ?10 foot UI? for Steam and that hardware vendors (which in this context are Smart TV manufacturers or set-top box manufacturers) can choose between Windows and Linux for their platform.
Do you seriously suggest that he just accidentally forgot to mention that desktop Linux is seen as major area for growth? He only talks about Linux in the context of 10 foot UI and unless either the GT guys deleted all other Linux comments on purpose or Gabe is the most confused guy in the world and he simply forgot, the message is clear.

[KameZero]

Of course, you have to consider the DRM involved here.

While the client program might be shared, the games aren't. So one user couldn't update for another.

I suspect they'll repeat whatever mechanism they use on Windows and OS X.

Actually, the data for the games is shared, it's kept in a "common" folder inside of steamapps, saves and the like are kept in the users own folder. So if one user updates a game, it should be updated for all users.

[johnc]

I was thinking more along these lines:
1) Add a steam user/group to the system
2) Install Steam to /opt/Steam (or whatever), with all files owned by steam:steam
3) Set the setuid bit on the Steam executable
3) Add certain user accounts to the steam group, and make the Steam folder permissions 750.

When launching Steam, the user will automatically be changed to the Steam user, and Steam can update itself and all of its games without a gksudo prompt. At the same time, you still have the ability to save per-User save games under ~/ and only users who are members of the steam group can run the Steam binary.

Of course, you have to consider the DRM involved here.

While the client program might be shared, the games aren't. So one user couldn't update for another.

I suspect they'll repeat whatever mechanism they use on Windows and OS X.

[WorBlux]

I was thinking more along these lines:
1) Add a steam user/group to the system
2) Install Steam to /opt/Steam (or whatever), with all files owned by steam:steam
3) Set the setuid bit on the Steam executable
3) Add certain user accounts to the steam group, and make the Steam folder permissions 750.

When launching Steam, the user will automatically be changed to the Steam user, and Steam can update itself and all of its games without a gksudo prompt. At the same time, you still have the ability to save per-User save games under ~/ and only users who are members of the steam group can run the Steam binary.

Yes that's the way to go. Though allowing the $HOME install can be usefull in cases where a user doesn't have admin rights.

[Veerappan]

If I have to guess I'd say that Steam will have to be installed in the users’ home directory to allow Steam to update itself and all games without asking for admin rights.

I was thinking more along these lines:
1) Add a steam user/group to the system
2) Install Steam to /opt/Steam (or whatever), with all files owned by steam:steam
3) Set the setuid bit on the Steam executable
3) Add certain user accounts to the steam group, and make the Steam folder permissions 750.

When launching Steam, the user will automatically be changed to the Steam user, and Steam can update itself and all of its games without a gksudo prompt. At the same time, you still have the ability to save per-User save games under ~/ and only users who are members of the steam group can run the Steam binary.

[nightmarex]

It seems you're living in some differnt world. If that's the case then, non Ubuntu based distros will be dead. Ubuntu is the most popular Linux right now. Imagine it popularity rapidly grows with games being available.

WTF are you talking about?! I said Valve would be as good as dead to Linux not Linux based distros.

Ubuntu most popular? It's could be but I don't know about it being king for long. A lot people who want to try a Linux distro are at Mint's doorstep (moot point since it's derived from Ubuntu but then again we don't call Ubuntu "Debian" any more do we?).

Fhack your statment, Arch/Gentoo/Fedora/Mageia/SUSE...etc desktop users would burn half the world before letting the exclusion of Steam kill their distro. That's not even counting server space you're smoking crack.

[ciplogic]

From the article:

So while some may not be too fond of these companies working with the game studio filled with lots of ex-Microsoft employees.

To me looks like an ad-hominem. Is Phoronix a strawman creator against Microsoft?
Isn't it C and C++ created by the greatest corporations of that moment (AT&T)? Isn't Java a part of other big big corporation. Isn't it LLVM part of another big corporation?
The creator of Java moved to Google, the first TraceMonkey design was in reality a design made for FlashPlayer (ActionScript VM) by Adobe. And as anyone bashes Flash, do not take the reality that a lot of scientific papers (and the outcome in future of the software) is made by big corporations (most of the time).

Why is relevant that they were ex-Microsoft employees? Means that they were smart enough to pass Microsoft hiring tests, and eventually they enjoyed another career, right? right? Are you not fond to have a smart developer implementing your games?
Or are ex-Microsoft programmers a "submarine" in Linux? Maybe that's why they left, because they disliked Microsoft.
I don't want to be defendant of Microsoft, but I consider that many big corporations, technology wise, have a great contribution for what software is today.
Let's consider 4 things that Firefox that Firefox had and it will have in 2 years time span and all improve interactive games on the web:
Done:
- JS: Type Inference - firstly implemented by Google and WeKit's JS, it greatly improved the performance of JS
- GPU accelerated graphics for Canvas element: IE 9 did it first, and Firefox follows
Will be done:
- two level JIT compilation, similar with Sun's HotSpot, and in JS world: latest Google's V8 engine, it will improve high computations kernels (like Kraken JS engine) performance
- a separate thread to do JS compilation - the 2nd level optimizing compiler, that takes longer time, will compile in parallel the code (done firstly by Microsoft's IE9 and the TraceJIT of Android)
Most of the times corporations offer better software, and opensource folks catch up. Sometimes they go beyond their parents (Mono's C# Compile-As-A-Service is first it comes to mind), but having the industry setting better standards, make that all of our software to improve. Don't want to be edgy, but VIM had no visible change in the last 5 years (at least me to notice it ) but in fact commercial backed big packages, like Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA (even they have OSS in their back), Mono they did improve and with them the things we can do with our Linux box.