Did Valve already get what they wanted from SteamOS? i.e. Win kernel + BigPicture DE

[V10lator]

I think we'll see more and more native Linux games begin using OpenGL 4 based engines directly because no Direct3D to OpenGL wrappers can currently support DirectX 11 APIs, which new games are targetting--not Wined3d, eON, nor ToGL at this time.

Wrong. ToGL supports DX11: https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/d...to%20Linux.pdf side 22.

The only choice is to support OpenGL 4.x with pure native binaries like we see with the new Metro Redux games.

Don't confuse things. All Valve games are pure native binaries (ELF).

//EDIT: BTW: Doesn't OGL 4.x has extensions to make D3D -> OGL wrappers more effective?

[Xaero_Vincent]

Wrong. ToGL supports DX11: https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/d...to%20Linux.pdf side 22.


Don't confuse things. All Valve games are pure native binaries (ELF).

//EDIT: BTW: Doesn't OGL 4.x has extensions to make D3D -> OGL wrappers more effective?

The slide presentation states that but the GitHub page for ToGL doesn't. Perhaps the slides are pointing to a future direction for ToGL? To be clear, though, ToGL currently only implements a subset of Direct3D 9c. It doesn't cover as far in scope as say eON or Wined3d, which are also of course incomplete but more implemented than ToGL:

Limited subset of Direct3D 9.0c

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

Being a native ELF binary executable doesn't exclude the software from using a D3D to OpenGL layer. I never said it was exactly the same as Wine with it's PE (Portable Executable) EXE loader but that ToGL has similarities with the WineD3D component. I'm not against developers using wrappers or shims as long as the resulting games are of good quality with decent framerate. I think Valve has accomplished that with their game ports. It will be interesting to see if they will use an Direct3D 11 extended version of ToGL for Half Life 3 or just a pure OpenGL 4.x port with their Source 2 engine.

[mmstick]

The slide presentation states that but the GitHub page for ToGL doesn't. Perhaps the slides are pointing to a future direction for ToGL? To be clear, though, ToGL currently only implements a subset of Direct3D 9c. It doesn't cover as far in scope as say eON or Wined3d, which are also of course incomplete but more implemented than ToGL:

Limited subset of Direct3D 9.0c

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

Being a native ELF binary executable doesn't exclude the software from using a D3D to OpenGL layer. I never said it was exactly the same as Wine with it's PE (Portable Executable) EXE loader but that ToGL has similarities with the WineD3D component. I'm not against developers using wrappers or shims as long as the resulting games are of good quality with decent framerate. I think Valve has accomplished that with their game ports. It will be interesting to see if they will use an Direct3D 11 extended version of ToGL for Half Life 3 or just a pure OpenGL 4.x port with their Source 2 engine.

From what I understood, ToGL was simply used to convert D3D to OGL at compile time, not during runtime like Wine.

[V10lator]

The slide presentation states that but the GitHub page for ToGL doesn't. Perhaps the slides are pointing to a future direction for ToGL? To be clear, though, ToGL currently only implements a subset of Direct3D 9c. It doesn't cover as far in scope as say eON or Wined3d, which are also of course incomplete but more implemented than ToGL:

Limited subset of Direct3D 9.0c

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

Taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree <- That means it's not the whole ToGL, it's just the stripped down version DOTA2 uses.

Being a native ELF binary executable doesn't exclude the software from using a D3D to OpenGL layer. I never said it was exactly the same as Wine with it's PE (Portable Executable) EXE loader but that ToGL has similarities with the WineD3D component. I'm not against developers using wrappers or shims as long as the resulting games are of good quality with decent framerate. I think Valve has accomplished that with their game ports. It will be interesting to see if they will use an Direct3D 11 extended version of ToGL for Half Life 3 or just a pure OpenGL 4.x port with their Source 2 engine.

I just wanted that you define the terms right. "Native binary" means ELF and that's what the Valve games are. There's an API wrapper used internally in the resulting binary, yes, but many native apps translate internal APIs to OS APIs. On the other side The Witcher 2 is not native as the game is still the Windows exe loaded by eON. Anyway, I'm also interested in seeing how the Source 2 engine will handle OpenGL.

[mmstick]

Taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree <- That means it's not the whole ToGL, it's just the stripped down version DOTA2 uses.


I just wanted that you define the terms right. "Native binary" means ELF and that's what the Valve games are. There's an API wrapper used internally in the resulting binary, yes, but many native apps translate internal APIs to OS APIs. On the other side The Witcher 2 is not native as the game is still the Windows exe loaded by eON. Anyway, I'm also interested in seeing how the Source 2 engine will handle OpenGL.

ToGL is not a wrapper.

[Xaero_Vincent]

Taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree <- That means it's not the whole ToGL, it's just the stripped down version DOTA2 uses.


I just wanted that you define the terms right. "Native binary" means ELF and that's what the Valve games are. There's an API wrapper used internally in the resulting binary, yes, but many native apps translate internal APIs to OS APIs. On the other side The Witcher 2 is not native as the game is still the Windows exe loaded by eON. Anyway, I'm also interested in seeing how the Source 2 engine will handle OpenGL.

Well my understanding is that ToGL was developed to aid Valve in porting their games based on the Source engine over to Linux and Mac. The reason is because the Source 1 engine was originally a DirectX 9 only engine and still today doesn't offer DirectX 10 or 11 support IIRC. I can be wrong but from this, I gather that all Source-based Valve games to date, including CS:GO, use DirectX 9 or this ToGL translator to convert to OpenGL 2.x for the Linux/Mac versions. So I kind of doubt Valve has a version with Direct3D 11 support production ready (if at all) and they probably won't need it if their Source 2 engine has first class OpenGL support and they develop future games with cross-platform in mind from the beginning.

[jimbohale]

For me SteamOS is a flop, it doesn't bring anything new. It's not faster than other linux distros. The base is very old (Wheezy), driver updates are also slow.
Don't see any advantage on this comparing to a linux distro or even windows.

It was supposed to be a bridge from Windows to Linux for people who were big gamers. Unfortunately gaming on Linux will never become a big thing, and if you suggest otherwise, look at what's happened since the beginning and how after 20 years Linux still is not good for gaming (in the sense that the availability of games is minimal at best, and Wine is not an acceptable solution to that problem). Now, there is a very specific reason and that is that it was not made for gaming. In addition, the people who are pro-Linux are anti-DRM, and you simply cannot have an ecosystem on computers where things like games are done entirely open source. Games are very expensive to make, and with little (generally negative) money to be made there is no point in doing it. Additionally, developing a game open source is cool for novelty purposes, but it will never take off and become massive (see: LoL, Dota2, etc where they've filled football stadiums). Granted, you can play those games on Linux if you try really hard, but my point is that a lot of reason is due to DRM and how many people are against it, when they just don't understand that you can't have an efficient ecosystem for certain things, particularly media (which gaming is one of) without it. Do not dare reference Nexiuz or whatever it is called now. It has some cool graphics, but it is NOT fun for me to play, I would much prefer to turn on my console and play video games on that.

Now, a little tangent but who really cares. Gaming in the sense that people are stuck on is not going to ever improve on Linux, so why start? The FPS's of the 90s are exactly what they sound like, old. Gaming is evolving from meaning those to meaning things like farmville or what have you, and if those were done on the web it would mean that it would work perfectly on Linux, as Google Chrome has by and large the best support for WebGL and the like (Firefox is bad at that, it didn't even support websockets in web workers until VERY recently, which to this say is dubious at best https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504553, and that support is crucial for games) and Chrome / Chromium is readily available for Linux.

So, we should instead focus on a distro that is extremely easy to use for general consumers who give NO fucks about what us enthusiasts or activists (whichever you or I may be) care about and just want a computer that works that they never have to touch, and a computer that if it breaks they can take it into a shop where someone who cares a lot more about that sort of thing can fix it for them. I believe ElementaryOS has that potential, and ultimately I think it is the bridge from consumer OS's to Linux. If they want to run a game, they can load up Google Chrome that's right in the dock in the bottom of their screen and get going. If they want to change their display settings, they open the settings menu and it's right there. No editing text files, no using terminal.

Full disclaimer: I am a former Linux user turned Mac user due to taking UI design classes and no distributions offering actually good UIs for my preference. ElementaryOS is great but it's not my personal cup of tea.

[mmstick]

It was supposed to be a bridge from Windows to Linux for people who were big gamers. Unfortunately gaming on Linux will never become a big thing, and if you suggest otherwise, look at what's happened since the beginning and how after 20 years Linux still is not good for gaming (in the sense that the availability of games is minimal at best, and Wine is not an acceptable solution to that problem). Now, there is a very specific reason and that is that it was not made for gaming. In addition, the people who are pro-Linux are anti-DRM, and you simply cannot have an ecosystem on computers where things like games are done entirely open source. Games are very expensive to make, and with little (generally negative) money to be made there is no point in doing it. Additionally, developing a game open source is cool for novelty purposes, but it will never take off and become massive (see: LoL, Dota2, etc where they've filled football stadiums). Granted, you can play those games on Linux if you try really hard, but my point is that a lot of reason is due to DRM and how many people are against it, when they just don't understand that you can't have an efficient ecosystem for certain things, particularly media (which gaming is one of) without it. Do not dare reference Nexiuz or whatever it is called now. It has some cool graphics, but it is NOT fun for me to play, I would much prefer to turn on my console and play video games on that.

Now, a little tangent but who really cares. Gaming in the sense that people are stuck on is not going to ever improve on Linux, so why start? The FPS's of the 90s are exactly what they sound like, old. Gaming is evolving from meaning those to meaning things like farmville or what have you, and if those were done on the web it would mean that it would work perfectly on Linux, as Google Chrome has by and large the best support for WebGL and the like (Firefox is bad at that, it didn't even support websockets in web workers until VERY recently, which to this say is dubious at best https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=504553, and that support is crucial for games) and Chrome / Chromium is readily available for Linux.

So, we should instead focus on a distro that is extremely easy to use for general consumers who give NO fucks about what us enthusiasts or activists (whichever you or I may be) care about and just want a computer that works that they never have to touch, and a computer that if it breaks they can take it into a shop where someone who cares a lot more about that sort of thing can fix it for them. I believe ElementaryOS has that potential, and ultimately I think it is the bridge from consumer OS's to Linux. If they want to run a game, they can load up Google Chrome that's right in the dock in the bottom of their screen and get going. If they want to change their display settings, they open the settings menu and it's right there. No editing text files, no using terminal.

Full disclaimer: I am a former Linux user turned Mac user due to taking UI design classes and no distributions offering actually good UIs for my preference. ElementaryOS is great but it's not my personal cup of tea.

This is complete and utter BS.

[gutigen]

The lack of Github support recently could be blamed on Source Engine 2 - in Q1' 2015 there is going be Dota 2 port to Source Engine 2 (announced by Valve). It should also bring Source SDK to Linux and full, native OpenGL support (Gaben has said that few months ago, can't find the link atm though).

[Zan Lynx]

I walk into most stores now and find nothing but tablets.

Speech to Text is the best ever! Laptops are a waste of money.

Huge PC's are only good for servers.

60'' TV + Chromecast + Tablet + Bluetooth keyboard = Programmer's dream

We're waking up and the companies are dying.

PS4 killed Microsoft with FreeBSD driving the nails home!

They'll have to drop the price another $100 (349, now $249) on the Xbox OnE!

Steam is where it's at. If Valve gets back in bed with Microsoft, it's their own mistake.

Maybe squirrl is trolling here? Dunno.

Most gamers I know would never buy a gaming PC in a store. The hardware is always out of date and last generation and overpriced too. Buy online or build your own.

There are great games coming that will only crawl on consoles. Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen are what I'm looking at. MMO games are also PC only and very popular. There's also hardware like the Oculus Rift and other things that only support PC. When it shows up on console it tends to be way overpriced and only good for one game.

As a programmer my dream PC is either a super-powerful desktop workstation or a very mobile laptop. A tablet is ridiculous. Believe me. I've tried using a SSH shell off an ASUS Transformer and the experience is sub-par. I do like big displays and have a 50" 4K on my home desktop. But running off a tablet with no multitasking and only one app running? Who works like that?

And if you put a multitasking OS on a tablet and attach a keyboard it becomes just another laptop.