

Portal 2 Beta for Linux officially released - neur0mancer
http://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1585569369676516320

======
voltagex_
Oh jeez.
[https://github.com/ValveSoftware/portal2/issues/21](https://github.com/ValveSoftware/portal2/issues/21)

~~~
baby
So there are github whiteknights.

The ridiculous thing here is that they're thinking that they're "protecting"
github when github doesn't need at all. Valve is doing free publicity for
github by doing that and as I said there, an issue tracker is taking
negligible resource from the servers.

~~~
throwawayaway11
OP (from github) here.

I apologize. I didn't understand Github welcomed this sort of use. Common
cases of hosting other people's infrastructure (e.g. Sourceforge,
freedesktop.org, Atlassian, ...):

    
    
        * Charity (free) for open source
        * Pay-for-use commercial users
    

I haven't seen a lot of companies volunteering to host other profitable
companies' infrastructure before. So, I posted that with my knee-jerk reaction
to the situation.

That being said, I take issue with your assessment of the situation and the
criticism. I object to the designation "whiteknight" — I believe I am actually
acting quite selfishly. It is in my best interest for Github to continue to be
in business as long as possible, to keep hosting open source software for my
projects and projects I consume.

The net gains/costs of Github hosting Valve's issue tracker are pure
speculation without an insider's view, and I can't pretend to have that. I'm
guessing you don't either? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your claim
is drawn out of thin air.

~~~
wat0
> I object to the designation "whiteknight"

You're behaving in the very definition of the term, no matter how much people
might dislike its over-application, and how it's almost applied to anything
one does online - you'll excuse my generalization about as easily as you'll
accept the term, I'm sure.

You're behaving as if you know what's best for resources you don't even own,
nor operate yourself. Why not just let Valve and Github work out policies
between each other.

Your knee-jerk is the very essence of vigilantism, albeit online social
justice: hence whiteknight. You might not like the pejorative, but it fits
perfectly for the action.

Maybe think before you speak? Not everyone needs an activist. Valve and GitHub
are big boys, they can fight with eachother - though by the sounds of it
they're not fighting at all.

~~~
throwawayaway11
I don't think my actions are as significant as you make them out to be.

> You're behaving as if you know what's best for resources you don't even own,
> nor operate yourself.

I don't know best — so I file an issue to start the question. This is how you
start discussions. An issue/bug report does not always mean "this is a
software bug, fix it now!"

> Your knee-jerk is the very essence of vigilantism

Really? Vigilantism is filing a github issue? Lollerskates. I see things that
go against my intuition, I file bugs, this is how you make software better.
Sometimes the bug reports are invalid _shrug_. My intuition is usually good.
Sorry it was wrong in this case.

> Maybe think before you speak?

This phrase gets thrown around a lot but only when talking to other people.
What makes you think that I didn't think before I wrote that? Or that somehow
your snide suggestion is more likely to convince me to "think more" before I
file future bugs than Github and Valve's professional responses ("we're cool
with this, closing")?

> Not everyone needs an activist.

I still think you're making out filing a two-sentence GH issue as waaaaaay
more involved or significant than it really is. I'm not a Github activist. I
just write code.

------
lvs
The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked, and
then there will be cake.

~~~
simias
Memes and popular quotes as the top comments. I had to double check the page's
URL to make sure I really was on HN.

~~~
ansimionescu
Oh, man, I love seeing the typical uptight HNer in action. ONLY SERIOUS
BUSINESS HERE, GUISE, PLEASE. _cries and hides_

~~~
simias
There are plenty of places on the web to spout memes and references to popular
games/movies/whatever, I don't see why we have to bring this over here. It's
the very definition of "noise". I also fail to see how the parent's quote has
anything to do with TFA, besides being from the Portal game. It offers no
insight whatsoever.

~~~
dandellion
I don't know, as long as it's just one thread I think it's ok to have some fun
every now and then.

~~~
giblaz
What's fun about it? It's not like it's an original witty thought. It's just
regurgitation. And it's about as palatable to read.

------
archagon
Curious: how is performance compared to the OSX port? All the Source games
I've tried run horribly on OSX compared to Windows on the same machine.
Strangely, they play just fine through a Parallels Windows VM running inside
OSX, so it can't be the OSX graphics driver's fault. What's going on over
there?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
I believe OS X has graphics drivers provided by Apple, not by the hardware
vendors, so that likely has something to do with it.

~~~
archagon
Yes — but as I said, running the game in a Parallels Windows VM results in 2x
better performance than running the same game natively. The same OSX graphics
driver is used in both cases, except the VM has to do extra work! How does
that make any sense?

~~~
olegoandreev
A wild guess would be that OS X drivers contain poor shader optimizer.

Parallels probably work by decompiling DirectX shader bytecode back into GLSL,
which is already optimized for OS X shader compiler, therefore there is less
burden on the optimizer.

Another example of poor drivers are various GLES drivers on mobile, mostly
trivial optimizations can drastically increase the performance:
[http://aras-p.info/blog/2010/09/29/glsl-
optimizer/](http://aras-p.info/blog/2010/09/29/glsl-optimizer/) and
[https://github.com/aras-p/glsl-optimizer](https://github.com/aras-p/glsl-
optimizer)

~~~
archagon
I was skeptical, but that first link speaks volumes. Interesting theory!

------
Ellipsis753
Awesome. I've already played through it on my Gentoo computer using wine but
will enjoy playing through it again and doing the online co-op missions when
this version is out of beta. It's a great game, very worth playing if you
haven't already.

------
mpnordland
Best news I got all day. Downloading now. It worked pretty good in wine (atop
Arch) for a while, then developed keyboard issues. Hoping to say goodbye to
those.

------
2mur
Awesome. I already played through on xbox, but I've been buying/playing the
linux ports of the valve games as they come out to support them.

------
Berrywt
Got it working on my arch linux laptop with Intel HD 4000 it is super smooth.

This is great news.

------
optymizer
I would like to see the SDK and the 'Authoring Tools' working on Linux.

------
notthemessiah
Has anyone tested to see if it would work with co-op with non-beta players?

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alexeyza
Great news, now just waiting for a Humble Bundle deal with Portal in it.

~~~
ekianjo
I don't think Humble Bundle ever did any deal with Valve titles.

~~~
mden
It would be pretty weird if they did considering they have their own platform
and bundles.

~~~
masklinn
Yep.

And they regularly do 75% or 90% sales on Valve titles during "season" sales.

------
darkstalker
Looks like I'm gonna buy a Steam game for the first time.

------
wikwocket
Reminds me of [http://xkcd.com/606/](http://xkcd.com/606/) ... Clearly, there
are no downsides!

------
ekianjo
nice, but i wonder why they took so long to release it after all the other
source engine games.

~~~
nness
Has got to be either low priority or technical limitations. I guess a Linux
port of Portal 2 isn't likely to provide returns anywhere close to PC sales,
so it may not have been approach furiously by Valve.

I also wouldn't be surprised if there were some DirectX specific stuff in
there that wouldn't easily make the transition to OpenGL either. Not to
mention all that driver testing they would have to do...

~~~
AimHere
Likely technical; the last three major source games to be ported were Dota2,
this and Counterstrike: Global Offensive (as yet not running on Linux), which
were their three newest games, and presumably used their shiniest, glossiest
versions of the Source Engine.

I'd imagine that CS:GO would have been prioritized much higher if it was
purely a business decision, given it's still high up in their top-played
games; Dota2, likewise, is their top played, flagship title, so if it was a
pure business decision, that would surely be #1 instead of third-last.

~~~
MLR
I'm not going to pretend I know when CS:GO was ported, but for a very long
time (until the crate update) it was easily the least played version of
Counter Strike.

I think it was ported to Linux before it was successful, but I can't be sure.

~~~
AimHere
It's not yet ported to Linux.

------
abvdasker
Better late than never I guess.

------
vezzy-fnord
Misread that as _Postal_ 2 beta (with an "s"), even though Postal 2 for Linux
on Steam has been around for a while now. RWS is planning a big update this
year, too.

This is good, too, though. I might consider checking it out, though I'm hardly
a gamer.

~~~
xfalcox
It's a really good game, that deserves it cult status. Go ahead, but try to
play the first one before if you can.

~~~
kenrikm
Yes play the first one.. there's some really yummy cake at the end!

