
Valve joins the Linux Foundation - kwestro
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/12/04/valve-joins-linux-foundation-prepares-linux-powered-steam-os-steam-machines/
======
SkyMarshal
Also of note, at the end:

 _" The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation [1], a nonprofit
consortium founded by AMD, ARM, Qualcomm and Samsung, among others to develop
open-standard specifications for parallel computing, and startup Cloudius
Systems are also joining the Linux Foundation today."_

[1]:[http://hsafoundation.com/](http://hsafoundation.com/)

~~~
salient
I hope something interesting will come out of HSA/OpenCL 2.0 in the next
couple of years, and that heterogeneous computing will start becoming more
practical for more types of programs.

------
casca
It will be interesting to see whether Valve can encourage the move to Linux
gaming. Their biggest asset at this time is the distribution model of Steam,
but that's not sufficient to get the big publishers to develop for OSX, never
mind Linux.

Edit: Valve's game list:
[http://www.valvesoftware.com/games/](http://www.valvesoftware.com/games/)

~~~
terabytest
OS X is not a good platform for gaming. It has a significantly smaller user
base of which only an even more significantly smaller are gamers. Playing on a
MacBook (or at least on my MacBook) is impossible, and I wouldn't buy an iMac
for gaming.

On the other hand, you can put Linux on anything (for free!), from your mom's
2002 pc to the latest generation hot stuff. This means there is indeed a
potential, and somebody just has to set the foundation.

~~~
stinkytaco
You seem to be contradicting yourself. Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it
has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. Playing on a
Macbook is impossible (presumably for performance reasons?), but you talk
about putting Linux on a 2002 PC for gaming. And Linux may or may not run on
the latest generation hot stuff, depending on how much time you want to spend
to get your newest graphics card working.

I'm not sure what potential you are talking about. If gaming doesn't work on
OS X, I can't see it working on Linux.

As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the
Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and massive
platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare.

~~~
Mikeb85
> Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but
> Linux's user base is much smaller.

There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10
million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam
OS) is easily installed.

Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC
because you can't put OSX on custom hardware.

> As an aside, Linux gaming would seem to me to suffer the same fate as the
> Android market times about a billion. Too many possible variations and
> massive platform fragmentation. It sounds like a development nightmare.

You sound like an iOS developer. It's not like every Windows PC has the same
screen resolution and hardware, yet it's the biggest gaming platform...

Have you ever developed anything for the desktop? It's not particularly
difficult to get things to run on computers with different hardware...

~~~
edoloughlin
_Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed._

I updated my desktop to Linux Mint 16 today and discovered that neither Steam
nor Wine will install on it. Steam seems to be supported on Ubuntu 12.10
(although it does work on 13.04).

~~~
Mikeb85
Your problem is using Linux Mint...

Both Steam and Wine work perfectly on Ubuntu 13.10 (I'm running both on my
13.10 laptop).

~~~
stinkytaco
> Your problem is using Linux Mint...

I think you just provided a shining example of the potential problems linux
gaming faces...

~~~
Mikeb85
I've used Steam successfully with Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, Arch, Manjaro...

Mint is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not
stable.

~~~
clarry
Ubuntu is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not
stable.

Fedora is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not
stable.

Arch is just a buggy distro, I used it once upon a time, it's simply not
stable.

We could play this game all day to make stinkytaco's point.

~~~
Mikeb85
You're right, any bleeding edge Linux can be unstable.

But I'd put an app into production on any of the ones listed over Mint.

Either way, the fact that Steam doesn't work on Mint is Mint's problem, not
Steam's...

~~~
aclevernickname
Because none of you seem to be reading anything outside your own little
threadwars:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6847940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6847940)

"Steam is included in the Linux Mint 16 repositories and you shouldn't have
issues installing it from the package manager. Or you can always "apt-get
install steam". Like most Linux applications, you are better off installing
the application from the package manager instead of from the upstream
website."

now stop spreading FUD.

------
kayoone
While this is great, its a bit sad that Valve is mostly doing all of this now,
because they fear losing their dominance on windows to the native Store in Win
8.x

In the end its a win-win for everyone if it works out, just their motives are
questionable.

~~~
Skoofoo
Before Windows 8, Valve seemingly couldn't care less about Linux! It bothers
me how Valve tries to make itself out to be Linux's best friend nowadays. They
also talk about open source a lot despite them ever releasing only proprietary
software.

~~~
xanderstrike
Leaks from years ago show that the Steam client and Source have both had Linux
versions in development since around the time of the Mac beta in 2010 (two
years before Windows 8) [0]. Also they've supported Linux servers forever, so
you can hardly say they couldn't care less. Also also, haven't they pushed
some stuff upstream and spurred interest and development in open source
drivers? That's more than many companies that publish proprietary software on
Linux.

Windows 8 may have pushed them over the line, and they may only be moving to
Linux in order to make more money. Is that really a problem though? I think
it's the breakthrough into the mainstream that Linux has been waiting for for
decades.

[0]
[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_ste...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1)

------
networked
If we introduced the Linus-Gates number by analogy with the Erdős-Bacon number
[1] but for code, what would Gabe Newell's Linus-Gates number be today?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_numbe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number)

~~~
dysoco
Did Gabe and Gates write any substantial code? At least lately? I don't think
we could relate them.

~~~
devcpp
Gabe was the 271st employee at Microsoft[0] and "was the producer on the first
three releases of Windows"[1], so I suppose that, even if he hasn't
contributed to the very same code as Bill Gates did, there must be an earlier
employee who has. I don't estimate his Gates code number to be more than 2.

[0] [http://www.giantbomb.com/gabe-
newell/3040-4498/](http://www.giantbomb.com/gabe-newell/3040-4498/)

[1]
[http://www.computerandvideogames.com/172835/interviews/creat...](http://www.computerandvideogames.com/172835/interviews/creative-
minds-gabe-newell/)

~~~
dysoco
Oh I forgot Gabe worked at MS, in that case, yeah, it must be pretty low. Gabe
worked both at Valve and MS, and both companies have submitted code to the
Linux Kernel.

~~~
vanilla
Gabe was not just "release producer" at MS, he was the driving force behind
windows gaming (port of Doom from DOS to windows)

[http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/167253-gabe-newell-made-
wi...](http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/167253-gabe-newell-made-windows-a-
viable-gaming-platform-and-linux-is-next)

------
Mikeb85
I must say, I'm surprised by how many naysayers there are, considering Gabe
thinks Linux is the future of gaming. There really is no technical reason why
this can't happen, we just need to make it happen...

~~~
Finster
Agreed. After years of haranguing Nvidia, for example, it wasn't until Valve
started pushing linux gaming that Nvidia FINALLY started clearing the air a
bit on their atrocious driver support.

Valve has a lot of influence in PC gaming. Whether it's enough to raise linux
as a preferred platform for PC gaming, only time will tell, but I hope it
does.

~~~
yapcguy
Developers (should) prefer using Linux over OS X.

Mac gaming languishes like it always has.

Pro video users have jumped shipped (still waiting for the new Mac Pro
sometime this month, 18 months after Tim Cook teased folks after WWDC, years
after any serious update)

What future OS X?!

~~~
stormbrew
Pro video users have jumped ship from Macs? To what?

~~~
ics
Could be referring to the micro-exodus of users after Final Cut X came out,
but then of all my friends in film and video none have switched _from_ Mac
since then, only to...

~~~
reustle
I'd love to do most of my amateur video editing on my powerful ubuntu desktop
instead of my macbook air. Is there a good community around any particular
video studio project for linux?

------
cabbeer
Right now the only thing keeping me from running linux full time is the Adobe
Master Collection (PS AI LR ID AE...)

~~~
SkyMarshal
Will it run in a Windows VM on Linux?

~~~
shawabawa3
photoshop is slow enough natively. Running in a VM might be good enough if you
use it occasionally, but for people who use it daily I doubt it.

~~~
jethro_tell
And why would you go that far out of your way if PS it's your primary tool?
What would you gain by having a Linux box around your Photoshop install?

Once you strip away specialized tool suits and programs that actually sit on
top of the OS, most users just need sound, mouse, keyboard, and monitor
support so they can run chrome or firefox. Most OSs handle this just fine, so
the real deciding factor in your OS should be the tool chain you need to run.

It's so backwards and kludgy to pick your os then try make your toolchain work
on top of it.

~~~
jebblue
Adobe is backwards and kludgy and needs to get with the future, get with
Linux, get with the program.

------
lobo_tuerto
And here it is, straight from the horse's mouth:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8PMUvuHK4g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8PMUvuHK4g)

~~~
NikhilVerma
Wow that's the most childish video graphic I've ever seen.

------
Aardwolf
DOSBox and Wine make Linux quite perfect for gaming.

Interestingly, for some games, running the Windows version in Wine works
better than running a native Linux version they've made of the game. E.g. the
native Linux version will complain that some library .so is not the correct
version, or that it cannot connect to X, etc...

~~~
gagege
I appreciate and use Wine quite a bit, but it's far from perfect. A lot of
things just plain crash from the get go.

Also, I wish that Steam on Linux would attempt to install and run Windows
games via Wine. If I want to play, for instance, Spelunky, I need to close
Linux Steam (can't log in in multiple clients, last time I checked) and open
Windows Steam in Wine. Maybe there's a way to get Wine games to run in Linux
Steam, I don't know. It would just be cool if it did it by default.

~~~
Groxx
Yeah, I've only had success about 3/4 of the time I've used Wine. Maybe less.
That's still 3/4 more than 0, so I absolutely _love_ it, but it's definitely
not perfect.

~~~
Aardwolf
Often if something doesn't work, winetricks helps get the right components,
and sometimes also settings like the one where Wine creates a "desktop" window
inside of which the game gets ran.

~~~
Groxx
Often. And that's why I've achieved 3/4 success rate. But finding the magic
winetricks incantations, even with the help of winehq.org, can be an enormous
time-sink with low guarantee of success once you've exhausted the standard
DirectX/VCRedist stuff.

------
vivab0rg
(Link)[0] to the actual announcement.

[0]: [http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-
media/announcements/2013...](http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-
media/announcements/2013/12/cloudius-systems-hsa-foundation-and-valve-join-
linux-foundation)

------
Xdes
Until Linux fixes its desktop story I'm going to stick with my Windows PC.

~~~
ds_
What's broken about it?

~~~
venomsnake
Well linux have 10 main desktop managers that are under development right now.
Each and every one of them does roughly 80% of what I want from a desktop. And
I have uncomfortable experience on all.

~~~
subsection1h
What's a desktop manager? I know about desktop environments, of which there
seem to be 4-5 for Linux, and I know about window managers, of which there are
many, thankfully.

Please list the "10 main desktop managers" so I can familiarize myself with
them. Thanks.

~~~
adamors
Haha, you've gotta love these armchair Linux critics man.

~~~
venomsnake
Indeed, call a person that sincerely tries for the last 3 months to move to
Linux as a daily driver armchair critic.

I could live with slightly wooden DE, I could live with the fact that my
speakers are buzzing while there are phones connected.

The only real dealbreaker is lack of decent file search in Linux. I want
something that delivers the speed of search of Everything and has realtime
update. No luck so far.

~~~
adamors
Have you looked into KDE? KDE has a pretty complex file search/tag system
called Nepomuk:
[http://userbase.kde.org/Nepomuk](http://userbase.kde.org/Nepomuk)

~~~
venomsnake
Nepomuk is indexer, and I am not sure it starts indexing on volume mount, also
not sure if it is hooked into fnotify. Everything is reads straight from the
NTFS journal - it is really smart little utility that has become my main
launcher for everything. But I have not found current in development project
that could be used like that - rlocate was closest but it is dead from 3
years.

~~~
adamors
Nepomuk is not the indexer, Strigi is. And Strigi has inotify support AFAIK.

EDIT: This is an older post, but I think it shows exactly that:
[http://www.afiestas.org/nepomuk-is-not-fast-is-
instant/](http://www.afiestas.org/nepomuk-is-not-fast-is-instant/)

------
jebblue
These guys have so much smarts and common sense, congratulations guys. I'm
enjoying Steam on Ubuntu, holding true to my promise to buy games and play
them. Even bigger news for me, now I can look forward to purchasing a Steam
Machine down the road. Sorry Roku, you've been great but you may have just
gotten steam rolled.

------
BrixSprix
I would love to have a bit more motivation to set up a linux partition.
Getting pretty tired of developing on windows...

~~~
int0c
Once you start developing against the POSIX API you will notice how beautiful
it is and how horrendous the Win32 API is in comparison. :)

~~~
taspeotis

        Once you start developing against the POSIX API you will notice how beautiful it is and how horrendous the Win32 API is in comparison. :)
    

Yeah, that POSIX standard for displaying windows on Windows is much more
beautiful than Win32.

------
erikpukinskis
That video is painful to watch. Here's the source of those video clips of
Gabe: [http://youtu.be/Gzn6E2m3otg?t=12s](http://youtu.be/Gzn6E2m3otg?t=12s)
It's from LinuxCon in September.

------
philliphaydon
Personally I think the movement to Linux will greatly help Linux, but will
hurt gamers. My opinion. We will see what the future holds.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Not a gamer, why would that be?

~~~
philliphaydon
Because game companies will likely delay games, cut corners to get cross-
platform and claim its too hard, but still charge the same price for less
content.

If that makes sense.

~~~
seabrookmx
I doubt it.

Most indy studios use a tool like Unity or gameplay3d to build games, which
can already target Linux.

Triple AAA titles from studios like EA already have OpenGL ports for the
PS3/PS4, so it's just a matter of adding a layer to interact with X and the
input APIs. With their huge amount of resources and budgets, this is child's
play.

------
metastew
What does this mean for Nvidia and AMD?

~~~
venomsnake
Nothing. The people that buy 250 watt, 300mm^2 GPUs to play games will
continue to buy them.

~~~
marcosdumay
Yep, they'll buy from one of them. How will they choose?

I think free drivers will become important. But maybe I'm wrong, and they'll
just get the one that consume more watts.

------
FridayWithJohn
The one thing that has forced me keep Windows on my PC is the fact that most
games require it. Hearing that such a large player in the gaming industry
wants to move to Linux is really fantastic news.

~~~
easy_rider
The only thing that bugs me is that driver support is lagging behind so bad on
Linux. I remember when Linus said something about why you should buy ATI for
linux gaming. Because they have open source drivers.. In the end I returned my
ATI card.

My older Turion x64/hd3650 something laptop is still struggling with whatever
flavor Linux. Still a work in progresss to get my Samsung 40" full hd TV
through HDMI detected as something other than a 7" tablet screen..hmm.

~~~
codfrantic
Try again, I'm using my HP Minilaptop with AMD components on (X)ubuntu or
Linux Mint, 32 inch samsung is detected better in Linux then it is in Windows.
(automatically runs it Full HD compared to Windows' 1366x768 )

~~~
easy_rider
Cool, could you hint me which version(s) of (x)ubuntu and mint are working out
for you? I couldn't get passed the Mint login screen after installation.
Couldn't drop to tty either. System froze over :( I'm now on ubuntu 12.04
which seems better, but still.. HDMI/dual monitor is bugging me out.

~~~
aclevernickname
Kubuntu 13.10 (or the latest Chakra if you don't like *buntu) should work, and
solve your HDMI pain.

~~~
easy_rider
thanks!!

