
Valve: Linux More Open Than Windows 8 for Gaming - dartttt
http://www.ubuntuvibes.com/2012/10/valve-linux-more-viable-than-windows-8.html
======
YokoZar
The title (and article) is really bad journalism. I'm an Ubuntu Developer at
the summit and listened to this talk live about an hour ago and he said
nothing of the sort.

He did say that Microsoft and Apple are moving away from the open platform
model and that Valve has always been in favor of open platforms. Linux is the
best option for a continuing open platform in the future.

Actual video of the talk will be online within a day or so, so I suggest you
watch that instead of reading contrite stories like this one.

Here is a much better article about the talk from OMG Ubuntu:
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/valve-talk-steam-for-
linu...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/valve-talk-steam-for-linux-at-uds)

~~~
astrodust
In this case "open platform" means "platform where a publisher other than the
operating system vendor can make a profit".

~~~
furyofantares
In my view the ability for anyone to hack on their own device is valuable,
too. I learned to program because GORILLAS.BAS came with the source code (and
I think required you to view it in order to run it!)

I use closed devices with some mixed feelings about it, the thing I'm most sad
to support is the move toward devices with bigger barriers toward tinkering
than what I had as a kid. I'm probably more accepting of it when it's a device
I never had as a kid, but when barriers are constructed for once-open
platforms it starts to irk me.

~~~
astrodust
I've heard this argument before and it's a load of crap.

If I had a choice between a C64 with BASIC and an iPad with a browser, I'd
take the browser _every_ time.

Within twenty seconds you can have <http://jsfiddle.net/> up in a window and
be programming JavaScript.

Within a few minutes you could create a Linode account and be using vi through
ssh.

Within a few days you could be creating a much more significant application
using the enormous selection of _open-source_ tools that never, ever existed
on the same platforms that GORILLA.BAS came from. You could do things that
were virtually impossible in the 1980s in a matter of days or weeks, even with
no prior experience.

People decry the App Store as "closed", but it's basically open to anyone with
a hundred bucks and the ability to ship an executable to Apple. Sure,
_theoretically_ you could've shipped your game on your C64 on floppy disks, as
some people successfully did, but the enormity of this undertaking is well
beyond the ability of most beginner programmers. It was basically impossible
to go it alone without a publisher for distribution. Now anyone can self-
publish.

If you ask me, the ecosystem has never been more open and accessible to
developers of all ages and backgrounds. It's also more open, more friendly to
users of all stripes, not just enthusiasts. Your grandmother can buy apps
through the app store. This sort of thing simply didn't happen in the so-
called glorious old days of "open" computers.

~~~
furyofantares
The barrier to entry for GORILLAS.BAS was "hey, what's this number do and what
happens if I change it?"

I didn't even have to know I wanted to learn to program.

I agree with you that there are tons of awesome things at our fingertips for
shipping applications to people, or for learning to code once you know that's
what you want to do. jsfiddle looks great, if you know you want to learn
JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Linode is awesome, once you know you want to host a
site. The App Store is incredible, once you can write an acceptable app.

Those are all great things, and they are all a few steps beyond the stage I'm
talking about. You're talking about learning to walk; I'm talking about
learning to crawl.

------
Karunamon
FTFA> _Windows 8 ships with its own app store and it is not an open platform
anymore._

If having an app store is the criterion for not being an open platform, not
even Ubuntu qualifies. And last I checked, I can still compile and run
whatever I damn well please on Win8.

There wasn't even this level of derp when Apple launched the app store for OS
X.

Straight up FUD. Windows will always be the premier gaming platform as long as
it has the majority of the desktop base, and by extension the best driver
support, and by extension the most games written for it.

Valve is going to kill themselves to attempt to make a point, at this rate.

~~~
w1ntermute
> If having an app store is the criterion for not being an open platform, not
> even Ubuntu qualifies.

It doesn't say "Because Windows 8 ships with its own app store, it is not an
open platform anymore," so you misinterpreted that.

The difference between the Windows 8 app store and Ubuntu's Software Center is
that you can easily add 3rd party repositories to the latter. Also keep in
mind that on Windows RT (the ARM version of Windows 8), you can't install any
apps from outside the app store, period.

> Windows will always be the premier gaming platform as long as it has the
> majority of the desktop base, and by extension the best driver support, and
> by extension the most games written for it.

Linux doesn't have to have the best driver support to be sufficient as a
gaming platform. If it has enough driver support for games to run well, it has
a chance. And the proprietary NVIDIA Linux drivers right now work quite well
in my experience. There are a few bugs, but nothing that can't be ironed out
with a little time.

Just because Windows has the "majority of the desktop base" doesn't mean it
has to be the premiere gaming platform. Gamers are a very select group of
people, and there's no reason Valve couldn't target them.

If I were Valve, I would start programs such as "if you spend X hours playing
Steam games on Linux, you get a discount on your next game." That would have a
_huge_ impact on what gamers are using to play games, and could push other
developers to port their games to Linux. As the middleman between millions of
gamers and hundreds of game studios, Valve has _enormous_ power here.

~~~
w0utert
>> And the proprietary NVIDIA Linux drivers right now work quite well in my
experience. There are a few bugs, but nothing that can't be ironed out with a
little time.

The proprietary NVIDIA drivers for Linux are built directly from the same
source base as the Windows drivers, the only difference being the interface
layer between the kernel and the driver. Feature set and performance are
identical to the Windows drivers.

I'm not aware of any known critical bugs in the kernel parts. Usually when
stuff breaks in the NVidia drivers, it's because of a combination of a kernel
update and sloppy package management by the distribution. None of this should
be an issue if Valve decides to release some kind of Linux based 'Steam
loader' that boots directly to the game itself, or make their own Linux distro
with tight control over the kernel and GPU drivers.

I'm not sure how good the ATI linux drivers are these days though.

~~~
roc
> _"None of this should be an issue if Valve decides to release some kind of
> Linux based 'Steam loader' that boots directly to the game itself"_

That's a pretty interesting angle. But it might be a bridge too far. Gamers
would almost certainly follow Valve to Linux. But asking them to give up their
mp3 players, chat programs and background tasks while they're gaming?

Only if it were a living room solution, which has its own "day 1" sorts of
challenges. (e.g. the number of titles with not only gamepad _support_ , but
where you truly do not need the keyboard/mouse to play.)

~~~
slowpoke
>But asking them to give up their mp3 players, chat programs and background
tasks while they're gaming?

Wat.

Linux programs like Pidgin have support for almost all IM protocols known to
man, it can handle any Portable Media Player with sane behavior (read:
identifies as removable storage, which pretty much all players except the
shitty Apple ones do) and last time I checked, Linux is capable of
multitasking, too.

~~~
Karunamon
>identifies as removable storage

Managing your music collection as a distinct set of files and folders is a
rather 90's concept. What matters is how the files are presented to the end
user - they can be all slapped into a single folder and given GUID names as
long as the resultant database presents them in a clear and meaningful way.

(Only partly kidding - I think your criterion for a "shitty" music player will
find a great deal of dissent :3)

>Linux programs like Pidgin have support for almost all IM protocols known to
man

 _Weak_ support. Anything beyond simple chatting almost universally doesn't
work. File transfers, picture syncing, god forbid voice and video chat.

~~~
slowpoke
The thing about identifying as removable storage is that it allows you to use
whatever music syncing tool or library program you want, and aren't locked
into the universally horrible vendor-supplied excuses for an application.
Files in a directory structure are a universal API that almost any program can
understand and make use of.

As for the IM protocols, maybe this will prompt people to migrate to better
protocols like XMPP. ICQ, MSN, AIM and all those other proprietary protocols
with their ad-laden, bloated clients (which I classify as nothing short of
malware) should have died years ago.

------
tomku
I can only assume that he actually means "we have less competition on Linux",
because my experience with Windows 8 as a gamer has been pretty damn good.
Everything gaming-related works just as well as Win7, as far as I can tell.
The games available on the app store are alright, but I don't see it competing
with Steam when it comes to the high-powered AAA titles.

Edit: From another comment, it sounds like this is a bad quote, and that the
Valve guy said nothing of the sort. Sorry to Valve for what I wrote
previously, and shame on UbuntuVibes...

~~~
barrkel
Does Crysis 2 work? The guys at bit-tech.net couldn't get it to run on Windows
8: [http://www.bit-
tech.net/bits/software/2012/10/26/windows-8-p...](http://www.bit-
tech.net/bits/software/2012/10/26/windows-8-performance-benchmarks/7)

~~~
tomku
I don't own Crysis 2 to test, sorry. The only program that I had installed
that flat-out broke due to the upgrade was actually Media Player Classic Home
Cinema, which works fine now after updating to the latest version.

Edit: To expand a little bit on that, I've been a Windows user since the 3.1
days. I've done most (if not all) of the upgrades during that time frame at
some point, and there are always programs that break. Games tend to be
particularly fragile in this respect, possibly due to relying on
undocumented/unsupported behavior to squeeze out extra performance.

Win98->XP (ME? what's that?) and XP->Vista were both particularly bad for
games, as I think anyone old enough to be a PC gamer during those times
remembers. However, it wasn't because XP or Vista weren't 'viable' for gaming
- the games just needed patches to adjust to new OS behavior or remove
reliance on deprecated APIs. Win7->Win8 is more comparable to Vista->Win7,
judging by my experience so far. There are things that will break and certain
games will need patches, but it won't be anything like the days of needing
"Vista patches" for 90% of your games.

------
Falling3
I'm really excited by this. I've always thought of gaming as one of the things
really holding linux back from taking a more reasonable market share on the
desktop (I said one of). Even people who prefer linux are forced to dual-boot
or use a VM. This certainly isn't a magic bullet, but I sure hope it makes
linux a more viable and mainstream choice.

~~~
Alterlife
The problem is as far as I've seen: people don't shift 'just because' or even
when the other option is 'slightly better'. In fact, Linux is going to be a
sub-standard choice for gamers for a good amount of time even after steam for
Linux catches on with the Linux community. The Windows games that people
already purchased aren't going to vaporise there's a lot holding them back to
the old platform.

People will install Linux enmasse when Linux gets something that the other
options don't have -- when desirable games come out that can ONLY play on
Linux and no other platform.

~~~
takluyver
I'd be a bit more optimistic than that. It's not unusual to meet technically
minded people who use Linux for getting stuff done, but dual boot Windows for
gaming. If enough games are available for Windows, that's going to increase
the market for Linux-only computers, which is another key part of the puzzle.

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hdra
I don't really get the reaction by Valve.. How is Windows 8 is going to affect
Steam?? Current users will still be able to install Steam. The only thing that
the Win8 app store going to sell is the Metro/WinRT apps, which is a
completely different thing than what Steam is offering... are they worried
about their future plan or something?

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k3n
> When asked about new Team Fortress 2 Hats, he said that some rumors have
> been circulating but he has no information about it.

Glad to see we've got our priorities in order!

------
ed_blackburn
If companies like Valve find it difficult to distribute their content without
paying a vendor tax, I fully anticipate some kind of boot to Acme Games Inc.
bootstrapping.

All one requires is a lite distro that'll fire up steam. They can ship it on
USB sticks. If it's not possible to boot from USB, just install it from the
USB. Would make the physical packaging smaller.

Imagine popping into you local shop, picking up a free (or nominal) USB.
Installing the mega lite distro before downloading and playing games.

Whilst the vendors will inch towards owning the ecosystems for their
platforms, they'll always be innovators who will circumnavigate. Unless you're
leasing the hardware under license I struggle to see one can realistically
prevent OS installations on standard hardware.

------
Magenta
They "need" pulseaudio? Yikes. I was hoping people had stopped using it D:

~~~
iso8859-1
what's wrong with it?

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erikpukinskis
Does anyone find it bizarre that Valve is so upset about the Windows Store not
being "open" when they, in Steam, run an app store that is far, FAR harder to
get your software distributed in?

~~~
bvdbijl
No, as the Windows store is baked into windows 8 so Microsoft controls to to
bottom but steam only controls your games.

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davidgerard
Valve wants to be _the_ Linux app store for proprietary apps. Proprietary apps
presently tend to crap all over the system in unpredictable ways; Valve offers
not having to worry about this.

This is why Valve is so dead against Windows 8: the Microsoft app store.

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aristidb
I totally need to get a gaming-capable computer to run Linux on, and install
Steam on it! (Currently my Linux laptop just has old Intel graphics which is
... rather underpowered. Also need to wait for Steam-for-Linux to become
public, obviously.)

~~~
navs
Now that's something I don't know if I could change. I've always installed
Linux on my older, outdated hardware. I've never purchased a brand new, top of
the line machine and thought about installing Linux.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I did, and then overclocked it. Totally worth it to combat my tendency to
switch over to hacker news while compiling.

<http://xkcd.com/303/>

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loboman
Valve in cooperation with Canonical. Now we know why Ubuntu needs to have some
secret projects.

------
indiecore
> When asked about new Team Fortress 2 Hats, he said that some rumors have
> been circulating but he has no information about it.

Did people really ask about hats at the Ubuntu Developer Conference?

~~~
YokoZar
This was a random audience question during the Q+A at the end of the talk,
jokingly asked before a real question

~~~
bonzoesc
And if they were passing out a limited number of Unique or Unusual hats, it'd
be like passing out Benjamins. The TF2 hat market is _fascinating_.

~~~
YokoZar
My guess is there will be a hat for people who have run the game on linux at
least once, very similarly to the way there was a hat for people who ran the
game on mac at least once

~~~
bonzoesc
They probably won't limit it like they did earbuds, which are the most
fungible of high-dollar-value game items (c.f. <http://tf2finance.com/> for
dollar value).

