

Valve CEO: Why Linux is the future of gaming - tanglesome
http://www.zdnet.com/valve-ceo-why-linux-is-the-future-of-gaming-7000020735/

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slacka
As someone who does most of his work in Linux, I would love to also be able to
game in Linux. I see way too many problems for this to be solved anytime soon.
Here are a few of the problems I regularly encounter when gaming in Linux.

1) X11 Fullscreen support - Current support is terrible. Basic games like Tux
Racer have taken down my system. Maybe wayland or Mir will fix this.

2) Current Compiz / 3D compositing window manager kill 3D performance - The
performance hit when running under any of the 3D composting mangers is
unacceptable. Maybe wayland or Mir will fix this.

3) Video driver situation is abysmal. Nvidia and AMD open source drivers run
at a fraction of speed of the proprietary counterparts and are riddled with
bugs. Proprietary drivers only work for latest generation cards. Intel has
decent open source drivers, but no true gamer would consider using integrated
graphics.

4) Linux Sound subsystem is a disaster. Sure it's fine for listening to music
or watching videos, but the latency and CPU usage is unacceptable to real
gamers. MS learned their lesson with Vista/Win7 and now have proper hardware
acceleration for sound cards in Win8 like they did in WinXP. Linux had their
chance to fix this situation with OSSv4 but instead went with the inferior
ALSA.

I would love to see Ubuntu and Value clean this mess up, but I'm not sure they
have the resources to pull it off. If Sony had chosen Linux instead of BSD, I
could see this happening. But the way things are going with Mir in terms of
performance and industry support, I don't see it happening.

~~~
ehmish
Real gamer here (well I play games for fun, I would say that makes me real).

I use FOSS AMD drivers, the default sound system for Ubuntu (I presume it's
pulse) and the compositing gnome shell desktop environment. I am able to play
Valve's ported games quite smoothly and enjoyably, Even things like alt-
tabbing out work flawlessly.

~~~
slacka
Yes, for causal gaming and general system usage, the open source drivers are
usable. But, I play competitively in a clan and take gaming seriously. None of
my clan members or gaming buddies would ever sacrifice 10-50% FPS and put up
with the micro-stuttering with the open source drivers. I regularly install
the gallium3D drivers to see how they are progressing. The current visual
glitches and performance hit is unacceptable to me.

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vasquez
Valve and Ubuntu might have popularized Linux gaming, but they also screwed us
over.

Every desktop CPU sold in the last decade, at least the ones capable of
running games, supports x86-64. The only reason 32 bit installs exist in the
wild is because Ubuntu (still) makes it their default download.

Enter Steam for Linux. Targeting 32-bit Ubuntu, it makes this the de facto
platform for Linux games. My desktop OS is now cluttered with multiarch
libraries, and the top-end games I want to play won't take advantage of either
the better instruction set or all my ram.

Linux gaming could have been a fresh new start, a break from the 32-bit
instruction set, but instead we're now stuck installing, maintaining and
supporting 32-bit libs forever..

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Lots of AAA games still ship with only 32-bit executables. If the message is
supposed to be "come to Linux, it's easy, we promise," then there's a good
argument for making things as similar as possible for devs/publishers who
don't want to gamble on a virgin market.

I agree with you, though, it's disappointing that even in abandoning Windows
we're stuck with MS-style backwards compatibility.

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matt_heimer
I have to wonder if the Ubuntu/Redhat type of Linux is really the right target
for Valve. Those tiny Android on a stick and Ouya type of systems are just
going to keep increasing in power. I guess you could dual-boot Android/Ubuntu
but I see Android winning against desktop Linux for most consumers.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
>I see Android winning against desktop Linux for most consumers

Erm... maybe, but not for the consumers who are in Valve's target demographic.
Valve sells AAA video games, and while tiny systems might have the hardware to
be able to play today's TF2 five years from now, their games will also have
moved on.

Android only works on PC at all through third-party forks, and certainly
doesn't have GPU support. Whatever else you think of Canonical, they've been
taking point on getting graphics driver support for Linux.

~~~
selectodude
> their games will also have moved on.

Valve Time seems to disagree.

~~~
GeneralMayhem
Valve Time is a popular joke because of Half-Life, but if you set that aside
they actually release things pretty consistently. With all the engine
improvements and content updates, TF2 in 2013 is only barely comparable to TF2
in 2007 in terms of gameplay, and not at all in terms of system requirements
to play at high quality. And apart from that, since the Orange Box in 2007,
they've released major games in 2008 (L4D), 2009 (L4D2), 2011 (Portal 2), 2012
(CS:GO), and 2013 (DOTA 2). The only year they missed was 2010, but that was
the year they released the OSX ports of all the Source games. They also rolled
out Linux support this year, although I imagine the transition from OSX to
Ubuntu was much less difficult than from Windows to OSX.

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bagosm
TLDR: Linux doesnt require valve to hand over a percentage off of sales, so we
will be all self-righteous about how we love open platforms and their
evolution... Like we cared before the commission on windows 8 store was
announced.

~~~
Zikes
I don't get it. So doing the right thing for the right reason is wrong, if
that reason didn't exist before?

Or are we supposed to be self-righteous about loving Linux before someone else
came along to try to improve it?

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gcatalfamo
I almost forgot the Steambox existed after seeing it at CES this year...I
guess it's finally ready

