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Valve to explain 'hardware opportunities' for Linux
Valve's Gabe Newell likes Linux. A lot. In spite of the operating system representing less-than-one percent share by every metric used by Valve, Newell believes that Linux will play a large role in the future of PC gaming--so much so that his company is invested in making a Linux-based Steambox. In addition to releasing games on the OS, Valve is showing their support of Linux by contributing to the LLDB debugger project, because developers frequently cite the need for a debugger to make Linux a better development platform.
Newell still believes Windows 8 is a catastrophe, pointing out that PC sales have experienced year-over-year declines. However, Steam sales have increased 76 percent--suggesting Valve is doing something right.
Valve brought Steam to Linux in February, and the platform now has 198 games. Newell has previously promised to unveil a Linux-based "Steam box" to compete against living room gaming consoles sometime this year, and his company has updated the Steam software to work better on TVs. While he didn't specifically mention the Steam box today, Newell hinted at an announcement next week.
"Next week we're going to be rolling out more information about how we get there and what are the hardware opportunities we see for bringing Linux into the living room," Newell said.
Getting games to work on Linux has its challenges. If not implemented right, "Just compile it yourself" could be the inconvenient solution to the problem of installing games and applying updates, he said. However, Valve worked through these problems in bringing Left 4 Dead 2 to Linux, hopefully showing the way to other developers, he said.
Bringing Steam to Linux "was a signal for our development partners that we really were serious about this Linux thing we were talking about," Newell said.
Timo2
Member
Posts: 77
Joined: 2012-10-11
Member
Posts: 77
Joined: 2012-10-11
#4657404 Posted on: 09/18/2013 04:42 PM
Indeed. Prebuilt libraries, procedure calls and subroutines embedded in Windows OS. You can understand it in a way as Windows became 99% of all OS worldwide by around 1999. Windows should have been made open source.
Indeed. Prebuilt libraries, procedure calls and subroutines embedded in Windows OS. You can understand it in a way as Windows became 99% of all OS worldwide by around 1999. Windows should have been made open source.
Redemption80
Senior Member
Posts: 18495
Joined: 2009-01-06
Senior Member
Posts: 18495
Joined: 2009-01-06
#4657429 Posted on: 09/18/2013 05:19 PM
@Redemption80
...do you realize that PC and Xbox are the only platforms that use directx? Mac, Nintendo, and Sony all use opengl, so no, it isn't going to be a huge wasted effort.
I do realise this, but unless Valve have managed to convince all developers to ditch DirectX then it is a waste of time and effort.
Developing for two api's will mean buggier ports and i really think if PC gaming was competing against itself it would really cause alot of harm.
Not that I think this will be competing against Windows anyway, it sounds more like an Ouya alternative.
Speaking of Windows, ignoring the added cost and closed nature of the OS, surely Windows 8 is a better choice for a large TV, controller friendly Steam console than Linux?
@Redemption80
...do you realize that PC and Xbox are the only platforms that use directx? Mac, Nintendo, and Sony all use opengl, so no, it isn't going to be a huge wasted effort.
I do realise this, but unless Valve have managed to convince all developers to ditch DirectX then it is a waste of time and effort.
Developing for two api's will mean buggier ports and i really think if PC gaming was competing against itself it would really cause alot of harm.
Not that I think this will be competing against Windows anyway, it sounds more like an Ouya alternative.
Speaking of Windows, ignoring the added cost and closed nature of the OS, surely Windows 8 is a better choice for a large TV, controller friendly Steam console than Linux?
schmidtbag
Senior Member
Posts: 6576
Joined: 2012-11-10
Senior Member
Posts: 6576
Joined: 2012-11-10
#4657440 Posted on: 09/18/2013 05:38 PM
I do realise this, but unless Valve have managed to convince all developers to ditch DirectX then it is a waste of time and effort.
Developing for two api's will mean buggier ports and i really think if PC gaming was competing against itself it would really cause alot of harm.
Not that I think this will be competing against Windows anyway, it sounds more like an Ouya alternative.
Speaking of Windows, ignoring the added cost and closed nature of the OS, surely Windows 8 is a better choice for a large TV, controller friendly Steam console than Linux?
It appears Valve is the only company that is actually making Linux ports of their older games - I don't think anybody expects other companies to do the same. However, companies don't HAVE to do 2 separate APIs. They all have the option to just use opengl, which would work on every platform, including Windows. Besides, considering how lazy developers are today, many game engines, including ones from the past 10 years, support both DX and OGL.
And no, Windows in general is considerably worse as a console. Linux has built-in support for most controllers without installing any drivers, it has several low-level tools to re-map controllers to keyboard or mouse functions (if they're even necessary), and considering how much you can customize it, you can set it up to boot directly into Big Picture Mode and not have any of the clutter of a regular desktop OS - this will make it boot much quicker and allow weaker hardware to do a good job. That being said, I expect this first steam box to have very mid-range parts. I could make a pretty good Steam-based linux OS right now that acts a lot like PS3 or Xbox360 if I really felt like it.
I do realise this, but unless Valve have managed to convince all developers to ditch DirectX then it is a waste of time and effort.
Developing for two api's will mean buggier ports and i really think if PC gaming was competing against itself it would really cause alot of harm.
Not that I think this will be competing against Windows anyway, it sounds more like an Ouya alternative.
Speaking of Windows, ignoring the added cost and closed nature of the OS, surely Windows 8 is a better choice for a large TV, controller friendly Steam console than Linux?
It appears Valve is the only company that is actually making Linux ports of their older games - I don't think anybody expects other companies to do the same. However, companies don't HAVE to do 2 separate APIs. They all have the option to just use opengl, which would work on every platform, including Windows. Besides, considering how lazy developers are today, many game engines, including ones from the past 10 years, support both DX and OGL.
And no, Windows in general is considerably worse as a console. Linux has built-in support for most controllers without installing any drivers, it has several low-level tools to re-map controllers to keyboard or mouse functions (if they're even necessary), and considering how much you can customize it, you can set it up to boot directly into Big Picture Mode and not have any of the clutter of a regular desktop OS - this will make it boot much quicker and allow weaker hardware to do a good job. That being said, I expect this first steam box to have very mid-range parts. I could make a pretty good Steam-based linux OS right now that acts a lot like PS3 or Xbox360 if I really felt like it.
Timo2
Member
Posts: 77
Joined: 2012-10-11
Member
Posts: 77
Joined: 2012-10-11
#4657443 Posted on: 09/18/2013 05:50 PM
Let's face it. Win8 is the nicest OS ever made. Especially 8.1. I realize it's a business with a profit motive/responsibility to shareholders but I think MS should :
a/ Charge $20 per copy (not $120)
b/ Re-install their openGL DLLs as standard. Those things worked so well back in the day.
Windows won the battle of OS's in the 80s because anyone could write free software for it and publish. I remember the walled gardens of everyone else. Young kids hated walled gardens then and are now gravitating towards unix as a result. But games is what holds everything back.
Let's face it. Win8 is the nicest OS ever made. Especially 8.1. I realize it's a business with a profit motive/responsibility to shareholders but I think MS should :
a/ Charge $20 per copy (not $120)
b/ Re-install their openGL DLLs as standard. Those things worked so well back in the day.
Windows won the battle of OS's in the 80s because anyone could write free software for it and publish. I remember the walled gardens of everyone else. Young kids hated walled gardens then and are now gravitating towards unix as a result. But games is what holds everything back.
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Senior Member
Posts: 6576
Joined: 2012-11-10
NT (OS/2 basically) is windows 2000 onwards. HAL is still there, I believe. What happened? MS bribed the developers?
Question is why don't game publishers simply compile for both hardware layers?
It's true - openGL, where correctly used, is often significantly faster than DX. But that's also the reason why developers don't use it as often for PC/xbox - it's slower and harder to develop for. As far as I'm aware, DX is actually loosely based around OGL but it's heavily abstracted to the point it's relatively easy to use.