And I don't know why you would want to 'kill' windows. What Valve is doing is great, its making more competition, that puts pressure on Microsoft to be competitive too. But killing off windows completely hurts everyone. No competition is bad.
Google already has a near-monopoly in the smartphone space and it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop. Android being built on tons of GPL software means they have to contribute changes back to the benefit of the FOSS ecosystem. It also means you can easily make/use a custom Android ROM without any proprietary components.
Like half the useful apps have problems running without Google Apps being installed. GCM errors, apps refusing to run if the Play Store is not installed, Google making decisions that impact ROM developers. That's what I read about it anyway and discouraged me from trying AOSP without Gapps.
> it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop
Steam is DRM. Gabe bus factor: Microsoft buys Steam and renames it to GFWL Redux
Nitpick: Steam offers DRM to developers who want it, it does not force games to use DRM. Many games installed via Steam run completely without Steam. The DRM-free games are mostly indie games.
I'm not sure why you think Google is better from the proprietary surveillance point of view than Microsoft either. Being that machine is literally how Google makes money.
And what about smart phones? Android has you locked into Google surveillance and Apple is closed so we have no idea how much they know. Send a text? Your provider had to send that data and the person on the receiving end... well, you never know how secure their systems are.
Just some food for thought, would like to hear why Windows is so bad, I'm a Windows/Apple/Linux user and I don't hate on any of them.
ISP surveillance is not OK, but ISPs only know the domains I access, not what I do on them. I can prevent them from knowing even that by using a VPN, Tor, or any other kind of proxy. I believe encrypted DNS might also become a thing in the future. Also, I'm not locked-in to my ISP.
>no matter how many precautions you take, someone is watching you some how
That's what we're trying to fight.
>There's a record somewhere with all your past emails and they are making a marketing profile about you
A lot of my email accounts are fake-identity and temporary and I try to use encryption whenever I can, but I admit email encryption has a long way to go. There's no lock-in here though.
>Android has you locked into Google surveillance
It doesn't. Custom Google-free Android ROMs are a thing and work well.
>Send a text? Your provider had to send that data
Use encryption. I recommend Matrix/Riot.im for encrypted chat. There is also a program called Silence that can encrypt SMS.
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If you want to know the point of all this, there's a lot of material online, but you can start by watching the short talk "Why Privacy Matters" by Glenn Greenwald
I hope you are aware that anything Google touches is at least a hundred times worse in that regard?
> Android being built on tons of GPL software means they have to contribute changes back to the benefit of the FOSS ecosystem.
Android is built around a ton of proprietary Google technologies and services, the number of which keeps growing. Alternatives will have to be written without industry support since Google forces phone makers to only sell Android phones with full spyware suite active by default and running at 100%. Any phone maker that tries to provide an alternative to Googles services will be cut off immediately, leaving them with warehouses full of bricks. Google is the new Microsoft.
> it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop
Android monopoly on the smartphone is the worst kind of monopoly. At least windows give a damn about your security patches and small things such as being able to run the latest version of the OS without invoking arcane rituals. Making a custom ROM without any proprietary components? Not a chance.
I am all for Linux dominance on the desktop but not with any Google DNA in there.
I have no love for Google. I don't even have a Google account.
>Making a custom ROM without any proprietary components? Not a chance.
Lineage, Copperhead, and Replicant exist and work well. And they are all 100% Google-free.
It's also possible to get an AOSP device de-googled, or to de-google one.
No, it’s not. There’s nothing infallible or timeless about either. Linux is already showing its age; vulkan is designed around hardware you can find today, around technologies that are already commoditized. It will also show its age soon, if it has not already.
> you can easily make/use a custom Android ROM without any proprietary components.
Uhm... easily? Most phones and tablets cannot even be unlocked / rooted.
Who the hell is competing with windows? Linux can’t meet its standards, and its main draws are being cheap and able to run popular software when macs can’t (I’m being reductive, but it doesn’t really matter much for my point). It already has no competitor. Each OS has its niches where it clearly excels, and they aren’t looking to be competing in the future.
Note, I use all three; I’m unsatisfied with all three. If this is personal, it’s not against just Microsoft.
So, Valve + literally anyone but Apple or Microsoft is amazing news in my book. GNU/Linux/whoever else benefits can use all the help they can get.
It's not cheap for personal computing, most people using linux buy windows laptops and run linux on it.
Every threat the MS poses to valve google does as well. Especially when it seems google is angling for Fuschia to be the future.
There is some weird fan effect with Valve similar to the Google early days where people see them as a universal force for good that will free PC gaming from Microsoft and has the users best interests at heart.
Honestly feel the actual drives of Valve couldn't be further removed from the desires and beliefs of Valve fans.
This disturbing chimera would be such a disaster for computing privacy and agency.
Steam and android are both horribly mismanaged from a technical user standpoint.
Sorry why is it in both of their interests to do so?
Times change.
Considering that their business is watching what you do all the time...
As for Google, well they are just big competitors in a lot of areas. I'm sure they would love to beat Microsoft on the desktop like they did in the smartphone space.
Google exerts a lot of power over Android.
The EU did recently punish Google for that, so theoretically Google now has to stop with it, but up until this point, they forced manufacturers to only ever preinstall the Google version of Android (or permanently lose their license to preinstall the Google Apps) and also forced manufacturers to always install the whole Google app bundle, not just the Play Store.
To put their power into perspective, just remember that Amazon has been in the game of distributing an Android fork and alternative app store for a while now. And Amazon is magnitudes bigger than Valve.
It was easy. They just started using the same name, “Android”, for loads of proprietary stuff, and the geeks didn't care because they were too busying sucking up to Google for not being Microsoft.
I believe Lineage and co have to supply their own replacements for some important features, and/or use the proprietary Google Play Services.
AOSP isn't a usable base product, like Chromium for example.
(That's my understanding anyway. It's quite possible I'm wrong!)
Windows 10 is somewhat less of a catastrophe in the UI department (though there is something to be said about mostly being able to ignore the mobile UI in Windows 8), but it's still controversial with its often illegal data collection. I mean, it's probably not going to happen, because the entire world depends on it, but theoretically countries could still block the sale of Windows 10.
But yeah, I don't believe myself either that the Windows Store is not seen as a threat. When you own a platform, you can push pretty much any software to be dominant on it.
The only way this happens is via streaming. You can already do that.
"Valve needs to"? Or you'd like Valve to?
> It's in the interest of both companies to kill Windows. [...] It would be a success and could seriously hurt Microsoft.
Ah, there it is, your real motive. Valve will do whatever will make them money and keep their users mostly happy. I doubt they have much incentive to "kill Windows", and they definitely won't do it just to pander to an anti-MS zealot such as yourself.
No, my fears are that this will only serve to grow the proprietary ecosystem on Linux and make general users reliant like Google has done to Android. Yes, Android runs on a base Linux kernel and userspace, but what use is that when users are totally reliant on Google services? Likewise, if users require Steam, etc, than the core OS running underneath that application matters little.
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement/
[..] information about the device you are using, including what operating system you are using, device settings, unique device identifiers, and crash data.