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Comment by NPC82 | Hacker News Reader

Steam working with hardware vendors on Linux drivers means everyone in the Linux community benefits. This is fantastic news.

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Yeah. And one of anti-linux arguments for Windows fans is just getting killed - gemes do run on Linux. If this experiment will be a success for Valve, we only can wait for other game producers to follow their steps. And taking under consideration that not everybody is going to like Windows 8, this can be a beginning of revolution!

"Windows fans" is a bit strong of a word for many. Does the fact that one needs windows to run some of the software they like makes them a "windows fan" ? I used the three major desktop OSes on a regular basis. My laptop is a MBA running OS X, since that's what works best for me in a mobile computer. My desktop used to have a dual boot of linux for my main, daily computing needs, and Windows for games. I had to stop using linux since I switched to an ATI card that couldn't even tolerably work with Gnome 3.

Free software proponents tend to be less level headed on the issue. I think there aren't a lot of true "windows fans", but on the other hand, there are a lot of "linux fans" who live for the politics of free software. Lots of people use both proprietary and free software. I do. We are the ones who don't care for your politics. Unlike lots of hardcore linux proponents who are actively hostile to closed source software. On purely technical terms, I like linux better than windows because of its ecosystem (terminal software, scripting, unix philosophy) but certainly not because I'm enamored with the politics of the FSF. OTOH I use windows not because I love it, but because I need it. That's being practical.

People who put other groups into boxes, like "anti linux" "Windows fans" aren't practical, they're turning software into a religion. You're even speaking of a "revolution".. for god's sake.

You're reading way too far into that comment. A "windows fan" is the kind of person that says windows is 'better' because 'it has games'. It's not an insinuation of being a crazy fanboy. It's not something that applies to anyone that uses windows for any reason.

You're the only one here treating it as a serious and solemn issue.

Yes, that was exactly my point. Thanks for clarifying. And by the "revolution" I meant, that this may be beginning of serious user migration from Windows to Linux. Of course, there is Ubuntu, Linux for human beeings, some people do use it, but it's still "some", small number, that you do not take under consideration when planning/developing a game.

I'm not an anti-linux Windows fan. I like both of them, and use both of them daily.

But I feel very rejected by the GNU mindset that 'every proprietary software in my platform is bad'.

Thankfully that's a GNU, not Linux mindset. Canonical includes proprietary drivers with Ubuntu because it makes the product better, and Linus himself has said that he supports OSS because it's a superior development model that leads to better products, not because of some half-baked moral claims.

I do agree, I think the ideal software platform will be an OSS OS, and a healthy ecosystem of both proprietary and OSS on top.

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