Valve Finds Value In Open-Source Drivers | Hacker News Reader

Valve Finds Value In Open-Source Drivers

phoronix.com

132 pointsmacco52 comments

> Valve has granted these Intel Linux developers complete access to the game's source-code, including the Source Engine. This has allowed Intel's Linux developers to better investigate possible optimizations and tweaks to their driver in order to enhance Source-powered games. Valve has even given them commit access to push back changes to the game company.

That sure is something EA and Ubisoft wouldn't do in a million years.

I don't know about Ubi but EA has done this in the past.

Do you have a source?

Nothing publicly citable, just experience working with IHVs in the course of my job. It happens enough that it's not really newsworthy in most cases.

We did it all the time with certain hardware OEMs. Not sure where you get that, aside from "LOL EA".

To be clear: they didn't email the code to some random people on the internet or post it to a mailing list. They shared it with employees of Intel Corporation, no doubt under NDA. Those employees happen to work on open source drivers, of course, but they certainly won't be spreading the Source source (heh) around.

It's still okay.

Of course it is. I was just responding to the surprise -- this isn't Valve sharing their code with "the open source community". This is Valve and Intel jointly tuning software in a commercial relationship.

> Valve makes games people actually want to run, rather than most of the games we work with now...

BURN!

And I know I've said this before, but there are open-source drivers for the other vendors' cards as well...and I think they'd benefit tremendously from some Valve love.

If only those drivers were backed up seriously by their corresponding hw manufacturers, maybe Valve would consider trusting them a bit more. If Valve source code is spotted in the wilde, there will be only that many possible leaks, and all of them would be dependable (i.e. able to pay up in case of successful litigation). With independant teams of developers, it is very understandable that Valve doesn't want to take that risk. The only thing that Valve might do is contribute enginering strength to those other drivers projects, but I suspect that Valve doesn't have the workforce for that. Besides, that wouldn't necessary be seen as a keen move from Intel's perspective. I'm all for more open source drivers, but really it has to come from the manufacturers first and foremost, in this case at least. The only case I know of a game shop working directly on an OSS driver was when John Carmack helped with the Utah GLX driver effort, and that was a long time ago.

Michael Larabel hates free games: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTExO...

I'm guessing Valve's foray into Linux is more or less a hedge against Microsoft. If Windows 8 is a massive flop, the next best option is Mac or straight Linux. If Windows 8 is a success, well, I suppose it is business as usual albeit with some extra pressure from the Windows app store.

A linux/Steam console would be pretty sick.

Yes, I think this is a better explanation than, "If Win8 flops we will go full Linux".

If Win8 flops I think people will keep buying Steam games on Win7. If Win8 (and its app store) succeeds then Valve needs plan B. IMO.

I am not convinced. If they were getting ready for a "steambox", why would they be spending their time getting their stuff in working order on multiple drivers? And if they were going to pick one and stick with it, I would think that Intel's would be out of the running to begin with.

That they are taking Intel's cards seriously suggests to me that they really do intend on taking Linux on consumer laptops/desktops seriously. They may still go for a dedicated Linux console, but I think that will be very much in addition to Linux on the desktop.

To get competitive pricing on hardware.

If Nvidia have the only working drivers for Source on Linux, then they can push up prices on their hardware to Valve, safe in the knowledge that it could take months for Valve to port their entire games library to AMD or Intel. If Valve keep support for all three, then they can squeeze the hardware manufacturers for better prices lest they take their custom elsewhere.

I don't know. I think "Drop your price, or we'll stick an Intel GPU into our new console" is a pretty bad bluff, even if they can get Left4Dead running on it surprisingly well. NVidia and AMD should both know nobody would ever actually use an Intel GPU for something like that.

It's a little more nuanced than that. It can put the brakes on Nvidia and AMD from trying to screw the nut in pricing, especially if the entire Steam catalogue will play on a good enough Intel GPU.

I don't think they want to get in the hardware business.

Instead, what I would see them doing is develop a software package that any cheapo hw manufacturer can drop on a pile of x86 hardware and call the result a Steam console.

I'd like to see this as a standard. Somewhere between the Linux Standard Base specification and the periodic Ultimate Linux Box, so I can know what to buy if I want to run the next round of games, developers can know what to target, etc. Then someone can make consoles to the spec.

If nobody is interested in Windows 8, I expect the next best option is Windows 7 for the next 10 years - the new XP.

Please. No.

Windows 7 SP2 coming your way in 2 years, and in 5, Windows 7 SP3.

As long as the browser auto-updates...

Why not? Windows 7 is a good OS.

It's a definite possibility. However, with Android and iOS many people are learning that the world doesn't end after Windows and Ubuntu is very user friendly.

The typical PC user uses a web browser, an office suite and videogames. With Chrome you have an excellent web browser regardless of OS; LibreOffice is fine for many users and it's interface is similar to that of Office pre-Ribbon, which many appreciate. Games have been a painful issue, but with browser-based games and Valve porting to Linux it's getting really better.

I believe it's a matter of time until users begin questioning the Microsoft tax when they can get a useful OS sans viruses and malware for free.

> I believe it's a matter of time until users begin questioning the Microsoft tax when they can get a useful OS sans viruses and malware for free.

You sound like mac users 5 years ago. There are viruses and malware for linux systems today. As the market share goes up, so too will the attacks.

No doubt there will be more attempts, but there are reasons to expect they won't be as successful. The default method of installing applications on Windows and Mac is to download an executable from the internet and run it as Administrator. The default method of installing applications on Linux is to get them from the package manager, and binaries downloaded from the internet don't have the execute bit set by default.

I don't mean to say that Linux is totally immune from malicious software, but it's a much harder target. You're in the position of having to either get malicious software into the repositories, convince users to do something arcane and atypical with binaries downloaded from the internet, or exploit security vulnerabilities in installed software on an OS with a package manager that auto-updates everything to the latest patch on a regular basis. None of those is anywhere near as easy as "click here to see Anna Kournikova naked" or exploiting known Java vulnerabilities that Apple was kind enough to leave unpatched for like a year.

> If nobody is interested in Windows 8, I expect the next best option is Windows 7 for the next 10 years - the new XP.

Funny, I'm getting ready to upgrade my gaming PC from XP to Win 7 soon.

I think an interesting takeaway from this article even for those who are not really interested in gaming on Linux is that the benefits of open source development can be seen even when source isn't made available to the world, but just within or between organizations.

That is probably something most HNers know or suspect already, but this seems like a particularly clean proof of that concept.

Playing CS:GO on Fedora 17 with the latest nVidia drivers is an absolute nightmare. However, the framerate and audio lag are doing wonders for building my patience.

I haven't been in the linux gaming loop in a while so pardon my ignorance here... are you using Wine or VirtualBox/VMWare or something else?

Probably Wine. Virtualization almost always prevents the guest OS from accessing the graphics card, which is very unsuitable for gaming.

A bit late of a response sorry, but now that VMWare and others have OpenGL support inside the VM, isn't that the graphics card access you are referring to? I'm sure it's still slower than bare metal, like all abstraction layers, but perhaps it's better now?

Playing CS:GO on Slackware 13 64bit with old nvidia drivers is an absolute joy for reference.

This will surely increase the Linux popularity as a platform.

I doubt it will actually bring much in the way of new blood. But it will make the life of existing linux users more pleasant (one less wine/virtualbox work around)

Ugh, I don't even want to imagine playing a game in VirtualBox.

OK, I was thinking of getting a Mac, but now I'm reminded that in not too long I will hopefully be able to play TF2 without WINE...

I have renewed hope.

It will be interesting to see what Valve _recommends_ as their preferred Linux distribution and even more so if they roll their own.

It's old news that the (first) supported distro will be Ubuntu.

too many ads on that page.

Adblock Plus. Check it out. I don't know how anybody surfs the web with ads anymore. It's just a terrible experience.

For the lazy: http://adblockplus.org/en/

Also Readability / Pocket. I find that page hard to read in the original form for many reasons, not only ads...

I really hate reading articles on Phoronix because they divide each article in 5, 10, 15, etc. pages. I understand they want to increase page hit but using an adblocker just defies the purpose.

Check out Autopatchwork. It de-paginates sites for you.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/aeolcjbaammbkgaiag...

I save all online reading in Instapaper. So that works well. But thanks for suggesting.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/autopager/

Seems to be the same thing for Firefox

Yeah, I usually don't notice I have AdBlock off until I go to Phoronix. Michael has way overdone it. Phoronix is terrible all around.

It's a business, and he probably doesn't have the same readership volume as wintel or apple dedicated sites.

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