Notch on Steam, Windows 8, what's next | Hacker News Reader

Notch on Steam, Windows 8, what's next

rockpapershotgun.com

57 pointsbookwormAT49 comments

If Steam supports Linux, you can count on several new distributions. Everything from a spare backend to run Steam on, to distributions which address the fiddly nature of the 1337 gamer (eg: specialty mouse, audio, and video drivers).

The day Steam supports Linux, you will have _overnight_ the single biggest influx of new Linux users. Followed quickly by a large group of programmers, designers, and entrepreneurs who will be interested in working and selling in the space.

If Linux isn't ready for prime time then, it never will be.

My thoughts exactly.

I am not clear, why would someone who owns a working windows running steam, install a linux distro from scratch to play exactly the same stuff he already does?

to avoid paying for windows 8?

When Windows 7 is going to be perfectly fine and usable for the next 10 years?

If I upgrade my computer does Windows let me transfer my installation? I can't remember

Yes (if by installation you mean settings and files and apps).

Since Win98 I think.

Sorry, I meant if I buy a new computer, can I continue to use the same Windows license.

They won't. People have been saying it's the "year of the linux on the desktop" for everything big that comes along. All this will do is give more of those so-called and self proclaimed hardcore gamers incentive to switch, especially if nothing else is holding them back.

There are a lot of people that say the only reason why they ever run Windows is to play games on Steam.

Sure, but "most" of them are fellow HNers (or programmers, in general). And although they're a vocal minority, they're minority nevertheless. Not a huge market.

Articles like this:

http://www.steamforlinux.com/?q=en/node/74

Do not underestimate the lengths gamers will go to get to 60 fps.

Most gamers couldn't care less, as long as it runs with the minimum of hassle. And I believe that graph is well outdated - the optimizations can be applied to the Windows version and reap similar benefits. And, realistically, 16% improvements are not going to cause a mass exodus from Windows. Additionally, FPS is a terrible performance measure once the counts are above 60 FPS or so, frame delay is more important, and in this case we're talking about 3.17ms vs 3.7ms per frame.

The smart thing for Valve to do, in the course of releasing their own platform, would be to artificially handicap Steam games on Windows. Regardless of the relative merits of Windows versus the Linux distro on the Steambox, Valve could make sure that their first-party titles never break 59.2 FPS on Windows.

It's no secret that Valve is worried about Microsoft's strategy with Windows 8, but Microsoft should be batshit terrified of Valve's strategy. They could lose ground in both the console gaming and consumer OS spaces if they aren't careful.

Whatever happens, in any contest between Steve Ballmer and Gabe Newell, I know who my money's on. If Ballmer were smart he would look to what made Microsoft successful in the first place, and choose incompetent enemies.

Personally I can't imagine this kind of strategy being used, it doesn't seem like Valve's style. Not to mention that their history favours give-aways and promotions over playing 'dirty' (there would no doubt also be a TF2 hat). You also have to remember they probably only control the games they've actually produced in-house.

I agree; I'm being mostly facetious when I say that it would be "smart" of them to do that. They wouldn't.

But it's the sort of thing that Microsoft would do well to think about as they move to lock down the Windows platform in the face of increased competition.

As a company, Microsoft has always been possessed of the peculiar conceit that their users run Windows for its own sake. (Hence their insistence on branding their cell phones 'Windows Phone X'.) They don't seem to understand that Windows hasn't been a consumer brand since the Windows 95 release, and is unlikely to become one again in the future.

Many Mac users who use Steam often install and boot into a Windows partition in order to play the many games that aren't released on Mac OS.

If Steam ran on Linux, that's one less operating system I have to buy.

This is a chicken and egg problem: gamers are not attached to Steam, they're attached to the game itself. Having Steam in Linux doesn't mean all big titles will work in Linux overnight. Valves title alone won't be enough. It has been over two years since Steam supports Mac OS X, but number of big titles ported to the Mac is still relatively low.

Valve AND Blizzard would be pretty big though since they make 'PC games' (for lack of a better term). Other big players like EA release their games on console as well.

Most Blizzard games already work pretty well with Wine so perhaps a distribution could take care of supporting Steam and a properly configured release of Wine for Blizzard games.

If you're already a Linux user then this is good, but it is definitely not enough to convince Windows gamers to switch.

I don't see why.

The Steam client running on Linux does not mean any more games will run on Linux than do today (hardly any of Steam's over 1500 games will be available in Linux in the foreseeable future). The only people who will load Linux just because the steam client runs on it now are people who like booting into different OS's depending on what game they want to play today.

"I don’t think Linux is it, because there are a few good distributions that actually are user-friendly, but at its core it’s made by nerds for nerds. For people who understand computers, it’s awesome, because you can control the entire computer. For corporations or families, it’s not really what they want. They just want to be able to use the computer in an easy way". This sums up my thoughts on Linux - yes, I consider myself a geek, but at the end of the day, for >90% of my computing needs I just want something that works. I find the idea of Linux awesome, and my web-dev work relies on it, but for my general computer it just isn't what's needed.

I'm not saying that I disagree with the general assessment (right now), but the line of reasoning is a bit odd. "At its core"? Well, the GNOME people did get quite a bit flack for ignoring the nerdy needs. Or are we talking technical terms? OS X is based on unix underpinnings, too. I'd argue that even Windows isn't as un-nerdy as some people might think. Most people aren't too happy about using it beyond what their work required, and then to a very superficial degree (browsers + media). (His target demographic of gamers being one noticeable exception)

That's one of the reason why mobile devices (phones/tablets) are so popular, they're basically the first un-nerdy computing devices.

I don't understand this reasoning. No one forces you to compile from source or even use the terminal. Likewise no one needs to touch the Windows registry or firewall settings if they don't want to.

There's a distro for almost everything and there's certainly one for the unassuming family PC - Ubuntu. It passes the "Mom test" for me and keeps my technology hesitant mother very happy. Email, web browsing, online banking, photo sharing, printing/scanning just works. If anything it's easier than "that Windows thing" (as she describes it). The Dash in Unity and the Launcher 'just work' and have made computing a much more pleasant experience for her. With the exception of very occasional hardware support issues (I change printers maybe every 2 years) it's more than convinced me Ubuntu is a very viable family OS.

Even if that were true (which I dispute, even in recent weeks GRUB broke after an upgrade on my Linux machine, resulting in an unbootable machine). What is the incentive for the average user? They already have a computer that came with Windows for 'free'. Tablets are many times simpler than either Ubuntu or Windows.

Under which distro did your GRUB break?

Anyway, Ubuntu has become the norm in my parents household. Yes, a new laptop or computer will come with Windows pre-installed, but what happens when you need to reinstall windows? This happens more than one may think. You have to worry about installing those darn drivers off the DVD that laptop came with (sometimes, it won't even come with a Windows DVD).

For my Mother this is not going to go over too well. In fact this happened and she spent an afternoon trying to install her new system. Enter Ubuntu -> Stuck in the USB key, filled in user info, clicked on what timezone to use and everything else was smooth as butter. No driver install disks. Everything just worked.

Sure, mileage may vary among the newest and greatest hardware. I'll grant that. However, those same new systems come with driver CD's coupled with a lot of useless software that just so happens to be checked for install by default.

What happens when you need to reinstall Windows? You use the restore disc that they give you with all the drivers installed. It comes with them more often than one may think.

More seriously though, I don't know a huge bunch about drivers on Linux. What makes Ubuntu better than Windows and the array of drivers it comes with?

Ubuntu has most of the drivers included in the kernel, while windows installs new drivers as needed. For normal computer use, this is an icon in the taskbar saying 'installing device drivers', but when you are on a fresh install, you need to install them yourself.

I recently reinstalled my Dell Inspiron 1420 (after having deleted the recovery partition). They did provide a drivers cd, but I had to click through them 1 at a time.

Obviously, this isn't Microsofts fault, as they do not have the rights to most of the drivers, but in Linux, the norm is to GPL drivers, and put them in mainline kernel, where they will be enabled on all general purpose distributions.

Hadn't thought about the impact driver licences have on their integration with the kernel. Cheers.

"Even if that were true (which I dispute, even in recent weeks GRUB broke after an upgrade on my Linux machine, resulting in an unbootable machine)."

I'm glad it's not just me.

Last year, I installed Ubuntu Linux via WUBI. After an update, some GRUB/kernel incompatibility left Ubuntu Linux unbootable. (At least, after far too much research, my best estimate was that it was a GRUB/kernel incompatibility.)

I was laughed at for using WUBI at all, and in shame, decided to install Ubuntu Linux in a dual boot configuration. Which worked... for a while.

At some point, Ubuntu Linux offered to upgrade itself to a newer version. It failed part way through with some obscure error message, and left Ubuntu Linux... you guessed it... unbootable.

Once again, I was laughed at. "Everyone knows you shouldn't try to upgrade Ubuntu Linux; do a fresh install instead." sigh

Also, Ubuntu Linux got fat (for lack of a better word). In the past, I could count on Ubuntu Linux to extend the life of old hardware, but frankly, modern versions do not appear to perform any better than Windows 7.

All of these problems, and Ubuntu Linux is supposed to be the easy distribution? For now, I've given up, and I'm back on Windows 7, which hasn't caused me any trouble.

This is one of the reasons I stick to LTS releases (Long Term Support). The releases between LTS are sort of "unstable" in comparison (for a lack of a better way of putting it).

Personally, I have had no issues upgrading from one LTS to another LTS system.

I agree, however, that there should be more work done on the upgrade system. It is a sort 50/50 in a lot of peoples eyes.

With that said: Ubuntu is not the only distro out there that is easy to use. There are other distro's out there that are built on Ubuntu - Linux Mint, Xubuntu, Kubuntu etc. etc. etc. - that may be more suitable for some people. With Ubuntu 12.04, things are really starting to look up. It is becoming a rather nice, usable system, regardless of the controversy of Unity. Yes, there are issues with 12.04 right now. For instance OpenGL performance under Unity is bad. With Steam coming on board, I will bet it will be fixed in due time.

Anyway, yes issues are still around. Though, really, it isn't as bad as your luck, I guess? I don't mean that in any condescending way, of course. I just think perhaps you might want to take another gander at it some time.

I've had a lot of success forcing my parents to Linux. I used to waste a lot of time helping them with technical problems. It was usually viruses, anti viruses or sneak ware causing problem. After Linux they have no more need for me and do all they need. My last victim was my girlfriend, if you ask her what her OS is, she has no clue. But she still use face book, games and "the spread sheet thing" with no problem.

I'm sure not only Linux has become user friendly enough for main stream. But it's actually the best option for it. Maybe losing to chrome books, I still have to try those out.

Well -- that ratio of systems to users to supportive personal is 1:2:1 in your house. That ratio is incredible, give me a company of 50 people with 25 PCs and 25 IT people and I could get them running on nearly anything.

Now, start over and format your mothers computer hand her a Linux disk and refuse to help -- now you have a better idea what the "average" user would experience.

I agree with you regarding the support ratio but disagree with you that Windows is necessarily easier to install on a blank machine.

I think that an uninformed user would probably struggle just as much with a blank computer and a Windows install disk as a blank computer and a Linux install disk. In fact, I'd argue that right now some distributions of Linux may even have the advantage since it gets used in that context far more often (most people have Windows pre-installed).

I suspect we may need a scientific test to know for sure.

Certainly.

But a user that's a tiny bit above average can (I hope) probably google around to find a screencast or article about how to isntall Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8. It's a million times easier, because the options are limited (just a few Windows versions are around).

On the other hand, we have millions of Linux distros, with folks like Ubuntu giving out new versions on a quarterly basis and often change, move or tweak small things in the installation panels which makes it very hard for the non-geek user to install, say, 12.04 if they're watching a YouTube video about how to install Ubuntu 11.10.

I absolutely hate Windows, but sadly it's much more user friendly than Linux. Thankfully, OS X is still around.

I get it that he's uneasy about Steam's dominance; but there's not a whole lot of reasoning behind it. There is competition, every publisher is trying to push their own marketplace. The problem is that they're all complete crap, look no further than Ubisoft's UPlay rootkit incident.

The last bit honestly left me reeling. As a Linux user, I feel like we're very close to turning a huge corner if Valve gets Steam/Source running well on Linux. This could be the nudge that starts an avalanche, and it's really disheartening to see such an influential figure dismissing it as though it's nothing; especially considering he's released his own game on Linux. Not to mention his reasoning makes no sense to boot - If anyone is capable of dealing with getting their hands dirty, it will be gamers who are accustomed to fixing buggy console ports and editing configuration files. For most others (Families and Corporations as he mentions), a browser and OpenOffice is already more than enough.

I think you're right; publishers are finally starting to realize that Steam is just as much a danger to them as it is (well, was) to brick and mortar retailers. And you're also right in how unbelievably horrible they are in trying to fight this battle.

I haven't tried EA's latest venture, Origin, but damn have the others been bad. I can't see what requires them all be so clunky. Even Steam could stand to have a lighter approach, I often feel.

Insofar as worrying about dominance, I think that's a legit worry. One asshole move Valve doesn't like, or your typing cousin just guys wild on your pc while you're not looking, and all of your games are gone. It really sucks to think I may have paid Steam hundreds of dollars to "borrow" games.

But what's the difference with ca. 1999-2002 when Loki ported popular games to Linux, Corel released Wordperfect for Linux and their own Linux distribution, Red Hat was the darling of the Linux world, and VA Systems IPOed?

That window of opportunity is gone. Home users are moving to tablets for most of their computing. For businesses there is little incentive to move to Linux, Windows licenses are relatively cheap and come with hardware. Retraining personel is more expensive.

The traditional Linux desktop provides a fine UNIX workstation and if the crazy desktop experiments stop, it could compete with OS X. Linux for the average home user has already succeeded as Android.

I tried red hat in 2002. The experience was very uncomfortable and I quickly went back to windows. I tried linux again in 2008 and everything was great and i moved onto it immediately. Also installed it for my mom...

What happened? Debian apt-get and Ubuntu.

Some user-friendly distributions at the time had apt-get, such as Corel Linux. Some other distributions, such as Caldera OpenLinux and SUSE were of a very good quality. At that time, you could install Linux on most computers without much effort. During that hype, I helped installing Linux a lot on friend and family's machines. The primary problem were Winmodems and some printers. These days we have Wifi, fan control, and such instead ;).

>Home users are moving to tablets for most of their computing.

Gamers are not the typical home users. Sure, there are games on tablets (and some of them are very good) but you're not going to get your typical hardcore MMO or FPS gamer to give up her big rig with giant monitor, bluetooth stereo headset, and pro-gamer mouse for a iPad game.

The way I read it his point was that Steam is the only one that isn't complete crap, and so Steam is in a very powerful position. You want at least a viable alternative to make "don't screw us around or we'll move somewhere else" a credible threat. It's not a fault of Valve's, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be at least a little cautious.

"Yeah, I think it’s very dangerous territory. In the case of EA and Zynga, those games are deceivingly similar. It looks like they’re trying to almost trick the customer into thinking it’s the same game. That’s when I think you should be able to stop people. I don’t want them to be able to trick people into thinking it’s the same game. If it’s the same idea, fine, but if you’re trying to move into the concept space of what Minecraft is, for example… It’s hard to express the exact difference. But trademarks fine, patents bad. That’s kind of the short summary."

I don't see anything dangerous because it works pretty much exactly how he hopes it does. Games are one area where the patent system actually works well. You can more or less clone a game legally. You cannot, however, copy their trade dress, in much the same way you can make ketchup that tastes like Heinz but can't call it Shmeinz and package it similarly.

My company (YC S07) did exactly this. We saw a game (Ogame) that had great mechanics, but poor art and execution on many levels. We made it social and built what might have been the first hardcore Facebook game (Starfleet Commander). We took a game that appealed mainly to Germans and tweaked it to appeal to Americans and other cultures where aesthetics and ease of use are valued as much as raw functionality. Everyone benefited, even the original game which probably got more new customers from people who found out about it through our game than they lost to us. Even though ours rapidly eclipsed theirs, I suspect they made more as a result.

"Games are one area where the patent system actually works well."

I have to disagree here. Games have all the same patent issues as other kinds of software.

See for example: http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/9/15/3337632/hearing-dat...

In which Worlds Inc. sues Blizzard for having "a system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space." Not a similar game, just a general system.

Is this working well?

An earlier case: http://www.stellardawncentral.com/forums/index.php?showtopic...

Which was dropped in the remaining cases after Jagex (makers of Runescape) won a dismissal in their case, but it still took time and money to defend it for all of the companies involved.

Larger game makers will settle these because it's cheaper than going to court, even if they win. Who exactly does that benefit?

If you are making the argument that "the patent system actually works well" because it prevents companies from copying others' trade dress, I'd like to see your source for that. All of the game-related patent lawsuits I know about were not over similar games, but rather core technologies.

Well, someone bringing a lawsuit doesn't mean the system is failing. Anyone can file a lawsuit for anything. If I had a good lawyer, I could drum up something to sue almost any company for, patent-related or otherwise. I probably wouldn't win, but I'd force them to spend a lot of money defending themselves. If anything that's more an indictment of the broader legal system than patents.

Regardless this is more of a software patent issue (an area of patent law I don't think anyone would argue is working) than one relating to game mechanics. The patents in both cases could easily be applied to non-game software. To my knowledge, nothing like this happens in non-software gaming.

I think the point is that utility patents - as opposed to the design patents which you seemed to refer to - apply to games as well, and also do damage there.

In case anyone else was interested, proteus: http://www.visitproteus.com/

Funny - Apple releases an app-store built into OS X and you hear faint applause (Yes, Steam already had a client for OS X at the time), Microsoft follows suit and you hear loud curses and wide spread disapproval. This shows 1. the illegitimacy of Apple and 2. the double standard that Microsoft faces.

There sure seems to be a lot of confusion here on HN about what Steam is.

There are a lot of people that say the only reason why they ever run Windows is to play games on Steam

It seems like a lot of people hear that there will be a Steam client for Linux and somehow think that all these games will now run on Linux. Sorry to disappoint you.

It seems that there is a misunderstanding of what Steam actually is. Steam is merely a marketplace, updater, and launcher for over 1500 games. Less than 5% of those games run on Linux. Valve only has 25 games that it produced in-house. Only 6 of these have been released since 2007 (their games alone hardly dictate how the industry will move. They are not a dominant player in this respect). Most of valve's titles have been mission-packs, or variants of Half-Life, TFS, or Counter Strike.

If gamers can boot into Linux tomorrow and run Steam, will they? Would they really do it for the 100 games that are available (most of them dated and washed up games)? Then new titles come out or they want to play their current favorite (non Valve) game, they have to boot back into Windows to play those? Why would they do that? (besides geeks/hackers with too much time on their hands).

I know that the majority of hackers love the openness of Linux and the smug "hipness" or "superiority" (or being in-vogue) of Apple, but I think that people tend to self dilute themselves with wishful thinking that Microsoft and Windows will somehow go away any time soon.

It is comical to me how people can berate one closed platform - Windows (and list being closed as the reason why) and yet love other, even more closed platforms (Apple products, Steam...)

Steam holds a monopoly on digital sales of Games in the PC market. Suddenly Microsoft wants to compete with them and they start ranting like lunatics (publicly calling windows 8 a catastrophe). Any company who does business with the public should expect competition. And the public should welcome it. It keeps prices lower and forces competitors to produce better software.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com