Hacker News Reader

Comment by officemonkey | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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 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.

My thoughts exactly.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com