Valve: Linux More Open Than Windows 8 for Gaming
ubuntuvibes.com
ubuntuvibes.com
He did say that Microsoft and Apple are moving away from the open platform model and that Valve has always been in favor of open platforms. Linux is the best option for a continuing open platform in the future.
Actual video of the talk will be online within a day or so, so I suggest you watch that instead of reading contrite stories like this one.
Here is a much better article about the talk from OMG Ubuntu: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/valve-talk-steam-for-linu...
I use closed devices with some mixed feelings about it, the thing I'm most sad to support is the move toward devices with bigger barriers toward tinkering than what I had as a kid. I'm probably more accepting of it when it's a device I never had as a kid, but when barriers are constructed for once-open platforms it starts to irk me.
If I had a choice between a C64 with BASIC and an iPad with a browser, I'd take the browser every time.
Within twenty seconds you can have http://jsfiddle.net/ up in a window and be programming JavaScript.
Within a few minutes you could create a Linode account and be using vi through ssh.
Within a few days you could be creating a much more significant application using the enormous selection of open-source tools that never, ever existed on the same platforms that GORILLA.BAS came from. You could do things that were virtually impossible in the 1980s in a matter of days or weeks, even with no prior experience.
People decry the App Store as "closed", but it's basically open to anyone with a hundred bucks and the ability to ship an executable to Apple. Sure, theoretically you could've shipped your game on your C64 on floppy disks, as some people successfully did, but the enormity of this undertaking is well beyond the ability of most beginner programmers. It was basically impossible to go it alone without a publisher for distribution. Now anyone can self-publish.
If you ask me, the ecosystem has never been more open and accessible to developers of all ages and backgrounds. It's also more open, more friendly to users of all stripes, not just enthusiasts. Your grandmother can buy apps through the app store. This sort of thing simply didn't happen in the so-called glorious old days of "open" computers.
I didn't even have to know I wanted to learn to program.
I agree with you that there are tons of awesome things at our fingertips for shipping applications to people, or for learning to code once you know that's what you want to do. jsfiddle looks great, if you know you want to learn JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Linode is awesome, once you know you want to host a site. The App Store is incredible, once you can write an acceptable app.
Those are all great things, and they are all a few steps beyond the stage I'm talking about. You're talking about learning to walk; I'm talking about learning to crawl.
Middle-man distributors, however, don't typically profit from platforms. Valve's position on platforms that have built-in preferred digital distribution systems isn't surprising, they're using their position as OS vendor to boost their digital software distribution business.
The article speculates that the emergence of Windows Store app platform from the Windows desktop could become similar to the emergence of Windows from DOS, and that newer technologies will similarly only be available on the Windows Store app platform.
It describes the locked-down properties of the Windows Store, and, extrapolating from the current certification requirements for Windows Store apps, it asserts that a game like Skyrim would be denied certification on Windows Store in 2032 because of its PEGI rating.
I understand why. The biggest problem of the convential desktop is the ugly compomize between freedom, power users and professionals on one end, and casual consumer usage at the other end.
But that does mean, many of Valves current customers, that buy midrange devices, will end up on RT or iOS.
And the crowd on this site, will likely find the devices aimed for them moving to a more expensive and exclusive niche.
Your argument is completely fallacious.
Amazon sells a Mac Mini for 600EUR (at least Amazon.fr does). That's about what an unsubsidized iPhone costs, right?
So where is this doom-and-gloom everything-is-locked-down-except-the-ultra-expensive actually coming from?
Do you want an iPad/iPhone/WinRT/Android tablet with "apps", or do you want an x86 device with the ability to run whatever binary code you want and an OS that enables that.
It's not about price, because you're right, I can find devices in both categories at literally all sorts of data points. But it is about the experience.
Valve's business RELIES on the experience that enables users to run, in this case, native code. Since they're being pushed out as a result of this shift... they're naturally trying to warn people and shift interest to a platform where they can more easily operate... or survive.
In fact, your example is ironic. People are more likely to go buy a $500 iPad than they are a $300 full featured Windows laptop. That's exactly what worries Valve. Or it should.
Especially considering that anything not from an app store is much easier to install on Windows (double click on GUI installer) than on Ubuntu (mess around with dependencies, and compiling stuff). Everything on Ubuntu comes from the Ubuntu store, or the Aptitude store. Not an easy task to download something like an exe off the web and install it
First of all, every damn time someone brings up the "you just have to double click the installer on Windows" argument, they leave out the steps before that (most prominently, locate and download a safe copy of said installer).
Second, I don't know what FUD you have been told about Linux on the desktop, but contrary to what you assert about it, no, installing applications on almost all widespread Linux distributions I can spontaneously think of - except Gentoo - requires neither compiling nor messing around with dependencies.
Third, no, not everything on Ubuntu comes from the "Ubuntu store" or "Apitude store" - in fact, neither of those exists. If you are talking about the Ubuntu Software Center, that's basically just a fancy front-end for APT - as is Aptitude. If I remember correctly, the UCS also allows purchasing of some commercial software as of recently (I don't use Ubuntu).
In addition, Ubuntu (and derived distributions) have a thing called Personal Package Archives, whose very concept is to make it possible to easily add your own package sources to complement the official repositories. The UCS can handle those, too.
Also, there's a very important distinction between a package repository as used in many Linux distributions and a closed app store: the former is, at least to an extent, managed by the community and the users. You cannot say that of the latter.
And if someone wants to give you simply a precompiled binary, they can do that too. Though in Linux you need to set the executable flag on it so you don't shoot yourself in the foot like you so easily can with malicious .exe files.
Steam?
I don't know if the title has been changed since it was posted—I suspect not, since it matches the URL—but what it actually says is that Linux is more viable than Windows for gaming (which is probably more surprising; but, in any case, is certainly a different point).
If having an app store is the criterion for not being an open platform, not even Ubuntu qualifies. And last I checked, I can still compile and run whatever I damn well please on Win8.
There wasn't even this level of derp when Apple launched the app store for OS X.
Straight up FUD. Windows will always be the premier gaming platform as long as it has the majority of the desktop base, and by extension the best driver support, and by extension the most games written for it.
Valve is going to kill themselves to attempt to make a point, at this rate.
I bet it's the latter.
Steve Jobs said a few things about the tablet foam factor.
Even if the gentleman from Valve did say that, they're not just going to throw away their business. They're probably playing for the 25% or so Linux gaming market that the Humble Bundles have shown exists.
It doesn't say "Because Windows 8 ships with its own app store, it is not an open platform anymore," so you misinterpreted that.
The difference between the Windows 8 app store and Ubuntu's Software Center is that you can easily add 3rd party repositories to the latter. Also keep in mind that on Windows RT (the ARM version of Windows 8), you can't install any apps from outside the app store, period.
> Windows will always be the premier gaming platform as long as it has the majority of the desktop base, and by extension the best driver support, and by extension the most games written for it.
Linux doesn't have to have the best driver support to be sufficient as a gaming platform. If it has enough driver support for games to run well, it has a chance. And the proprietary NVIDIA Linux drivers right now work quite well in my experience. There are a few bugs, but nothing that can't be ironed out with a little time.
Just because Windows has the "majority of the desktop base" doesn't mean it has to be the premiere gaming platform. Gamers are a very select group of people, and there's no reason Valve couldn't target them.
If I were Valve, I would start programs such as "if you spend X hours playing Steam games on Linux, you get a discount on your next game." That would have a huge impact on what gamers are using to play games, and could push other developers to port their games to Linux. As the middleman between millions of gamers and hundreds of game studios, Valve has enormous power here.
When I run windows 8, I can run steam and all my games, they dont magically stop working. While windows 8 RT isnt an open platform, the windows i will be running on my laptops and my desktops will be.
I'm very disappointed in valves wording, and it shows how poorly their responding to their first real competition.
And what has Valve done to promote gaming on OS X exactly? Sure, they had a short Portal promotion and have added games since, but they haven't exactly pushed the platform.
And besides, Macs are not good gaming machines. Desktop Macs (iMacs and Mac Pros) are much more difficult to upgrade than Linux/Windows desktops, and you get less powerful hardware for your money.
You can't install OS X on a non-Apple desktop (not without a lot of hassle, anyway), and very few people have done that. OTOH, you can easily install Linux on a Windows desktop, which is what most gamers have at the moment. A lot of the people on HN have spent a lot of time in the Bay Area and have forgotten that 90% of the population doesn't own a Mac, so let me remind you of that fact. Unlike with OS X, gamers can move to Linux without purchasing any new hardware.
Therefore, using the lack of success of OS X as a gaming platform since Steam added support for it to say that Linux won't succeed either is faulty logic.
> When I run windows 8, I can run steam and all my games, they dont magically stop working.
Well, there are many of us who already run Linux and only keep around a Windows install to play games. The vast majority of my time is spent playing Source-based games. If I were given the option of playing Source-based games in Linux, I would spend very little time in Windows.
> I'm very disappointed in valves wording, and it shows how poorly their responding to their first real competition.
I think they're responding the best they can. They're going up against Microsoft, which is well known for its anticompetitive behavior. The Windows 8 app store will be installed by default and given prime real estate (baked into the UI) in Windows 8. Valve needs to do something quickly before Microsoft starts abusing this power, and the best way to do that is to get gamers onto a platform no one controls - Linux.
'Much more difficult' is an exaggeration for Mac Pros. The biggest issue for gaming is the GPU. With Mountain Lion, you have seamless support for 600-series NVIDIA cards using NVIDIA's own drivers (I use a GTX 670 at home in my recently built Hackintosh). The bigger issue from a game developer's point of view is that the OpenGL implementation on OS X is still a mess, though it's been slowly getting better, partly from pushback from developers like Valve.
I know the guys doing the Linux work at Valve personally. They've been doing a ton of work with vendors in the process of getting their games to run well on different GPUs. Right now NVIDIA and Intel have the best Linux support. Hopefully AMD/ATI will catch up if Valve's Steam push creates enough momentum.
Almost all the issues with gaming on OS X and Linux are chicken-and-egg problems that will resolve themselves if there is ever enough anti-Windows momentum to warrant the sufficient vendor work.
> Therefore, using the lack of success of OS X as a gaming platform since Steam added support for it to say that Linux won't succeed either is faulty logic. True. Same thing applies with saying that gaming on Linux will take off just because Steam added support for it.
I think the problem with desktop Linux that was discussed around a while back is still the biggest thing that is holding Linux as a gaming platform (or as a desktop OS, even). A number of humble bundle that I purchased runs really slowly on Linux because of lack of support for my graphic card.
TLDR: Still a chicken/egg situation with Linux adoption as a mainstream OS in general.
It doesn't matter if they have decent hardware, that hardware is expensive and not upgradeable. That's a big factor for gamers who want to get the most bang for their buck. 2 years down the line, those Macs will struggle to run the latest games at the highest settings, and rather than being able to just swap out some components as necessary, people will have to ditch the whole computer and buy a new one from Apple. Good for Apple's profits, bad for the gamers.
> the driver problem in Linux prevents a large portions of hardware to perform efficiently anyway
I don't know what this mythical "driver problem" is, but I haven't personally encountered it.
> A number of humble bundle that I purchased runs really slowly on Linux because of lack of support for my graphic card.
I don't know what graphics card you have, but I have purchased just about every Humble Bundle so far, and they run just fine on my Linux machine.
But Linux still has driver issues. I'm not sure even my keyboard (Corsair K90) would work with Linux - a quick scan on the forums (http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=109501) suggests it needs various manual tweaking and most of its functionality would be missing.
I have various other bits of USB paraphernalia of Taiwanese / Chinese / etc. origin like scanners, printers, microscopes, etc., all of which only come with Windows drivers and maybe, if you're lucky, Mac. The problem with Linux is that you generally have to know the chipset etc. in order to know which driver is applicable, and it turns into a detective hunt. You must have seen this before; quite frequently, a single SKU may have multiple different chipsets behind the scenes, but the manufacturer's Windows drivers just cope - meanwhile, to get Linux to work, you need to know the details.
I have never installed Linux and had it work for all my hardware, except for distributions tailored specifically for the machine (Eeebuntu on my Asus Eee 701) - and even then they missed out on things like the keyboard shortcut to toggle the wifi radio so you could use it on a plane.
The pool of hardware out there is deep and gnarly.
This is all FUD being spun up by Valve because they don't like competition for their app store.
This was never a comparison between Steam and the Windows 8 app store. The two are not equivalent, because one is baked into the OS, while the other is 3rd party software.
What is comparable is the Windows 8 app store and the Ubuntu Software Center. And it's very clear that the latter is much more open.
So when will Valve let me install their software with Ubuntu Software Center?
The proprietary NVIDIA drivers for Linux are built directly from the same source base as the Windows drivers, the only difference being the interface layer between the kernel and the driver. Feature set and performance are identical to the Windows drivers.
I'm not aware of any known critical bugs in the kernel parts. Usually when stuff breaks in the NVidia drivers, it's because of a combination of a kernel update and sloppy package management by the distribution. None of this should be an issue if Valve decides to release some kind of Linux based 'Steam loader' that boots directly to the game itself, or make their own Linux distro with tight control over the kernel and GPU drivers.
I'm not sure how good the ATI linux drivers are these days though.
That's a pretty interesting angle. But it might be a bridge too far. Gamers would almost certainly follow Valve to Linux. But asking them to give up their mp3 players, chat programs and background tasks while they're gaming?
Only if it were a living room solution, which has its own "day 1" sorts of challenges. (e.g. the number of titles with not only gamepad support, but where you truly do not need the keyboard/mouse to play.)
Wat.
Linux programs like Pidgin have support for almost all IM protocols known to man, it can handle any Portable Media Player with sane behavior (read: identifies as removable storage, which pretty much all players except the shitty Apple ones do) and last time I checked, Linux is capable of multitasking, too.
Managing your music collection as a distinct set of files and folders is a rather 90's concept. What matters is how the files are presented to the end user - they can be all slapped into a single folder and given GUID names as long as the resultant database presents them in a clear and meaningful way.
(Only partly kidding - I think your criterion for a "shitty" music player will find a great deal of dissent :3)
>Linux programs like Pidgin have support for almost all IM protocols known to man
Weak support. Anything beyond simple chatting almost universally doesn't work. File transfers, picture syncing, god forbid voice and video chat.
As for the IM protocols, maybe this will prompt people to migrate to better protocols like XMPP. ICQ, MSN, AIM and all those other proprietary protocols with their ad-laden, bloated clients (which I classify as nothing short of malware) should have died years ago.
So the current (in)existence of other Linux software would be irrelevant.
I'd say the best option here is to work with Canonical to make Ubuntu a stable gaming platform. Valve has the gaming expertise and Canonical has the Linux expertise and community mindshare, so I could definitely see them working it out.
Or just install the other store's software onto Win8 or OSX. Still FUD.
This is true, especially among the subset of gamers who build their own computers. They are particularly ripe for experimentation with Linux, and would represent the Innovator/Early Adopter stage in the TAL [1]. Get those guys on board and the rest may see it as new and cool and follow.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle*
I know that one might say but majority of users do not know this, but from what I can tell from participating in gaming communities, these guy do proper research before buying a new rig. I can totally see lot of people who solely play Valve games (TF2, L4D, Dota2, CS:Go, CS) will try Linux if their games work on Linux.
Then the article was not written clearly. I don't see Valve taking Apple to task for the MAS. There's no other valid way to interpret that sentence.
>Linux doesn't have to have the best driver support to be sufficient as a gaming platform. If it has enough driver support for games to run well, it has a chance.
I'd argue that it already does. There are plenty of games that run on Linux (hardly as many on windows, but you can easily say the drivers are "there").
>Just because Windows has the "majority of the desktop base" doesn't mean it has to be the premiere gaming platform. Gamers are a very select group of people, and there's no reason Valve couldn't target them.
Disagree. Look at the Mac - decent support, decent performance, it has AAA titles on it that are also on other platforms, yet you won't ever see AAA exclusive titles being released on the mac. And why would you? Think like a publisher - you're artificially limiting your audience. The number of people who will jump platforms (or even maintain two platforms) just for your title is infinitesimal. Until such time as that happens, the mac is an also-ran. Same for Linux - and Linux has a huge advantage over Mac in that there's zero cost barrier.
If you don't understand the difference between "Windows 8 ships with its own app store and it is not an open platform anymore" and "Because Windows 8 ships with its own app store, it is not an open platform anymore," then you need to work on your English comprehension skills. The difference is subtle, but apparent. There's nothing wrong with the article.
> I don't see Valve taking Apple to task for the MAS.
Because Macs and Mac users were never a big audience for Valve to begin with. The vast majority of Valve's users run Windows, so it only makes sense for them to be worried about the drastic changes with respect to app distribution in Windows 8.
> Look at the Mac - decent support, decent performance, it has AAA titles on it that are also on other platforms, yet you won't ever see AAA exclusive titles being released on the mac.
Who said anything about getting exclusive titles? Moreover, there was no reason before to move away from Windows or towards Mac. Windows 7 was an open platform and the Mac is relatively closed and not friendly to gamers in terms of hardware.
The situation has changed with Windows 8 because there is a clear reason for people not to use it - the weird new touch-centric interface that's used for desktops as well, which makes even less sense on the multi-20+ inch monitor setups that many gamers have.
Valve can easily create pull factors for Linux that it couldn't with OS X. It can work closely with Canonical to improve game performance beyond that on Windows (this is already the case according to their framerate tests) and perhaps bundle Steam with Ubuntu. It can support a wide range of easily upgradeable gamer-friendly hardware setups. The factor that you can just use your existing Windows PC to run Linux (something not possible with OS X) is a big factor as well.
Then why mention them together? Again, I don't see Valve giving apple a hard time over their decision to make the app store the primary distribution method for Mac software.
>The vast majority of Valve's users run Windows, so it only makes sense for them to be worried about the drastic changes with respect to app distribution in Windows 8.
You mean the addition of a store that doesn't really change anything? Steam runs on 8 exactly as it did on 7. Again, Apple had tighter integration and more coercion - which is why I said this sounds like FUD. Their concerns are inconsistent.
>Who said anything about getting exclusive titles?
I did, because what I'm trying to imply here is that Mac/Linux is not a serious gaming platform until such time as publishers would even think about considering making exclusives for it. Until that time, there just isn't enough penetration for it to matter.
No it doesnt. The problem is actually NOT that games have to run on average drivers, but rather that drivers dont work on the OS.
For example, I'm constantly hindered by ATI and Nvidia drivers affecting suspend/resume, HDMI out and power consumption. And quite often, I get drivers that screw with X.
You give me a 30% hit in game performance, but dont let it affect core OS issues, I'll be more than happy. However, I dont think thats the status quo.
This is actually why I think (flames welcome) that Valve should focus more on the Linux core first and then on the Steam app as such. I was half expecting them to come up with this distro using Wayland, seamless Linux audio (!!) and a new driver infrastructure.
It's metro - who cares? You get more functionality with the desktop.
On a less snarky note, yes you can. All that's necessary is your system has to trust the CA that signed the app - which is itself a few mouse clicks away.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsstore/archive/2012/04/25/depl...
I've personally done this to load a leaked Skype beta for Metro. Put the requisite commands in a powershell batch file and it becomes so easy your gran can do it.
2. I didn't realize you could set up sideloading on non-enterprise versions. As long as that is intentional and not a side-effect of implementation, I take back my complaints about windows 8.
That said, there's nothing saying you can't use the enterprise version at home...
Edit: From another comment, it sounds like this is a bad quote, and that the Valve guy said nothing of the sort. Sorry to Valve for what I wrote previously, and shame on UbuntuVibes...
Edit: To expand a little bit on that, I've been a Windows user since the 3.1 days. I've done most (if not all) of the upgrades during that time frame at some point, and there are always programs that break. Games tend to be particularly fragile in this respect, possibly due to relying on undocumented/unsupported behavior to squeeze out extra performance.
Win98->XP (ME? what's that?) and XP->Vista were both particularly bad for games, as I think anyone old enough to be a PC gamer during those times remembers. However, it wasn't because XP or Vista weren't 'viable' for gaming - the games just needed patches to adjust to new OS behavior or remove reliance on deprecated APIs. Win7->Win8 is more comparable to Vista->Win7, judging by my experience so far. There are things that will break and certain games will need patches, but it won't be anything like the days of needing "Vista patches" for 90% of your games.
People will install Linux enmasse when Linux gets something that the other options don't have -- when desirable games come out that can ONLY play on Linux and no other platform.
And the more people who switch to gaming on Linux for reasons like mine, the more companies will tend to support it.
Let's also not forget that those same high-budget productions rely heavily on the current set of graphics (and audio) drivers, and there is hardly any effort to bring the Mac and linux up to par on that front.
Glad to see we've got our priorities in order!
All one requires is a lite distro that'll fire up steam. They can ship it on USB sticks. If it's not possible to boot from USB, just install it from the USB. Would make the physical packaging smaller.
Imagine popping into you local shop, picking up a free (or nominal) USB. Installing the mega lite distro before downloading and playing games.
Whilst the vendors will inch towards owning the ecosystems for their platforms, they'll always be innovators who will circumnavigate. Unless you're leasing the hardware under license I struggle to see one can realistically prevent OS installations on standard hardware.
This is why Valve is so dead against Windows 8: the Microsoft app store.
Did people really ask about hats at the Ubuntu Developer Conference?