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Comment by Expez | Hacker News Reader

For all my love for Steam, Valve, Linux and Newell himself, I cannot help but gag a little every time he opens his mouth as of late.

Not a single fuck was given about Linux prior to the release of Win 8. Then, suddenly, once Valve's profit margins and business model is threatened the company shows some interest. This is all--of course--perfectly rational behavior, but there's no need to be all righteous about it and feed into our superiority complexes as Linux users. We don't want an 'us vs them' mentality here. What we want is for all the Windows users to get curious and come explore what Linux has to offer, not dig in and defend their OS just because they were pissed off by smug flamebait rethoric.

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Not really. Years ago people mentioned they found extra code for what looked like a linux version somewhere in some steam package or development kit or whatever it was. This was years and years ago. Valve downplayed it. Of course now it's obvious they've been planning and experimenting with linux this whole time. They've gotten higher frame rates in Left 4 Dead 2 on Linux than on Windows on the same hardware so, they have quiet a vested interest in this thing.

I think they're in this for the long run. The biggest threat to consoles is Steam and consoles after all, are just crippled PCs.

"Not a single fuck was given about Linux prior to the release of Win 8. Then, suddenly, once Valve's profit margins and business model is threatened the company shows some interest."

Well, I don't think so. It has been a continuous move for no dependence on MS for a long time. It is just that the backend code for making their code multiplattform is not as visible as their recent announcements.

If I have to point milestones, they are: Android as a commercial(linux) viable product, companies that make Linux compatible hardware (Xi3), and of course the tremendous amount of demand for mobile devices(that will surpass desktop computers installed base this year), not just MS fear.

I don't care what his motivation is as long as he jumpstarts the movement of supporting AAA games on Linux, and getting GPU makers to make drivers for Linux, and game engine builders to support it as well.

Linux adoption is a chicken and egg problem right now. If Valve fixes the developer side of that, then the consumers will want it on their laptops, and manufacturers will start building such laptops, too. Well except Dell now, I guess.

Phoronix have basically reported on Valve's work on "Steam for Linux" since 2008, usually backed up with some kind of evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoronix

It is possible Windows 8/RT was the deciding factor in making Steam for Linux a product, but the interest in Linux is not a new thing.

Rumors of Valve's Linux-Based console have been floating around for years.

Sorry, but that's simply not true. I think the real truth is that developing major applications / games on Linux is still sucktastic. No universal package management system, no universal set of dependencies, no guaranteed binary runtime environment, no unified platform API for the desktop, etc.

Windows developers would also like a debugger and IDE equivalent to Visual Studio.

The sad fact of the matter is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, and I think Valve has decided to gamble that if they motivate developers to come to the platform, it will become ready.

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