Steam - It's Not Just for Windows and Macs Anymore

TheGameguru wrote:

I can't imagine Windows 8 being anymore of a "disaster" for Microsoft than Windows Vista..They survived as did PC Gaming. I applaud Gabe for bringing Steam to as many platforms as possible and supporting the Linux community..but it's rare to find anything positive born out of negativity. I would rather Valve embrace Linux because of its positives rather than out of some sort of necessity. To me that just screams grandstanding and trolling for PR.

Could not disagree more.

More fuel for the fire:

Rob Pardo[/url]]nice interview with Gabe Newell - "I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space* - not awesome for Blizzard either

So that seems to back up Gabe then. Who is next, CEO of EA?

I wrote something up about Gabe's history with such comments and where they lead. Not that he and Pardo don't have credibility (they most certainly do) but the two people who have spoken out so far are ones for whom Windows 8's app store stands to become potentially serious competition. Much as I'm still on the fence about Windows 8, I don't see how a change in how programs are launched (which is the biggest change that has people up in arms) makes it a disaster for PC gaming, especially when everything else from Windows 7 will still be there.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I wrote something up about Gabe's history with such comments and where they lead. Not that he and Pardo don't have credibility (they most certainly do) but the two people who have spoken out so far are ones for whom Windows 8's app store stands to become potentially serious competition. Much as I'm still on the fence about Windows 8, I don't see how a change in how programs are launched (which is the biggest change that has people up in arms) makes it a disaster for PC gaming, especially when everything else from Windows 7 will still be there.

I tend to agree with your article. Gabe is speaking his mind and gets a conversation started. Which is always a healthy thing.
Not sure why Gabe think the MS store would be a good competitor at all. Most people owning an Xbox would go with it, for the ease of use (one account). The rest is on Steam basically.
Long term prediction: Steam Linux Distro

Sparhawk wrote:

Long term prediction: Steam Linux Distro

Now that's a fascinating idea! A distro with pre-packaged and optimised drivers for all the popular video/sound/input hardware with Steam pre-loaded. If they were to do the mythical Steam Box, that would be a brilliant way to do it and keep costs down.

I'm more interested in the two sentences after the "catastrophe" sentence:

Gabe Newell wrote:

I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.

I'm not sure what that means. Is MS changing the licensing structure for 8? Something else? I don't follow this sort of stuff, but the catastrophe comment seems to be linked not purely for technical reasons against Windows 8 (which seems to be drawing most of the commentary). anyone have any insight into why Win8 might destroy margins on (what I assume to be) hardware guys?

tboon wrote:

I'm more interested in the two sentences after the "catastrophe" sentence:

Gabe Newell wrote:

I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people.

I'm not sure what that means. Is MS changing the licensing structure for 8? Something else? I don't follow this sort of stuff, but the catastrophe comment seems to be linked not purely for technical reasons against Windows 8 (which seems to be drawing most of the commentary). anyone have any insight into why Win8 might destroy margins on (what I assume to be) hardware guys?

Only thing I could think of is if MS does like the do with Win Phone, and take more control of what OEMs can pre-load machines with. I think they make a lot of money selling space on the desktop to crappy software preloads.

MS have been making noise about their 'signature' edition, and offering a service at MS stores to do a clean reinstall. W8 also has the reset/restore functionality built in, where you can put your PC back to it's original state easily, I wonder if they've locked OEM bundling out of that. The other thing might be secure boot, or what requirements and conditions MS attached to it.

Here's an article trying to come up with reasons behind Newell's quote: http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-...

It gets better half way down the page once they're past the generic W8/metro gripes.

I'm confused. Steam works fine on W8... I've been using it for countless months. So is it just new competition for lame 1$ games that is the "catastrophe" ?

The last point about PC openness is something I've been saying for a while and one of the main things I don't like about iOS. I wrote about that concept on my blog as well. Microsoft is certainly trying to go in that direction but I don't think they'll ever be able to on PC because there's a massive ecosystem based around the open concepts and they can't close that off without alienating such a large number of customers (including most enterprise) that it would cripple their bottom line. Apple was able to do it with iOS (and theoretically Microsoft could do it with tablets too) because they were stepping into a new space and were able to do it from day one. But the same reason they'll never be able to do it on Mac is the same reason Microsoft won't be able to with Windows.

Scratched wrote:

Here's an article trying to come up with reasons behind Newell's quote: http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-...

It gets better half way down the page once they're past the generic W8/metro gripes.

A nice read. And like ibdoomed I don't see the downfall yet of W8 for games or Steam for that matter. I think Gabe is more or less pointing out the direction where microsoft is taking things. Games are for the xbox, not pc. As MS can make money with titles on the xbox and not pc.
Still, there is the option not to go through the ms store and for companies not to submit their software to ms. And I am sure Steam will take that route and we will be all fine really.

Do disagree with this part:

What’s worrying for PC gamers and hardware manufacturers is that Microsoft are now offering a hardware alternative that competes directly with the traditional PC and laptop. When it comes to their next PC purchase, consumers get a choice: a desktop, a laptop, or a shiny Windows tablet.

The hardware and software are not out yet. I have to yet see people actually looking at it as an alternative. Software will be less available, because it has to run on both processors (such a stupid move! Talking about convoluted coding). And a tablet is still a tablet.
Taking the gamer pov, this tablet will be as much fun as an iPad and I haven't heard iPad owners dumping their console or gaming rig.

Scratched wrote:

Here's an article trying to come up with reasons behind Newell's quote: http://www.pcgamesn.com/article/why-...

It gets better half way down the page once they're past the generic W8/metro gripes.

I thought the article was terrible...especially since you can still install and play games just like you do in Windows 7. Lots of FUD.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Sparhawk wrote:

Long term prediction: Steam Linux Distro

Now that's a fascinating idea! A distro with pre-packaged and optimised drivers for all the popular video/sound/input hardware with Steam pre-loaded. If they were to do the mythical Steam Box, that would be a brilliant way to do it and keep costs down.

Agreed..a purpose built Linux distro for Steam and Games would be cool...optimize it for Intel and Nvidia platform with full 360 controller support and HDMI output and I'm sold..who wouldnt love a system that squeezed out max performance and featured a great 10ft UI and solid controller support.

I just don't see it before the 720 is launched..and I believe MS will push the hardware envelope enough to dazzle us again for $299

Here's a question for the legal experts out there. IF Microsoft used its OS to freeze out competitors like Valve, wouldn't that be a repeat of the whole Netscape anti-trust debacle? Are there key differences that would allow Microsoft to win in this case? IF not, I can't see why Microsoft would set themselves up like that again.

I really don't see the point of a Steam Linux distro -- if I wanted to reboot to play a game, I'd just reboot in to Windows and be done with it.

The problem with a lot of these pre-configured, purpose-built Linux distributions -- and I see this a lot with distros dedicated to music production -- is that people outgrow them very quickly. When everything works out of the box, it's great at first, but if something goes wrong, the user ends up at a loss: partly because they don't understand the system at all, and partly because it's more difficult to get help than it is with a more generic distribution. Even if everything does work, the user gets in to the same trouble as soon as they want to do something beyond what the distro includes by default, for the same reasons: they don't really understand how to use the OS, and it's hard for them to get help.

Now, if you're talking about an appliance -- the mythical Steam Box, running Linux behind the scenes as a mere implementation detail -- then a customised, dedicated installation makes perfect sense. On a PC, I want Steam on the OS I use every day.

I would envision a Steam "distro" to be more along the lines of a Ubuntu spinoff rather than a separate standalone distro.

Something that installs with Steam + binary video drivers right off the bat. Like how Edubuntu is Ubuntu + preinstalled educational software, and even has some software written for it, but which is still just packages that any Ubuntu user could install.

*Legion* wrote:

I would envision a Steam "distro" to be more along the lines of a Ubuntu spinoff rather than a separate standalone distro.

Something that installs with Steam + binary video drivers right off the bat. Like how Edubuntu is Ubuntu + preinstalled educational software, and even has some software written for it, but which is still just packages that any Ubuntu user could install.

If this existed, I'd uninstall windows.

Gaming is pretty much the only anchor that keeps me in windows. It's surprising how much of the things I consider essential aren't apps as they are the data those apps use, and most of the time there are very competent apps to use that data on whichever OS you use. A major contributing factor is probably how everyone lives 'on the web' now, which is platform agnostic.

Games plus drivers that run the hardware well, and reasonably simple WINE/emulation/virtualisation for the rest would be good.

pneuman wrote:

I really don't see the point of a Steam Linux distro -- if I wanted to reboot to play a game, I'd just reboot in to Windows and be done with it.

The point of a Steam Linux distro is to NOT have to reboot to play a game.

Scratched wrote:

Gaming is pretty much the only anchor that keeps me in windows. It's surprising how much of the things I consider essential aren't apps as they are the data those apps use, and most of the time there are very competent apps to use that data on whichever OS you use. A major contributing factor is probably how everyone lives 'on the web' now, which is platform agnostic.

Games plus drivers that run the hardware well, and reasonably simple WINE/emulation/virtualisation for the rest would be good.

Gaming is a huge factor..but Office Productivity apps as well as various misc apps like Mapinfo, Photoshop, Acrobat are key day to day apps for me. Combine that with Microsoft's insistence to keep certain cloud based apps IE only makes it difficult to ever envision not having a Windows PC as my primary work/gaming platform.

Every other platform has far to many hassles to deal with on a day to day to surpass the default.

I have to use Office too, and I do.

In a VM in a little window on my left monitor.

There's a few other Windows tools I use for work as well, but I won't let these things dictate what system I use. Not in today's world where running a VM is trivial (hell, running multiple simultaneous VMs is trivial).

*Legion* wrote:

I have to use Office too, and I do.

In a VM in a little window on my left monitor.

There's a few other Windows tools I use for work as well, but I won't let these things dictate what system I use. Not in today's world where running a VM is trivial (hell, running multiple simultaneous VMs is trivial).

I'm sure that works fine.. I guess that my point (without this becoming an OS debate) is that there just isnt enough incentive to want to deal with a different OS. I just don't see a significant upside to Linux over Windows 7. It's stable.. easy to use.. comfortable/familiar as well as running all my programs completely without any hassles.

TheGameguru wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

I have to use Office too, and I do.

In a VM in a little window on my left monitor.

There's a few other Windows tools I use for work as well, but I won't let these things dictate what system I use. Not in today's world where running a VM is trivial (hell, running multiple simultaneous VMs is trivial).

I'm sure that works fine.. I guess that my point (without this becoming an OS debate) is that there just isnt enough incentive to want to deal with a different OS. I just don't see a significant upside to Linux over Windows 7. It's stable.. easy to use.. comfortable/familiar as well as running all my programs completely without any hassles.

That's where I'm at. What's the point to linux for those of us only familiar enough to run a few commands? Sticking it to MS? The old malware argument that mac people used to be able to us?

I run 3 VM's daily to deal with all the crap (need IE 7/8/9 for web testing and an osx vm to support those people) so regardless, I'd be using windows, I would just need 4 VM's...

ibdoomed wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:
*Legion* wrote:

I have to use Office too, and I do.

In a VM in a little window on my left monitor.

There's a few other Windows tools I use for work as well, but I won't let these things dictate what system I use. Not in today's world where running a VM is trivial (hell, running multiple simultaneous VMs is trivial).

I'm sure that works fine.. I guess that my point (without this becoming an OS debate) is that there just isnt enough incentive to want to deal with a different OS. I just don't see a significant upside to Linux over Windows 7. It's stable.. easy to use.. comfortable/familiar as well as running all my programs completely without any hassles.

That's where I'm at. What's the point to linux for those of us only familiar enough to run a few commands? Sticking it to MS? The old malware argument that mac people used to be able to us?

I run 3 VM's daily to deal with all the crap (need IE 7/8/9 for web testing and an osx vm to support those people) so regardless, I'd be using windows, I would just need 4 VM's...

The malware argument isn't just something to be trivially brushed away. The rest..I don't even know why that needs an answer. Is anyone saying everyone should switch to Linux? Because otherwise I'm not sure why you'd ask "What's the point of switching to Linux for someone who's not going to use Linux for anything they can't do in Windows?"

TheGameguru wrote:

I'm sure that works fine.. I guess that my point (without this becoming an OS debate) is that there just isnt enough incentive to want to deal with a different OS. I just don't see a significant upside to Linux over Windows 7. It's stable.. easy to use.. comfortable/familiar as well as running all my programs completely without any hassles.

That was mostly a response to the part of your post that sounded like it was suggesting you couldn't reasonably change primary OSs because of the things tying you to Windows.

If you don't want to change, for the reasons you state above, that's of course completely understandable. I'm just saying for people that do want to, hardware and virtualization have gotten to the point where it's about as painless as possible to run one or more secondary OSs in VMs on commodity desktop hardware.

I'm a huge Linux fan, but I am not of the opinion that Linux is for everyone and that everyone should be running it. I'd just be happy to see it get to 5% of desktop usage. It's far too good even as a desktop-for-normal-people to be only 1%.

*Legion* wrote:

I have to use Office too, and I do.

In a VM in a little window on my left monitor.

Why didn't I ever think of that!? Seriously, as someone who has been considering moving to a different OS, this has been a major hitch along the way. Now if I just had an extra license key kicking around...

SixteenBlue wrote:
pneuman wrote:

I really don't see the point of a Steam Linux distro -- if I wanted to reboot to play a game, I'd just reboot in to Windows and be done with it.

The point of a Steam Linux distro is to NOT have to reboot to play a game.

I think you missed my point. I'm already running my preferred Linux distribution all the time. Why would I want to install a second copy of Linux on my PC just because it has Steam in it? I'd much rather just install Steam on my usual Linux distribution.

I've seen a lot of people start out with Linux by using a custom distro that's meant to set everything up for your automatically (AVLinux, a distro for pro audio work, is a classic example, and trust me -- that's a lot harder to get set up than just installing some binary video drivers). Very few of them stick with it, because it turns out that they end up wanting to go beyond what ships on the DVD, or they want to upgrade the included software to newer versions, and when they do that, it's just easier to install a real Linux distro and then add the software they want.

*Legion* wrote:

I would envision a Steam "distro" to be more along the lines of a Ubuntu spinoff rather than a separate standalone distro.

Something that installs with Steam + binary video drivers right off the bat. Like how Edubuntu is Ubuntu + preinstalled educational software, and even has some software written for it, but which is still just packages that any Ubuntu user could install.

That's a more reasonable idea, but I think the delta between that and a standard Ubuntu system is so small as to make it mostly pointless. It's already pretty damn easy to install the NVIDIA/AMD binary drivers in Ubuntu, and if Steam is made available via APT -- especially if it's in Canonical's standard repository for third-party commercial apps, assuming both Valve and Canonical are happy to have it there -- then it would be easy to install Steam, too.

A whole new distro just to pre-install a couple of add-on packages that are already pretty easy to install sounds crazy to me. If someone isn't willing to learn how to install a couple of add-on packages, then Linux probably isn't the right OS for them.

pneuman wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
pneuman wrote:

I really don't see the point of a Steam Linux distro -- if I wanted to reboot to play a game, I'd just reboot in to Windows and be done with it.

The point of a Steam Linux distro is to NOT have to reboot to play a game.

I think you missed my point. I'm already running my preferred Linux distribution all the time. Why would I want to install a second copy of Linux on my PC just because it has Steam in it? I'd much rather just install Steam on my usual Linux distribution.

I've seen a lot of people start out with Linux by using a custom distro that's meant to set everything up for your automatically (AVLinux, a distro for pro audio work, is a classic example, and trust me -- that's a lot harder to get set up than just installing some binary video drivers). Very few of them stick with it, because it turns out that they end up wanting to go beyond what ships on the DVD, or they want to upgrade the included software to newer versions, and when they do that, it's just easier to install a real Linux distro and then add the software they want.

*Legion* wrote:

I would envision a Steam "distro" to be more along the lines of a Ubuntu spinoff rather than a separate standalone distro.

Something that installs with Steam + binary video drivers right off the bat. Like how Edubuntu is Ubuntu + preinstalled educational software, and even has some software written for it, but which is still just packages that any Ubuntu user could install.

That's a more reasonable idea, but I think the delta between that and a standard Ubuntu system is so small as to make it mostly pointless. It's already pretty damn easy to install the NVIDIA/AMD binary drivers in Ubuntu, and if Steam is made available via APT -- especially if it's in Canonical's standard repository for third-party commercial apps, assuming both Valve and Canonical are happy to have it there -- then it would be easy to install Steam, too.

A whole new distro just to pre-install a couple of add-on packages that are already pretty easy to install sounds crazy to me. If someone isn't willing to learn how to install a couple of add-on packages, then Linux probably isn't the right OS for them.

Yup I totally missed the point. Sorry about that.

Teehee, a comment from open source's resident crazy, RMS:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfr...

Nonfree game programs (like other nonfree programs) are unethical because they deny freedom to their users. (Game art is a different issue, because it isn't software.) If you want freedom, one requisite for it is not having nonfree programs on your computer. That much is clear.