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Michael Larabel (of Phoronix) met with Valve today; tweets "steam is coming to Linux"

zoku88

Member
I am confused, won't the Linux version be, just a port of OS X version? Which is so so interms of performance. How would the Linux version be better? In all probability it would be worse.

How would a Linux version be better for Linux users than what?

Running it in Wine?
 
Q

qizah

Unconfirmed Member
I dont get the enthusiasm of the people on the first page of this thread. I am interested in knowing how performance could improve if valve sinks money into developing a steam OS fork.

It's nice to have everything in one place. Mac users should know the feeling.
 
I don't own a Mac, I am a windows user. The idea of having the service on another platform is cool but having this platform come close to parity to windows even possible?
 
I don't own a Mac, I am a windows user. The idea of having the service on another platform is cool but having this platform come close to parity to windows even possible?

Parity in what way? Game performance? Client performance? Library?

Game Performance: Yes. It could use some driver updates and have ATI not be so terrible, but yes.

Client Performance: Yes. Easily.

Library: No way in hell.
 

zoku88

Member
Parity in what way? Game performance? Client performance? Library?

Since he's talking about the service, I would guess he means the Steam Client?

I mean, whether it's on par with the performance of the Windows client or not isn't really important ("though, its the steam client... I can't imagine that it's that hard to get working well. Isn't it mostly based off of webkit?")

EDIT: Wow, when you said library, I had no idea you meant "library of games".
 
Damnit Steam! Not you too.

*cancels kickstarter funding*

Edit: oh shit, I was just joking. Does this actually upset some people? Guess not.
 
Since he's talking about the service, I would guess he means the Steam Client?

That's what I thought too, but questing whether or not Valve can get the client running acceptably on other platforms is such a silly question to me that I'm wondering if there isn't some sort of confusion I'm missing.

Damnit Steam! Not you too.

*cancels kickstarter funding*

Edit: oh shit, I was just joking. Does this actually upset some people? Guess not.

All that extra revenue going down a black hole of nothingness. Why do they just keep pouring money into this Linux thing? Why won't it stop?!
 

zoku88

Member
I am talking about performance of games

Game performance depends on opengl and driver performance.

Current drivers suck, but AMD and Nvidia can always update them.

As far as opengl, it's probably based on the skill of the programmers more than anything else. I'm guessing Valve themselves are more experienced with DirectX than opengl. Who knows though. Though, that also depends on drivers too.

Btw, you have a really confusing way of asking this question. All of the earlier posts seemed to suggest you were talking about the performance of the Steam Client.
 

mik83kuu

Banned
I would much prefer if Valve finished some of the projects they have going on instead of starting new ones. Big picture mode pls.
 

morningbus

Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
I would much prefer if Valve finished some of the projects they have going on instead of starting new ones. Big picture mode pls.

Like, I get that there is always a comment like this in any thread. But you do know that the people who are dedicated to porting over the client and games are not the same group of people dedicated to doing the 10ft. UI, right?

It's like yelling at your waitress to cook your food quicker.
 
I am talking about performance of games

While I can't comment on whether they are at parity now, I will say that OS X was in a pretty sorry state when it got StarCraft II and Steam. So Valve seems to be confident that if they start porting, the platform will catch up.

It's certainly not a big enough disparity to make this project pointless. Out of all of the games I have for both Windows and Linux, the Linux version always runs better. So it's not impossible.

I didn't even realize that linux was still relevant. I honestly haven't heard of it in years.

That seems like a stretch, considering Android and Ubuntu. Not to mention the whole "it runs almost every server" aspect.
 
I didn't even realize that linux was still relevant. I honestly haven't heard of it in years.

It only runs, like, 70% of all the websites and stuff.

IIRC Unreal Engine 4 is heavily DX11 based and so is CE3.

If anything, DirectX will be less and less of a restriction on PC development the more titles are multiplatform and/or utilize major gaming middleware. PS3, WiiU, Android, and iOS are all OpenGL-based platforms; all new multi-platform middleware systems support OpenGL in order to work with these platforms. On a purely graphical level, most games (especially multiplatform ones) could support OSX and Linux pretty easily going forward. (It's really other elements of the system -- and dealing with bad drivers -- that make porting time-consuming at this stage.)
 

SteveWD40

Member
What's wrong with Windows 8 and gaming?

Well I have seen a few remarks from developers (such as Gabe here) that it's shitty to work with (not sure why) and from testers that things run like shit on it (Win7 Consumer preview had no such issue).

You will also need a Windows Live account to use the metro app store and it will force GFWL / XBLA on you.

Oh and Microsoft would love to kill PC gaming so we will all buy Xbox 360's.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
This is mostly correct. There is a NDK (native development kit) available for Android for apps that need it (only games, as far as I know.) But yea, almost everything runs on Dalvik.


EDIT: ANDREX!!! :mad:

;)

I'm fairly certain power user apps like Chrome also use the NDK, as well as cross-platform stuff.
 

D3RANG3D

Member
Well I have seen a few remarks from developers (such as Gabe here) that it's shitty to work with (not sure why) and from testers that things run like shit on it (Win7 Consumer preview had no such issue).

You will also need a Windows Live account to use the metro app store and it will force GFWL / XBLA on you.

Oh and Microsoft would love to kill PC gaming so we will all buy Xbox 360's.

Did Gabe really say that though, link or it didn't happen!
 
There is now a video of how L4D2 runs on Linux:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA5MjQ

Hmm... a nice blurry video that doesn't show anything new, other than a bit of LFD2 running off screen.

I'm really not questioning the legitimacy of this video at all. There's way too much noise being made over this to be fake, and the people at Valve haven't discredited anything yet either...

I just wish the video quality was a little crisper, so I could take a look at that system monitor. :p
 

Nilaul

Member
So.. steam console to be based on Linux.

Its cheaper then using windows, and it can have an os that runs on 128 mb of ram or less.
 

morningbus

Serious Sam is a wicked gahbidge series for chowdaheads.
Hmm... a nice blurry video that doesn't show anything new, other than a bit of LFD2 running off screen.

I'm really not questioning the legitimacy of this video at all. There's way too much noise being made over this to be fake, and the people at Valve haven't discredited anything yet either...

I just wish the video quality was a little crisper, so I could take a look at that system monitor. :p

It appears consistent with the image they put out:

VAPXl.jpg


Nothing terribly special.
 

Blizzard

Banned
Windows 8 sounds like the new Vista. It's best to just ignore it and carry on using 7.
I figure Windows 98SE was good, Windows ME wasn't very good, Windows XP was good, Windows Vista wasn't very good, and Windows 7 is good. Clearly the pattern must not be broken.
 

M3d10n

Member
If anything, DirectX will be less and less of a restriction on PC development the more titles are multiplatform and/or utilize major gaming middleware. PS3, WiiU, Android, and iOS are all OpenGL-based platforms; all new multi-platform middleware systems support OpenGL in order to work with these platforms. On a purely graphical level, most games (especially multiplatform ones) could support OSX and Linux pretty easily going forward. (It's really other elements of the system -- and dealing with bad drivers -- that make porting time-consuming at this stage.)

Do not underestimate this.

OpenGL is great on platforms with little hardware variance, like consoles and mobile. Even in OSX, hardware diversity if very low when compared to PCs.

On PC hardware, if you want to go beyond baseline shader model 3.0, it's a nightmare. DirectX 10 and on really streamlined the whole feature set stuff: DX10/10.1/11/11.1 cards are guaranteed to support well defined groups of features, whereas with OpenGL you need to deal with extensions and having to check features one by one.

Not to mention that even with DirectX, new high-profile games often have to deal with driver issues, both on NVidia and AMD cards, when they start pushing GPUs in "interesting" ways. In OSX it was a hundred times worse: the arrival of Steam and SC2 improved things somewhat, but it's still impossible to make Mac games that use shader model 4.0 or rely heavily on render buffers with formats other than R8G8B8A8, for example. The situation in Linux, considering the drivers aren't fully open source, is likely to be similar.

Source Engine will have no problem in Linux because their rendering techniques are mostly outdated, from a technological point of view. Many indie games, which usually tend to be low on the GPU trickery, are also good. But stuff like Skyrim, as example, is unlikely.
 

zoku88

Member
I have to wonder: why are they talking to this guy?

I mean, they were asking him, supposedly, for driver related help (linux developer references.) Shouldn't they be talking to AMD and Nvidia?

Though, maybe there's more to this guy than I know. All I know is that he makes that one benchmark suite (which is pretty good, methinks) and this website.
 
I have to wonder: why are they talking to this guy?

I mean, they were asking him, supposedly, for driver related help (linux developer references.) Shouldn't they be talking to AMD and Nvidia?

Though, maybe there's more to this guy than I know. All I know is that he makes that one benchmark suite (which is pretty good, methinks) and this website.

Phoronix have done other things too, from memory (may be wrong on this) they developed a way to patch the linux kernel without a reboot, and a ZFS port for Linux that doesn't require FUSE.
 

angelfly

Member
Phoronix have done other things too, from memory (may be wrong on this) they developed a way to patch the linux kernel without a reboot, and a ZFS port for Linux that doesn't require FUSE.

Neither of those were done by anyone at Phoronix. You must be thinking of articles they wrote on the subject. The only thing they have is the benchmarking suite.
 
Some more information:

- Yes, they are collaborating with AMD and NVIDIA. Both companies have access to the Linux client and are working on driver optimizations. AMD reportedly found some code-paths on their end to improve, but in my testing of L4D2 with Catalyst 12.7 betas I had (AMD hasn't sent over to Valve any test drivers yet...), the fixes didn't seem to be in there.

- Intel not caring is bullshit. In fact, at least for the OTC developers themselves it's quite the opposite. Going through the official Intel -> Valve channels was slow for them so on the developers' behalf - at their request - I personally intervened and looks like things there are now rolling. Don't be surprised to see Mesa-related improvements coming.

- Valve has surprising interests beyond binary drivers.

Not sure what I should say, but it's growing. They're actually waiting on a list from me of more potential hires. Turns out they just didn't want Linux GL developers but kernel developers, etc. If anyone is looking for work and feels qualified to work at Valve, feel free to contact me if I haven't already contacted you yet to examine your interest level. I'll be compiling a new list in the next few days.



http://phoronix.com/forums/showthre...elivery-At-Valve-Software&p=260705#post260705
 
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