You keep asserting (in this and other topics) that the only way anyone could possibly create OGL renderers that compete functionally with DX would be if a company dedicated to doing so and with the express business model of charging for that work chose to do so, and that it could never be done for free, when this is demonstrably wrong.
Valve are already working on improving OGL rendering.
Intel are already working with them on it.
These are things that are already happening.
You also keep asserting that learning how to implement a new API is such a huge task that nobody could ever do it, but developers do it all the time.
Every game that uses middleware (which is every AAA title out there) has to learn new APIs.
Adding Euphoria to a title instead of Havok? New API.
Adding Twitter / Facebook functionality? New API.
Developing for a new console? New APIs.
Integrating Steamworks? New API.
You also make it sound like changing to using an OGL renderer core instead of DX would break every pipeline out there, when it does nothing of the sort.
If you're modelling, if you're animating, if you're scripting, if you're building levels, if you're designing audio, if you're creating AI, you're using the same damn tools you already use. What the compiled package uses as its includes doesn't matter.
Would it be trivial to recompile to use a different graphics API? No.
Would it be unfeasible to recompile to use a different graphics API? No.
Do developers already have forked engine branches and builds for different APIs?
Yes, they demonstrably do even if you've never actually stepped foot in a development studio, because the only platform that only uses DirectX is the 360.
I was talking about needing to charge to maintain a
fork of OpenGL, not OpenGL itself. It's totally possible to just use OpenGL, but in the other topics people were specifically talking about a
new renderer.
You say I'm asserting that "learning how to implement a new API is such a huge task." No, it's not.
Implementing a new API is such a huge task. It's not like the programmers learn how to use OpenGL and BOOM IT'S DONE. It's thousands of hours to write a rendering engine, and to port anything from DirectX 11.1 to OpenGL 4.3 would require a
major rewrite. It would take a restructuring of a lot of the engine. It's not on the scale of thousands of hours, but it's a solid chunk of time and money that just plain isn't worth it. It's not just "compiling with a different renderer" like you're insinuating. If it was so easy to ship with OpenGL,
people would do it.
Except you're ignoring iOS, OSX and Android, which are all built using a *nix kernel.
You might think Windows 8 is going to tear shit up in the Tablet and Phone market, but right now the majority of customers in those markets are very clearly saying they don't give a fuck about 'brand loyalty' for Windows, they just want something that works.
Why are those markets important? Because those markets didn't start out with a Microsoft monopoly.
In the tablet and Phone space, 'the public' seem absolutely fine with Linux. So why is Linux automatically impossible even in concept for mass market usage, when it's already there?
A SteamOS as hypothesised in the OP would just be a computer that runs Steam.
It would boot into Steam, it would be big picture mode, it would run games in your library, it would have chat / webkit based browsing / facebook posting and youtube uploading.
It would just cost nothing and run games faster without any hardware upgrades.
Are gamers going to go "FUCK THAT NOISE I LOVE WINDOWS" if that was the proposition offered to them? A proposition offered for free to boot?
You say yes. I say no.
I'd also say you must have never actually spoken to many people who work in an office in your life if you think "the public loves windows" and the only complaining about it is on "the internet".
I'm ignoring iOS, OSX, and Android because they're against the spirit of nix. Nobody cares that they're nix, and nobody is jumping on the nix bandwagon because of them. They're locked down, proprietary operating systems that serve a purpose directly contradictory to the ideals of the GPL.
I think Windows 8 will flounder in the tablet and phone space until Microsoft rallies up their support for parallelism between devices. That's a long ways off, and anyone who thinks they can make a prediction that far ahead is just kidding themselves.
Once again, the public is fine with them in the tablet and phone space because they're lightweight, easy to use, locked down (read hard-to-break) interfaces. They're not using their tablets and phones to do most of their work, they're just using them as a connection to social networking and texting. If they had it on their desktop, they would hate it. Or are you saying you LIKE Metro, now?
Are gamers going to go "FUCK THAT NOISE I LOVE WINDOWS"? No, that would be stupid. It's not like they drink Windows' kool-aid, they'll just make a logical decision. They'll look at SteamOS, look at all the trouble of partitioning, installing a bootloader, dealing with hardware issues (because no matter how much you praise your package manager, hardware never just works in Linux), and dual-booting, and they'll give it a pass. Yes, they'll give it a pass "
for free", because it still comes with major, major inconvenience.
And yes, I've never talked to anyone in an office. Like none of those 21,000 employees in my office. I've never talked to them. None of them
in the software development division that I work in. I don't talk to those people.
Everyone there prefers Unix for development. It's easier to develop in. We work in embedded systems. It's reasonable. However, other than the few who follow the Church of Linux Christ, they mostly all use Windows as their primary operating system at home. Why? Because it's familiar, it's convenient, and it works. It's the same goddamn reason the rest of the world uses Windows. In fact, the developers use Windows on their workstations, and use Visual Studio whenever possible.
Honestly, it's tiring how many people preach the glory of Linux. It's not easy to use. Get over it. You
know that it takes learning to use. And it doesn't just take
some learning, it takes a
shitton of learning. Linux is for the experienced. That's how it is.
This is complete insanity. Hardware support is Windows' 100% total knockout weakness compared to Linux. You can do NOTHING without getting some random EXE from the internet and double-clicking it with your local admin user account. And every hardware vendor has their own installer methology that vomits all over your drive, their own control interfaces, their own taskbar icons, their own idiosyncrasies. I can't recount the tales of suffering I had to endure to get trivial shit like SATA controllers, sound, USB WLAN sticks, or indeed just plain ethernet cards to work on Windows machines.
All that shit just works, out of the box, hands-off, the moment you boot a recent (X|K|)Ubuntu LiveCD. Plus it's configured always in the same way, no matter who manufactured the chips or had them soldered on a board in China and put them in their own ugly boxes.
OTOH I can't even plug a USB keyboard into a running Windows 7 machine without it informing me that it's "Installing drivers", whatever the hell that means. Or use my USB stick plugged into the USB hub (hub works; stick works; just not in combination). Or try moving a harddrive to a different SATA controller, or *gasp* turn off EHCI emulation in the BIOS after Windows has been installed. Do tell me how that goes.
Now of course you mean graphics card drivers with 3D acceleration. They're in the Ubuntu repositories for Nvidia, Ati and Intel users, and pulled in by default. Which means they're already inherently easier to install and easier to keep current than whatever process you go through in Windows.
Maybe you wouldn't have USB issues if you didn't fuck with EHCI emulation. Just a guess.
And you know that it's complete horseshit that Linux works out of the box. That might be true for manufactured PCs, but it's definitely not true for piecewise PCs, you know, the ones PC gamers have.