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| [Oct 29, 2012, 8:11 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments |
Ubuntu Vibes quotes (or paraphrases) Valve's Drew Bliss speaking at a Ubuntu Developer Summit in Denmark praising Linux as being amore viable gaming platform that Microsoft's just-released Windows 8. They summarize what they learned about Valve's Linux plans going forward in handy bulleted form:
- Steam client is running nicely on Ubuntu and many developers have approached them with good game products.
- Cooperation with Canonical has been good.
- Ubuntu is preferred platform as it has a large user base and good community support with a strong company like Canonical behind it.
- Linux has everything they need: good OpenGL, pulseaudio, OpenAL and input support.
- New Source engine games will be available for Linux.
- No firm time frame for Steam Linux release, but soon.
- Copy protection is up to the game publishers.
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| 47. |
Re: Valve on Linux Plans |
Oct 30, 2012, 16:13 |
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Right but the problems usually begin when a user wants to install "boxed" software. Package managers and whatnot are arcane voodoo to those people, the ones who want to run office, an antivirus application and get lolcat screensavers or whatever. I guess my point is that getting booted to a user friendly desktop is only half the battle. The kind of people who just want to game on Steam aren't necessarily all power users, far from it. I play Counter-Strike and other FPS games quite a bit with public communities, I am amazed most of the people I encounter actually managed to get themselves in game. Hell, back before UPNP and other advances many couldn't.
The PC market has a deceptive amount of casual users and those people need their OS preinstalled, I'm not sure if Linux has made any traction there recently but last I heard things weren't good.
I think it's promising that a large company like Valve is willing to put their weight behind it but there is a lot that needs to be done, the lack of a unifying API like DirectX is particularly troublesome when it comes to games adoption on Linux despite the Win32 emulation advances. I've tried Ubuntu, Mint(Ubuntu), Sabayon(Gentoo) and the Mandrivia forks PCLinuxOS and Mageia 2. All these have a user friendly GUI package manager plus something like Synaptic and finally you have the terminal. Packages are broken down by category and you can search by keyword. When you select a package it automatically downloads and installs the package and any required dependencies. Installed packages are also removed through the Software Manager. I don't really see how it could be made any easier.
Mint's isn't the prettiest but it works the same as the rest.
[IMG]http://thumbnails105.imagebam.com/21777/e4530c217763882.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://thumbnails102.imagebam.com/21777/d75724217763885.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://thumbnails101.imagebam.com/21777/3c18fc217763890.jpg[/IMG]
The distros coming out now intended for the desktop come with a good selection of software. Web browser, email client, Libre or Open Office, movie player, music player, CD burner, etc... some will include one of each type others install multiple programs. What's included should be listed on the distro's website.
OpenGL, Pulse Audio, OpenAL. I'm far from an expert but isn't the majority of the hardware support built into the Linux kernal? |
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