Steam goes Linux » Forum Post by MegaVolt

Boys, on both of you need to read the article at :

http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199201179

Ok, it is a old article but it is enough realistic... write by a Vista fan... but since 2007, a few few have change...

- Page 3... problem with HP Laserjet 1000 with Linux... so problem don't exist anymore unless your have material like these winmodems... they are not standalone hardware but a mix of hardware and windows software... no, a lot of driver for linux are provided by the fabricant... in the case of the HP Laserjet 1000, it can be found at clickhere. If have myself a Hp Color Laserjet CM1015 MFP who work in black/white only with the default Linux driver but work perfectly with the HP linux driver... let say that both system are equal now... maybe not really... Vista don't allow the use of non certified drivers... so, if you have old material who are not more supported, you need buy new one...

- Page 5 : search... vista win... i cannot comment for Ubuntu since i use Kubuntu... Search work very good within Konqueror... normally, file brower is dolphin, it look more like the Vista thing but i don't like it... i am always using a old KDE serie 3... KDE4 is a wonder but it don't accept some of my gadget that i cannot more miss... Let say that today, both are equal...

Conclusion of the article show that both OS are equal in quality... but in some way different... but this was in 2007... Kubuntu have a 6 month release cycle, adding new features each times... recently, it was the big jump to KDE4...

As for today, i can say that Kubuntu is a little better that Vista... but i think that it will change soon, when Windows 7 will be released... sure, that again, they will be almost equal... only the high release cycle of linux version give them a little advantage...

More interesting, people like me who have use Windows and Linux from the first version can confirm that with the year, both system seem to converge to the same goal, confort for the user... slowly, GUI become almost identical quad functionality... only internal engine work in different way but give a almost identical result...

I think that these article embrace a lot of subject who have appear here... and it show that both OS are a good choice...

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EDITED : double post

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Quoting Thoumsin,

reply 1

I think that these article embrace a lot of subject who have appear here... and it show that both OS are a good choice...

And that both OSes can be a hugely crappy choice too, depending on what it is you want from it.

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And that both OSes can be a hugely crappy choice too, depending on what it is you want from it

That can be said for any OS. Which is why I say that subjective criticisms don't add much. I like Red, you like Blue, he likes Green. So what.

The point of this thread was basically to show that there is a viable gaming market for GNU/Linux and we've gone way off topic by now

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DirectX deals with so much more than OpenGL. As a professional development tool, I can't comment. However for games, DirectX does 3d, but also sound, input, and similar. Microsoft is also very supportive of prospective developers. Most importantly, since so much of the userbase runs Windows, there's little benefit to a Mac/Linux port.

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Quoting DeadMG,

reply 5

DirectX deals with so much more than OpenGL. As a professional development tool, I can't comment. However for games, DirectX does 3d, but also sound, input, and similar.

It is a mistake that Windows OpenGL programs do not use DirectX. A very common way to get an OpenGL surface under Windows is a DirectDraw surface. You can swap Direct3D for OpenGL without loosing the rest of DirectX.

On the other hand, you may want to get an OpenGL surface from SDL and use its input & sound facilities, or perhaps use OpenAL for sound. If you do that, you can support Windows & Linux with exactly the same code.

You don't need to. If you want to use OpenGL, DirectSound & DirectInput, nothing stops you.

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Have you asked them if they think it's simple? Have you asked them why they think it's more simple and/or complex? Could you be more specific as to you you mean by "harder to use?" How do you use your computer? What types of usage patterns do you see in other people as they use their computers?

Yes, I did. Take a look at the screenshots below. This is a perfect example of Linux being very to easy where Windows is only mediocre. They show some very typical UI concerns, which are typyical for the entire Windows/Linux UI experience.

So, basically, I open a browser, a PDF file, and something to do some burning.

As you can notice, all Windows programs use a different skin.UI and their interfaces are for to clean. Users need to learn what the icons do for each of the different programs. A typical Microsoft habbit is to make things easier than they are. People want to burn files on the CD. Only problem, you cannot find files in the WMP UI to burn. The K3B not only displays a very intuitive drag & drop interface, it also display it exactly the same way as the Konqueror file manager does (not shown here). This makes it very easy for people to get going with burning CD's.

Note the thumbnails in KPDF. This is quickly noticed by Linux newcomers as something they did not have under Windows. Linux quickly gains credit amongst new users as soon as they start to discover these things. After a while they may even start "hating" the Acrobat Reader, not only because they miss the thumbnails, but also a typical criticism is that Acroread is much slower than KPDF. And when they discover that many programs can also create PDF's.....

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Businesses and people are often conservative by nature - they generally abhor change. Doesn't mean the interface of Office 2007 is any worse - just means it's different enough that the business didn't like the idea of spending a lot of time re-training its workers.

No, the business is a bit unconventional in that it believes it should not interfere how users do their work. The users should run on their computers what they like makes them the most productive. This differs per user. If a user can make great things in program A, it is a bad idea to force him to use program B. Popular choices in our office are SuSE and Ubuntu, but a few people prefer Windows. If people think MS Office makes them more productive than OpenOffice they are allowed to so. However, at a certain point people requesting MS Office were getting Office 2008 CD's and didn't like that program.

One thing new people in our office quickly notice is that they are kept responsible for keeping their own computer working and virus free. If they can't do that, they are quickly given a SuSE CD or Ubuntu CD in their hands.

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CobraA1

Join Date 09/2006

+26

Yes, I did. Take a look at the screenshots below.

Great screenshots!

Items circled in IE: 9
Items circled in KPDF: 11
Items circled in Konquerer: 16. I'm noticing a trend.
That's not the default UI for IE7 or IE8. In fact, it doesn't even look like IE7 or IE8.
K3b has black up, back, home, and reload icons, while in Konquerer they are grey/blue.
Adobe reader is not a Microsoft product. Even Linux can't control the UI of all of its applications if the author decides to do something different.
That doesn't look like a recent version of Media Player, and it's not in a recent OS. The latest version of Media Player in Vista looks much more consistent.
I don't read German or whatever that language is, so all of the text on those UIs are incomprehensible to me.

Note the thumbnails in KPDF.

Note the thumbnails in Adobe Reader.

And when they discover that many programs can also create PDF's.....

Like Word?

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Great screenshots!

* Items circled in IE: 9
* Items circled in KPDF: 11
* Items circled in Konquerer: 16. I'm noticing a trend.

Oh yeah Mr. Fanboy. Shall I circle the full IE UI?

You might have guessed that in IE I have only circled the useless cluttered items. Now please recount with the full number of items in the GUI and we talk again.

I did interpret the question as a serious question why users may find Linux not harder to use than Windows. I did real work work to show you why users may find Linux not harder to use, if all you can respond is some trolling we'd better stop anyway. Any child can see the issue from those shots.

* That's not the default UI for IE7 or IE8. In fact, it doesn't even look like IE7 or IE8.

The screenshot was taken from a Windows 2003 Server during a remote desktop connection and it's the default IE UI. Not that it matters, because the IE UI, by modern standards, is crap in any version. By the way, both the Linux and Windows GUI had a few minor settings changed to my preferences.

I don't read German or whatever that language is, so all of the text on those UIs are incomprehensible to me.

Rule 1 with dealing with people that talk some large language as mother tongue: Don't make their lack of language skills your problem.

K3b has black up, back, home, and reload icons, while in Konquerer they are grey/blue.

You noticed well. Don't know why they did decide to do so, perhaps because it's not a toolbar.

Note the thumbnails in Adobe Reader.

Point taken.

Like Word?

Konqueror, Gwenview, Scribus, you name it...

(By the way, there is no way to tell the user he has to use the Word 2008 he hates so much once he knows he has something better.)

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CobraA1

Join Date 09/2006

+26

The screenshot was taken from a Windows 2003 Server during a remote desktop connection and it's the default IE UI.

Likely IE6 or earlier, then. Back when the browser wars was all about adding more features and they weren't particularly concerned with simplicity of the interface.

Frankly, IE6 was a joke. The joke that beat Netscape, but still a joke.

IE 7+ is greatly simplified. It has about the same number of items as Konquerer.

By the way, there is no way to tell the user he has to use the Word 2008 he hates so much once he knows he has something better.

2007, I think you mean. So I guess the question is - how is "better" being defined in this context, and what is it being compared to?

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Quoting DeadMG,

reply 5

DirectX deals with so much more than OpenGL. As a professional development tool, I can't comment. However for games, DirectX does 3d, but also sound, input, and similar. Microsoft is also very supportive of prospective developers. Most importantly, since so much of the userbase runs Windows, there's little benefit to a Mac/Linux port.

Not fully true... let see about dx10...

Direct input is deprecated, use now wm input ( window message processing for keyboard and mouse input. )

Direct Sound is deprecated, use now XACT, a Vista audia stack render sound in software on the cpu... no more hardware acceleration and only 48 khz... people with expensive sound card at 96 khz drop to 48 khz on dx10... EAX 3d sound from sound blaster is rendered by CPU and not more by the hardware on the sound card...

Direct play is deprecated

About Microsoft being supportive... they apply the EEE tactic... Embrace, extend and extinguish... Embrace: Announce support for an open standard. Extend: Start adding proprietary extensions to the standard on the excuse that they "add value". Extinguish: Increase use of proprietary extensions to the extent that it becomes incompatible with the open standard. This can cause the open standard to die. This will only work if the firm is dominant enough to push out the open standard through its control of things such as operating systems, server products, and developers'' tools. Microsoft has been excused of using this tactic on HTML, Java, Kerberos, TCP/IP, Fahrenheit ( a unified 3D API http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_graphics_API

Yep, without the EEE tactic of Microsoft, now, we will have a universal 3D API...

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Quoting Thoumsin,

reply 12

Not fully true... let see about dx10...

Direct input is deprecated, use now wm input ( window message processing for keyboard and mouse input. )

Direct Sound is deprecated

That only leaves

DirectDraw, Direct3D, DirectMusic and DirectSetup then... And the upcoming Direct2D and DirectWrite.

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Quoting DeadMG,

reply 5

DirectX deals with so much more than OpenGL. As a professional development tool, I can't comment. However for games, DirectX does 3d, but also sound, input, and similar. Microsoft is also very supportive of prospective developers. Most importantly, since so much of the userbase runs Windows, there's little benefit to a Mac/Linux port.

That's why I mentioned SDL before. Here the link: http://www.libsdl.org/

It deals with everything DirectX does - except for graphics (which OpenGL manages). The combination OpenGL + SDL is just as powerful as DirectX and works on any system.

Yes, Microsoft is "supportive". It wants to chain people to its own products of cause. This is something OpenGL and SDL can not offer. I at least prefer my freedom and wouldn't want to be tied to any one other company with all my products.

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Quoting MegaVolt,

reply 14

I at least prefer my freedom and wouldn't want to be tied to any one other company with all my products.

All windows software is not made by microsoft, so there's no risk of that happening even if running windows.

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Quoting mickeko,

reply 15

Quoting MegaVolt,
reply 14

I at least prefer my freedom and wouldn't want to be tied to any one other company with all my products.

All windows software is not made by microsoft, so there's no risk of that happening even if running windows.

I meant it from the point of view of the software developer.

If your whole business model evolves around making stuff for Windows then you will for sure have a major problem if for any reason the Windows market share drops significantly. Which will probably not happen in the next 2 years but which is very possible (I'd say even very probable) within the next 5 or 10 years.

StarDock can obviously not offer the desktop enhancments for Linux since Linux has it's own awesome desktop enhancments that are completely free. The games however are very, very easy to develop for multiple systems (as I mentioned, the combination of OpenGL and SDL is incredibly strong and can replace DirectX with ease). It would be a good safety net to have at least those products that are capable of being platform independant utility that capability. And, as mentiond a few times already, it would certainly create tons and tons of voluntary "viral marketing" because Linux users are very vocal about who they like (and who they don't like ... there is a reason why Microsofts image is very, very bad in the nerd community).

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If your whole business model evolves around making stuff for Windows then you will for sure have a major problem if for any reason the Windows market share drops significantly. Which will probably not happen in the next 2 years but which is very possible (I'd say even very probable) within the next 5 or 10 years.

This a serious risk. Linux is a disruptive technology, what may work on Windows to make money may not work on Linux. To make money on Linux, one needs to have the right product. For an application developer this is much more serious than for a game developer, since a game developer knows a port of his game will make the game enjoyable on the platform. An application developer has no guarantee that an application for which is a demand on Windows, sees the same demand on Linux, because the features people are looking for are so different.

Yet Linux is a 10 digit $$ market. It's not the future, people are making stacks of money with it today. Anyone in the software industry taking himself serious looks closely how he can get a share of this.

Now if Windows goes down, many companies that do not know the Linux market, will go down with it. Luckily for them, I don't expect Windows to go down anytime soon. However, a significant decrease in market share is not only realistic, it can to a certain extent be considered expected, as nobody is expecting any stop in the slow but steady decrease of the Windows market share. A significant drop in the Windows market share can be a serious dent in the health of any business that only knows how to make money on Windows.

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Now what is this about Windows losing market share in the years to come? Windows 7 is going to be increasing their market share, not decreasing it. Windows 7 is going to rule! Why Steam wants to support Linux with Windows 7 coming out I am not sure unless they are thinking of supporting it with dedicated Linux hardware and a distro to go with it down the road.

I am not anti Linux. I was working with AT&T Unix back in 1984, then later got on the Linux bandwagon with Red Hat. Today Ubuntu, hey it is excellent. So I do not dislike Linux, in fact I like it a lot. I just don't want to game on it. Linux is a game in itself!

Then too, there is the matter of genius. Microsoft embodies the genius of Bill Gates. Linus Torvalds ... well ... he's from Finland (one of them little foreign countries overseas) so what can you expect?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1136463/Theres-reason-poor-people-malaria-The-moment-Bill-Gates-released-jar-mosquitoes-packed-conference.html

is the latest example of the genius of Bill Gates. Could Torvalds have thought of something like this. Clearly not.

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Windows loosing market share in the past years.

What makes you believe 2009 will be different? It's recession, good times for Linux. We'll go below 85% for sure this year.

And talking about Windows 2007 taking over, here is the big shock: people get just as excited with KDE 4.

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Well, Linux market share doubling in 2 years isn't that impressive if you see the increase from 0.5% to 1% The MS loss is mainly caused by the success of Apple.
Since Mac OS uses a BSD core, having Linux compartibility also means basically free mac compartibility. And that is quite a huge part of the market.

In addition to that I doubt the numbers in that graph. How were they obtained? It looks like that site averages hits on web pages and checks the browser identification for the operating system. If this method is indeed used (can anybody confirm?) it has two major problems: First it includes all business PCs which usually run Windows + Internet Explorer. Those are completely irrelevant for the PC gaming market. So the Linux market share for home PCs would be significantly higher then the 1% shown there. Second the web pages scanned for hits influence the result a lot. Take slashdot vs kde.org vs microsoft.com. OS market share by browser identification would vary a lot between these sites and building an average value that comes close to reality is very hard.

About Windows 7: I don't really think that it will increase the Windows market share. Why should it? Especially with KDE 4.2 out (the final and usable version) Linux can hardly be beaten in terms of eye candy and it is very intuitive to use. Windows 7 may be able to replace XP (which Vista was not able to do) but that's about it.
Actually Windows 7 is not really a new OS. It is basically a Vista Service Pack, marketed as new OS since Vista failed completely and they want to get rid of the bad name.

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I think the numbers definately include business PC's running Linux, it's not that easy to separate professional and home use of PC's. I think the numbers can be considered a reasonable approximation for the market share, anything else is pure guesswork.

What can be concluded, regardless of the error margin, is that Windows loosing several % points a years. It's way too early to call Windows a sinking ship, but any software vendor that is Windows only should think how it can best react to a shrinking market.

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To be honest it's simple bet hedging. Look at it this way, for years people thought Apple had a copy of OS X running on Intel hardware 'just in case'. Apple denied it like crazy! Well, PPC... old and busted. X86 new hotness, with a development speed which means, yeah, that X86 version of Darwin did exist.

So it makes sense that there would be chunks of code floating around an office somewhere for Steam/Source to mate with Linux and OS X. I wouldn't be surprised if similar chunks of code for Impulse were floating around Stardock. Of course just because a development version of <software> has hooks for <not it's normal OS> doesn't mean their ever going to be used in the wild.

Of course that'll be true right up until the point <insert OS people have discovered it's got hooks for> takes off and grabs enough market share for it to be commercially viable to polish it off and send it out in to the wild. Although Steam/Impulse are just content delivery mechanisms, you'd need actual content to deliver.

A Linux version of Half Life 2? Unlikley. "Half-Life 3" having DX/OGL/SDL swapable wrappers? Possibly, maybe, if market share increases.

Keep in mind, the Linux community tends to be "all mouth and no trousers", we want the moon on a stick and when someone gives it to us we complain it's not quite the nicest stick around then put the boot in (see EVE:Online cancelling Linux support).

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Quoting Sarah Hayes,

reply 22

Keep in mind, the Linux community tends to be "all mouth and no trousers", we want the moon on a stick and when someone gives it to us we complain it's not quite the nicest stick around then put the boot in (see EVE:Online cancelling Linux support).

That's kind of a bad example. The Eve Online Linux client totally sucked. It was more a turd on a stick and surprisingly nobody liked it. The Windows client worked perfectly with Wine and Linux, the official Linux client didn't even support the premium content. So in the end on Linux people used the Windows client with Wine instead of the Linux one because their Linux client was really crappy.
A bad piece of software did not do well on Linux. Yes, that's the way it should be. But it says absolutely nothing about Linux as gaming platform.
This reminds me a little bit of the first PCs that were shipped with Linux. Vendors were not sure if it will sell well. So they put it on some crappy PC with crappy hardware that didn't even cost less then the Windows alternative and was in no way a good offer, no matter with what software it shipped. And obviously nobody bought that PC. And then they said: "Hey, look here, nobody is buying the Linux PC. Obviously nobody wants Linux on their PCs!".
Yes, nobody wanted the crappy Eve client. Not because nobody wants to play on Linux but simply because it was crappy.

Look at id Software for example. They produce working Linux clients for their games. And they are successful! Yes, they are only barely worth the money put into them, but they manage to (barely) pull it off. Direct Linux-sales make the profit so the Linux client is worth it. Not included are the countless people who buy the "normal" shelf version and play it with the Linux client (which can be downloaded for free) and not included is the positive effect the existence of the Linux client has on marketing (word of mouth in the Linux community influencing Windows players to buy the game).

So if it works for id Software, if they are able to get the cash needed for the Linux client from additional sales and then are able to get the other benefits (marketing etc) for free, why shouldn't it work for everybody else? All it takes is OGL/SDL support right from the start.

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The Eve Online Linux client totally sucked.

Well, if I read the stories on the topic, you should say "client", because the Linux "client" was a simply recompile of the Windows version against Transgaming's Cedega, so the only difference between running the "Linux" version and the Windows version under Cedega, was that the exe was in ELF rather than PE-COFF format. In addition, they simply did disable all features that caused problems with Cedega.

Cedega is a fork of Wine from several years back. Players did discover the real Wine ran Eve Online better than the Linux "client" and started using Wine to run the Windows client.

Still, those users didn't do Linux a favour, because a user running the the Windows client under Wine did count as a Windows user, and thus did help the decision to discontinue Linux support. From now on, people coding Eve Online will no longer need to check wether Cedega/Wine can run their code, within time the game may no longer be playable under Wine.

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Quoting Zoomba,

reply 14

<snip>
And honestly, I feel one of the single largest barriers to getting games onto Linux is support. Oh my lord supporting software on Linux is a logistical nightmare. There is no single base configuration you can count on. <snip>

I'd suggest that the type of person flirting with Ubutu might likely be a gamer. Maybe because I am a gamer and have flirted with Ubuntu a few times over the years.

I wouldn't think it horrible if a game were developed and tested under Ubuntu. It's a popular distro, and it is well-documented and supported.

Targeting a first attempt at a Linux game to an Ubuntu audience would be an interesting project. Probably interesting enough for a fair amount of publicity. That might help rationalize a portion of the costs - if you consider such a project to be (at least in part) a marketing or PR endeavor. Don't know if it's worth taking heat from Microsoft and risking the relationship between MS and Stardock though. I'd root for Stardock, fwiw.

P.S. Wanted to add... If Ubuntu has too many vowels, or is otherwise not desirable as a gaming platform, try Mac OSX. The hardware is sweet, the OS is better than most default linux distro configurations (and is obviously based on BSD), and the development tools, API support and documentation are all in place. It's got a fair amount of market penetration, and (imo) a game suitable for play on a Mac desktop (and especially, a laptop, such as a turn-based strat game or something) would be an exciting prospect.

Either way, I have XP, Vista, Windows 7, OSX, Ubuntu and OpenSolaris running at the moment. Except for XP, they all currently suck for gaming options. I wouldn't mind playing a game under something other than XP.

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