15 ms·

Valve is paying open-source developers to work on Proton, Mesa, and more

630 points by raybb 4y ago

divs1210 4y ago
One of the reasons I love Valve.
raybb 4y ago
Direct link to the interview where this was said: https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview-late-2022 https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview...
cowmix 4y ago
I bought Steam games and a Steam Deck just to support Valve... and I'm not really a gamer. However, the Deck has turned out to be a pretty good computing device.
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  I was thinking of doing this - how do you like it? How's coding on it?
  - cowmix 4y ago
    I keep it docked (mostly) and it works great. My ONLY beef is that the AMD drivers do not work 100% with Blender so you don't get the accelerated Cycles rendering. Otherwise, it is great.
    - slavik81 4y ago
      That's interesting. I'm no expert on the Steam Deck, but I would have expected it to work. Do you have any more details about the problem?
      - cowmix 4y ago
        Valve is using the 'wrong' AMD gpu driver.
        slavik81 4y ago
        That's not enough information for me to understand what's wrong, but I suppose maybe I should find a Steam Deck and try things out myself. If you want to follow up privately, my email is in my profile.
        smoldesu 4y ago
        I believe they're misrepresenting the issue. Blender's Flatpak is possibly broken, but I'd imagine the Steam Runtime version works without-flaw.
        freedomben 4y ago
        AMD does have two different drivers (which I find maddening). I bought a monstrous GPU to use for hashcat, but the open source/built-in drivers don't support the openCL that hashcat (and crypto mining) need. The Pro driver doesn't get updated fast enough to work on Fedora, which is also a travesty for me. I really wish that weren't the case. I can't speak for steam deck though, just my experience on a self build.
        versteegen 4y ago
        Have you heard about just-released Mesa 22.3 which now has rusticl for modern OpenCL support? Previously Mesa used Clover for OpenCL, which was stuck somewhere just below OpenCL 1.2 (but only reports OpenCL 1.1 support).
        COGlory 4y ago
        There are two drivers for AMD on Linux. There's the open source driver, Mesa, and there's the proprietary AMD driver, called AMDGPU. I'm not certain which driver Valve is using on Steam Deck (I've never had to look), but if they're funding Mesa, I'm guessing they're using Mesa. Unfortunately, some of AMD's GP-compute infrastructure is only supported on Linux through the proprietary driver. I believe these are ROCm and HIP. I'm not sure about OpenCL. I'm not 100% sure what Blender uses for AMD acceleration, but if it's ROCm, you'd need the AMDGPU driver instead of Mesa. Could have some of these details wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it. You can, of course, install other OS on the Deck.
  - bsurmanski 4y ago
    Not op, but I bought one. It's essentially a Linux laptop with a control interface built in. For emulators and steam games, it's really nice to have an option to play on the tv (with the dock). I don't see it being an especially nice coding experience; you'd need an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. And without a dock, all it has is a single USBC port. Though it has a full KDE desktop, so it should be feasible.
    - freedomben 4y ago
      yeah without a keyboard it sucks. it's like trying to code via SMS lol. But the dockability makes it pretty damn awesome. you can code in first class style by docking it with a monitor and keyboard, and then when you leave you can take it with you and get a great portable game player or movie watcher or web browser with good battery life. the built in screen is pretty good. I was impressed
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I'm using one from time to time to do some programming on minor projects. Works pretty well, although it's not as fast as the laptop or desktop (obviously) that I have. But it's pretty lightweight and handles games well, so if I go on trips somewhere, sometimes I just bring the Deck + small keyboard to do emergency fixes on, and for that, it works very well.
  - andrewparker 4y ago
    The deck plus the OEM dock with mouse, keyboard and monitor makes for a nice, cheap Linux desktop that you can grab-and-go to play games. The dock is really seamless, always works right away. If you're programming, I wouldn't recommend Deck without the dock.
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    Doable on the device itself (Although I wouldn't bother without at least an external keyboard). Full KDE desktop based on Arch (/ is read-only by default, but this can be disabled) it Really shines when plugged into external monitors/dock. In particular, I have a couple USB-C displays that provide usb-hubs - I plug a single usb-c cable into the top of the thing and have a great little mini-workstation machine. Does 4k displays just fine and is very responsive for the size. It's basically replaced the linux laptop I would drag along on trips. If I need a workstation it suffices, and I can plug it into hotel room tvs really easily to watch whatever I want. Basically - hard to argue with the value proposition given it only costs $500 and I get a great little portable workstation. That fact that it does an excellent job with games is just cream on top.
  - conradev 4y ago
    It's definitely great to support Valve in their efforts, but you all might be interested in GPD's lineup of small computers, because many of them have built-in keyboards: https://gpd.hk/product https://gpd.hk/product
  - hellotomyrars 4y ago
    If you're going to properly sit down with it somewhere it works fine. But you're going to want external keyboard/mouse, and most likely a bigger display. You'll need a hub/dock if you want to plug in more than one USB-C device. Honestly a laptop makes a lot more sense in general for that still. You just pull it out and everything you need is there. But if the versatility of the device is appealing to you then it might make more sense. I have used it for traditional computing with a keyboard/mouse and portable monitor, but it is quite cumbersome to do so. But I value it much more and primarily as a portable games system. As an aside, the trackpads are great and for me the thing that sets it apart from any of the similar systems, but in desktop mode they aren't nearly as good or useful by comparison. Though it might be possible to change the way they work in desktop mode but the basic way it hooks input by default makes them pretty dumb trackpads.
ekianjo 4y ago
That's not news. We have known that for years.
- bdhcuidbebe 4y ago
  News flash. This is not a news site.
  - hacym 4y ago
    Hacker News…
    - texasbigdata 4y ago
      You should check out the economist, you’d be surprised it’s not all economics! Also those gosh darn New York Times newspapers don’t solely focus on NYC. Wtf! Don’t judge a book by the literal interpretation of its title?
      - hacym 4y ago
        Strange, I could have sworn that 99% of the things posted here are news and commentary on news.
        ParetoOptimal 4y ago
        I don't know... i frequently see dang linking to old posts of the "new" repost.
        roflyear 4y ago
        Lol most posts here are certainly not news.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      HN usually suppresses real "news" bc it is often divisive. They are cool with informative stuff like tech blog posts but not "News" as in recent events.
tb_technical 4y ago
And as a result they have an amazing cross platform product
Spivak 4y ago
Proton is way better than it has any right to be and single handedly made Linux a viable gaming platform. The odds of any particular game working on Linux is higher than Mac now.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Well, it's standing on the shoulder of a giant. Wine has been going strong for 29 years now, counting from its initial release. What I really appreciate in Valve's contribution is the integration and UX work they have put in it. It's just a breeze to use Steam and Proton, I can hardly imagine it being even more simple. Which, of course, was not the case with the original Wine, although Winetricks, and other projects like Lutris made it a lot easier.
- djcannabiz 4y ago
  Yeah one of the reasons I decided to take the plunge and install Linux on my macbook is the compatibility with 32 bit games (risk of rain in particular).
  - autotune 4y ago
    As I have a M1 MBP I am probably going to have to have a separate gaming laptop, or possibly Steam Deck in the future, for quite some time.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - httgp 4y ago
      Or AsahiLinux might let you keep using your M1.
    - yurishimo 4y ago
      Work bought me an M1 laptop. I bought a Steam Deck. Paired with my PS5 and Switch, I haven't found a game I _want_ to play that I can't. For AAA titles, I can play them on PS5, indies on the SD, and Zelda on the Switch.
haunter 4y ago
Linus at DebConf 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=yo... >I’m on a record saying, that maybe Valve will actually save the Linux desktop. And it’s actually not because I think games are important! I don't care, I don't play games. I think some people do, so games maybe important. But the really important issue is I guarantee you Valve will not make 15 different binaries. And I also guarantee you that every single desktop distribution will care about Valve binaries. The problem is Valve though build everything statically linked and it creates huge binaries. And that's kind of sad but that's what you have to do right now.
- Linux_Watcher 4y ago
  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that excluding work related stuff gaming is very important to those who own a Windows PC.
- yazzku 4y ago
  "I don't play games, I think some people do." Multi-billion dollar industry raking in higher profits than Hollywood and that at this point is an unregulated online casino for teens. Yeah, some people do...
  - zopa 4y ago
    Well, yeah. His comic timing’s not the best but I think that was meant to be the joke.
    - indigodaddy 4y ago
      Yes, very dry, if not awkward, humor. I actually think Linus is quite funny in most of his interviews.
    - yazzku 4y ago
      Would have never guess it was meant to be a joke.
pjmlp 4y ago
They would do better by sponsoring native GNU/Linux games, or even ports from other POSIX like platforms like Playstation/Android, instead of playing OS/2 with Windows games.
- belval 4y ago
  That's not really true, native Linux games are a much harder sell for publishers because the proportion of users is just too low.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Hence why Valve should make the needful to change that, instead of "emulating" Windows.
    - Ericson2314 4y ago
      Think embrace extend and extinguish...in reverse! 1. Make wine really really good. 2. Start adding Linux-only features. hehehe
      - pjmlp 4y ago
        Those Linux only features don't matter because games are targeting Win32.
        jetbalsa 4y ago
        the DXVK project out of all this has been a godsend for the older DX11, DX9 games on modern hardware, its being used to increase FPS on older titles on windows
        gpderetta 4y ago
        Isn't Intel even shipping DXVK on window for their shiny new GPUs as it is often works better than their DX9 drivers?
Kiro 4y ago
Is Valve the only company in the world that is not universally hated by the HN and reddit crowd?
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  No universal but I'm very much anti valve as they are among the few who continue to do business in Russia.
  - curiousgal 4y ago
    If Russia is where you draw the line boy do I have news for you! If your standards were universal, you wouldn't be doing business with any company at all.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      Especially with entertainment, I haven't understood the anti-Putin sentiment. Is it really in the West's interest to stop exporting soft power there? Sanctions make sense to me, but this particular industry we should make an exception for, I'd say. Authoritarian regimes try to isolate their populace anyways, it'd be a shame to co-opt that.
      - ROTMetro 4y ago
        Yes, let's ensure we continue to give young Russian males an outlet to escape from thinking about the current realities in their country. Steam is providing the modern circus in 'bread and circuses'. If anything, this is the exact soft power we should leverage to highlight to those your angst filled males that their current reality is isolating them. Or, we could just give an opium of the masses to keep them indifferent to reality in their rooms because 'soft power'.
        npteljes 4y ago
        You can be sure that if we don't give them outlets, China will. Do you think nobody would fill the vacuum? If they'd ban every media import, that'd just be an opportunity for the regime to further solidify their own goals. For examples, look at what happened when McDonalds, Coca Cola left the country - they have the same shit, but now without the influence. Whatever there is, there will be abuses of it, so yeah, many would just use the "opium" part of Steam. But there's another aspect of it that would still get imported, and that's any of the narratives that differ from the propaganda they are subjected to. With Steam specifically, they'd be exposed to titles like This War of Mine, and international communities where they'd experience that nobody gives a fuck about them being Russian, or even find it cool, despite the prevalent anti-Western propaganda in their own media. And that all, I think, is worth more than sanctioning it.
moloch-hai 4y ago
Somebody needs to step up to save Clang now that Google has more or less abandoned it.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Google uses Clang for much of its production code and employs people to work on it. I don’t think saying that they’ve abandoned it is accurate.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    I hope you are right.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - stusmall 4y ago
    It's been a (very) long time since I worked in Android OS land but at the time I could see effects of them actively moving projects from GCC to Clang. I always picked up the outsider impression that it was their preferred C++ toolchain. First I've heard of them abandoning it
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      There is a big push for their proprietary language "Carbon". Clang is way behind on implementing most C++20 features.
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        Well, let this be a lesson to anyone who tries competing with a GPL product. Permissive licenses are cool up until the moment a FAANG company embraces your project, extends it and extinguishes it.
      - stusmall 4y ago
leeoniya 4y ago
i'm a big fan of companies paying and/or hiring OSS devs to continue working on OSS code. (100% biased :D)
- npteljes 4y ago
  There's nothing wrong with liking things. Go open source!
butz 4y ago
Thanks to Valve Linux is single OS on my home computer. Most of the games from my medium sized Steam library are working, and few that does not work today, will probably be fixed in the future. Need to mention that I do not play new AAA titles or multiplayer games, but I enjoy older games, and some of those are broken on modern versions of Windows.
- npteljes 4y ago
  I had good luck even with newer titles. Right now I'm playing Red Dead Redemption 2, and it works like a charm, out of the box. Same flow as in Windows, even.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- prettyStandard 4y ago
  I played all of cyberpunk shortly after release on a 3950x and 3060ti on Steam+Proton+Ubuntu with very little problems. It did get very laggy in busy areas on occasion, but that was the exception not the rule. Obviously newer hardware helped, but it seemed Valve hurt the gaming experience less than CD Project Red did! Not really a gamer. Cyberpunk is probably my high water mark at 90 hours. It's so nice to not to have to make major concessions to run Linux. Valve you have earned a customer with me.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    That's really impressive, considering Cyberpunk had so many issues even on officially-supported platforms
    - Sugimot0 4y ago
      Yeah same here, it was sort of satisfying watching all my nvidia/windows buddies whine about bugs while it seemed to run buttery smooth on my amd/linux machine after they all shilled windows/nvidia "ok man good luck gaming on that setup, i hope it works out". It did lol, i gained frames!
capitol_ 4y ago
This is one of the main reason to why I buy all my games on steam.
752963e64 4y ago
freedomben 4y ago
If anyone from Valve is reading this, I'm not a gamer at all, but I bought a (fully loaded) SteamDeck largely to support your efforts, and secondly to have a cool portable computer. It is (in about a week) going to become a game console hooked up to my TV. I could have got an xbox for much less the price, but the openness, power, and linuxyness of the steamdeck was too attractive to pass up :-D Please keep it up! you're the heroes we need in this fight. P.S. I'll be buying games from your store also as my kids are gamers
- martin82 4y ago
  I hope your kids are not expecting high end gaming experiences and are happy with simple indie games (which usually are the better games anyways), because the SteamDeck cannot and never will replace something like an XBox.
  - rimunroe 4y ago
    Eh, for me it’s largely replaced my extremely beefy gaming computer. I use the Steam Deck for so many games, including AAA titles like the Final Fantasy VII remake. It’s a shockingly good little device.
    - rimunroe 4y ago
      This is a small selection of the games I’ve recently played on the Steam Deck and been surprised by how flawlessly they performed and played: - God of War - Elden Ring - Final Fantasy VII Remake - Forza Horizon 5 - Jedi: Fallen Order - Spider-Man Remastered
  - izacus 4y ago
    Steam Deck comfortably runs high end AAA games like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk 2077, in many ways with comparable performance of the base Xbox model. Which makes sense since the hardware is similar. So I have no idea what you're talking about, it can easily replace Xbox.
  - sph 4y ago
camdenlock 4y ago
I continue to be terrified that some day in the future, in a moment of weakness, Valve will allow itself to be swallowed by Microsoft…
- ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
  There's 0 chance of this happening at long as Gabe's around.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    Yeah, problem with that is that Gabe is human and won't live forever. I worry about what will happen to one of the greatest forces in keeping PC gaming not only alive, but relatively open and free from bullshit, when Gabe isn't around.
    - antifa 4y ago
      Strong chance of moving to 100% piracy forever if Gabe, or his replacement, bends the knee.
- Sunspark 4y ago
  Understandable concern, as documented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
- hellotomyrars 4y ago
  I find it pretty unlikely, both because of Gabe, but also Valve prints money and is private. They don't have anything to gain by being bought by microsoft.
emersion 4y ago
I'm one of the developers contracted by Valve to work on gamescope, wlroots, Mesa, the kernel, Wayland, etc. Really happy that my contracted work helps not only SteamOS, but very often the whole ecosystem. Examples include radv/amdgpu fixes, tearing page-flips, a re-usable library to make use of KMS planes, and the list goes on.
- mylons 4y ago
  is it public what they're paying these contractors?
  - vj636 4y ago
    I recently interviewed for one of these open source dev positions (Proton). From what I could gather from my conversations with the hiring manager, its somewhere between 120K to 160K for C Devs.
  - robert_foss 4y ago
    No, but why would it be. I'd expect a competitive pay.
- jeppester 4y ago
  Can I ask how it's decided what you are working on? Given the variety of the projects you've mentioned it could seem that you have some degree of freedom, but I might be mistaken.
  - emersion 4y ago
    Yeah, there is a lot of freedom, it's pretty similar to how an open-source project works. Pierre-Loup indicates what features would be nice to have (in gamescope or other projects), I can pick from that list. Or I can pick my own ideas and work on these. Or I can discuss with the other contractors, come up with an idea and coordinate our work. Sometimes I work on short-term bugfixes, sometimes I work on long-term plumbing efforts.
    - 4y ago
ffhhj 4y ago
GTA5 still crashes on an i7 with IrisXE graphics, latest Ubuntu, and latest Proton or Experimental. Hope they manage to fix it.
robswc 4y ago
Reminds me of that joke where the worlds entire computing system is perched upon a tool by a guy that lives in the middle of Nebraska. Seems the field of people that could get this stuff working (some really awesome hacking) is so small... or rather, breakthroughs come from a few individuals.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

630 points by raybb 4y ago

One of the reasons I love Valve.

Direct link to the interview where this was said: https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview-late-2022 https://www.theverge.com/23499215/valve-steam-deck-interview...

cowmix 4y ago

I bought Steam games and a Steam Deck just to support Valve... and I'm not really a gamer. However, the Deck has turned out to be a pretty good computing device.

yellow_lead 4y ago
I was thinking of doing this - how do you like it? How's coding on it?
- cowmix 4y ago
  I keep it docked (mostly) and it works great. My ONLY beef is that the AMD drivers do not work 100% with Blender so you don't get the accelerated Cycles rendering. Otherwise, it is great.
  - slavik81 4y ago
    That's interesting. I'm no expert on the Steam Deck, but I would have expected it to work. Do you have any more details about the problem?
    - cowmix 4y ago
      Valve is using the 'wrong' AMD gpu driver.
      - slavik81 4y ago
        That's not enough information for me to understand what's wrong, but I suppose maybe I should find a Steam Deck and try things out myself. If you want to follow up privately, my email is in my profile.
        smoldesu 4y ago
        I believe they're misrepresenting the issue. Blender's Flatpak is possibly broken, but I'd imagine the Steam Runtime version works without-flaw.
        freedomben 4y ago
        AMD does have two different drivers (which I find maddening). I bought a monstrous GPU to use for hashcat, but the open source/built-in drivers don't support the openCL that hashcat (and crypto mining) need. The Pro driver doesn't get updated fast enough to work on Fedora, which is also a travesty for me. I really wish that weren't the case. I can't speak for steam deck though, just my experience on a self build.
        versteegen 4y ago
        Have you heard about just-released Mesa 22.3 which now has rusticl for modern OpenCL support? Previously Mesa used Clover for OpenCL, which was stuck somewhere just below OpenCL 1.2 (but only reports OpenCL 1.1 support).
        COGlory 4y ago
        There are two drivers for AMD on Linux. There's the open source driver, Mesa, and there's the proprietary AMD driver, called AMDGPU. I'm not certain which driver Valve is using on Steam Deck (I've never had to look), but if they're funding Mesa, I'm guessing they're using Mesa. Unfortunately, some of AMD's GP-compute infrastructure is only supported on Linux through the proprietary driver. I believe these are ROCm and HIP. I'm not sure about OpenCL. I'm not 100% sure what Blender uses for AMD acceleration, but if it's ROCm, you'd need the AMDGPU driver instead of Mesa. Could have some of these details wrong, but I believe that's the gist of it. You can, of course, install other OS on the Deck.
- bsurmanski 4y ago
  Not op, but I bought one. It's essentially a Linux laptop with a control interface built in. For emulators and steam games, it's really nice to have an option to play on the tv (with the dock). I don't see it being an especially nice coding experience; you'd need an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. And without a dock, all it has is a single USBC port. Though it has a full KDE desktop, so it should be feasible.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    yeah without a keyboard it sucks. it's like trying to code via SMS lol. But the dockability makes it pretty damn awesome. you can code in first class style by docking it with a monitor and keyboard, and then when you leave you can take it with you and get a great portable game player or movie watcher or web browser with good battery life. the built in screen is pretty good. I was impressed
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm using one from time to time to do some programming on minor projects. Works pretty well, although it's not as fast as the laptop or desktop (obviously) that I have. But it's pretty lightweight and handles games well, so if I go on trips somewhere, sometimes I just bring the Deck + small keyboard to do emergency fixes on, and for that, it works very well.
- andrewparker 4y ago
  The deck plus the OEM dock with mouse, keyboard and monitor makes for a nice, cheap Linux desktop that you can grab-and-go to play games. The dock is really seamless, always works right away. If you're programming, I wouldn't recommend Deck without the dock.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  Doable on the device itself (Although I wouldn't bother without at least an external keyboard). Full KDE desktop based on Arch (/ is read-only by default, but this can be disabled) it Really shines when plugged into external monitors/dock. In particular, I have a couple USB-C displays that provide usb-hubs - I plug a single usb-c cable into the top of the thing and have a great little mini-workstation machine. Does 4k displays just fine and is very responsive for the size. It's basically replaced the linux laptop I would drag along on trips. If I need a workstation it suffices, and I can plug it into hotel room tvs really easily to watch whatever I want. Basically - hard to argue with the value proposition given it only costs $500 and I get a great little portable workstation. That fact that it does an excellent job with games is just cream on top.
- conradev 4y ago
  It's definitely great to support Valve in their efforts, but you all might be interested in GPD's lineup of small computers, because many of them have built-in keyboards: https://gpd.hk/product https://gpd.hk/product
- hellotomyrars 4y ago
  If you're going to properly sit down with it somewhere it works fine. But you're going to want external keyboard/mouse, and most likely a bigger display. You'll need a hub/dock if you want to plug in more than one USB-C device. Honestly a laptop makes a lot more sense in general for that still. You just pull it out and everything you need is there. But if the versatility of the device is appealing to you then it might make more sense. I have used it for traditional computing with a keyboard/mouse and portable monitor, but it is quite cumbersome to do so. But I value it much more and primarily as a portable games system. As an aside, the trackpads are great and for me the thing that sets it apart from any of the similar systems, but in desktop mode they aren't nearly as good or useful by comparison. Though it might be possible to change the way they work in desktop mode but the basic way it hooks input by default makes them pretty dumb trackpads.

ekianjo 4y ago

That's not news. We have known that for years.

bdhcuidbebe 4y ago
News flash. This is not a news site.
- hacym 4y ago
  Hacker News…
  - texasbigdata 4y ago
    You should check out the economist, you’d be surprised it’s not all economics! Also those gosh darn New York Times newspapers don’t solely focus on NYC. Wtf! Don’t judge a book by the literal interpretation of its title?
    - hacym 4y ago
      Strange, I could have sworn that 99% of the things posted here are news and commentary on news.
      - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
        I don't know... i frequently see dang linking to old posts of the "new" repost.
      - roflyear 4y ago
        Lol most posts here are certainly not news.
  - roflyear 4y ago
    HN usually suppresses real "news" bc it is often divisive. They are cool with informative stuff like tech blog posts but not "News" as in recent events.

tb_technical 4y ago

And as a result they have an amazing cross platform product

Spivak 4y ago

Proton is way better than it has any right to be and single handedly made Linux a viable gaming platform. The odds of any particular game working on Linux is higher than Mac now.

npteljes 4y ago
Well, it's standing on the shoulder of a giant. Wine has been going strong for 29 years now, counting from its initial release. What I really appreciate in Valve's contribution is the integration and UX work they have put in it. It's just a breeze to use Steam and Proton, I can hardly imagine it being even more simple. Which, of course, was not the case with the original Wine, although Winetricks, and other projects like Lutris made it a lot easier.
djcannabiz 4y ago
Yeah one of the reasons I decided to take the plunge and install Linux on my macbook is the compatibility with 32 bit games (risk of rain in particular).
- autotune 4y ago
  As I have a M1 MBP I am probably going to have to have a separate gaming laptop, or possibly Steam Deck in the future, for quite some time.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - httgp 4y ago
    Or AsahiLinux might let you keep using your M1.
  - yurishimo 4y ago
    Work bought me an M1 laptop. I bought a Steam Deck. Paired with my PS5 and Switch, I haven't found a game I _want_ to play that I can't. For AAA titles, I can play them on PS5, indies on the SD, and Zelda on the Switch.

haunter 4y ago

Linus at DebConf 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=310&v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc&feature=yo... >I’m on a record saying, that maybe Valve will actually save the Linux desktop. And it’s actually not because I think games are important! I don't care, I don't play games. I think some people do, so games maybe important. But the really important issue is I guarantee you Valve will not make 15 different binaries. And I also guarantee you that every single desktop distribution will care about Valve binaries. The problem is Valve though build everything statically linked and it creates huge binaries. And that's kind of sad but that's what you have to do right now.

Linux_Watcher 4y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that excluding work related stuff gaming is very important to those who own a Windows PC.
yazzku 4y ago
"I don't play games, I think some people do." Multi-billion dollar industry raking in higher profits than Hollywood and that at this point is an unregulated online casino for teens. Yeah, some people do...
- zopa 4y ago
  Well, yeah. His comic timing’s not the best but I think that was meant to be the joke.
  - indigodaddy 4y ago
    Yes, very dry, if not awkward, humor. I actually think Linus is quite funny in most of his interviews.
  - yazzku 4y ago
    Would have never guess it was meant to be a joke.

pjmlp 4y ago

They would do better by sponsoring native GNU/Linux games, or even ports from other POSIX like platforms like Playstation/Android, instead of playing OS/2 with Windows games.

belval 4y ago
That's not really true, native Linux games are a much harder sell for publishers because the proportion of users is just too low.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Hence why Valve should make the needful to change that, instead of "emulating" Windows.
  - Ericson2314 4y ago
    Think embrace extend and extinguish...in reverse! 1. Make wine really really good. 2. Start adding Linux-only features. hehehe
    - pjmlp 4y ago
      Those Linux only features don't matter because games are targeting Win32.
      - jetbalsa 4y ago
        the DXVK project out of all this has been a godsend for the older DX11, DX9 games on modern hardware, its being used to increase FPS on older titles on windows
        gpderetta 4y ago
        Isn't Intel even shipping DXVK on window for their shiny new GPUs as it is often works better than their DX9 drivers?

Kiro 4y ago

Is Valve the only company in the world that is not universally hated by the HN and reddit crowd?

ROTMetro 4y ago
No universal but I'm very much anti valve as they are among the few who continue to do business in Russia.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  If Russia is where you draw the line boy do I have news for you! If your standards were universal, you wouldn't be doing business with any company at all.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    Especially with entertainment, I haven't understood the anti-Putin sentiment. Is it really in the West's interest to stop exporting soft power there? Sanctions make sense to me, but this particular industry we should make an exception for, I'd say. Authoritarian regimes try to isolate their populace anyways, it'd be a shame to co-opt that.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      Yes, let's ensure we continue to give young Russian males an outlet to escape from thinking about the current realities in their country. Steam is providing the modern circus in 'bread and circuses'. If anything, this is the exact soft power we should leverage to highlight to those your angst filled males that their current reality is isolating them. Or, we could just give an opium of the masses to keep them indifferent to reality in their rooms because 'soft power'.
      - npteljes 4y ago
        You can be sure that if we don't give them outlets, China will. Do you think nobody would fill the vacuum? If they'd ban every media import, that'd just be an opportunity for the regime to further solidify their own goals. For examples, look at what happened when McDonalds, Coca Cola left the country - they have the same shit, but now without the influence. Whatever there is, there will be abuses of it, so yeah, many would just use the "opium" part of Steam. But there's another aspect of it that would still get imported, and that's any of the narratives that differ from the propaganda they are subjected to. With Steam specifically, they'd be exposed to titles like This War of Mine, and international communities where they'd experience that nobody gives a fuck about them being Russian, or even find it cool, despite the prevalent anti-Western propaganda in their own media. And that all, I think, is worth more than sanctioning it.

moloch-hai 4y ago

Somebody needs to step up to save Clang now that Google has more or less abandoned it.

saagarjha 4y ago
Google uses Clang for much of its production code and employs people to work on it. I don’t think saying that they’ve abandoned it is accurate.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  I hope you are right.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- stusmall 4y ago
  It's been a (very) long time since I worked in Android OS land but at the time I could see effects of them actively moving projects from GCC to Clang. I always picked up the outsider impression that it was their preferred C++ toolchain. First I've heard of them abandoning it
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    There is a big push for their proprietary language "Carbon". Clang is way behind on implementing most C++20 features.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      Well, let this be a lesson to anyone who tries competing with a GPL product. Permissive licenses are cool up until the moment a FAANG company embraces your project, extends it and extinguishes it.
    - stusmall 4y ago

leeoniya 4y ago

i'm a big fan of companies paying and/or hiring OSS devs to continue working on OSS code. (100% biased :D)

npteljes 4y ago
There's nothing wrong with liking things. Go open source!

butz 4y ago

Thanks to Valve Linux is single OS on my home computer. Most of the games from my medium sized Steam library are working, and few that does not work today, will probably be fixed in the future. Need to mention that I do not play new AAA titles or multiplayer games, but I enjoy older games, and some of those are broken on modern versions of Windows.

npteljes 4y ago
I had good luck even with newer titles. Right now I'm playing Red Dead Redemption 2, and it works like a charm, out of the box. Same flow as in Windows, even.
- deleted 4y ago
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prettyStandard 4y ago
I played all of cyberpunk shortly after release on a 3950x and 3060ti on Steam+Proton+Ubuntu with very little problems. It did get very laggy in busy areas on occasion, but that was the exception not the rule. Obviously newer hardware helped, but it seemed Valve hurt the gaming experience less than CD Project Red did! Not really a gamer. Cyberpunk is probably my high water mark at 90 hours. It's so nice to not to have to make major concessions to run Linux. Valve you have earned a customer with me.
- brundolf 4y ago
  That's really impressive, considering Cyberpunk had so many issues even on officially-supported platforms
  - Sugimot0 4y ago
    Yeah same here, it was sort of satisfying watching all my nvidia/windows buddies whine about bugs while it seemed to run buttery smooth on my amd/linux machine after they all shilled windows/nvidia "ok man good luck gaming on that setup, i hope it works out". It did lol, i gained frames!

capitol_ 4y ago

This is one of the main reason to why I buy all my games on steam.

752963e64 4y ago

freedomben 4y ago

If anyone from Valve is reading this, I'm not a gamer at all, but I bought a (fully loaded) SteamDeck largely to support your efforts, and secondly to have a cool portable computer. It is (in about a week) going to become a game console hooked up to my TV. I could have got an xbox for much less the price, but the openness, power, and linuxyness of the steamdeck was too attractive to pass up :-D Please keep it up! you're the heroes we need in this fight. P.S. I'll be buying games from your store also as my kids are gamers

martin82 4y ago
I hope your kids are not expecting high end gaming experiences and are happy with simple indie games (which usually are the better games anyways), because the SteamDeck cannot and never will replace something like an XBox.
- rimunroe 4y ago
  Eh, for me it’s largely replaced my extremely beefy gaming computer. I use the Steam Deck for so many games, including AAA titles like the Final Fantasy VII remake. It’s a shockingly good little device.
  - rimunroe 4y ago
    This is a small selection of the games I’ve recently played on the Steam Deck and been surprised by how flawlessly they performed and played: - God of War - Elden Ring - Final Fantasy VII Remake - Forza Horizon 5 - Jedi: Fallen Order - Spider-Man Remastered
- izacus 4y ago
  Steam Deck comfortably runs high end AAA games like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn and Cyberpunk 2077, in many ways with comparable performance of the base Xbox model. Which makes sense since the hardware is similar. So I have no idea what you're talking about, it can easily replace Xbox.
- sph 4y ago

camdenlock 4y ago

I continue to be terrified that some day in the future, in a moment of weakness, Valve will allow itself to be swallowed by Microsoft…

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
There's 0 chance of this happening at long as Gabe's around.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  Yeah, problem with that is that Gabe is human and won't live forever. I worry about what will happen to one of the greatest forces in keeping PC gaming not only alive, but relatively open and free from bullshit, when Gabe isn't around.
  - antifa 4y ago
    Strong chance of moving to 100% piracy forever if Gabe, or his replacement, bends the knee.
Sunspark 4y ago
Understandable concern, as documented here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
hellotomyrars 4y ago
I find it pretty unlikely, both because of Gabe, but also Valve prints money and is private. They don't have anything to gain by being bought by microsoft.

emersion 4y ago

I'm one of the developers contracted by Valve to work on gamescope, wlroots, Mesa, the kernel, Wayland, etc. Really happy that my contracted work helps not only SteamOS, but very often the whole ecosystem. Examples include radv/amdgpu fixes, tearing page-flips, a re-usable library to make use of KMS planes, and the list goes on.

mylons 4y ago
is it public what they're paying these contractors?
- vj636 4y ago
  I recently interviewed for one of these open source dev positions (Proton). From what I could gather from my conversations with the hiring manager, its somewhere between 120K to 160K for C Devs.
- robert_foss 4y ago
  No, but why would it be. I'd expect a competitive pay.
jeppester 4y ago
Can I ask how it's decided what you are working on? Given the variety of the projects you've mentioned it could seem that you have some degree of freedom, but I might be mistaken.
- emersion 4y ago
  Yeah, there is a lot of freedom, it's pretty similar to how an open-source project works. Pierre-Loup indicates what features would be nice to have (in gamescope or other projects), I can pick from that list. Or I can pick my own ideas and work on these. Or I can discuss with the other contractors, come up with an idea and coordinate our work. Sometimes I work on short-term bugfixes, sometimes I work on long-term plumbing efforts.
  - 4y ago

ffhhj 4y ago

GTA5 still crashes on an i7 with IrisXE graphics, latest Ubuntu, and latest Proton or Experimental. Hope they manage to fix it.

robswc 4y ago

Reminds me of that joke where the worlds entire computing system is perched upon a tool by a guy that lives in the middle of Nebraska. Seems the field of people that could get this stuff working (some really awesome hacking) is so small... or rather, breakthroughs come from a few individuals.

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