4 ms·

Instead, they just joined a camp - this is not good. This is exactly what they should be doing, not further fragmenting an already gratuitously fragmented mark

Instead, they just joined a camp - this is not good. This is exactly what they should be doing, not further fragmenting an already gratuitously fragmented market. Every time some commercial vendor makes a move into Linux and people start bickering about distros I just /facepalm.

drivebyacct2 14y ago
No kidding. How ungrateful is this reaction (and I'm not normally one to grate-guilt)? If it works in Ubuntu, it will probably work just fine on other Linux variants, but Ubuntu is the primary support scenario. And why would a new distro make sense? Now you can have gaming if you just install ~~Windows~~ ValveLinux.
sandGorgon 14y ago
actually I am indeed talking about the "bickering" that is going to start. I use Ubuntu myself and am most definitely not bickering about Fedora. However, the Linux market is already fragmented. And even worse, it is deeply religious. Just google for the bickering that ensued when Meego chose rpm over deb. People have already started talking about why not Arch, etc. The point that you are missing is that, if anyone could unify the Linux fragmentation it is Valve. Steam is a killer app, and I can totally see people migrating towards a distro built around it (and laptops certified for it). I want Valve to succeed - how will it succeed in a severely fragmented market ? Can it justify the cost of its Linux team then ? Android is having a similar problems in version fragmentation. People have posted articles here on how they are unable to justify multiple version (distro?) development. Multiply that problem by a thousand - different audio toolkits, poor driver compatibilities. I am not able to see how they are going to succeed, unless they unify atleast the multimedia toolkits (something like CoreAudio)
- ElliotH 14y ago
  I'm not sure this is the issue you think it is. Games in the Humble Indie Bundle releases have Linux builds. (.tar.gz or .bin) I haven't had major issues beyond installing the libraries that I get prompted are missing. That could get automated, especially now PackageKit abstracts away from the details of different package management utilities. Also, you could cover a huge portion of the linux market by just supporting Ubuntu and Fedora. Other distros (e.g Arch) have a community that has some experience in repackaging these for their distro.
- cageface 14y ago
  Steam is a killer app, and I can totally see people migrating towards a distro built around it (and laptops certified for it). http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/ Anybody willing to switch distros just to run a game might as well just install a Windows partition.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Very true, this reminds me of the failed Corel Linux years back. If the attitude towards fragmentation is to fork a new distro for every application, am I supposed to restart my computer every time I want to task switch or run hundreds of virtual machines? There are some specialised situations where a custom distro makes sense, like appliance type applications (smoothwall, backtrack etc)
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    Eh, switching from Fedora to Ubuntu would not be a big deal at all. The differences really are quite minimal and the actual install would take what, half an hour tops? The effort to install a windows partition would be much higher.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      I think they are responding to the suggestion that Valve releases their own distro. Would certainly take me significantly more than half an hour to switch to Fedora though since I would need to re-learn the package manager, move all my settings across and figure out the subtle differences in configuration etc.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        If you keep a seperate /home the process is greatly streamlined. I've had the same one through countless ubuntu , gentoo, and fedora installs. Just have to swap out your / and recreate your user. The only real differences in package management for I'd say 95% of use cases is if you type 'yum' or 'apt-get' before typing 'install whatever'.
      - 14y ago
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I don't think they'd really reduce fragmentation by creating yet anther distro. They could probably solve a lot of issues with fragmentation by establishing steam in a chrooted environment on the system so that it could maintain it's own versions of certain libraries etc. This could then be targeted by developers as opposed to targeting a specific distro. In essence, a "distro within a distro".

drivebyacct2 14y ago

No kidding. How ungrateful is this reaction (and I'm not normally one to grate-guilt)? If it works in Ubuntu, it will probably work just fine on other Linux variants, but Ubuntu is the primary support scenario. And why would a new distro make sense? Now you can have gaming if you just install ~~Windows~~ ValveLinux.

sandGorgon 14y ago

actually I am indeed talking about the "bickering" that is going to start. I use Ubuntu myself and am most definitely not bickering about Fedora. However, the Linux market is already fragmented. And even worse, it is deeply religious. Just google for the bickering that ensued when Meego chose rpm over deb. People have already started talking about why not Arch, etc. The point that you are missing is that, if anyone could unify the Linux fragmentation it is Valve. Steam is a killer app, and I can totally see people migrating towards a distro built around it (and laptops certified for it). I want Valve to succeed - how will it succeed in a severely fragmented market ? Can it justify the cost of its Linux team then ? Android is having a similar problems in version fragmentation. People have posted articles here on how they are unable to justify multiple version (distro?) development. Multiply that problem by a thousand - different audio toolkits, poor driver compatibilities. I am not able to see how they are going to succeed, unless they unify atleast the multimedia toolkits (something like CoreAudio)

ElliotH 14y ago
I'm not sure this is the issue you think it is. Games in the Humble Indie Bundle releases have Linux builds. (.tar.gz or .bin) I haven't had major issues beyond installing the libraries that I get prompted are missing. That could get automated, especially now PackageKit abstracts away from the details of different package management utilities. Also, you could cover a huge portion of the linux market by just supporting Ubuntu and Fedora. Other distros (e.g Arch) have a community that has some experience in repackaging these for their distro.
cageface 14y ago
Steam is a killer app, and I can totally see people migrating towards a distro built around it (and laptops certified for it). http://xkcd.com/927/ http://xkcd.com/927/ Anybody willing to switch distros just to run a game might as well just install a Windows partition.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Very true, this reminds me of the failed Corel Linux years back. If the attitude towards fragmentation is to fork a new distro for every application, am I supposed to restart my computer every time I want to task switch or run hundreds of virtual machines? There are some specialised situations where a custom distro makes sense, like appliance type applications (smoothwall, backtrack etc)
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Eh, switching from Fedora to Ubuntu would not be a big deal at all. The differences really are quite minimal and the actual install would take what, half an hour tops? The effort to install a windows partition would be much higher.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I think they are responding to the suggestion that Valve releases their own distro. Would certainly take me significantly more than half an hour to switch to Fedora though since I would need to re-learn the package manager, move all my settings across and figure out the subtle differences in configuration etc.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      If you keep a seperate /home the process is greatly streamlined. I've had the same one through countless ubuntu , gentoo, and fedora installs. Just have to swap out your / and recreate your user. The only real differences in package management for I'd say 95% of use cases is if you type 'yum' or 'apt-get' before typing 'install whatever'.
    - 14y ago
jiggy2011 14y ago
I don't think they'd really reduce fragmentation by creating yet anther distro. They could probably solve a lot of issues with fragmentation by establishing steam in a chrooted environment on the system so that it could maintain it's own versions of certain libraries etc. This could then be targeted by developers as opposed to targeting a specific distro. In essence, a "distro within a distro".