6 ms·
Oh my god. This provides a genuine chance for year of the linux desktop in 2014, for gamers at least.
by xSwag 13y ago
Oh my god. This provides a genuine chance for year of the linux desktop in 2014, for gamers at least.
- saraid216 13y agoGaming is one of the last legitimate refuges of Windows dominance. There are a lot of us who wouldn't care about (read: would be willing to switch) their OS if not for PC gaming.
- Heliosmaster 13y agoOr people that dual boot and keep Windows around just to game.
- darkstalker 13y agoI'm waiting a LoL for linux so i can uninstall windows.
- pathy 13y ago>Gaming is one of the last legitimate refuges of Windows dominance. What about pretty much all larger businesses in the world? Windows sure dominate the corporate space.
- flyingbuttress 13y agoI think he meant in terms of being the best option available. You would have a hard time arguing that Windows is significantly better than competitors like RHEL in the corporate space. For gaming, on the other hand, no other OS comes close to offering the selection that Windows has, at least for now.
- saraid216 13y agoThe corporate space isn't dominated by Windows because there are no other options. The main reason for that dominance is change aversion. I'll put it a different way: When I buy a computer with an OS, I tend to pick Windows mainly because I intend to game on it. If I don't intend to game on it, then OS would stop being a major factor in my decision-making. I might spring for a Mac instead, or I might get a Linux box. It's no longer the point. If I were buying a computer for surfing the web, I can get what I want. If I were buying it for word processing, I can get whatever. If I were buying it for photo manipulation, I can get whatever. For Door #1, I'd be looking at network connection options. For Door #2, I'd probably be looking for compactness. For Door #3, I'd want graphics and RAM, I think. For none of these is my primary consideration, "Well, the program I'm going to want to run isn't going to be available unless I get Windows." That primary consideration exists for gaming. If I bought a replacement gaming rig today, I'd get a Windows box. Period.
- macavity23 13y agoAnother big reason is Active Directory. It's very surprising to me that there isn't a full-featured FLOSS alternative to AD, because what it does is pretty simple, but it works pretty much out of the box, and it scales massively. Two years ago I would have said another big reason was Outlook, because no other desktop calendaring app comes close (even though it sucks hairy balls as an email client), but nowadays web-based solutions, particularly Google Calendar, are as good if not better.
- mikevm 13y agoAlso MS Office, Adobe Photoshop and a bunch of other Windows-only or Mac-only tools.
- MLR 13y agoYou say a lot, what you really mean is <5% of PC users, that's a high end estimate.
- Al-Khwarizmi 13y agoSome years ago I was about to switch my home PC from the terrible Windows Vista to Linux, and the only thing that prevented me from doing so was Team Fortress 2. Now TF2 runs on Linux, and the perspectives for Linux gaming are very good in general, but I no longer want to switch because I am happy with Windows 7, I hate Unity and Gnome 3 and their dumbed-down UIs that make me want to bang my head against the wall, XFCE is OK but feels like going ten years back in time, and KDE 4... well, that one is not too bad, but I still prefer Windows 7. It's a pity that all this Linux gaming surge didn't happen back in 2008 or so, when Windows was in its lowest moments with Vista and most Linux distros hadn't yet been ruined by overbearing UI visionaries. I'm sure that desktop Linux market share would have soared in that case.
- wtetzner 13y agoCinnamon is quite good. http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/ http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/
- anentropic 13y agoIsn't this specifically not a desktop system?
- sandyarmstrong 13y agoI assume he is implying that games coming to SteamOS should be able to run on any desktop linux that supports the Steam client.
- aroman 13y agoYes but it's virtually the same core software stack as on the desktop. So the linux distros get a huge leg up in that arena.
- wonderzombie 13y agoAre you sure about that? Why wouldn't this be more similar to Android than, say, Linux Mint? Who says they're even using any of the typical userspace bits? I would bet a money (albeit a small amount) that, to a first approximation, they're really only using the Linux kernel.
- jeltz 13y agoBecause they already ported Steam to Linux and have about 200 titles native on Linux. That fits quite well with "Hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS." statement. I do not see why they would force game developers to do the work again.
- sa1 13y agoThe release of Steam on Ubuntu was a precursor to this. Valve encouraged developers to port their games to Ubuntu and ported their own games. It is unlikely that they would do that again. This will likely be a linux system with gnu userspace for now, even though they would have a custom UI.
- aroman 13y agoAs others have said, the important point here is that the core of Linux support is here. They've already ported all of their major titles to Ubuntu-based desktop linux, and I would be extremely surprised if SteamOS did not inherit greatly from that effort. Even if SteamOS uses different toolkits or packaging (which it very well might), the amount of effort to get those titles to run on typical desktop linux distros should be relatively very minimal. I highly doubt it would be more similar to Android than Linux Mint simply because they have already invested time and money into making Steam run on the Linux Mint family of distros (i.e Ubuntu), and (to my knowledge) none working on the android stack.
- pippy 13y agoI am incredibly excited for this. This may well push Linux into the hands of everyday people.