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http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux Valve has been planning this for a while, and has had pretty good

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux Valve has been planning this for a while, and has had pretty good success motivating a lot of smaller publishers to target Linux, even though the base isn't there yet, and of course have moved their own incredibly valuable games to Linux. Major game engines (Unreal 3D, Unity, among others) already support Linux as an equal target.

rkalla 13y ago
Dennis, maybe you are right... this is a long-game and they are just getting ahead of the inevitable (engines supporting Linux natively, eventually more and more releases for the platform). I suppose this is the curse of the first-mover, it always seems to be risky/nonsensical until it isn't... then we all see it as an obvious move in hindsight ;)
- ebertx 13y ago
  Yeah, this reminds of the initial launch of Steam back in 2003. At first it seemed like an annoying hoop to jump through. As the years went by and it got more dependable, more games, and more features, it became easier and easier to forget how annoying it was in the beginning. I wonder if the same thing will happen with SteamOS. At best it will initially seem like a novelty, then 10 years from now a huge group of customers will have forgotten what it was like to never have had it.
  - chii 13y ago
    in fact, microsoft should be scared of this move - because the gaming scene is basically what keeps a whole bunch of machines installed with windows.
    - ytjohn 13y ago
      For home users, yes. But in the business world, it's the Microsoft Office Suite, especially Outlook + Exchange. Sure, MS Office has been ported to OSX, but it's more expensive to go with Apple Hardware than commodity PC + MS Windows. If Microsoft flipped their lid and ported Office to run on common Linux distributions (Debian/Fedora), you'd see a lot more corporations switching. Microsoft does have their Office365.com, which is a web-based version of Office. I haven't tried it myself, but from what I've heard, a lot of its advanced features rely on Silverlight and using browsers other than IE on Linux or Mac OSX puts you in a sort of basic mode. The advanced mode is very comparable to running the desktop version while the basic mode is akin to the Google Docs editor.

rkalla 13y ago

Dennis, maybe you are right... this is a long-game and they are just getting ahead of the inevitable (engines supporting Linux natively, eventually more and more releases for the platform). I suppose this is the curse of the first-mover, it always seems to be risky/nonsensical until it isn't... then we all see it as an obvious move in hindsight ;)

ebertx 13y ago
Yeah, this reminds of the initial launch of Steam back in 2003. At first it seemed like an annoying hoop to jump through. As the years went by and it got more dependable, more games, and more features, it became easier and easier to forget how annoying it was in the beginning. I wonder if the same thing will happen with SteamOS. At best it will initially seem like a novelty, then 10 years from now a huge group of customers will have forgotten what it was like to never have had it.
- chii 13y ago
  in fact, microsoft should be scared of this move - because the gaming scene is basically what keeps a whole bunch of machines installed with windows.
  - ytjohn 13y ago
    For home users, yes. But in the business world, it's the Microsoft Office Suite, especially Outlook + Exchange. Sure, MS Office has been ported to OSX, but it's more expensive to go with Apple Hardware than commodity PC + MS Windows. If Microsoft flipped their lid and ported Office to run on common Linux distributions (Debian/Fedora), you'd see a lot more corporations switching. Microsoft does have their Office365.com, which is a web-based version of Office. I haven't tried it myself, but from what I've heard, a lot of its advanced features rely on Silverlight and using browsers other than IE on Linux or Mac OSX puts you in a sort of basic mode. The advanced mode is very comparable to running the desktop version while the basic mode is akin to the Google Docs editor.