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Most of the things you have problems with are related to you not buying a machine with Linux on it. This is the reason SteamOS is so important. We use hundreds

Most of the things you have problems with are related to you not buying a machine with Linux on it. This is the reason SteamOS is so important. We use hundreds of Linux machines, some macs(some of them are 5years old or more). We have no problems with it. Why, because we buy hardware that we know works with Linux. If it does not, we choose alternatives. This solves all the problems in the future in our experience. We had no regressions as we could have with Windows(drivers that work on Windows X but not on the new version). This happened with the drivers of the few Windows machines we have with bar code scanners, we can't update the machines without changing the bar code system(big hassle), so we did not.

slacka 13y ago
I couldn't disagree with you more about drivers that work on Windows breaking. MS actively tries to keep driver compatibility between releases. The Linux kernel developers actively try to break the binary drivers. This means that once the manufactures stop supporting the hardware, you have to worry about the drivers not working on the next kernel release. Case in point my Radeon X1950 can no longer run the catalyst drivers in Linux and I'm instead stuck with the buggy and slow Gallium3D drivers. In Windows 8, I can still load drivers written for Vista and run modern games like Star Craft 2 and Crysis 2. If Valve can improve the driver situation, it will be a huge win for Linux gamers. Edit: typo
- Hello71 13y ago
  > MS actively tries to keep driver compatibility between releases vista > Case in point my Radeon X1950 can no longer run the catalyst drivers in Linux wat. this has literally. nothing. to. do. with. linux. devs. AMD. does. not. support. these. cards. in fact, your example of the X1950 is a perfect example of which cards the OSS community supports better than proprietary.
  - slacka 13y ago
    > in fact, your example of the X1950 is a perfect example of which cards the OSS community supports better than proprietary. Wow, that's some twisted logic. AMD doesn't support the cards under Windows 8, but I can still load the unsupported Vista drivers and play modern games. Last time I benchmarked OpenArea in Windows vs the Linux Gallium3D, windows was 3x-5x faster, while the last working catalyst was 90% of windows. Beyond the Quake2/3 engine games, Gallium3D are worthless for gaming. I've had terrible luck with Humble Bundle games like Penumbra and demos like unigine that run perfectly under windows and Linux with the catalyst drivers, but are broken under Gallium3d. The X1950 is in my spare PC. My primary rig is an AMD 5970 and I dread the day I'm forced to use Gallium3d drivers because of some GPL zealot kernel developer changed some driver interface. I'd love to see Valve pull a Google here to enforce a stable binary driver interface.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Stable internal ABI has been beaten to death. It isn't going to happen, nor should it.

slacka 13y ago

I couldn't disagree with you more about drivers that work on Windows breaking. MS actively tries to keep driver compatibility between releases. The Linux kernel developers actively try to break the binary drivers. This means that once the manufactures stop supporting the hardware, you have to worry about the drivers not working on the next kernel release. Case in point my Radeon X1950 can no longer run the catalyst drivers in Linux and I'm instead stuck with the buggy and slow Gallium3D drivers. In Windows 8, I can still load drivers written for Vista and run modern games like Star Craft 2 and Crysis 2. If Valve can improve the driver situation, it will be a huge win for Linux gamers. Edit: typo

Hello71 13y ago
> MS actively tries to keep driver compatibility between releases vista > Case in point my Radeon X1950 can no longer run the catalyst drivers in Linux wat. this has literally. nothing. to. do. with. linux. devs. AMD. does. not. support. these. cards. in fact, your example of the X1950 is a perfect example of which cards the OSS community supports better than proprietary.
- slacka 13y ago
  > in fact, your example of the X1950 is a perfect example of which cards the OSS community supports better than proprietary. Wow, that's some twisted logic. AMD doesn't support the cards under Windows 8, but I can still load the unsupported Vista drivers and play modern games. Last time I benchmarked OpenArea in Windows vs the Linux Gallium3D, windows was 3x-5x faster, while the last working catalyst was 90% of windows. Beyond the Quake2/3 engine games, Gallium3D are worthless for gaming. I've had terrible luck with Humble Bundle games like Penumbra and demos like unigine that run perfectly under windows and Linux with the catalyst drivers, but are broken under Gallium3d. The X1950 is in my spare PC. My primary rig is an AMD 5970 and I dread the day I'm forced to use Gallium3d drivers because of some GPL zealot kernel developer changed some driver interface. I'd love to see Valve pull a Google here to enforce a stable binary driver interface.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Stable internal ABI has been beaten to death. It isn't going to happen, nor should it.