Buying a pre-packaged Linux (Steam) box is not the way to go. Linux is Open Source and should be independent of any manufacturer. I'd rather have my own custom made PC running Linux and the Steam client, just like my Win7 box does today. Lock into a vendor and eventually they will do something dumb. Keep it independent and you'll see growth with competition to stimulate innovation.
Understood. I meant MS will try to kill this as they want gaming companies coming to them so they can sell dev licenses and OS's. Their current embracing of Open Source on their cloud platform is to get more customers to pay for their cloud services. They did go around threatening legal action to anyone using Linux unless MS was paid not too long ago.
Urgh! I missed that. Truly disappointing.
Not at all, I'm just taking a long term approach to this. Specifically I encourage corporations (of all types) to contribute to Open Source. That is, make changes, then publish the source for all to use. I just won't buy proprietary hardware like a SteamBox. I build all my own PC's and hobby computers and want full control over that hardware and software I put on it. I prefer to buy the hardware components individually and build my own. I do support open standards hardware in a big way. Valve is doing all the right things today, but they are a corporation and Uncle Gabe won't be around forever. Motorola and Nokia spring to mind as companies who've had their IP catalogs ravaged by other corporations. Sony (Playstation), Microsoft (XBox), Apple (Everything they make) among others, love to put out devices you cannot modify, change or optimize.
Alright, here I concede. Yeah, without that benevolent dictatorship, Valve may not remember to play nice.
Your commitment was never in doubt! I just wanted to understand where you were coming from. Because this thread keeps coming round and taunting me. I figured if it was annoying me that much I might as well try to stir up some some conversation about how to entice devs to deploy on Linux. Because clearly the market is there, it's just not making its wallet felt.
heheh, the original page is back online too; http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/
Yeah, it looks like there are 1922 Linux compatible games (not including other software) currently listed on Steam as of this post. Not too shabby.
http://store.steampowered.com/searc...m=#sort_by=_ASC&category1=998&os=linux&page=1
Google and Apple have taken Open Source software, commercialized it into product, then not released the source code back to the community for months or not at all. Google also recently put a "fix" in place where Android Pay will no longer work on rooted phones. That sort of "our way or the highway" philosophy is wrong and unnecessary. It's my phone dagnabbit and I want to control what is going on with that device. I improved my Android phone battery life 32% removing all the extra unneeded crap that dials everything I do back to the mothership. My Cyanogen Samsung ran from Friday 7:30 AM to Monday 5:30 PM and still had 28% battery left. Luckily, I don't use Android Pay. I have a thin plastic card I use for stuff like that. Tends to keep my transaction history off of Google's databases.
I have to point out to you that the payment ISO standard which has to be strictly followed to make any phone based payment work is what the problem is with rooted phones - not Google themselves. The banks will not honour payment from these phones as they cannot guarantee the security of the code.
I'm not sure if it was Windows 8 or 10, but at one time Microsoft were going to exclude all competing online software distribution systems. They certainly did with the ARM based Windows RT. This would have meant MS Win becoming just like the iPhone and killed off Microsoft's competitors, like Steam. It was around this time the SteamOS was publicly announced. It's hardly surprising that Valve responded when faced with a threat like that. So now they've got their own platform it seems unlikely they'd want to give up on it. All depends on how popular the SteamOS boxes are, and how MS, etc, respond.
More players with viable product the merrier. The 'launcher for your launchers' approach has flaws as the launcher companies will throw roadblocks in their way. And at some point, someone has to monetize Linux gaming. You have to pay your staff something and I don't think that's unreasonable. Competition is a good thing and keeps all involved products healthy.
As individuals, I don't know if there is anything barrier breaking we could do, but if Valve decided to put Half Life 3 out as Linux / SteamOS exclusive with full Vive support... Yeah, the mind boggles, but the howls from the PC master race would be deafening. Even though, all they would need to do is download a free distro to run it. Would love to see some of the older (no longer developed) games ported over to Linux and improved like Harpoon. However, I think the gains would be incremental. Again, chicken and egg.
Devs follow the money in a classic, chicken and egg scenario. You need devs to build games, but you need games to sell to pay the devs. Crowdfunding is filling that void. I've backed a few games that will have Linux ports out of the gate. You need an install base of millions to attract devs, but then the whole Open Source crowd expects everything for nothing. Linux, in effect, is undermining itself.
I'm not sure if Linux will ever be mainstream in it's current form. It isn't a user friendly OS to many. The learning curve is steep and frankly alien to Windows users. It is a niche OS for experienced computer users. I don't recommend it to anyone I don't think can handle it. Valve's approach is to cram it into a SteamBox and hide the more confusing aspects of the OS, which simplifies it significantly for the end user, but that removes the freedom that Linux aficionados like myself enjoy. It's a hard call to make given the number of unknowns. Cross-platform open standards are the key, but Google, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, and any other corporations that hold IP will fight that because it undermines their bottom line and / or monopolies as applicable. Not to mention the established mega game corps like EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, et al who will want their own interests covered.
