News Valve encouraging gamers to try Linux

Tried Linux

didn't like it...now what valve?

 

There is a serious lack of games available on Steam for Linux.
I have steam installed on my Ubuntu based netbook just to check how much of my game library is available and this is a big problem.
Valve should talk to one of the many companies who offer game wrappers to run windows based games under linux, such as CodeWeavers, Wine etc, to allow non native linux steam games to be easily run under these conditions

 

I have literally zero interest in running Steam on Linux unless there are some tangible benefits.

The two things that will change this are:

100% of my games run
Some of the above 100% run better.

Until this happens, almost no one will switch.

 

Average Joe and Linux don't go together.

 

I've broken Ubuntu too many times to want it as anything more than to see how it's coming along. Until I understand the OS better at least - which is never going to happen!

 

The problem, for me at least, is that I have no desire to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu on my main PC in order to do what I can already do in Windows.

If you're in Windows, playing a Windows-only game, and your mate comes online and says "hey, fancy a game of <insert-title>?" I'm not going to say "SURE! Let me just reboot my PC into Linux first, brb!" when I could just launch it through Steam in Windows with no fuss.

Of course the solution, then, is NOT to dual-boot, and to run Linux as my one-and-only OS, which really isn't practical tbh. I've got far too much running in Windows to want to make a wholesale shift and until Linux brings me actual benefits over and above "it's free" then I just won't be making that kind of change on my main gaming rig.

 

Are there any real advantages of running games through Linux instead of Windows?

 

Yes i understand its a beta but Valve are pushing people to try the beta and many will not if they are unable to play there favourite games in said beta.
The only game i would be able to play would be Team Fortress 2 and i will not dual boot just to play this single game.
If Valve want people to try it out at least give them a few popular titles to try.

 

If Linux gets the work it needs to make it more appealing to the main stream and especially gamers it may well be because of some form of outside financial involvement like the Ubuntu Linux Amazon integration which didn't go down too well.

Would people be prepared to have Steam and game/driver developer ads and specific search engines in Linux if it helped to pay for continued development and support of Linux, Linux has come quite a way with Ubuntu and Mint but will it ever be truly game compatible if some big gaming names don't get more involved?

If Linux is not taken up by enough users to make it viable for developers, etc, they will abandon it, you can't really expect companies to spend time and money on software/drivers for Linux if it's not worthwhile, trying to convert windows users to Linux is very difficult so maybe if new PC's were sold as dual boot with windows/Linux then people could "safely" explore Linux and it would attract more users especially those that actually pay for their copy of windows, in the future they might be more inclined to go for Linux than buy the latest windows OS, I can see MS going ballistic already at the thought of new PC's with dual booting

 

yes, yes people. It's been a chicken and egg scenario for years. Gamers dont use Linux because there's fewer games. Developers don't use Linux because there's few gamers there. Basically, no ones been willing to take the time to invest in a long term strategy for Linux gaming, wherein there may be little to no profit (or even some loss) for the first year or more, but in the longterm Linux gaming can be grown to rival Windows. If you're not willing to invest the time in Steam beta, don't worry about it. Plenty of others have been waiting years for this, we'll get it up and running so you can switch in a year or so.

 

Are there any advantages for me in switching, even when a decent number of games become supported?

 

Good, because it takes people that know what they are talking about to evaluate Steam beta properly, a load of people just screaming "It don't work" is pointless, and Steam/Linux really has to be working well when launched because there are few second chances if it fails to impress and it will be years again before many people will bother with it.

 

I've tried it. So long as you completely ignore its persistent prompts to update your graphics card drivers and stick to the ones officially supported by your distribution's primary repositories, it's fine. If, however, you start down the path of installing cutting-edge drivers... well, my results range from "the cutting-edge drivers failed to install so I reverted to the distro ones" to "the cutting-edge drivers failed to install so I followed various Steam forum threads, completely broke my graphics card installation and had to revert to non-accelerated drivers", to "I completely broke X and had to re-install my entire operating system from scratch". The visual difference between Torchlight on distro-supported "old" graphics drivers and the cutting-edge drivers I have on my MS-Windows box is precisely bugger all, so I don't really understand why Steam For Linux keeps nagging about graphics drivers. At minimum, there should be an option to turn off driver update nags. Modern Linux updates are handled by repositories, there should never be any need to manually install drivers. Even if special cutting-edge drivers are required, they should be provided by a PPA (optional repository), and not by manual installation, and that PPA should be stable against the distribution it is targeted at. To be fair, this is as much the fault of AMD/ATI & Nvidia as it is Valve. I share Linus Torvalds' opinion of closed-source graphics card manufacturers.

 

I won't try it simply because the games I play don't work on Linux.

I have asked some of the game developers on Twitter and via email if they are going to support Linux with the future releases of games and never once got a reply.

While it appears there are some benefits performance wise in games when using linux compared to windows, Valve need's to be able to show the main games that get played using Steam having such a improvement.

The other issue is that most people, don't know what the performance difference for regular stuff such as video or photo editing is on linux compared to windows.

Hopefully they can get the likes of Call Of Duty, Battlefield, Crysis, Need For speed etc working on Linux and then I will try it.

 

I'd like a console that you can upgrade the graphics on that is similar to a computer.

 

Err..........No!

 

this.. in its current form linux is still.. well for hardcore users only, there where numerous times I wanted to explore it and just ended up breaking it, linux is honestly too fragile for the average joe, but is extremely powerful to enthusiasts, unless your solution is to limit the roles/permissions of user accounts. (which almost every other OS is doing/trying), good luck with convincing people with that,lol, quite frankly Valve is just pushing people to go linux just to stop the Windows 8 bandwagon (well the Windows AppStore to be specific), if their reason was much more like "linux is now sooo user friendly and sooo easy to develop and integrate for everybody", well they have bought me,lol

 

Yes, I would love to switch from my stable, well supported operating system to one which lacks decent hardware support and has by comparison a tiny library of software and games just because erm, I have no idea what advantage.

Valve just has a pissy on with Microsoft ATM, there are very few good reasons for most people to switch.