News Dell launches Ubuntu-based Alienware X51 gaming rig

Not sure who will buy a Linux powered Alienware – those two make truly terrible bedfellows. I’d like to see the sales numbers in a years time. I’d really like to go Linux – I like free stuff, and I like customisation, but until it can run at least 90% of all of the games I play it’s just not going to happen.

 

Yes totally it will be a while before anyone can really jump ship without losing something, DOTA and Global offensive for me will be enough to make me jump ship. Don’t think Ubuntu will be my choice of distro tho! But just great to see an alternative to windows, whether people thinks better or not.

 

Gabe has said that the smallest version of SteamBox that might come out of all this will receive a streamed game directly from our gaming PCs. Therefore these SteamBox systems will eventually be running 100% of our libraries anyway.

As for this Alienware thingy, I'm quite interested, and recently started delving into Linux, but I'll probably wait for the smallest, sexiest, quietest, feature-packed, and high powered SteamBox before I make a decision which to get.

 

i can just imagine how pissed some kid(17) gonna be after convincing his mum to get him one to then find out it doesn't play the hip games

 

remind me again why it's great to see an alternative to Windows?

 

Died at:

 

Same, but its still not financially viable to have a gaming system with 100% SSD, especially with steam as a game has to be downloaded whether or not you have the disk.

 

not sure either, with all honesty's sake the only reason I see "most" people voting on linux for gaming is because Gabe says so. remove Gabe out of the equation and my guess is most won't even care about gaming in linux, the damn thing is too fragmented. from what Im seeing just call it "gaming for ubuntu" rather than gaming for linux lol

 

IDK.

I hear a lot of people complain that they can't wait to move to Linux once they can play their games on it. I like windows. It's stable as hell and I can't say I really ever have any issues with it.

Don't get me wrong I like linux a lot too, but even if my games are running on linux, it's going to take a long time until I'm going to see the same stability and performance on linux that I get in windows.

Linux is fine to mess with time to time but I always question why I installed it in the first place after I realize that none of the programs I use are available for linux.

 

Competition drives companies to improve themselves and their products

 

Well for me its my primary operating system, bringing all my software onto one machine is a great thing. In my opinion choice drives forward innovation. If one platform is improving the other will need to do the same or face falling behind. More choice is always a good thing for the consumer. Steam of Linux runs on pretty much every distro out their now, why would anyone call it "gaming for ubuntu"...?

Also on another note I don’t really care what Gabe Newell says, he could be rooting for everyone to play games on a gameboy advance for all I care. But bringing all my software/games onto one platform, that’s something to listen and to be pleased about.

 

You mentioned this before but honestly I don't recognise what your saying. Linux has 99 problems but stability is not one of them. I don't think my Debian server has ever crashed and it only gets turned off when I'm out the country. On my desktop occasionally individual applications will crash but I can't remember the last time the actual OS just up and died and required rebooting.

 

We all have gaming PCs, but in reference to these SteamBox's people are talking like they will have to give up Windows and give up what they already have ... weird.

I am a poster boy for these SteamBox's - nothing I've read has turned me away from it yet. BUT, I cannot imagine dumping my Windows gaming PC, even when I have one or two of these SteamBox's in other rooms ...

The SteamBox, from the way it will fit my needs, will enhance my gaming, not limit me to Linux machines, or force me to dump my Win7 gaming machine ...

Everybody sounds all dramary about it ...

 

I think I would go as far as to say, that linux is easily more stable than any microsoft/windows platform. Don't get my wrong, I use windows alot, but, I have linux servers out there, that haven't been powercycled in a very long time, some of them in maybe over a year. I have linux servers watching over my networks and talking back to my central server, the system has been live for a year, and I have only had to reboot one or two of the servers in that whole time (There is currently about 15 ubuntu servers in my monitoring network). I have some squid accelerators running on debian builds that have been in service about 4 - 5 years, which are seldom power cycled (normally only for updates etc.) but have never crashed.

 

Because there are so many distros of linux, if all games were available on them the competition would be great and we'd end up with a much better gaming platform.

Also, if games are developed using opengl, then they'll be compatible with mac os too.

 

One of the biggest advantages to PC gaming as I see it is backwards compatibility. Being able to pull Diablo II or Age of Wonders out of a drawer and play them with no issues whatsoever is great.

Moving away from a DirectX based PC would mean that in five years, I wouldn't be able to do the same thing with Bioshock or Dragon Age.

Even if all new games were written in OpenGL from tomorrow onwards, I'd still run them on a Windows PC for that reason.

 

older games can usually be ran through emulation so it isnt really a problem. pretty sure once interest in gaming is increased you will see many pc emulators that can outperform wine. so the older titles will play fine and completely stable

 

I've gotten 2 kernal panics today, and zero issues in my windows install. I know which OS im going to stick with...

 

That's true enough for current old games, but is it going to be true for the games that will be considered classics in 5 years? I don't know enough about engines etc, but it seems unlikely the current crop of games will be so future-proof as old 2D games.

Also, do you need a Windows license to use WINE, or rather, to install the redistributable packages that WINE requires you to download to run many games? I may have remembered that wrong, but in that case you'd need to buy Windows anyway, so may as well use it.

Also to weigh in on the stability debate - I've probably had as many issues with Linux as I have with Windows over the years, except that Windows 7/8 have been more stable than anything else I've used. In the case of Windows 8 on a low-end/old system, it's also a lot quicker than the Linux distros I've tried on the same hardware, especially Ubuntu which is nowhere near as fast.