Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

alphaniner · 2012-07-27 21:08:22

boast wrote:

But most gamers build their own rigs

Is there data to back that up? I would have assumed the same a few years ago, but now I'm not so sure. In the interim I've met many gamers who only buy off-the-shelf (many of whom have the skills to build their own, no less O_o ).

ConnorBehan · 2012-07-27 21:26:16

boast wrote:

And with secureboot stuff that will make it harder to pirate windows (as I understood it), they might be more willing to get linux to try it out.

Secure boot can be completely disabled. In fact one would have to do this to install most Linux distributions.

Gusar · 2012-07-27 21:35:11

ConnorBehan wrote:

Secure boot can be completely disabled. In fact one would have to do this to install most Linux distributions.

Yeah, but it's possible Windows will refuse to boot if it's disabled.

Zancarius · 2012-07-27 21:40:03

karol wrote:

Zancarius wrote:
I don't really see there being that many of us who use Windows solely for games
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=19256
Games, tax returns and a few other uses.

There's an interesting thought. If Valve can prove it's a worthwhile market, what are the chances other companies might follow suit?

MrCode · 2012-07-27 21:48:44

Gusar wrote:

it's possible Windows will refuse to boot if [Secure Boot is] disabled.

…so you turn it back on again when you want to boot Windows. I don't see how this is a major obstacle for the technically inclined.

Other people, on the other hand… <_<

Zancarius · 2012-07-27 21:57:11

MrCode wrote:

Gusar wrote:
it's possible Windows will refuse to boot if [Secure Boot is] disabled.
…so you turn it back on again when you want to boot Windows. I don't see how this is a major obstacle for the technically inclined.
Other people, on the other hand… <_<

They're also the sort who wouldn't use Steam anyway! (Isn't that somethin' you iron yer clothes with?)

blackout23 · 2012-07-27 23:30:37

Steam is great for my skin, too.

I for one welcome the arrival of 2500 games for linux on steam as long as they aren't all the "Hello Kitty Island Adventure" type of games.

I think gamers are more tech-savvy than norma PC users who just want to write letters, print birthday cards and check emails.. and watch porn.

Awebb · 2012-08-01 07:32:57

There was this rumor of Valve creating their own game console. What would be better than some embedded Linux running Steam?

DoctorSamulus · 2012-08-01 14:02:02

MrCode wrote:

Gusar wrote:
it's possible Windows will refuse to boot if [Secure Boot is] disabled.
…so you turn it back on again when you want to boot Windows. I don't see how this is a major obstacle for the technically inclined.
Other people, on the other hand… <_<

I dual boot to play games atm. Rebooting, going into the BIOS and enabling secure boot when I want to play a game and then rebooting going to the bios and disabling secure boot when I want to do everything else on Linux is going to get old fast..

My biggest concern with Steam on Linux is privacy actually. This is going to sound dumb but with open source programs there is always that inherent trust between the developer and the user that says, "I know you wouldn't put anything malicious or unsavory in your program because I can read the code any time I want." Realisitcally we aren't going to read the source code for every single program on our computer but that peace of mind is there and if you ever do feel like checking it out or just want to know how it implements X function you can always look.

Since the only thing I do on Windows is play video games I don't really care that all the software is closed source, there is nothing for the games to snoop around for on my computer. Linux being my main operating system however is a different story, I'll probably just end up sandboxing Steam and running it on Linux anyway when it comes out soon.

x33a · 2012-08-01 14:10:53

@ DoctorSamulus

Steam requires you to log in (yes, i know there' an offline mode too, but that still requires internet one time). They can track where you are logging from. That should be more of a privacy concern than worrying about malicious code embedded into steam. Valve has a reputation to protect, and they wouldn't dare do such a thing. Also, you'll probably need closed source video drivers (nvidia for example), to have decent gaming performance on linux. so maybe worry about another closed source software

blackout23 · 2012-08-01 14:23:19

It will be interesting to see how they are planing to release and update steam. Most would probably prefer to let the package manager do this
because this is how it goes on linux. Having everything in 64 bit would be nice aswell as many probably don't want any 32 bit software on their
64 bit machine.

To anyone with more programming skills than I have: How exactly do you make a 64 bit build of let say gedit? Does it require extra work with different code lines or does it mean only using other compiler flags.

Last edited by blackout23 (2012-08-01 14:24:07)

karol · 2012-08-01 14:34:29

blackout23 wrote:

To anyone with more programming skills than I have: How exactly do you make a 64 bit build of let say gedit? Does it require extra work with different code lines or does it mean only using other compiler flags.

You can view the PKGBUILD yourself: https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit … ages/gedit
gedit might be a bad example ;P

Edit: I think discussing this here is OT, so please open a new thread.

Last edited by karol (2012-08-01 14:35:42)

masteryod · 2012-08-01 17:40:17

Awebb wrote:

There was this rumor of Valve creating their own game console. What would be better than some embedded Linux running Steam?

Actually if things will go in that direction it would probably be another bitter disappointment, most notably Valve hardware and software dependency. Right know they care about whole ecosystem, multiple hardware & multiple software/drivers, so everyone wins, even if you don't play/don't use steam.

Zancarius · 2012-08-01 19:15:57

DoctorSamulus wrote:

My biggest concern with Steam on Linux is privacy actually.

There is some truth to this. On Steam, depending on how your account is configured, your friends can see exactly how much you play (or don't play) games. They can also see how many games, and which ones exactly, you own. I believe setting your profile to private helps, but Valve can still see your stats (personally, I don't take issue with this).

Also, not having friends might help.

blackout23 · 2012-08-02 06:57:05

Zancarius wrote:

DoctorSamulus wrote:
My biggest concern with Steam on Linux is privacy actually.
There is some truth to this. On Steam, depending on how your account is configured, your friends can see exactly how much you play (or don't play) games. They can also see how many games, and which ones exactly, you own. I believe setting your profile to private helps, but Valve can still see your stats (personally, I don't take issue with this).
Also, not having friends might help.

I think he's more concerned about the steam client scanning the files on his PC like origin does.

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-Say … 36690.html

Zancarius · 2012-08-02 07:29:31

blackout23 wrote:

I think he's more concerned about the steam client scanning the files on his PC like origin does.
http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-Say … 36690.html

Ah, I interpreted that incorrectly. Origin is terrible anyway (not that I've ever used it--on principle).

On the other hand, that sort of concern is perplexing to me. I understand the privacy implications, but with the appropriate toolchain and utilities, it should be easy to tell if a badly behave app was doing something of the sort. If it is reputed to do so, don't use it.

I suppose a little paranoia now and again in this day and age isn't such a terrible thing.

blackout23 · 2012-08-02 08:45:01

ZOMG ZOMG

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … px=MTE1MjI

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

karol · 2012-08-02 09:30:31

blackout23 wrote:

ZOMG ZOMG
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n … px=MTE1MjI
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

I wonder how things work with a more reasonable setup and e.g. AMD card ;-)

blackout23 · 2012-08-02 09:57:00

I wonder how many more frames I would get if my PC would boot directly into steam with .xinitrc -> exec steam

Results are very promising I think and I belive there is still room for improvement (64-Bit Kernel, Wayland when it's finally mature and leaner than X.org, etc.)

Awebb · 2012-08-02 10:49:31

blackout23 wrote:

I wonder how many more frames I would get if my PC would boot directly into steam with .xinitrc -> exec steam

Starting games in a seperate X session is often recommended for performance gains. It gives you a few frames, nothing fancy, depending on your desktop, of course.

karol · 2012-08-13 00:57:14

I've heard people say that Valve with their non-gaming stuff can become the place to go when you're looking for e.g. productivity software, because there's no such thing on PC yet - no App Store, Android Market / Google Play etc. Windows Store is just around the corner though.

We can't access e.g. Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office through pacman but if GIMP and LibreOffice is what you want, it's just a few keystrokes away :-)
pacman doesn't have to be running all the time, you need Internet connection just for updating and installing. In FOSS world DRM takes shape of 'license.txt' which details what can you do with a particular piece of software in a really not intrusive way.
Steam and commercial software it offers doesn't work like that.

blackout23 · 2012-08-13 15:06:12

I'd welcome a place where you can get prop. productivity software on linux. If there was a native version of Microsoft Office for Linux I'd buy it.
Right now I'm running Office 2007 trough wine which required some patching and fixing. Word and Excel run mostly fine. Libre Office is just
not an option if you want to have other people be able to work on your files and I feel quite limited with LO Calc if I want to do more than add and
subtract cell values.

karol · 2012-08-13 15:42:21

blackout23 wrote:

I'd welcome a place where you can get prop. productivity software on linux. If there was a native version of Microsoft Office for Linux I'd buy it.
Right now I'm running Office 2007 trough wine which required some patching and fixing. Word and Excel run mostly fine. Libre Office is just
not an option if you want to have other people be able to work on your files and I feel quite limited with LO Calc if I want to do more than add and
subtract cell values.

There's also Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) :-)

SeducingOrange · 2012-08-24 16:17:11

yep. Now that they ported it over to OpenGL it's beating windows.

I posted about it on my blog.

zzaw · 2012-08-24 23:36:02

Is the main reason we see very few linux ports the fact that the majority of games are developed for Direct X, or are there other major hurdles involved in getting a game ported to linux?
Also out of interest is there a reason why Direct X became so favored?

Arch Linux

#126 2012-07-27 21:08:22

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#127 2012-07-27 21:26:16

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#128 2012-07-27 21:35:11

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#129 2012-07-27 21:40:03

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#130 2012-07-27 21:48:44

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#131 2012-07-27 21:57:11

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#132 2012-07-27 23:30:37

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#133 2012-08-01 07:32:57

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#134 2012-08-01 14:02:02

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#135 2012-08-01 14:10:53

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#136 2012-08-01 14:23:19

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#137 2012-08-01 14:34:29

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#138 2012-08-01 17:40:17

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#139 2012-08-01 19:15:57

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#140 2012-08-02 06:57:05

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#141 2012-08-02 07:29:31

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#142 2012-08-02 08:45:01

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#143 2012-08-02 09:30:31

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#144 2012-08-02 09:57:00

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#145 2012-08-02 10:49:31

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#146 2012-08-13 00:57:14

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#147 2012-08-13 15:06:12

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#148 2012-08-13 15:42:21

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#149 2012-08-24 16:17:11

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

#150 2012-08-24 23:36:02

Re: Looking forward to having Steam on Linux? Read this.

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