Evidence Suggests Steam is Coming to Linux

[nukem950]

I so hope this happens. Ubuntu and I would become the bestest friends and windows would become a virtual machines(7, Vista, XP) since I would just use Office and the really nice windows programming tools.

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]palladin9479[/nom]Ok now they need to take over the development of OpenGL and finally update it.[/citation]
You know OpenGL 4.0 is finalized, right? Feature parity with Direct3D 11? They even back-ported a lot of the features in 4 to the new 3.3 point update for older hardware.

 

[Stardude82]

Yeah this is only for game servers... don't hold your breath on getting actually game support. The open source community is more concerned with purity than making the platform closed source games friendly. That and PC gaming with OpenGL is a minority of a Gaming minority with the dominance of the console market.

 

[Zoidman]

I know its been said before, but I'll say it again, games are basically the main reason holding me back from natively running linux. And in my opinion the main reasons why Linux is not more widely excepted.

There are plenty of Linux distro's for basic things like office work and browsing the internet, but not to the high end consumer. Whom of which, by the way, are the ones that set the trends for the rest of the market to follow.

 

[killerclick]

[citation][nom]mlopinto2k1[/nom](GIMP BLOWS MONKEY BALLS, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE TRIES TO TELL ME)[/citation]

Photoshop is better at most things but far too few designers use more than a fractions of capabilities of either application. It's rather a matter of habit: if you invested as much time (years) in using GIMP as you did in using Photoshop, you'd probably have a more balanced view. Plus Photoshop is $700 (+ at least $200 per upgrade yearly) and takes up a few gigabytes while GIMP is $0 and is a 18 megabytes download.

And perhaps most importantly, GIMP liberates you from any proprietary OS. Tomorrow Microsoft could charge $500 for a Vista-like mess and you'd be stuck with it because you need Photoshop and only Photoshop.

 

[gamebrigada]

Not necessarily, after all mac os x is just a very beautiful version of linux.

 

[cruiseoveride]

[citation][nom]gamebrigada[/nom]Not necessarily, after all mac os x is just a very beautiful version of linux.[/citation]
What? If you mean beautiful as in crippled old BSD.

I'll keep my Linux thank you.

 

[randomizer]

I NEED PHOTOSHOP DAMNIT!

No point yelling here. Lobby Adobe to port it to Linux. They are the only ones who can help you with that.

all in favor of linux say YUM .....

That was a rather APT comment.

Not necessarily, after all mac os x is just a very beautiful version of linux.

OSX has nothing to do with Linux.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]No point yelling here. Lobby Adobe to port it to Linux. They are the only ones who can help you with that.[/citation]YOU HAVE A POINT!! Just kiddin... but you are right.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]Photoshop is better at most things but far too few designers use more than a fractions of capabilities of either application. It's rather a matter of habit: if you invested as much time (years) in using GIMP as you did in using Photoshop, you'd probably have a more balanced view. Plus Photoshop is $700 (+ at least $200 per upgrade yearly) and takes up a few gigabytes while GIMP is $0 and is a 18 megabytes download.And perhaps most importantly, GIMP liberates you from any proprietary OS. Tomorrow Microsoft could charge $500 for a Vista-like mess and you'd be stuck with it because you need Photoshop and only Photoshop.[/citation]A few things before I go to work... GIMP as a program that works and looks similar to Photoshop, EXCELLENT. GIMP as a functioning piece of software in a work evironment, HORRIBLE. Please understand, I have used GIMP for MONTHS in agony trying to make things work. It doesn't work. My main gripes is the layer coding (slow as hell), and just about everything else... coding. Everything is either SLOW AS HELL or doesn't work right. How about trying to create a drop shadow or glow or embossed bezel? Crashed. I can run CS4 in Wine BETTER than GIMP in Linux.

 

[randomizer]

Considering Adobe haven't even ported something as widely used as Flash to Linux properly I doubt we'll see Photoshop any time soon.

 

[mitch074]

@mlopinto2k1: layer performance is actually the part that is getting the most overhauling in Gimp 2.7/2.8. On-layer editing, layer groups, GEGL layer management are currently found in Gimp 2.7.0 (the development branch that will end up as Gimp 2.8).

Upcoming work is improved management of vector layers (integration of GSoC 2006 work). Please test and report.

@randomizer: Adobe did port Flash to Linux properly (it's just still flagged as 'alpha'; no more unstable than the Windows, build, that just doesn't say much) - in fact, Linux is the first platform hosting a 64-bit Flash build. what is missing is hardware-accelerated video processing, like on Mac, because no 'open' API exists that can process YUV video in hardware and send it back as RGB to Flash for further processing (adding UI elements, etc.).

Well, that's the excuse anyway (it seems the Gnash developers worked around that limitation somewhat by using an OpenGL backend, but it doesn't fallback easily and isn't exactly geared towards video processing like h.264 decoding, motion compensation and deinterlacing; at least, OGL does take care of YUV->RGB conversion, image stretching and, when shaders are available, postprocessing).

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]Stardude82[/nom]Yeah this is only for game servers... don't hold your breath on getting actually game support. The open source community is more concerned with purity than making the platform closed source games friendly. That and PC gaming with OpenGL is a minority of a Gaming minority with the dominance of the console market.[/citation]

Let them think that all their games will magically work on Linux, its quite entertaining to read them.

DX is here to stay.

Too l33t for windows, but not enough to understand that the Steam UI isnt the same as the games...

 

[Regulas]

[citation][nom]dwave[/nom]Woot! Maybe more games will come to linux so I can ditch Window$ completely. Games are the only thing holding me back.[/citation]
Total agreement here too. OS X and Linux are both based off of Unix and both use Open GL so this may be true.
I will watch this development closely.

 

[Regulas]

[citation][nom]mlopinto2k1[/nom]Oh this would be a great day indeed! Games hold me back from making a complete switch BUT not having native support for Photoshop (GIMP BLOWS MONKEY BALLS, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE TRIES TO TELL ME) is a reaaaal let down. I NEED PHOTOSHOP DAMNIT! I have CS4 loaded with Wine through a work-around but it still is not enough. I need native Linux support. Only god knows if this will ever happen. C'MON VALVE! GIVE ME STEAM![/citation]
While I don't need Photoshop I agree with you Gimp is nothing compared to Photoshop. The clone stamp is one aspect that Photoshop excels in. I fixed that problem with my MiniMac, I would love to drop MS completely and use Linux for not only for my main PC but my PC gaming platform as well. For now that would be fine and let creative stuff still be handled by OS X, Photoshop Elements, Music Studio ans so on.

 

[randomizer]

Let them think that all their games will magically work on Linux, its quite entertaining to read them.

All Valve games will. The rest is up to the other devs and publishers.

 

[haplo602]

old news, phoronix even got a working linux client together, just you cannot athenticate since the closed beta only accepts selected accounts.

also note that Steam is only the distribution system. This makes it easier for developers to reach a larger audience, it does not make all the games run on Linux.

but it's a start

 

[Regulas]

[citation][nom]taintsauce[/nom]As far as I know, you buy once and play on whatever machine you can run Steam on. I think they call it Steam Play or something like that.[/citation]
Oh crap looks like one day I will be playing the Orange Box again but this time running in Ubuntu. Sweet!!!!!

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]regulas[/nom]While I don't need Photoshop I agree with you Gimp is nothing compared to Photoshop. The clone stamp is one aspect that Photoshop excels in. I fixed that problem with my MiniMac, I would love to drop MS completely and use Linux for not only for my main PC but my PC gaming platform as well. For now that would be fine and let creative stuff still be handled by OS X, Photoshop Elements, Music Studio ans so on.[/citation]Right on bro.

 

[deanjo]

[citation][nom]mlopinto2k1[/nom]Oh this would be a great day indeed! Games hold me back from making a complete switch BUT not having native support for Photoshop (GIMP BLOWS MONKEY BALLS, I DON'T CARE WHAT ANYONE TRIES TO TELL ME) is a reaaaal let down. I NEED PHOTOSHOP DAMNIT! I have CS4 loaded with Wine through a work-around but it still is not enough. I need native Linux support. Only god knows if this will ever happen. C'MON VALVE! GIVE ME STEAM![/citation]

Lol, good luck with that happening. When it comes to Adobe, they can't code anything worthwhile outside of Win32. Even a simple browser plugin stumps them if it isn't on windows.

 

[captaincharisma]

LOL steam will be on Linux and all its 3 supported games that anyone gives a crap about

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]mitch074[/nom]@mlopinto2k1: layer performance is actually the part that is getting the most overhauling in Gimp 2.7/2.8. On-layer editing, layer groups, GEGL layer management are currently found in Gimp 2.7.0 (the development branch that will end up as Gimp 2.8).Upcoming work is improved management of vector layers (integration of GSoC 2006 work). Please test and report.[/citation]Thank you for being understanding to my ranting. It is very difficult to express concern after being discontent about something, especially a piece of software. I will be totally honest, if GIMP's developers are working on fixing some of these issues (they ARE issues) I would most certainly give it a shot! There is something else that really, really needs to be addressed and that is the LINE SMOOTHING when using the paint brush, or any tool that draws for that matter. If I make a fast stroke in GIMP (I am using a wacom tablet) it makes it looks like straight lines making a curve. That cannot stay like this! It just can't! It even does it in Photoshop 7 through Wine. Inkscape and Photoshop CS4 (through wine) are the only programs I have found that don't let this happen. It also happens in Windows but it is not nearly as noticeable and CS4 completely eliminates it. Anyway, I'm ranting again. Sorry! Hope they are working on some of the issues. They have an excellent piece of software on their hands to really throw a curve ball at the industry. Let's hope they don't screw it up.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

[citation][nom]deanjo[/nom]Lol, good luck with that happening. When it comes to Adobe, they can't code anything worthwhile outside of Win32. Even a simple browser plugin stumps them if it isn't on windows.[/citation]Yes, I know. One can only hope. Things have been changing and maybe someone will shine through with a new update to Wine. CS4 works OK now on it (with that work-around) but it is glitchy and not stable. If they could make a patch or something that applies just to CS4 or adobe products in general that provide seamless integration.. what ever is clever!

 

[Tindytim]

[citation][nom]WheelsOfConfusion[/nom]You know OpenGL 4.0 is finalized, right? Feature parity with Direct3D 11? They even back-ported a lot of the features in 4 to the new 3.3 point update for older hardware.[/citation]
Yeah, except the Khronos Group still hasn't rectified Long Peaks, and won't stop suckling on the balls of all the CAD professionals that are switching to DirectX anyway (it's such a hugely ironic vicious cycle).

 

[pyroghozt]

Hell Ya, I'm so sick of games only running natively on a Microsoft OS. They have had a Monopoly for too long now. Games should run natively on all operating systems and Source Games are a good start.