Linux and Steam and Windows 8

**junk2drive** · 25 Apr 12, 22:34

Interesting article about the possible future.

https://decentralist.wordpress.com/2...ming-platform/

**Redwolf** · 26 Apr 12, 09:12

To be honest, most of the Valve games (not steam games) were fairly friendly to running in wine on Linux anyway. It's just very polished software that doesn't do anything wacky and breaks on the next version of Windoze.

Performance problems are going to be the norm for a while. While the NVidia Linux driver team did a great job overall there are spots where things are rocky (let's leave aside the whole optimus mess). And it seems that they just replaced the whole team. In the ATI world the official drivers aren't very well-liked. The open source drivers for ati cards are better than the ones for NVidia cards but things are lacking for running the newest blockbuster games.

There will be a feedback loop with increased driver development as more games become available, but it requires more cooperation from nvidia and ati. NVidia in particular needs to give up the old stance of not supporting open source drivers.

***Scott Tortorice*** · 26 Apr 12, 20:12

I've been noticing that all of a sudden "Linux! Linux! Linux!" is on everyone's tongue in the gaming industry. Usually when that happens, some heavyweight in the industry (like Valve) is behind some sort of concerted push. I wonder if this indicates some sort of deep seated unease about Microsoft's commitment to the future of PC gaming. It was only a few weeks ago that Brad Wardell of Stardock was expressing serious misgivings about Windows 8 from a PC dev's perspective.

**Redwolf** · 26 Apr 12, 21:06

Might also be financial. MS might try to lock windows game developers in the same way that they do on Xbox or Sony does on PS.

I think the developers prefer to keep their cash for themselves.

And as we discussed elsewhere, superheavy gaming isn't that important anymore. A couple fps lost in a sub-par driver won't raise an eyebrow in 2014. Linux is pretty solid if you don't get assassinated by distribution antics. Chromebooks work pretty well, Linux is on any Android phone. A lot of critical mass.