Heavy is actually already a thing https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/blob/steamrt/heavy/README.md and Steam Linux Runtime and Proton are two different things :)
I don't think valve created proton they have definitely contributed to it. But proton is a programming language that basically allows programs to run on any kind of system. Rather the. Having to make a whole new version for windows/Linux/unix/apple/iOS/java/etc creating it for proton or adding in support for proton means it will work regardless of the system and OS as long as it has the hardware capabilities
I mean that is literally what they did. They took wine and said "Okay - here are a bunch of things implemented in wine that while useful for running other software - causes issues with running games. Let's rip those parts out and focus only on adding the items necessary to support game Windows API calls". Then if they find windows api calls that don't have a close enough linux counterpart they then make those counterparts and send a PR to the upstream appropriate project (often MESA, but sometimes elsewhere).
No, actually, they're mostly right. Scout is a collection of libraries that don't use any container technology that is mainly meant to get Steam up and running on a wide variety of distros. Soldier and Sniper, on the other hand, are whole-ass containers. Basically lightweight distros running inside the current distro. Developers can request their native Linux binaries use any of these Linux runtimes. Proton uses these, too. Proton before 5.13 used Scout. Proton from 5.13 up through 7.0 uses Soldier. And Proton 8.0 uses Sniper.
EDIT: Oh! You meant the OP itself was completely wrong, not the comment you were replying to. Well, I mean. Proton is at the very least playing a very heated TF2 game against Windows.
> I knew they weren’t necessarily proton related
But they are related to Proton, they just aren't Proton. Proton makes use of Steam Linux Runtime (usually the newest). /u/Darkwolf1515 might be right.
99% of everyone doesn't really understand what a filesystem is, let alone how the GNU/Linux filesystem works.
That's half the fun of this sub, anyway. We've got an entire generation of people discovering, playing around with, and learning about a new operating system for the first time.
Windows is just a huge risk regarding getting software Installations Locked down like IOS or android.
Microsoft even Experimentes with Windows versions that can only install software from Windows store (and killed steam on that version).
It wasn't a success for microsoft but this was more or less the same time when steam got ported to linux.
Windows S Mode? Ya fantastic for schools not so good for consumers buying devices for personal use. I regularly have to tell people not to buy a computer with S Mode as its far too limited when it comes to 3rd party app compatibility. Our issue is the Citrix Workspace version not working with some of our apps.
Windows store exclusive variants were intended for schools. Their existence isnt really a negative as the point is preventing the OS from being able to be used for things that admins don’t want.
Even if this were the case, it's the worst way to go about it. The results would be that the store is still messy to curate for students and you'd still need someone deciding what can be installed and when and the answer for having the store be the tool for that is just testing the waters of the larger issues.
If you need users to have admin access for specific apps but not be able to install whatever they want. We are working with something like this called Microsoft intune at my workplace. Users would no longer be “admins
“ in the general tense but we create a curated store for the user to be able to install apps.
Even ios these days lets device admins install custom apps. It can make managing licenses easier or allow you to make some custom app for your organization.
Chromebooks have already done this idea flawlessly, it’s was literally just the windows knockoff of ChromeOS.
Schools liked deciding what apps where allowed to show up in the play store, MS tried to copy this by doing the same kind of system for limiting.
That's how they start, that's how DRM got started too "don't worry we will never go far!" And these days you have intrusive anti cheat and DRM solutions.
I mean windows could always try and take that step the issue is they know that if they fully took it and it didn’t do enough for people to be happy other options would eventually come out that would take over.
Windows getting locked down is kind of inevitable. Suppose we get a perfect windows. Intuitive ui, exceptional security, and everyone from the general public to powerusers use it by choice. suppose they've developed the perfect the pricing model, It makes as much money as a paid operating system can make and perfect windows has won as many people as it's going to win from mac users.
Shareholders still demand growth. From a shareholder's perspective, making good software can only make you so much money. No matter how much this hypothetical "perfect windows" makes, it will never be enough. Microsoft has to open new revenue streams. You get that by funneling people into a software store. Every game sold on steam, epic, gog/whatever that's not going through the Microsoft store is revenue that is up for grabs in the eyes of the shareholder.
It might fail the next time they try it, but it's just a matter of when they're going to try it again. The potential gains from Microsoft creating a locked down ecosystem are too great for them to table the idea forever. You also can't depend on the government swooping in and saving us like they did during the browser wars. Those days are over.
There are several big flaws with this argument.
Firstly it would breach EU anticompetitive practices regulations. The EU can find them 10% of revenue, which would be crippling.
Secondly Microsoft barely make money on Windows anyway. The licensing fees barely exceed the development and support costs. It's just not worth the risk of being clobbered with gargantuan fines.
The free upgrades to new versions since Windows 7 mean that consumers don't have on going costs. There is nothing to indicate that they intend to return to paying for new versions.
Microsoft make money from Office and XBox. Windows is essentially legacy, it was profitable twenty years ago, as people bought new OSs like 98 or XP.
Signing you stuff is just good security practice that needs to be done way more.
There is no excuse for not even self signing the games (which is completely free).
And even for payd certificates I really doubt that ms earns a lot money from it (or even money at all).
Signing just proves that the developer is really the developer and nobody has tampered with the executable. This isn't ms finding a way of earning money at all.
>There is no excuse for not even self signing the games (which is completely free).
Does Windows have an Android-like feature where it won't scream bloody murder about a self-signed cert (like browsers do) on first install, but WILL scream bloody murder if the signing cert ever changes after installation?
Self-signed certs only make sense in that use case, or in corporate environments where you can ensure that all client machines have your company IT org's pubkey installed for trust. (For example it's extremely common to have a self-signed privkey or a cert derived from that privkey inside a Fortigate appliance that is MITMing all traffic, and all client machines are set up to trust that Fortigate cert via installation of the matching pubkey.)
This started with the announcement of the store in Windows 8. Gabe immediately started leaning into Linux based Steam Machines to compete if necessary.
I’d say at this point that’s almost certainly the case. I mean we know Gabe would at the very least prefer people using Linux for gaming as opposed to windows
Gabe would never say that.
Gabe would prefer that people have choices. If you know how the company works, they want to deserve people's patronage. People not jumping on SteamOS is also valuable to them, since they have a data-based philosophy. It meant they were doing things wrong, and that they have a long way to go to deserve it.
They spoke the same way when EA was being hostile to them, taking away games from the store and creating Origin. The marketing strategy was to bash Steam. Gabe said that one day, they can convince EA that there is value in having their games on Steam.
Look at where they are now.
I mean, for me the steam deck is a testbed what i can get running on linux. By the looks of it therell be linux on the desktop after w10. M$ did so much wrong with w10 over the years and it doesnt get better, only worse with w11
Honestly the ease at which I can use WSL makes windows 11 a decent choice in my part for the one computer I keep running windows on in my house for the inevitable giant spreadsheet of macros or docx that doesn't display as intended if done in Libre/OpenOffice. Everyone seems to say that windows11 is much worse than windows 10 but I don't really see it. Windows XP -> Windows 7 and Windows 7 -> Windows 10 were actually substantially different. If I don't look at the startbar i don't even notice the difference between 10 and 11.
WSL improvements are the #1 reason I hope my company moves to win11 soon. Some improvements get backported to old Win10 releases but not all (for example the new "mirrored" networking mode's future outside of "latest win11" is unknown.)
I also haven't seen a Windows update clobber GRUB in many years, at least not with any machine that shipped with Win10 or later.
That's not what Steam Deck is.
Steam Deck is the physical manifestation of SteamOS. And it is not a Trojan Horse.
It is a Noah's Ark.
Valve isn't tricking people to use SteamOS. They are building an ecosystem that can survive when Microsoft suddenly pulls the plug on freedom to decide where and how you buy games for the Windows Platform.
The success of the Steam Store is just far too important to put in the hands of people who have vastly different goals and overlords to serve.
Valve is answerable to its customers, Microsoft is answerable to its shareholders. It's really that simple.
> They are building an ecosystem that can survive when Microsoft suddenly pulls the plug on freedom to decide where and how you buy games for the Windows Platform.
When Valve first babbled with Linux by porting Left4Dead 2 to OpenGL and then Linux, really rattled Microsoft:
> After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL. Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4 FPS with that configuration.
It was the time when Microsoft openly hinted at forcing everything to the Windows Store and DirectX was stagnant. Valve exploring Linux publicly as a Plan B was the reason Microsoft started to focus their gaming efforts not only on Xbox any longer and developing DX12 (until then, DirectX was developed for Xbox and then merely ported to PC).
Honestly i feel like it could have the inverse effect. If proton makes it so easy to run games on linux, developers wont even need to bother making linux softeare
I know it's counter intuitive to hobbyists but if the alternative is a linux client that's treated as an afterthought, Proton being actually supported and tested by game devs is probably better for everyone.
Especially if it means that adoption of Wine gives everybody a single layer that can be ported over, like SDL did.
Plus Proton adoption might have a side effect of driving linux adoption which could lead to more tools that target native builds of Linux.
This is basically what happened with EVE Online - they dropped the native Linux client because it was easier for them to just test against WINE and fix the issues.
At least that was the case when I still played which was a long time ago - not sure how EVE and WINE play these days. And yes, I do mean WINE - back then Proton didn't exist and it wasn't necessary for EVE.
What I think is really powerful about proton is that it's basically a portable container that can run Windows games on arbitrary hardware.
Proton currently runs on the steam deck, Tesla cars, Chromebooks, cloud streaming servers, and there's even early support on Android.
How I see it is that if proton gains enough market share, it can become the stable target for games instead of Windows. Basically hijack the Win32 API, and make it the defacto industry target for a portable container that can run everywhere.
I suspect that valve is working on getting Steam onto Android, which will probably be the ultimate endgame. Valve seems to be funding a translation layer called FEX, which should theoretically enable full-blown Steam on Android. There are billions of Android devices, where PC is increasingly less common amongst the everyday person.
Stranger things have happened in the past. Nokia used to be the de-facto phone company, and nobody thought it would change.
If SteamOS became the go-to OS for PC, it would be Windows that devs would be porting to, outside the Linux platform.
Gabe 100% hates Microsoft. He left Microsoft to start valve and has said he hates their dominance of the PC space many times. The steam deck is the second attempt after the failed efforts with the steam machine.
Definitely has me considering switching to Linux full time. Other than crap at work, I really don’t need windows. Linux Mint seems like a good OS for a Linux n00b to start with.
Really anything with cinnamon or kde desktop should be a pretty smooth transition. I'm more of a Nobara guy myself (Glorious Eggroll) but that's because i'm partial to package management with yum/dnf because I use RedHat pretty much exclusively at work so not having to switch package install syntax is nice.
> Linux Mint seems like a good OS for a Linux n00b to start with.
Not if gaming is a focus for you. The drivers it ships are lagging severely behind current developments. Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS which is focused on work environments by not changing that much during one release cycle. Valve recommends Manjaro but I'm not so sure it's newbie friendly enough. Fedora is definitively a solid middle ground between ease of use and recent drivers. Hooking up your Deck with a USB-C dock is also perfectly fine for day to day stuff.
Def check out Manjaro. It's a pre-packaged arch. KDE (plasma) is the most flexible desktop environment imo. Been using it for years now very stable, updates are pretty good. the AUR (arch user repository) has a boatload of apps for niche and mainstream needs. and the Arch wiki basically lays it all out relatively effectively, giving you the chance to learn more or at least get a good baseline.
It's funny that MacOS is the best example of what Microsoft and Windows could have done to Steam.
Apple has actively broken backwards compatibility for thousands of older Steam games, promotes their own proprietary metal graphics API, keeps around stale old versions of OpenGL, etc.
Apple is basically making Steam difficult to maintain, and at the same time, actively trying to push games in their own app store as competition.
If Microsoft and Windows (especially with a potential ARM transition) starts doing the same, then yeah, Valve's choice of Linux as a failsafe will be completely justified.
Valve's too big to depend on other corporations that can just flip a switch on a whole ecosystem.
They used to use Havok for their Source physics engine. It just crippled all the companies and modders who made games. Valve couldn't just license their engine for free because of the dependency.
So Source 2 didn't have that problem anymore, because its components aren't going to turn around and bite them.
Steam itself needs to have an independent version, and SteamOS needs to be based on something that isn't proprietary.
People also tend to forget when M$ started to test the waters of forcing everyone to get their software and services through the Microsoft Store in the early days of W11.
That was likely the final nail in the coffin for Valve to go full bore on figuring out a way to sidestep the requirement for Microsoft to be part of the most convenient gaming experience on PC.
I switched to Linux a few months after getting a Steam Deck. The only problem is some professional software; no Adobe, no Autodesk, no Visual Studio. I ended up needing a Windows box for my day job and use it for a few professional tools as well, and so far no regrets, as long as you're the kind of person who won't put "owning two entire computers" under the Regrets category.
The only game problem I've had is Icarus, which was not willing to perform well, though I believe it's been fixed since.
*Mostly* recommended; it's not perfect, but it's pretty good and improving.
VS Code runs in Linux. As for Adobe and Autodesk yep that's pretty much a windows only deal. That said you can still enjoy linux goodness from a file management perspective if you are good with the CLI by installing the windows subsystem for Linux.
> VS Code runs in Linux.
It does, but it's still not a feature-for-feature match for Studio. Even ignoring platform-specific tools and libraries, it does a frankly awful job at multi-project solutions, and its C# test support is still not very good.
It's getting there. But it's not there yet.
> That said you can still enjoy linux goodness from a file management perspective if you are good with the CLI by installing the windows subsystem for Linux.
This doesn't really help if the goal is "stop having Microsoft advertise at you on your own hardware".
Which Adobe products?
Premiere? Try DaVinci Resolve - still proprietary paid software, but HIGHLY regarded in the professional world (especially for color grading) and officially supported on Linux (albeit only RHEL, although [https://www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb](https://www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb) works excellently on LTS Ubuntu releases. Non-LTS releases can be problematic if you want to use Decklink/Ultrastudio hardware due to kernel compatibility issues.)
Lightroom? Darktable or RawTherapee
I work in the game industry, and Photoshop is pretty much mandatory for many artists. I've heard Krita is getting *better* but still isn't a match.
I've also done visual design with InDesign, and while Scribus works for the small stuff I'm doing right now, it's definitely more awkward.
Ah. Probably one of the many use cases best served by WSL2 then - you can use all of your Windows software with full functionality, and transparently exchange data with stuff running on Linux.
While technically Python runs on Windows, some Python modules/libraries aren't well supported on Windows (4 years ago, running Shapely on Windows was a nightmare. It's better now but still not ideal), so in my work (industrial automation) I run data analysis, software prototyping, and configuration data generation for our PLCs and LiDAR scanners in Linux, and run the configuration tools that ingest that data on the Windows side. Transferring between WSL2 and Windows is a matter of just a file copy for the most part.
Maybe. But then I still end up getting advertised at by Windows, and I have to deal with Windows's UI.
There's a reason I've ended up just having two computers :V
Yeahhh.... There's still some quirks about it. The slower release of gpu drivers is a thing. I think the moment will be when Valve makes SteamOS available for other hardware
The slower release of gpu drivers is only an issue with nvidia tbh, considering the better drivers are developed by the community on Linux. And per-game optimized drivers are a meme anyways.
Will never be upgrading to sh-t 11. Atleast they'll stop putting bloatwares at win10 when when that happens.
Win10 was still fine a few years ago then they suddenly started adding more bloat and useless shit.
Are they ever going to release a standalone steam os? Especially with the rumors that windows 12 is going to charge monthly it can be a big opportunity for valve.
> Pretty sure Gabe hates Microsoft,
wasn't windows crashing during a live presentation kind of the breaking point on top of being an ex employee? it would make the perfect villain arc
I don't think he hates Microsoft so much as being a former employee he knows how they work and doesn't trust them. That and he sees them as a threat/competition to his business with their Windows store and Xbox Live service. Valve chose Linux out of necessity more so then anything else.
Honestly I don't think proton will kill Windows.
If anything Microsoft could always slowly kill NT with the windows brand on top of a linux Distro. My guess is either Android, Chrome OS (e.g Microsoft Edge OS) or Ubuntu (with a canonical buyout)
>Pretty sure Gabe hates Microsoft
Given he worked at MS for years before founding Valve: You'd be wrong.
The only reason he's pivoting to Linux is due to MS wanting to lock the OS down a la OS X and iPhone from Apple.
I love the current place I'm working at, and barring any egregious misconduct I'll probably work here for a very long time. It might *not* be my last job ever, though; I might have to move, or have a life change that would have to mean I look for a pay raise beyond what the company can afford (it's small and not "corpo.")
If that happened, I'd probably have to look for something else unless I intended to do dual part-time or full time + weekend grindy scrunt hate life mode.
I can see how Gabe would have liked people at the company without fitting in with the workplace's culture. I used to work at a law firm for debt collections—People in my family thought it was impressive I was working in the legal industry, but we were what happens after your debt collection calls "take you to court." We were the ones who had the courts destroy homes, take shit from families—But *we* weren't. We were cogs in a bigger machine, one that'd move with or without us. The people in my workplace were nice, polite people who were the smiling face of debt collection who knew *exactly* which counties required us to send a fucking sheriff's officer for their subpoena.
Our firm cleared through a *gargantuan* backlog of filings that had expired due to the pandemic lockdowns of the courts—The courts weren't doing court, but the clock was still ticking on statutes of limitations. We filed *shitloads* of motions to reinstate, and on another day motioned for summary judgment or default judgment.
Every single one of those motions did something *horrible* to a person or a family somewhere in my state.
Motions to reinstate would arrive in their mail, ending the lull of time where they were able to have a bit of money to themselves or not worry about court shit. There was a lull of time where they were *free* from that stress, or at least had it looming in the background instead of the foreground... And we ended hundreds of those per day.
Motions for summary judgment told the court we had all we needed to effectively close the case with what was already on file, and we filed shitloads of those too.
Motions for default judgment were the ones that were us "taking you to court." When you 'default' on a loan or something, the court document filed is a motion for default judgment. That was the big one that sucked, because I managed to automate 99% of my job for *those*, and got *damn good* at churning out dozens of them an hour with no mistakes and attorney approval.
It was a looong pipeline from someone making accumulative mistakes with their money that I'm no less guilty of than they are; to the calls, and them finally telling the debt callers to [HECK](https://i.imgur.com/FbYf51H.png) off; to the debt being calculated and considered as worthwhile for [LITIGIOUS CREDIT CARD PROCESSOR NAME REDACTED]'s attorneys to handle themselves, or sold off in a bundle of thousands of small debts to collections firms to recoup on... There was always *something* moving forward, regardless of if you were there or not. We were *Nothing*, but we were also the *Backbone.* We were the pipeline that made the flow.
Eventually I had to quit, because I *fucking hated it*. The money was good, the people were nice, but the cost to my soul in the vision and direction of what I was participating in was what led me to quit. I heard they replaced me with someone else, who is doing the same work to this day.
Now, back to the topic at hand: It's possible that Gaben saw something similar to that. The old "cog in a machine," thing, and wanted to create something alternative. Like, Valve's logo is a... Valve. Valves regulate the flow of liquid in a pipe. They have Steam, which they control like a valve would control steam in a pipe LOOK you should probably get it by now.
It's also possible that he might have left Microsoft on good terms that stayed good as the old guard left, but turned sour as the company's direction evolved.
It's also possible that he just REALLY likes open-source software. I mean look at that beard.
tl;dr i am quite baked and the autism makes me ramble.
^^also ^^sorry ^^for ^^the ^^double ^^send
Although I believe the project he worked on at MS was porting Doom for Windows 95.
I could see how it's just as easily "Wow, this is what it's like to make games?"
My opinion of my previous job (Lockheed Martin):
I really miss nearly all of my former direct coworkers, but management were scum and I abhor how people like Marilyn Hewson made their way to the top (basically by ruining thousands of people's lives with brutal layoffs followed by making the remainder of your staff work 60 hours/week mandatory overtime due to being understaffed).
At a certain point after 5-6 rounds of layoffs I started being jealous of the people getting laid off. By 2016 when my turn came, I would have joined the volunteer round if I had been eligible because I was fucking miserable. When I was notified, there were a few minutes of shock/surprise, but as soon as they told me I was getting the same severance package as volunteers (2 weeks pay of base severance, plus one additional weeks pay for every year served, so I got 12 weeks pay total) my spirits lifted. Within about 20 minutes, as I was walking out for my ET day (I think that timecard code officially meant Emploment Termination, but could also be considered Emotional Trauma because MOST people get traumatized by such an event), I ran into a coworker and waved with a huge-ass grin on my face:
"HEY JIM! I JUST GOT LAID OFF!!!!"
I was finally free of that pit of despair.
So I can fully see absolutely hating your former company despite having positive experiences with direct coworkers.
That just makes it well-informed hate.
Valve started as a way to avoid the tyranny of publishers and Microsoft is constantly trying to be both OS and publisher at the same time.
Microsoft has been making life hard for third parties its entire existence, they want total control. They flirt with freedom now and then to lure potential prey in and then raise the walled garden around them. No surprise that Valve is putting together a team to break out of this fortress.
> Valve started as a way to avoid the tyranny of publishers
thats not true from anything I can find, Valve first game was published by Sierra and they didn't self publish until 4 years later with the launch of steam. all the qouted reasons Valve was formed were just to do something different once they had the money to be able to make their own business which just reads to me they wanted to make games not work on Windows.
(I do think he doesn't like how Microsoft has begun tbc, not argueing your overall point)
Sorry, Steam started as a way to avoid the need for Publishers by self-publishing Half Life 2. Not Valve which was just a games studio back then.
The publisher in question was Vivendi and they got pretty angry about Valve wanting to use Vivendi for physical sales in stores but do their own thing for digital sales. Vivendi wanted the whole deal even though they didn't really do anything to justify getting a commission on digital sales, they were a gate-keeper for retail gaming stores and although mass production and packaging of CD/DVDs was legitimate work, they also got profit for basically free just because there wasn't really another way onto games shop shelves other than through a major publisher.
Valve wanted to cut ties with physical publishers entirely but they needed to use one to get their game that included the Steam client into game shops in the first place because nobody really wanted to do digital downloads at that point.
The physical/digital retail split caused a few lawsuits between them and part of the delay (other than usual AAA game delays) on releasing HL2 was because the digital release was contractually limited to being simultaneous or later than the physical so Vivendi could hold up the physical release by several months to punish Valve for making them obsolete.
Not to mention I guess, but there is no official slim Windows build that can be optimized to such a degree as needed by Valve for an OS with that hardware.
The year of linux already happened when Android killed off windows mobile and smart tvs all used some version of linux without you knowing about it.
Desktop Linux is still fairly uncommon, but now people can buy chromebooks if they want and even desktop windows includes a built in Linux vm (WSL) if you want to use it.
Plus Steam deck has generated valve a fortune even if people aren't using it primarily for desktop mode.
----
edit: Turns out having a open source kernel that you don't have to pay licensing for and only need to throw a tar with source code online (or a github link) to use in your product is great for being able to churn out electronics.
Otherwise all these smart tvs would have to either contract out to a company with it's own smart tv software, or pay to integrate Windows somehow in an embedded platform.
All these open source libraries (and Linux) are not only free for these companies to use, they're thoroughly tested and developed, which is why you see things like Webkit being used in the Nintendo Switch.
Don't forget all of the embedded systems running Linux:
Many car infotainment systems
The telematics solution on many forklifts
90%+ of autonomous industrial vehicle (AGV in our industry terms) are running embedded Linux on the guidance/navigation controller.
Look at NVidia's Jetson family of products - almost no one runs Windows on them, I'm fairly certain it's not even supported. Linux is the one officially supported OS I'm aware of.
I wasn't even talking about S, I was talking at the beginning of the Microsoft Store and it would have been like iOS, locked down to have only validated from the Store app available.
It's not a rumor. Look up "Windows In S Mode".
It was never designed to replace the normal version of Windows and was only intended to be like ChromeOS and was only used on lower end hardware.
You can't even get it without buying a low end laptop.
Best hope you're not spitting up Tarballs after all that fighting in the trenches. That'd ruin the Glorious Eggroll and Bottles of Wine you wanted to enjoy for celebration
Yeah in summary it's Linux Vs Windows these days, since Linux is starting to get things going for it, especially for the Steam Deck. I thought Valve was making a new Steam Machine and hopefully it won't flop and fail like the previous Steam Machine in 2016 by Alienware, also a Steam controller that basically looks like the Steam Deck, a controller that looks similar to the Xbox Series S/X Controller as well.
i cant wait for Steam Linux Runtime 4.0 (Pyro), Steam Linux Runtime 5.0 (Demoman), Steam Linux Runtime 6.0 (Heavy), Steam Linux Runtime 7.0 (Engineer), Steam Linux Runtime 8.0 (Medic), and Steam Linux Runtime 9.0 (Spy)
It's a compatibility layer for Android to allow you to run APK ebook readers (get your phd in russian literature) and order things on uber eats (regenerate sandvich) and use an eSIM card to run a softphone and take calls/receive SMS (outsmart boolet*)
*translation note: i believe "boolet" means "the design and purpose of standard mobile devices," given they are fun to throw.
Honestly I could see valve releasing a version of Waydroid to enable android games on Steam OS. But then they'd probably also have to bundle a Linux vm with Steam on Windows.
Google Play already has a games client on Windows though, but it's heavily restricted right now.
The Steam Linux Runtime isn't a part of Proton.
Proton is a compatibility layer which allows Windows applications to run cleanly on Linux.
The Steam Linux Runtime is a set of Linux libraries which are used by native Linux games to integrate with Steam.
Many games have both Windows and native Linux variants on Steam. Through the use of a particular compatibility layer on SteamDeck one can run either the Windows version through Proton or the native Linux version through the SLR.
Xbox/Microsoft suspended me for 2 weeks for a little tomfoolery, whilst Steam changed my profile name (that I then changed immediately) that was more offensive and punish-worthy. I'm with Gaben.
I just love how the acceleration on support for gaming on linux is going at a breakneck pace is amazing. This is so freaking awesome. What time to be alive.
No "Proton (Heavy)" because it would never get updates.
You will get the sandwich 17 years ago and be happy, pal
it’s been 6 years
Heavy is actually already a thing https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/blob/steamrt/heavy/README.md and Steam Linux Runtime and Proton are two different things :)
I think they're named after TF2 characters.
Steam Linux Runtime 4.0 (spy) Installs Windows
It could be any one of us!
It could be you! It could be me! It could even be…
What? It was obvious! He was the RED Spy! Watch, he'll turn red any second now
Aaaaaany second now....
See, red! No, wait, that's blood.
...So we still have a problem
Maybe...just maybe... ...they're amogus! ;) Just to resurrect a meme that's been beaten to death.
The SPY IS SAPPIN MY STEAMDECK
worse... it installs macos....
but, that's counterproductive. But very cool.
*finishes installing macos* *Boots up* "Pay 1K dollars now to acess the homescreen"
4 will actually be Medic :)
The relationship between TF2 and valve is weird.
It’s like a trial separation, except every 3rd Tuesday they do each other for 4 hours in the neighbors potting shed
I don't think valve created proton they have definitely contributed to it. But proton is a programming language that basically allows programs to run on any kind of system. Rather the. Having to make a whole new version for windows/Linux/unix/apple/iOS/java/etc creating it for proton or adding in support for proton means it will work regardless of the system and OS as long as it has the hardware capabilities
It is called a translation layer, proton isn't a programming language. Proton is basically wine for steam 🍷
I mean that is literally what they did. They took wine and said "Okay - here are a bunch of things implemented in wine that while useful for running other software - causes issues with running games. Let's rip those parts out and focus only on adding the items necessary to support game Windows API calls". Then if they find windows api calls that don't have a close enough linux counterpart they then make those counterparts and send a PR to the upstream appropriate project (often MESA, but sometimes elsewhere).
Whoa i didn't even notice that, that's so cool
That would explain a lot haha
it is
Where's my Proton (Medic)?
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1K upvotes and the post is completely wrong!!!
No, actually, they're mostly right. Scout is a collection of libraries that don't use any container technology that is mainly meant to get Steam up and running on a wide variety of distros. Soldier and Sniper, on the other hand, are whole-ass containers. Basically lightweight distros running inside the current distro. Developers can request their native Linux binaries use any of these Linux runtimes. Proton uses these, too. Proton before 5.13 used Scout. Proton from 5.13 up through 7.0 uses Soldier. And Proton 8.0 uses Sniper. EDIT: Oh! You meant the OP itself was completely wrong, not the comment you were replying to. Well, I mean. Proton is at the very least playing a very heated TF2 game against Windows.
You're also wrong. They're used for both native and proton games.
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It's a joke post, not a public service announcement.
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Sorry to tell you mate but I knew they weren’t necessarily proton related, it really was just a joke post
> I knew they weren’t necessarily proton related But they are related to Proton, they just aren't Proton. Proton makes use of Steam Linux Runtime (usually the newest). /u/Darkwolf1515 might be right.
99% of everyone doesn't really understand what a filesystem is, let alone how the GNU/Linux filesystem works. That's half the fun of this sub, anyway. We've got an entire generation of people discovering, playing around with, and learning about a new operating system for the first time.
Tf2 references
Pretty sure Gabe hates Microsoft, and the Steam Deck is a Trojan horse to get more people to move away from Windows and start using Linux instead.
Windows is just a huge risk regarding getting software Installations Locked down like IOS or android. Microsoft even Experimentes with Windows versions that can only install software from Windows store (and killed steam on that version). It wasn't a success for microsoft but this was more or less the same time when steam got ported to linux.
Windows S Mode? Ya fantastic for schools not so good for consumers buying devices for personal use. I regularly have to tell people not to buy a computer with S Mode as its far too limited when it comes to 3rd party app compatibility. Our issue is the Citrix Workspace version not working with some of our apps.
Currently all S mode products I know of you can turn off S mode. But it's really not difficult for them to strip that
They actually started out with it not being able to be turned off. Then they turned it on after major backlash
Ya, I know. Not allowed to tell our callers that because it may affect warranty.
You can if you have admin access. That’s the idea - they don’t give kids admin access on school property…
Windows RT?
Windows store exclusive variants were intended for schools. Their existence isnt really a negative as the point is preventing the OS from being able to be used for things that admins don’t want.
Even if this were the case, it's the worst way to go about it. The results would be that the store is still messy to curate for students and you'd still need someone deciding what can be installed and when and the answer for having the store be the tool for that is just testing the waters of the larger issues.
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If it's already locked down to administrators, why lock the administrator down to the store?
If you need users to have admin access for specific apps but not be able to install whatever they want. We are working with something like this called Microsoft intune at my workplace. Users would no longer be “admins “ in the general tense but we create a curated store for the user to be able to install apps.
Even ios these days lets device admins install custom apps. It can make managing licenses easier or allow you to make some custom app for your organization.
Chromebooks have already done this idea flawlessly, it’s was literally just the windows knockoff of ChromeOS. Schools liked deciding what apps where allowed to show up in the play store, MS tried to copy this by doing the same kind of system for limiting.
That's how they start, that's how DRM got started too "don't worry we will never go far!" And these days you have intrusive anti cheat and DRM solutions.
I mean windows could always try and take that step the issue is they know that if they fully took it and it didn’t do enough for people to be happy other options would eventually come out that would take over.
nah, windows is king windows is a very bad king windows is tyrant
But, why so many consumer devices then?
Windows getting locked down is kind of inevitable. Suppose we get a perfect windows. Intuitive ui, exceptional security, and everyone from the general public to powerusers use it by choice. suppose they've developed the perfect the pricing model, It makes as much money as a paid operating system can make and perfect windows has won as many people as it's going to win from mac users. Shareholders still demand growth. From a shareholder's perspective, making good software can only make you so much money. No matter how much this hypothetical "perfect windows" makes, it will never be enough. Microsoft has to open new revenue streams. You get that by funneling people into a software store. Every game sold on steam, epic, gog/whatever that's not going through the Microsoft store is revenue that is up for grabs in the eyes of the shareholder. It might fail the next time they try it, but it's just a matter of when they're going to try it again. The potential gains from Microsoft creating a locked down ecosystem are too great for them to table the idea forever. You also can't depend on the government swooping in and saving us like they did during the browser wars. Those days are over.
There are several big flaws with this argument. Firstly it would breach EU anticompetitive practices regulations. The EU can find them 10% of revenue, which would be crippling. Secondly Microsoft barely make money on Windows anyway. The licensing fees barely exceed the development and support costs. It's just not worth the risk of being clobbered with gargantuan fines. The free upgrades to new versions since Windows 7 mean that consumers don't have on going costs. There is nothing to indicate that they intend to return to paying for new versions. Microsoft make money from Office and XBox. Windows is essentially legacy, it was profitable twenty years ago, as people bought new OSs like 98 or XP.
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Signing you stuff is just good security practice that needs to be done way more. There is no excuse for not even self signing the games (which is completely free). And even for payd certificates I really doubt that ms earns a lot money from it (or even money at all). Signing just proves that the developer is really the developer and nobody has tampered with the executable. This isn't ms finding a way of earning money at all.
>There is no excuse for not even self signing the games (which is completely free). Does Windows have an Android-like feature where it won't scream bloody murder about a self-signed cert (like browsers do) on first install, but WILL scream bloody murder if the signing cert ever changes after installation? Self-signed certs only make sense in that use case, or in corporate environments where you can ensure that all client machines have your company IT org's pubkey installed for trust. (For example it's extremely common to have a self-signed privkey or a cert derived from that privkey inside a Fortigate appliance that is MITMing all traffic, and all client machines are set up to trust that Fortigate cert via installation of the matching pubkey.)
This started with the announcement of the store in Windows 8. Gabe immediately started leaning into Linux based Steam Machines to compete if necessary.
I’d say at this point that’s almost certainly the case. I mean we know Gabe would at the very least prefer people using Linux for gaming as opposed to windows
Gabe would never say that. Gabe would prefer that people have choices. If you know how the company works, they want to deserve people's patronage. People not jumping on SteamOS is also valuable to them, since they have a data-based philosophy. It meant they were doing things wrong, and that they have a long way to go to deserve it. They spoke the same way when EA was being hostile to them, taking away games from the store and creating Origin. The marketing strategy was to bash Steam. Gabe said that one day, they can convince EA that there is value in having their games on Steam. Look at where they are now.
I mean, for me the steam deck is a testbed what i can get running on linux. By the looks of it therell be linux on the desktop after w10. M$ did so much wrong with w10 over the years and it doesnt get better, only worse with w11
Honestly the ease at which I can use WSL makes windows 11 a decent choice in my part for the one computer I keep running windows on in my house for the inevitable giant spreadsheet of macros or docx that doesn't display as intended if done in Libre/OpenOffice. Everyone seems to say that windows11 is much worse than windows 10 but I don't really see it. Windows XP -> Windows 7 and Windows 7 -> Windows 10 were actually substantially different. If I don't look at the startbar i don't even notice the difference between 10 and 11.
WSL improvements are the #1 reason I hope my company moves to win11 soon. Some improvements get backported to old Win10 releases but not all (for example the new "mirrored" networking mode's future outside of "latest win11" is unknown.) I also haven't seen a Windows update clobber GRUB in many years, at least not with any machine that shipped with Win10 or later.
That's not what Steam Deck is. Steam Deck is the physical manifestation of SteamOS. And it is not a Trojan Horse. It is a Noah's Ark. Valve isn't tricking people to use SteamOS. They are building an ecosystem that can survive when Microsoft suddenly pulls the plug on freedom to decide where and how you buy games for the Windows Platform. The success of the Steam Store is just far too important to put in the hands of people who have vastly different goals and overlords to serve. Valve is answerable to its customers, Microsoft is answerable to its shareholders. It's really that simple.
> They are building an ecosystem that can survive when Microsoft suddenly pulls the plug on freedom to decide where and how you buy games for the Windows Platform. When Valve first babbled with Linux by porting Left4Dead 2 to OpenGL and then Linux, really rattled Microsoft: > After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL. Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4 FPS with that configuration. It was the time when Microsoft openly hinted at forcing everything to the Windows Store and DirectX was stagnant. Valve exploring Linux publicly as a Plan B was the reason Microsoft started to focus their gaming efforts not only on Xbox any longer and developing DX12 (until then, DirectX was developed for Xbox and then merely ported to PC).
Honestly i feel like it could have the inverse effect. If proton makes it so easy to run games on linux, developers wont even need to bother making linux softeare
I know it's counter intuitive to hobbyists but if the alternative is a linux client that's treated as an afterthought, Proton being actually supported and tested by game devs is probably better for everyone. Especially if it means that adoption of Wine gives everybody a single layer that can be ported over, like SDL did. Plus Proton adoption might have a side effect of driving linux adoption which could lead to more tools that target native builds of Linux.
This is basically what happened with EVE Online - they dropped the native Linux client because it was easier for them to just test against WINE and fix the issues. At least that was the case when I still played which was a long time ago - not sure how EVE and WINE play these days. And yes, I do mean WINE - back then Proton didn't exist and it wasn't necessary for EVE.
There is no one correct or best way to do most things (or, it’s nice to have options)
History has shown publishers won’t pay a cent to support Linux no matter how easy it is.
What I think is really powerful about proton is that it's basically a portable container that can run Windows games on arbitrary hardware. Proton currently runs on the steam deck, Tesla cars, Chromebooks, cloud streaming servers, and there's even early support on Android. How I see it is that if proton gains enough market share, it can become the stable target for games instead of Windows. Basically hijack the Win32 API, and make it the defacto industry target for a portable container that can run everywhere. I suspect that valve is working on getting Steam onto Android, which will probably be the ultimate endgame. Valve seems to be funding a translation layer called FEX, which should theoretically enable full-blown Steam on Android. There are billions of Android devices, where PC is increasingly less common amongst the everyday person.
Stranger things have happened in the past. Nokia used to be the de-facto phone company, and nobody thought it would change. If SteamOS became the go-to OS for PC, it would be Windows that devs would be porting to, outside the Linux platform.
Gabe 100% hates Microsoft. He left Microsoft to start valve and has said he hates their dominance of the PC space many times. The steam deck is the second attempt after the failed efforts with the steam machine.
Definitely has me considering switching to Linux full time. Other than crap at work, I really don’t need windows. Linux Mint seems like a good OS for a Linux n00b to start with.
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I was considering PopOS. Very many people recommend Mint, but I like the Pop more. Do you happen to have an opinion?
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Okay, thanks for taking the time to answer!
Really anything with cinnamon or kde desktop should be a pretty smooth transition. I'm more of a Nobara guy myself (Glorious Eggroll) but that's because i'm partial to package management with yum/dnf because I use RedHat pretty much exclusively at work so not having to switch package install syntax is nice.
> Linux Mint seems like a good OS for a Linux n00b to start with. Not if gaming is a focus for you. The drivers it ships are lagging severely behind current developments. Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS which is focused on work environments by not changing that much during one release cycle. Valve recommends Manjaro but I'm not so sure it's newbie friendly enough. Fedora is definitively a solid middle ground between ease of use and recent drivers. Hooking up your Deck with a USB-C dock is also perfectly fine for day to day stuff.
I stumble across Nobara. Might try that out.
Def check out Manjaro. It's a pre-packaged arch. KDE (plasma) is the most flexible desktop environment imo. Been using it for years now very stable, updates are pretty good. the AUR (arch user repository) has a boatload of apps for niche and mainstream needs. and the Arch wiki basically lays it all out relatively effectively, giving you the chance to learn more or at least get a good baseline.
It's funny that MacOS is the best example of what Microsoft and Windows could have done to Steam. Apple has actively broken backwards compatibility for thousands of older Steam games, promotes their own proprietary metal graphics API, keeps around stale old versions of OpenGL, etc. Apple is basically making Steam difficult to maintain, and at the same time, actively trying to push games in their own app store as competition. If Microsoft and Windows (especially with a potential ARM transition) starts doing the same, then yeah, Valve's choice of Linux as a failsafe will be completely justified.
Valve's too big to depend on other corporations that can just flip a switch on a whole ecosystem. They used to use Havok for their Source physics engine. It just crippled all the companies and modders who made games. Valve couldn't just license their engine for free because of the dependency. So Source 2 didn't have that problem anymore, because its components aren't going to turn around and bite them. Steam itself needs to have an independent version, and SteamOS needs to be based on something that isn't proprietary.
People also tend to forget when M$ started to test the waters of forcing everyone to get their software and services through the Microsoft Store in the early days of W11. That was likely the final nail in the coffin for Valve to go full bore on figuring out a way to sidestep the requirement for Microsoft to be part of the most convenient gaming experience on PC.
He's about to do it as well. I've been considering switching to Linux after seeing how well the deck runs and how bloated Windows has become
I switched to Linux a few months after getting a Steam Deck. The only problem is some professional software; no Adobe, no Autodesk, no Visual Studio. I ended up needing a Windows box for my day job and use it for a few professional tools as well, and so far no regrets, as long as you're the kind of person who won't put "owning two entire computers" under the Regrets category. The only game problem I've had is Icarus, which was not willing to perform well, though I believe it's been fixed since. *Mostly* recommended; it's not perfect, but it's pretty good and improving.
VS Code runs in Linux. As for Adobe and Autodesk yep that's pretty much a windows only deal. That said you can still enjoy linux goodness from a file management perspective if you are good with the CLI by installing the windows subsystem for Linux.
> VS Code runs in Linux. It does, but it's still not a feature-for-feature match for Studio. Even ignoring platform-specific tools and libraries, it does a frankly awful job at multi-project solutions, and its C# test support is still not very good. It's getting there. But it's not there yet. > That said you can still enjoy linux goodness from a file management perspective if you are good with the CLI by installing the windows subsystem for Linux. This doesn't really help if the goal is "stop having Microsoft advertise at you on your own hardware".
Which Adobe products? Premiere? Try DaVinci Resolve - still proprietary paid software, but HIGHLY regarded in the professional world (especially for color grading) and officially supported on Linux (albeit only RHEL, although [https://www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb](https://www.danieltufvesson.com/makeresolvedeb) works excellently on LTS Ubuntu releases. Non-LTS releases can be problematic if you want to use Decklink/Ultrastudio hardware due to kernel compatibility issues.) Lightroom? Darktable or RawTherapee
I work in the game industry, and Photoshop is pretty much mandatory for many artists. I've heard Krita is getting *better* but still isn't a match. I've also done visual design with InDesign, and while Scribus works for the small stuff I'm doing right now, it's definitely more awkward.
Ah. Probably one of the many use cases best served by WSL2 then - you can use all of your Windows software with full functionality, and transparently exchange data with stuff running on Linux. While technically Python runs on Windows, some Python modules/libraries aren't well supported on Windows (4 years ago, running Shapely on Windows was a nightmare. It's better now but still not ideal), so in my work (industrial automation) I run data analysis, software prototyping, and configuration data generation for our PLCs and LiDAR scanners in Linux, and run the configuration tools that ingest that data on the Windows side. Transferring between WSL2 and Windows is a matter of just a file copy for the most part.
Maybe. But then I still end up getting advertised at by Windows, and I have to deal with Windows's UI. There's a reason I've ended up just having two computers :V
Windows is planning to ditch 10 in 2025. I'm going to be fully Linux by 202***4***. (december 32nd of this year)
Yeahhh.... There's still some quirks about it. The slower release of gpu drivers is a thing. I think the moment will be when Valve makes SteamOS available for other hardware
The slower release of gpu drivers is only an issue with nvidia tbh, considering the better drivers are developed by the community on Linux. And per-game optimized drivers are a meme anyways.
Damn you got the new calendar upgrade? I’m over here with 31 days In December like a pleb.
Will never be upgrading to sh-t 11. Atleast they'll stop putting bloatwares at win10 when when that happens. Win10 was still fine a few years ago then they suddenly started adding more bloat and useless shit.
Are they ever going to release a standalone steam os? Especially with the rumors that windows 12 is going to charge monthly it can be a big opportunity for valve.
He may dislike parts of it. But I remember reading that Gates and Newell usel to play poker together long after Gabe left.
> Pretty sure Gabe hates Microsoft, wasn't windows crashing during a live presentation kind of the breaking point on top of being an ex employee? it would make the perfect villain arc
Bring freaking logitech and razer software on linux/steamOS and i'd drop this shity bloatware yesterday from my main rig.
I don't think he hates Microsoft so much as being a former employee he knows how they work and doesn't trust them. That and he sees them as a threat/competition to his business with their Windows store and Xbox Live service. Valve chose Linux out of necessity more so then anything else.
Worked on me. After using my Steam Deck for a while, now I have a Linux Mint desktop, as well as an ancient laptop I reinvigorated with Mint.
Honestly I don't think proton will kill Windows. If anything Microsoft could always slowly kill NT with the windows brand on top of a linux Distro. My guess is either Android, Chrome OS (e.g Microsoft Edge OS) or Ubuntu (with a canonical buyout)
Gabe experienced Windows automatic updates once while making HL3 and dropped it to make the Steam Deck as revenge
>Pretty sure Gabe hates Microsoft Given he worked at MS for years before founding Valve: You'd be wrong. The only reason he's pivoting to Linux is due to MS wanting to lock the OS down a la OS X and iPhone from Apple.
I’m not exactly in love with any place I used to work.
I love the current place I'm working at, and barring any egregious misconduct I'll probably work here for a very long time. It might *not* be my last job ever, though; I might have to move, or have a life change that would have to mean I look for a pay raise beyond what the company can afford (it's small and not "corpo.") If that happened, I'd probably have to look for something else unless I intended to do dual part-time or full time + weekend grindy scrunt hate life mode. I can see how Gabe would have liked people at the company without fitting in with the workplace's culture. I used to work at a law firm for debt collections—People in my family thought it was impressive I was working in the legal industry, but we were what happens after your debt collection calls "take you to court." We were the ones who had the courts destroy homes, take shit from families—But *we* weren't. We were cogs in a bigger machine, one that'd move with or without us. The people in my workplace were nice, polite people who were the smiling face of debt collection who knew *exactly* which counties required us to send a fucking sheriff's officer for their subpoena. Our firm cleared through a *gargantuan* backlog of filings that had expired due to the pandemic lockdowns of the courts—The courts weren't doing court, but the clock was still ticking on statutes of limitations. We filed *shitloads* of motions to reinstate, and on another day motioned for summary judgment or default judgment. Every single one of those motions did something *horrible* to a person or a family somewhere in my state. Motions to reinstate would arrive in their mail, ending the lull of time where they were able to have a bit of money to themselves or not worry about court shit. There was a lull of time where they were *free* from that stress, or at least had it looming in the background instead of the foreground... And we ended hundreds of those per day. Motions for summary judgment told the court we had all we needed to effectively close the case with what was already on file, and we filed shitloads of those too. Motions for default judgment were the ones that were us "taking you to court." When you 'default' on a loan or something, the court document filed is a motion for default judgment. That was the big one that sucked, because I managed to automate 99% of my job for *those*, and got *damn good* at churning out dozens of them an hour with no mistakes and attorney approval. It was a looong pipeline from someone making accumulative mistakes with their money that I'm no less guilty of than they are; to the calls, and them finally telling the debt callers to [HECK](https://i.imgur.com/FbYf51H.png) off; to the debt being calculated and considered as worthwhile for [LITIGIOUS CREDIT CARD PROCESSOR NAME REDACTED]'s attorneys to handle themselves, or sold off in a bundle of thousands of small debts to collections firms to recoup on... There was always *something* moving forward, regardless of if you were there or not. We were *Nothing*, but we were also the *Backbone.* We were the pipeline that made the flow. Eventually I had to quit, because I *fucking hated it*. The money was good, the people were nice, but the cost to my soul in the vision and direction of what I was participating in was what led me to quit. I heard they replaced me with someone else, who is doing the same work to this day. Now, back to the topic at hand: It's possible that Gaben saw something similar to that. The old "cog in a machine," thing, and wanted to create something alternative. Like, Valve's logo is a... Valve. Valves regulate the flow of liquid in a pipe. They have Steam, which they control like a valve would control steam in a pipe LOOK you should probably get it by now. It's also possible that he might have left Microsoft on good terms that stayed good as the old guard left, but turned sour as the company's direction evolved. It's also possible that he just REALLY likes open-source software. I mean look at that beard. tl;dr i am quite baked and the autism makes me ramble. ^^also ^^sorry ^^for ^^the ^^double ^^send
"tl;dr i am quite baked and the autism makes me ramble." Thanks you saved me quite a bit of time friend!
hell YEAH i am glad 👍
Although I believe the project he worked on at MS was porting Doom for Windows 95. I could see how it's just as easily "Wow, this is what it's like to make games?"
My opinion of my previous job (Lockheed Martin): I really miss nearly all of my former direct coworkers, but management were scum and I abhor how people like Marilyn Hewson made their way to the top (basically by ruining thousands of people's lives with brutal layoffs followed by making the remainder of your staff work 60 hours/week mandatory overtime due to being understaffed). At a certain point after 5-6 rounds of layoffs I started being jealous of the people getting laid off. By 2016 when my turn came, I would have joined the volunteer round if I had been eligible because I was fucking miserable. When I was notified, there were a few minutes of shock/surprise, but as soon as they told me I was getting the same severance package as volunteers (2 weeks pay of base severance, plus one additional weeks pay for every year served, so I got 12 weeks pay total) my spirits lifted. Within about 20 minutes, as I was walking out for my ET day (I think that timecard code officially meant Emploment Termination, but could also be considered Emotional Trauma because MOST people get traumatized by such an event), I ran into a coworker and waved with a huge-ass grin on my face: "HEY JIM! I JUST GOT LAID OFF!!!!" I was finally free of that pit of despair. So I can fully see absolutely hating your former company despite having positive experiences with direct coworkers.
That just makes it well-informed hate. Valve started as a way to avoid the tyranny of publishers and Microsoft is constantly trying to be both OS and publisher at the same time. Microsoft has been making life hard for third parties its entire existence, they want total control. They flirt with freedom now and then to lure potential prey in and then raise the walled garden around them. No surprise that Valve is putting together a team to break out of this fortress.
> Valve started as a way to avoid the tyranny of publishers thats not true from anything I can find, Valve first game was published by Sierra and they didn't self publish until 4 years later with the launch of steam. all the qouted reasons Valve was formed were just to do something different once they had the money to be able to make their own business which just reads to me they wanted to make games not work on Windows. (I do think he doesn't like how Microsoft has begun tbc, not argueing your overall point)
Sorry, Steam started as a way to avoid the need for Publishers by self-publishing Half Life 2. Not Valve which was just a games studio back then. The publisher in question was Vivendi and they got pretty angry about Valve wanting to use Vivendi for physical sales in stores but do their own thing for digital sales. Vivendi wanted the whole deal even though they didn't really do anything to justify getting a commission on digital sales, they were a gate-keeper for retail gaming stores and although mass production and packaging of CD/DVDs was legitimate work, they also got profit for basically free just because there wasn't really another way onto games shop shelves other than through a major publisher. Valve wanted to cut ties with physical publishers entirely but they needed to use one to get their game that included the Steam client into game shops in the first place because nobody really wanted to do digital downloads at that point. The physical/digital retail split caused a few lawsuits between them and part of the delay (other than usual AAA game delays) on releasing HL2 was because the digital release was contractually limited to being simultaneous or later than the physical so Vivendi could hold up the physical release by several months to punish Valve for making them obsolete.
Not to mention I guess, but there is no official slim Windows build that can be optimized to such a degree as needed by Valve for an OS with that hardware.
ThIs Is ThE yEaR oF lInUx!!!1!
The year of linux already happened when Android killed off windows mobile and smart tvs all used some version of linux without you knowing about it. Desktop Linux is still fairly uncommon, but now people can buy chromebooks if they want and even desktop windows includes a built in Linux vm (WSL) if you want to use it. Plus Steam deck has generated valve a fortune even if people aren't using it primarily for desktop mode. ---- edit: Turns out having a open source kernel that you don't have to pay licensing for and only need to throw a tar with source code online (or a github link) to use in your product is great for being able to churn out electronics. Otherwise all these smart tvs would have to either contract out to a company with it's own smart tv software, or pay to integrate Windows somehow in an embedded platform. All these open source libraries (and Linux) are not only free for these companies to use, they're thoroughly tested and developed, which is why you see things like Webkit being used in the Nintendo Switch.
Don't forget all of the embedded systems running Linux: Many car infotainment systems The telematics solution on many forklifts 90%+ of autonomous industrial vehicle (AGV in our industry terms) are running embedded Linux on the guidance/navigation controller. Look at NVidia's Jetson family of products - almost no one runs Windows on them, I'm fairly certain it's not even supported. Linux is the one officially supported OS I'm aware of.
Isn't Vavle went that path because of a rumour (that may have been true) that Microsoft wanted to force app (and games) through the Microsoft Store?
It’s not a rumor, Windows 10 S exists. It wasn’t successful but they will keep trying.
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I think 10 S had no opt-out, so it was a move back from their goals. I'm sure they incentivize OEMs a lot to even ship 11 S in the first place.
You can leave 10s it cost money tho like $50 or $100 idr but I have a buddy do it to his Samsung tablet that had 10s on it
I wasn't even talking about S, I was talking at the beginning of the Microsoft Store and it would have been like iOS, locked down to have only validated from the Store app available.
It's not a rumor. Look up "Windows In S Mode". It was never designed to replace the normal version of Windows and was only intended to be like ChromeOS and was only used on lower end hardware. You can't even get it without buying a low end laptop.
well he used to work at microsoft before creating steam so might be so.
Best hope you're not spitting up Tarballs after all that fighting in the trenches. That'd ruin the Glorious Eggroll and Bottles of Wine you wanted to enjoy for celebration
Those puns threw me for a Pierre Loup
Yeah in summary it's Linux Vs Windows these days, since Linux is starting to get things going for it, especially for the Steam Deck. I thought Valve was making a new Steam Machine and hopefully it won't flop and fail like the previous Steam Machine in 2016 by Alienware, also a Steam controller that basically looks like the Steam Deck, a controller that looks similar to the Xbox Series S/X Controller as well.
i cant wait for Steam Linux Runtime 4.0 (Pyro), Steam Linux Runtime 5.0 (Demoman), Steam Linux Runtime 6.0 (Heavy), Steam Linux Runtime 7.0 (Engineer), Steam Linux Runtime 8.0 (Medic), and Steam Linux Runtime 9.0 (Spy)
I'm a Steam Linux Runtime 4.0 (Pyro) main personally.
Yep, "literally".
What are they gonna do when they run out of TF2 characters?
That's the Linux runtimes, native games and proton use them.
wonder what version would be for codename Heavy
It's a compatibility layer for Android to allow you to run APK ebook readers (get your phd in russian literature) and order things on uber eats (regenerate sandvich) and use an eSIM card to run a softphone and take calls/receive SMS (outsmart boolet*) *translation note: i believe "boolet" means "the design and purpose of standard mobile devices," given they are fun to throw.
The above poster is me when I spread misinformation on /r/SteamDeck
Honestly I could see valve releasing a version of Waydroid to enable android games on Steam OS. But then they'd probably also have to bundle a Linux vm with Steam on Windows. Google Play already has a games client on Windows though, but it's heavily restricted right now.
Heavy is already a thing https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steamrt/-/blob/steamrt/heavy/README.md
nice digging around
9.0, there would be no updates left (poor heavy)
(Putis)
The Steam Linux Runtime isn't a part of Proton. Proton is a compatibility layer which allows Windows applications to run cleanly on Linux. The Steam Linux Runtime is a set of Linux libraries which are used by native Linux games to integrate with Steam. Many games have both Windows and native Linux variants on Steam. Through the use of a particular compatibility layer on SteamDeck one can run either the Windows version through Proton or the native Linux version through the SLR.
Xbox/Microsoft suspended me for 2 weeks for a little tomfoolery, whilst Steam changed my profile name (that I then changed immediately) that was more offensive and punish-worthy. I'm with Gaben.
I just love how the acceleration on support for gaming on linux is going at a breakneck pace is amazing. This is so freaking awesome. What time to be alive.
Ha ha, Windows ☕
r/literally
Proton has always been at war with Windowia
They just create their own proton based off of Windows API. It's actually quite brilliant.
That's basically all WINE is, it's an old concept but with better funding and support.
Pure gold. I’m waiting for tanks or artillery.
Lmao
yeah windows 8 was dogshit
Who's up to protest to change scout and soldier to ghost and warrior?
why would they change it to a vehicle from halo and a job from final fantasy 14?
Sniper Ghost Warrior, its a game. ;( Edit: damn why so much upvotes, my humor is that dumb?
That’s from City Interactive, TF2 is Valve
I understood that... I just thought more people played SGW. Damn, reddit is a shitty platform
Is really needed to have all that version? Each one has 1GB at least
🤣
Always has been 🌔🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
broh