Will you Switch To Linix Now That Gabe Newell has Said "Linux IS the future of gaming"?

It'd be nice if all the software I used was available on Linux. Until then...

Windows will always get any game worth playing that is made for linux.

Plenty of game made for windows will never get ported/work on linux so no i won't switch.

Only way this is going to change is if microsoft stops making/supporting windows.

Gabe is just crying because he doesn't like microsoft having its own windows game store.

@gilbert64: MS closed the games for windows store...

If developers stop relying on directX and make everything for Linux then sure, ill move overs but until then, Windows all the way.

I have a massive library of games, the main draw to me of PC Gaming is the fact I can carry my games over from system to system.

Now I know you can dual boot, but until every system comes with Linux as standard or everyone starts installing Linux as a secondary or primary platform then MAYBE the would be a large enough market to make Linux a viable platform for developers on a large scale but for now I don't think the will be enough interest for the majority of developers to even consider a linux port yet a lone championing Linux as their main platform.

I like convenience and more importantly I like using the Windows platform (even 8 in it's current state) enough to not even consider the hassle of running 2 different operating systems.

I ran only Ubuntu for about a year a few years back. I liked it a lot, but man, it was hard enough to find a competent Minesweeper clone let alone any kind of real game. Especially since my system featured somewhat less than stellar performance. That's a large part of the reason I was running Linux to begin with.

Haha, no.
Gabe: "LINUX IS THE FUTURE"
And suddenly everyone just turns on, eyes glow blue and everyone on the planet, in unison, says: "Linux is the future! Linux is the future"

And that's how the robots take over the world.

Well I already have linux installed for work purposes, so whatever, lets do it.

edit: also there's no need to 'make the switch', you can have both Windows and Linux installed no problem.

I will happily switch over to Linux if it becomes the main platform for PC games. But, no, I wont switch to nuthin' because Gabe say anythin'.

no.

I've been wanting to use Linux more anyway so this is a positive thing for me. I don't think I'll leave Windows 100% but I'd like to rely on it less if possible.

I have been and watching and sometimes playing Dota 2 on Linux. If anything the issues that version has are the same the Mac version has.

In reality, the only thing that's keeping me from switching to Linux right now is Photoshop/Premiere

I'll go to where the games are. If at some point the current situation is flipped and the vast majority of games are Linux only, then I'll probably switch. But Linux by itself has no inherent interest to me as I'm satisfied with Windows 7. I have no desire to join Newell's personal crusade against his former employer.

I voted "I'll stick with Windows..."

This reminds me of the late 90s "year of the Linux Desktop" stuff that went around.

I'm not really sure that it is ever likely to happen. Linux developments usually seems to fragment out of spite whenever they really get going, and major point-releases are always a big restart button (e.g. sound, KDE/Gnome releases, video drivers).

Would love to, but the game support is still nowhere nears as good as on Windows.

Getting the Ubuntu graphics drivers to work with my machine is tough as shit. Even with drivers TF2 ran with like 10FPS as opposed to the 100+FPS I'm getting on Windows. And even when they are installed, Ubuntu really hates my machine and loves to lock up on bootup.

What about you? @bigjeffrey

The key issue is, if you have built your own PC the cost of Windows even at OEM levels are getting ridiculous. along with the even more draconian licensing where before Microsoft looked the other way if you rebuilt your machine. If your rebuild budget is under $500, you could spend another $100~ getting a new version of Windows 8.

Basically, Windows is getting to the point where it is cost prohibitive for custom builds where Linux doesn't have that cost or a license.

I would have switched to Linux years ago, but there are too many games I play that don't work on Linux.

Gabe might be making some reasonable claims about the problems with the current infrastructure, but he's missing the necessary arguments about how and why development (and more importantly, usage) will shift over to a new platform. Considering his positions in the past, I'm going to assume Gabe is prone to exaggeration.

I'm a stupid sheep so yeah why not?

IS.

This is more likely an "in ten or so years" type of thing. I remember reading an interview in CGW (from 2005 I think) in which Gabe said that he believed homogeneous system architectures were going to take over, i.e. your cpu and graphics in one chip. Keep in mind, this was when the idea of having a physics processor was starting to gain traction, and even the really glorious of the master race were like "AI chip maybe?" To say the least, it seemed unlikely at the time. Now though it seems more likely since physics processes are folded in with graphics cards, and more prominently, both the PS4 and the Xbox One are both using unified system architectures, with just what Gabe described, the CPU and GPU all in one. So I guess what I'm saying is, even though it doesn't seem likely in the least right now, maybe things will change.

I will wait for Gabe's vision to become reality first. He is known for wild exaggeration - but he and his management team also have a history of being able to accurately predict where PC gaming is going. The past few years of Steam have been filled with massive successes thanks to this.

Also, bear in mind that switching from windows to linux is simply a matter of software - and a PC can run both, eliminating the need to jump in with both feet right away.

I'm part of the 1% over here.

I certainly wouldn't switch right now. Newell himself admitted that currently the market for Linux gaming is so small as to almost be irrelevant. If Valve is serious about Linux I am really interested to see what their vision for the platform is especially when it comes to hardware.

I remember when Ryan was arguing about what the Steam Box was going to be on Gamespot's QfT. He seemed to think that it wouldn't be something we'd recognize as either a PC or Console and at the time I tended to agree with him. Now I'm trying to imagine what role does Linux plays in Valve's hardware. I can't see whatever box they bring out being a Linux-OS gaming device because the games and the support simply aren't there yet. Valve needs something that can instantly leverage it's enormous catalogue of (mostly windows-based) games. Streaming systems like On-Live have proven that network infrastructure has a lot of catching up to do before something like that can be viable.

One possibility is that perhaps the steam box is some sort of system that utilizes a capable PC in your household to render games and then streams the output to your TV. It would have Big Picture as it's front-end, you would be able to access your Steam library and presumably it would still work with whatever USB-based controller you decided to plug-in (360/X1 controller, KB+M etc). The hardware costs would be much less than a full-on console as it wouldn't need huge video cards, it would still be attractive to gamers who've already invested a good chunk into a gaming PC and you have Linux running everything efficiently behind the scenes.

Valve has to do something to maintain control of their own destiny, rather than be subject to the whims of other companies' platforms. This means either coming up with a proprietary OS / console, or supporting an open-platform. It's going to be a tough sell for users with a huge Steam library, but that's what a Half-Life 3 exclusive is for.

I'll switch to linux for gaming when its no longer the future, but the reality. I have linux running and use it for work, but I see no point in restricting my game library to 15% of its size while performance goes down just for the sake of using linux.

I've never understood the "the market for Linux is too small". Any PC and modern Mac today can run Linux. If you go with Ubuntu you get tested drivers and software. Multiple distribution can run off a USB drive and can live "side-by-side" with Windows without reformatting or otherwise interfering with Windows (or OSX). In reality, the big reason why Windows is still dominate is the vendor lock in on DirectX which isn't available to anything but other Microsoft platforms. On other platforms like mobile where this is meaningless games are flourishing just fine.

On the technical side, one of the big remaining technical hurdles for all of this turns out to be AMD-ATI and NVidia where both are only interested in "delivering" binary drivers. Intel is very open but they don't necessarily make "power graphics hardware". Once a more permanent solution is found that should make games even easier to run.

And to not be completely "sunshine" about this topic, one thing Valve needs to better at is supporting other distros than Ubunutu. Steam on Ubuntu is stellar. Steam on other distributions is a bit rockier. And there is still a "risk" that Valve goes off and does a "Steam Distro" which would ruin the situation.

even IF Gabe and Valve can get all the steam games running well on Linux, the fact of the matter is that everything else about linux seems to have an unnecessary learning curve attached to it.

I've got ubuntu 12 and 13 on virtual machines and my issue with them is that all of the software I've bought and am most familiar with does not have a linux version and the free linux equivalent feels inferior.

Linux has very useful purposes but the way I see it is that unless you have a specific need for linux, nothing right now is going to replace win7 x64 for a while. If I didn't game, I'd honestly use a mac.

I wish being a PC gamer would make me as buff as Goku somehow. Isn't he like 40 when he fights Buu?

Anyway, for the foreseeable future nobody is going to move on from Windows for gaming.

lol

It is the future of gaming. It is not the now of gaming. Switching now has exactly zero benefits in terms of gaming.

P.S. It's not actually the future. That's fucking crazy talk.

Linux has been stubbornly trying to prove to everyone that it's the future of something for the past 15 years.

Half-Life 3 - Linux Only - Confirmed

I would rather eat a snail than learn how to operate a LinuX computer. Mr. Newell sounds like damned conspiracy theorist when he goes on this bent -- and not your average conspiracy nut, but the kind that seems to know what they're talking about -- the dangerous kind.

As the resident OpenBSD user, I wish this was true but the fact is there is to much politics in the Unix/Linux community. No one agrees on anything and everyone thinks they can do it better. Go to distrowatch.com and look at how many distros there are. It's why OpenGL was so bad for so long to much fighting to move forward and directX sweep up the market.

Linix, huh.

Hell no; Gabe is a crazy person. Any time he mentions the "future", he means more than a decade away at which point we have no clue what could change in that space of time (for all we know, Steam may be overtaken by another digital service - shocking I know, but it's happened before in much bigger and intrusive industries).

I could literally not give less of a crap about what Gabe Newell thinks.

If it works as well as Windows then sure... but until then nope. Hell you can't even connect a modern Android device to Linux without installing additional packages.

No, that's dumb.

I'll just stick with Windows as I'm more comfortable with using it, still sticking with Windows 7 as I personally don't like the look of the interface of Windows 8 but that alone won't make me switch till I know I can play all my PC games on Linux without more compatibility issues.

I like Gabe Newell, but he says a lot of things. And a lot of it is nonsense.

I play all my games with knives.

I switched to Linux Mint in January and deleted my Windows partition in February. This laptop is a few years old and most big budget games ran like crap in Windows anyway and many smaller games have a Linux version. Never realized how much I missed the command line.

Nope

If I wasn't a gamer I'd have switched to Linux years ago (actually I did put linux on a couple of old computers to give them a few more years of life). I think that at the moment there's a lack of games on linux (much like a lack of games on mac), but if there grows to be a good library on linux then that would be a better situation for gaming.

Also when there comes that inevitable point when windows 7 is no longer supported with modern games and you're forced to at least upgrade to windows 8... that'd suck. Much as I like crazy menus on linux, for my windows give me my start menu ass windows!

You can dual boot. You don't even have to switch. For nothing more than your time you can install linux. 100% of PC users can follow Gabe and still come home to Windows.

No

Eventually, yeah. If Valve makes a strong push into Linux, and they provide enough incentive for developers to target it as a primary platform, then I will happily switch.