Valve declares WIndows 8 "a catastrophe for PC", talks about migrating games to Linux

Secure Boot means that distro packagers will need to buy keys from Microsoft's choice of signing company (VeriSign, if I remember correctly) if they want people to be able to install their non-Windows OS.

MS will create their own keys and distribute public parts to OEMs who will put them on "W8 RT certified" HW (= no option to disable secure boot or change public key). They're going Apple way.

EDIT: I think I read that MS will offer signatures for some money. But still, screw them.

On-topic: Whether Valve is or is not hypocrite doesn't matter to me. The important thing is that it may convince OEMs to offer Linux pre-installs too. Which may later convince some SW vendors to finally port their stuff to Linux (like autodesk).

Great post Kindling. For many years I have run a dual boot system with windows for games and linux for everything else. Whatever Gabe Newell's real motivations, a native linux steam and ports of important games (eg linux native HL2 or, gasp, HL3) would give me one less reason to reboot into windows.

Not that win7 is bad. I held out from upgrading XP until 2 months ago, and was pleasantly surprised at the win7 experience.

Win8 however just seems to be a solution in search of a problem: a default interface that will confuse and alienate a lot of users; under the bonnet architectural changes (eg accelerated font rendering) that no-one will notice; and steps towards hardware lockdown masquerading as bios level security.

Vista was proof that no amount of press by MS shills could rescue a flawed product. I get the feeling that win8 will be the same. As the Scots say - ye cannae polish a turd.

I've personally tested the consumer preview version a bit in a vmware with 3d acceleration:

-Ui rendering is quite a bit faster then windows 7 (no it's not just marketing, they actually changed and fixed a lot of stuff)

-Metro is a daft piece of crap if you don't have a touchscreen and whatever they say i see plenty of people using the start button all the time...

-I ran into some problems with specific Point Of Sale printerdrivers... (it seems they did a major overhaul of the printer driver system, this might turn out to be a big no go in a lot of business situations, wich is exactly the market where Microsoft still reigns...)

-My non-IT girlfriend spent 20 minutes looking for a way to shut the damn thing down, this is going to be a hard bugger for people that are in support functions...

I can't help feeling MS is slowly but certainly turning into something of the past, you know like the day might come that people think of Windows as they think of VHS tapes...

It could all turn out some other way, but trying to sell 1000$ crashing "surface" slates might not be the best idea when there's a perfectly good functioning cheaper Ipad around followed by a string of even cheaper Android tablets...

MS is doing the exact opposite of Apple. Instead of focussing on a couple of good products they try to do everything. They may turn out to fail at everything.

The appstore they introduce in win8 might very well be the first step to a system where apps NEED to be installed from the appstore and be verified (ahum monitised) by MS in complete Applestyle.

In this context I very well understand Valve as their market might be on the virge of total collapse, unless they differentiate.

Valve may be also targeting Android (because it's also Linux). Look at this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console. It reached goal in KS in 8 hours!

It's also kinda hypocrite for one (sort-of) Monopolist (Steam) to complain about another (Microsoft).

IMO this stunt has another side; creating an even larger monopoly position for Steam :) Think about it...

I don't see how it's hypocritical, firstly what he was talking about is regarding platform openess, nothing to do with monopolies, plus he wasn't even complaining, just explaining that they were hedging their bets by moving onto another platform because the platform they originally chose (which benefited them by being open) is trending towards being closed.

I see some parallels of this in a post I read yesterday regarding the fall of Microsoft Flight, Robert Randazzo a addon developer for the MS Fight Simulator series explained that with the new MS Flight, Microsoft put strict conditions on them for developing any addons including: "All commercial products would be marketed exclusively by MS and we would not be allowed to sell our own products from our own sites" and "The inability to market our own products in the brick and mortar retail market without purchasing licenses to our own products in advance of production", they couldn't even provide free stuff.

Someone from Blizzard agreed with Gabe's comments, clearly some in the industry can see the writing on the wall regarding MS developing business practices.

Check out the post, it's quite interesting:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/358874-some-thoughts-on-flight/

There's also a short post on gnu.org by Richard Stallman that along with links therein (e.g., "the harm to your freedom that Windows would do") is worth reading IMO.

M$ long ago floated the idea of their software being made available only on a lease basis. The drift towards lock-in, excessive DRM, potential requirements for other OS providers to get "Windows certification" and keys from M$ with unspecified costs would all seem to blend well with that. I find a scenario in which Microsoft has such control over what I might do with my own machine really rather chilling.

Personally, I'm more of a simplified BSD license guy as it provides the original developers, derivitive developers and the users with the maximum amount of power and freedom but the GNU guys have always been an important counterbalance to corporations and companies such as Microsoft. :)

Of course, this isn't an unexpected direction for MS - Bill Gates (and now Microsoft) has always sold software licenses, not the software itself, and has always been criticized for anticompetitive and outright manipulative monopolizing behaviour. Bill Gates is making it up in humanitarian ways, but I doubt that every Director on Microsoft's board is doing the same.

Yeah, sometimes Stallman seems to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The difference between a lease and a licence is that M$ could just announce that all leases on (say) XP will expire on October 1, forcing users to 'upgrade' to whatever M$ was prepared to offer. And with users locked in, what's to stop MS demanding that companies like BIS or Blizzard or Adobe or Symantec pay for 'certification' and a key before Windows will allow the software to be installed?

Whatever about humanitarian issues, Gates & co's' history inspires anything but trust. Greedy and ruthless seems the best description. Remember how they simply stole code that either they were incapable of producing or simply found it more profitable to rip off? - Stacker (disk compression) was one of the very few to win in court. costs were too much for the typically small copyright owners. Hmm, add 'hypocritical" to the list of epithets.

Everyone knew MS were bastards business-wise but people turned a blind eye cause they could pick up a piece of their action, now that Microsoft's marketing dept. has decided to turn and eat their own all for a few more dimes suddenly attitudes change, risks increase and so fingers are pointed.

MS stopped improving Windows and Windows API many-many-many moths ago :(

where is DirectX 12 ? where is WDDM 2.0 ? where is DirectCompute utilisation in ALL main system components, aswell as switching from [deprecated/underperforming]SSEx.x code toward AVX2.x and beyond in codebase ?

where is hard-reset support OS feature ?

Why GPLv3 important ?

Just look at TiVo-ised x264 codec suffering/ordeals , named by "QuickSync" by iNtel. For reference.

but the GNU guys have always been an important counterbalance to corporations and companies such as Microsoft. :)

GNU guys are just part of it. Linux (as in kernel) isn't from GNU guys after all.

Anyway, RMS made statement regarding Steam =P https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.en.html

GNU guys are just part of it. Linux (as in kernel) isn't from GNU guys after all.

Anyway, RMS made statement regarding Steam =P https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/nonfree-games.en.html

Sure, I'm speaking only on licensing - Linux (as in the kernel) is GPLv2 and is most often distributed with a GNU (also GPL) userland. That said, many GNU guys do contribute to the kernel code, as do many corporations (including MS as the recent 'B16B00B5' tabloid-style fiasco highlights). It is interesting to see that Stallman is conceding a little more than usual to Valve - 'My guess is that the direct good effect will be bigger than the direct harm'. Pretty interesting, considering Stallman's general hostility towards non-GPL developers and especially DRM - he seems to be suggesting that it's a lesser evil considering the beneficial effect of bringing more people to Linux.

The great thing about Linux, and all GPL-, MIT- and BSD-licensed applications, is that the more people use them, the more people will want to develop them. A steady stream of interest is the best thing for all Linux distributions and applications at the moment.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows

I love this recent anti-MS hype.

Me too. Competition is always good

Those who coded win 8 kernel in assembly language / native C/C++ are in my judgement sad when they look at what their colleagues in charge of the GUI have done.

What a shame... Such an outstanding core system with such a crappy interface... And that new M$ policy... Damn, get ride of those uncompetent leaders..

Kuddos to the devs, though. Fully tested the beast and it's in terms of speed & performance way better than what I have seen so far, including some UNIX/Linux kernels.

I could barely imagine the amount of pointers pointing to pointers to optimize the use of memory... heh

Regards,

TB

Valve may be also targeting Android (because it's also Linux). Look at this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console. It reached goal in KS in 8 hours!

This is a scam, by the way. Same specs as a Google Nexus 7/Galaxy 10 or any Tegra 3 smartphone and these phones do have HDMI out. :rolleyes: The concept is redundant, manifest in an Android OS box without a screen, grounded in the living room. Goodbye 7.5 million dollars.

Windows 8,

qIMuJTrxuhQ

Can't see corporates moving to such an unproductive OS: UI design is well-suited for tablets and other mindless consumption devices, though not desktop.

personally I don't like at all, what I can see in the vid. where is the simplicity? The panel with all these icons seems really uncomfortable for an intensive use . And If you don't use all the microsoft programs; is it possible to remove them; the panel seems frozen.

This is a scam, by the way. Same specs as a Google Nexus 7/Galaxy 10 or any Tegra 3 smartphone and these phones do have HDMI out. :rolleyes: The concept is redundant, manifest in an Android OS box without a screen, grounded in the living room. Goodbye 7.5 million dollars.

Scam? Care to elaborate? It's seems OK for simple games like Tekken or Mario and there may be products with better specs in future from independent vendors. It's also more than just gaming console (http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2012/08/07/xbmc-and-ouya-oh-yeah/).

Valve may be also preparing its own "Valve Box".

Ugly and unintuitive as the Metro design may appear to some (& apparently there's a registry hack that brings back something like a normal Win desktop) could posters please keep OT & not wander off into a general discussion of the merits/demerits of W8?

TIA

Orc

There's a way I can discuss this Ouya crap and stay on topic of Windows 8.

Scam? Care to elaborate?

Read their prospectus: bloated, zero details, the sole video shows them sitting there like clowns, designing a joystick 70% of the time.

It's seems OK for simple games like Tekken or Mario and there may be products with better specs in future from independent vendors.

Google Nexus 7 tablet is $199; the delusion which had been named "Ouya" is supposedly $99 - is NVIDIA going to sell these clowns Tegra 3 SoCs for $49 or less? Besides, specs in the ARM architecture move at the rate of Moore's Law, and I don't see such a "console" being upgradeable.

It's also more than just gaming console (http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2012/08/07/xbmc-and-ouya-oh-yeah/).

So, you have some independent 3rd party 99 cent Android media player developer as the only pillar for success? They could become victims of this scam also, which leads me to XBOX 720 and Windows 8 - Win 8 is actually a platform designed for the new upgradeable XBOX by Microsoft, and their recent patents do show that.

The master plan is to have the latest XBOX console running the same OS as PCs, presumably allowing same games to be played on both, which would be a blessing to developers and the death of console ports for PC. This may be the reason why VALVe is scared of Windows 8 - you won't be seeing the new XBOX games on Steam either way.

Now you can see Microsoft's strategy, though it may become redundant if the new XBOX console becomes a PC de facto with upgradeable components, but I think MSFT knows its game and it will feature new proprietary connectors and PCB.

@Iroquois Pliskin: Let's continue here http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?138113-Ouya!-Time-for-game-Developers-like-BIS-to-move-to-an-open-platform&p=2203776&viewfull=1#post2203776

So, you have some independent 3rd party 99 cent Android media player developer as the only pillar for success? They could become victims of this scam also, which leads me to XBOX 720 and Windows 8 - Win 8 is actually a platform designed for the new upgradeable XBOX by Microsoft, and their recent patents do show that.

The master plan is to have the latest XBOX console running the same OS as PCs, presumably allowing same games to be played on both, which would be a blessing to developers and the death of console ports for PC. This may be the reason why VALVe is scared of Windows 8 - you won't be seeing the new XBOX games on Steam either way.

Now you can see Microsoft's strategy, though it may become redundant if the new XBOX console becomes a PC de facto with upgradeable components, but I think MSFT knows its game and it will feature new proprietary connectors and PCB.

Where does all of this come from? The idea that the xbox would go from a custom built OS, to a operating system based on the Windows kernal seems ludicrous.

Where does all of this come from? The idea that the xbox would go from a custom built OS, to a operating system based on the Windows kernal seems ludicrous.

It comes from MSFT's desire to have an even bigger monopoly on the events that happen in DirectX space, this is why they peddle Windows 8 to desktops - it will become interchangeable with the new XBOX, as will the games for it. After interacting with Metro, it seems as if the UI had been made as a (secondary) match for a joystick controller and a large screen HDTV, "tiles4derps".

Sony doesn't have their own operating system and by linking PC and console, you ensure the majority of game developers will want to design for MSFT.

It comes from MSFT's desire to have an even bigger monopoly on the events that happen in DirectX space, this is why they peddle Windows 8 to desktops - it will become interchangeable with the new XBOX, as will the games for it.

It just doesn't seem logical to me that they would throw away all that development on the xbox OS to bolt on a Windows OS with all it's issues like legacy functionality, non-relevant critical components etc?

It just doesn't seem logical to me that they would throw away all that development on the xbox OS to bolt on a Windows OS

It is the same logic that has given PS3/XBOX 360 high capacity hard drives to store multimedia and a BluRay drive, an Ethernet port and other connectivity to PlayStation 3. Does anyone remember 16 MB PlayStation Memory cards? :)

Windows 8 will unsettle many things, take the case for ultrabook laptops for an example: Asus Transformer Infinity TF700, specs are Tegra 3 Quad core SoC, 1 GB RAM, Anrdoid OS (for now), 1080p 10" IPS screen, HDMI out, 1 2.0 USB port, 2 MP front-facing camera, 8 MP main one on the back of the tablet, MicroSD slot + SD slot on the keyboard dock, the keyboard also has an additional battery. Price only $599.

WCUDayaJvmc

Envision the same tablet/form-factor with the keyboard and Windows 8/RT slapped onto it with integrated OfficeSuite out the box - it makes every laptop below the <13" form-factor obsolete. Not to mention upcoming Intel's Haswell ultra-low voltage CPUs - you may even be able to cram an x86-64 processor in the same chassis and still retain 8-9 hour battery life.

This MSFT OS on a next-gen console can take down the remaining competition for home entertainment for Joe & Jane 6-pack: HTPCs, PC sales would suffer, if you could watch the latest movies on BluRay, suft the web and run all the latest MMOs on the XBOX 720, provided you buy a separate keyboard, and I'm sure a lot of dedicated people will do exactly that.