Steam based their OS on Linux, so of course it's broken shit
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If Valve had the same clout as Sony, and they convinced game makers to design games for their system, you'd have a point.
Steam is so widespread Valve pretty much have the entire PC game market already making games for their platform. And they did it without having to make adverts that looked like they were written by someone high on a mix of cocaine and ecstasy.Valve has enough clout to help Linux gaming take off; it just needs to want to do so.
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@sloosecannon said:
It was started as an open source project, acquired by Google, and remained open-source.It most certainly did come out of the open source community.
The finished OS comes from Google.
Without Google, we would not have Android cell phones.
Without Google, AT&T/Sprint/every other cell phone guy, would not have designed Android phones.
To say how it started or the fact that people can look at the source code is equivalent to a homebrew project is dishonest.
Ubuntu comes from Canonical.
RHEL comes from RedHat.
What's the difference?
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What's the difference?
The original point is that Google would be more successful. How does that argue against that?
You know.
Whatever, people in here think Linux is the shit and has no disadvantages... when it comes to console gaming... especially since they aren't marketing to developers to develop on their exclusive platform... whatever. Pipe dream.
This SteamOS is only going to appeal to people who are interested in a Linux PC Console.... for whatever niche reason. And it will have less support for games than a PC.
I don't know how else to phrase that. And the fact that people are outright denying that a OS with less game support has disadvantages is boggling to me.
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So, the argument is:
Point: Open source projects can't be successful
Counter-point: Android is successful
Point: Android isn't open source because it's successful
?
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With Android, Google jumped into a market void with a lot of potential.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, tries to get into markets that are already saturated. That's much more difficult (as the lack of success for MS' Windows Phone also shows, for example).
And as for Red Hat - I don't know whom they target exactly or if they are successful in that.
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And as for Red Hat - I don't know whom they target exactly or if they are successful in that.
Mainly enterprise I think, and they've been reasonably successful
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Yeah, absolutely. It's all about the market and the product.
RedHat does server editions, mainly enterprise.
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Or build your spaceship from a fishing boat instead of a plane.
ah. the bebop. yes several times it does actually land and do duty as a boat.
IIRC they even fish from it at one point
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What about a boat that functions as a plane?
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Because people are getting stuck on the word fault like fault implies the only problem, main problem, only reason it fails, stupid decision, etc.
What about the question begging that they've actually failed?
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With Android, Google jumped into a market void with a lot of potential.
Ubuntu, on the other hand, tries to get into markets that are already saturated. That's much more difficult (as the lack of success for MS' Windows Phone also shows, for example).
Yes
Point: Android isn't open source because it's successful
Android does not come from the greater open source community of people contributing to projects that aren't already organized as a company.
Maybe I'm the only one that sees a distinction between open source contributed by a bunch of people in their spare time, to a company that decides to make their software open source.
I don't count corporate efforts as part of the open-source community.
Maybe the definition evolved and I'm out of the loop.
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they've actually failed?
fine.... I'll go edit my post to remove the word "fail"
But I stand by my choice of word "disadvantage"
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Looks like I have to improve my points to be airtight or someone is going to dismiss them based off of an incidental word that doesn't change the meaning of the argument.
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Android does not come from the greater open source community of people contributing to projects that aren't already organized as a company.
Sure it does. There are plenty of community forks of Android and I'd be willing to bet that at least a few changes have been pulled upstream from projects like that (Cyanogenmod is a primary example, but there are others)
Maybe the definition evolved and I'm out of the loop.
It's a tough definition to pin down, but I think Android counts
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Sure it does. There are plenty of community forks of Android and I'd be willing to bet that at least a few changes have been pulled upstream from projects like that (Cyanogenmod is a primary example, but there are others)
TIL Google is not a notable contributor.
As soon as an open source contribution is included, everyone can claim credit for Android's success.
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TIL Google is not a notable contributor.
o.O
I was providing an example of community contributors.
Obviously Google is the primary contributor, it's their freaking project!
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Ok, let's take a different approach.
I'm going to assume I'm wrong. Like, completely. I've been wrong this entire time.
However, on such a special-purpose device, the OS should just not want to offer any general purpose abilities. To use the example of Android again: it comprehensively offers its own way of doing things. Even though it is based upon Linux, no normal person would ever want to open a command-line terminal on their smartphone.
Are there any examples of any such products that ended up marketed to your grandma that didn't primarily come from a corporation?
Because the end point of this is that Linux is a disadvantage to marketing a device as a easy end-user experience that's plug and play, and that the only times these things end up successful is when they have major corporate backing, and that they are marketed to developers as "develop on my platform" and not "my new platform works for existing things, but not really".
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At this point I'm only really participating so that I can find a better way to communicate my thoughts.
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Are there any examples of any such products that ended up marketed to your grandma that didn't primarily come from a corporation?
I doubt it, because most communities wouldn't market to or design products for your grandma
Because the end point of this is that Linux is a disadvantage to marketing a device as a easy end-user experience that's plug and play, and that the only times these things end up successful is when they have major corporate backing, and that they are marketed to developers as "develop on my platform" and not "my new platform works for existing things, but not really".
I... don't think that follows from the first statement...
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Inexplicably, liquid water seems to be plentiful in our solar system according to Cowboy Bebop, to the point where it makes sense to build a spaceship that lands and takes-off like a seaplane. (Sure, I mean all those planets and moons had been terraformed, but still. You'd have to harvest an AWFUL LOT of comets to get enough water to make a huge lake on Mars.)
Here in reality, liquid water's pretty damned rare.
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Windows ME was superior to Linux at the time
If you had Windows Me installed on your machine without any OEM shovelware, and you didn't have any hardware that didn't have proper drivers for it, it was actually quite good.
Unfortunately almost nobody met those criteria!
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@xaade said:
Windows ME was superior to Linux at the time
If you had Windows Me installed on your machine without any OEM shovelware, and you didn't have any hardware that didn't have proper drivers for it, it was actually quite good.
Unfortunately almost nobody met those criteria!
Also, if you disabled the pile of shit that was System Restore as it was one of the most crash-prone parts of the system in ME.
Not surprisingly, it worked considerably better in NT.
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You'd have to harvest an AWFUL LOT of comets to get enough water to make a huge lake on Mars.)
Or be in the Star Trek universe.
Computer, scoop up that mountain and rearrange its particles into water.
Yes sir.
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Yeah they don't have that. They only have some vaguely-defined technology that allows ships to accelerate to speeds where they can explore the solar system in days instead of months, and the first time they tried using it it cracked the (Earth's) moon apart.
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it started as a free clone of MINIX
Actually, it's kind of funny because it wasn't, strictly, a clone--Linus didn't like that Minix had a monolithic kernel, and took a couple of potshots at the guy who write Minix, which were returned.
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Designing a desktop OS to mimic tablets... I don't know where that idea came from.
The guy who saw explosive tablet growth as desktop and laptop sales were falling off, duh.
That doesn't mean he was right, but he had a reason that was reasonable.
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Are there any examples of any such products that ended up marketed to your grandma that didn't primarily come from a corporation?
Because the end point of this is that Linux is a disadvantage to marketing a device as a easy end-user experience that's plug and play, and that the only times these things end up successful is when they have major corporate backing, and that they are marketed to developers as "develop on my platform" and not "my new platform works for existing things, but not really".
Those are two different things. An Android device or game console is a packaged end-user product. And perhaps indeed only large companies can make such a thing.However, that does not follow to the conclusion that Linux is a disadvantage. Would Android be better, would Google have made more money from it, if they had not taken Linux, if they had tried to create something from scratch? Probably not. The people at Google aren't stupid.
It also doesn't mean that anything at all can only be successful if it is managed by a big company. The Linux kernel, for example, isn't. Even though a lot of code has probably been contributed by all kinds of commercial companies, including big ones like Google.
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I... don't think that follows from the first statement...
It's not supposed to.
This is why I think SteamOS doesn't work as an idea.
The point of grandma is to support how I feel that Android wouldn't exist without Google. You have members of the Open Source community sans corporations.
Why would they design any of their projects to be used by people that aren't technical?
So, how do you take a OS not designed to be used by people that aren't technical and convert it into a console for gaming when it doesn't already have a large repertoire for games.
Well, one way is to be big enough to keep shoving resources down it until it works.
Or you can switch to a marketing scheme that requires developers to develop to your platform.I don't have confidence that Valve can do this.
This is why I feel that Linux is a disadvantage for them, but this really extends to the whole idea at its core. They have both a marketing and a technological disadvantage in a saturated market where cost efficiency is a big deal.
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That doesn't mean he was right, but he had a reason that was reasonable.
Oh I know exactly why.
What he underestimated is that people buy desktops to have desktops, not tablets.
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The Linux kernel
isn't consumed by the same users that want to buy a box plug it into a TV and expect it to work with minimal effort.
To do that, you absolutely have to have a lot of resources, and you can't do it by building a box that is expected to work with existing things when the technology it is built on is already technically challenging to support a wide array of games.
Especially on a platform that supports a minority of games.
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What he underestimated is that people buy desktops to have desktops, not tablets.
Well, also, except for the stupid pause when rendering the Start screen, the screen was far better than the old menu. For one thing, you could rearrange your icons, something that had been lost after XP. Second, you got the entire screen instead of one little itty bitty scrolling window for your All Programs menu.
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I mean, what are you going to say when average jim buys Steam box, and plugs it up and wants to buy a game and the majority of AAA titles aren't supported?
He's going to say, well if it's this lightweight I could have just bought that android Console if I realized I was going to be playing Angry Birds on it.
And oh look.... it's a third of the price.
That's a disadvantage. Is it not?
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Well, also, except for the stupid pause when rendering the Start screen, the screen was far better than the old menu. For one thing, you could rearrange your icons, something that had been lost after XP. Second, you got the entire screen instead of one little itty bitty scrolling window for your All Programs menu.
I don't think it was the start screen popping up over everything that was the problem.
I feel it was the fact that it didn't escape into desktop.
That desktop was treated as "just another app"
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To clarify, before pedantry.
I think the most common complaint and therefore biggest problem was the desktop app thing.
Of course, other people may find another problem, and that other problem may be the biggest problem for a subset of users.By big I mean.... most common and contributed to most of the angst. By most common, I mean shared by the most users.
I could be wrong. But I wanted to clarify, because clarity has been my biggest enemy in this thread.
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Every Microsoft OS is generally well liked. The moment the next one comes out.
Except for Win8/8.1 and Win10. I am pretty sure the general consensus is that Win8/8.1 is still shit.
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I'm actually a bit confused at this point. Is everyone just trolling xaade? Because I think his point makes some sense.
The biggest thing, imo, when choosing a platform, is whether or not you can make it work for you. I don't think anyone here can argue that Linux is user friendly. You pretty much need Google to make it into something a common user will tolerate.
And the company doing this one is Valve. They don't have the slightest idea how to make something user friendly. They never have.
Admittedly, they didn't really have a chance with Windows, since Microsoft has a console. They definitely don't have the skill or manpower to build a specialized OS, so this was the best they could do. But it will be a very long time before they get it right, if they ever do.
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The biggest thing, imo, when choosing a platform, is whether or not you can make it work for you. I don't think anyone here can argue that Linux is user friendly. You pretty much need Google to make it into something a common user will tolerate.
I am a bit confused at this point. Linux is a platform. And well, maybe Google makes it into something that grandma can use, and Red Hat makes it into something else. But so what?It's a bit like saying that Visual Studio or the C++ std::libs or AutoCAD aren't user-friendly enough for grandma to use. Yes, ok, sure. They aren't meant to be, but that doesn't make them a wrong tool to create an user-friendly end product with.
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that doesn't make them a wrong tool to create an user-friendly end product with.
No, but it also doesn't make it the right tool for Valve in particular to create a user friendly end product with.
To date, there have been very few successes in reaching this point with Linux in general, and Valve is absolutely not on par with anyone who has managed it.
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I don't think anyone here can argue that Linux is user friendly. You pretty much need Google to make it into something a common user will tolerate.
I know a bunch of non-technical people using Linux Mint without any issue.
And most of those switched from Windows 8 because they found it user-unfriendly.And no, they never use the CLI.
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The PS4 is a box designed to play games.The SteamBox is a box designed to play games.
I see how they're so radically different now.
The PS4 has most companies willing to make games and/or game engines for it. SteamBox/Linux does not.
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I know a bunch of non-technical people using Linux Mint without any issue.And most of those switched from Windows 8 because they found it user-unfriendly.
And no, they never use the CLI.
Cool story bro.
Glad to know people other than Valve can make a desktop user interface that's usable, which is something I've admitted. You've really added to this discussion.
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If you had Windows Me installed on your machine without any OEM shovelware, and you didn't have any hardware that didn't have proper drivers for it, it was actually quite good.
Windows ME is the only version of Windows that I actually paid for and then still downgraded back to the previous version.
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I know a bunch of non-technical people using Linux Mint without any issue.
I know more people who would be confused and hate it it if I replaced Windows with it on their computers. What's your point? Some people prefer different things to other people.
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This is why I feel that Linux is a disadvantage for them, but this really extends to the whole idea at its core.
It probably explains Windows' dominance in stuff like DVRs, too.
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And as for Red Hat - I don't know whom they target exactly or if they are successful in that.
Red Hat is very successful.
If you're a large enterprise and you're running Linux servers, chances are you either a) run RHEL, b) run CentOS (i.e., RHEL with no support), or c) are a tech company rolling their own OS. Debian is the close second, I believe. Ubuntu has a presence, especially with web apps but not like RHEL or Debian. Ubuntu moves too fast.
Most Unix installations moved to RHEL as Unix slowly died. Most enterprise Linux applications run on RHEL. Red Hat support is very good, and their software is vetted much more strongly than other distros, IMX. Even CentOS has a 10 year life span. Not even Debian is like that anymore.
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@TimeBandit said:
I know a bunch of non-technical people using Linux Mint without any issue.And most of those switched from Windows 8 because they found it user-unfriendly.
And no, they never use the CLI.
Cool story bro.
Glad to know people other than Valve can make a desktop user interface that's usable, which is something I've admitted. You've really added to this discussion.
So you agree with him that @xaade is wrong now?
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Actually, it's kind of funny because it wasn't, strictly, a clone--Linus didn't like that Minix had a
monolithicmicrokernel, andDr. Andrew Tannenbaum, the guy who wrote Minix took a couple of potshots at<in>Linux for being an old-fashioned monolithic kernel, which were returned.FTFY, as you had it backwards. While Torvalds took some inspiration from Minix, he wanted to write his own kernel, because NIH, and then was so impressed that he could get it to switch tasks between a process writing a 'A' to a fixed console and one writing a 'B' to same console without getting the interleaving wrong
, he posted it to the comp.os.minix newsgrope with a 'gee, look what I made!" and "meh, if someone else likes this, they can copy it, I guess".Then, when Tannenbaum took offense to the fact that a grad student's hobby project didn't use a modern, spiffy micro-kernel design like the ones he was developing in his research projects, Linus got defensive enough about it that he fired back, making them both look like tools. More importantly, Torvalds decided that his personal honnr was at stake, so he started working at making his kernel into something more than a toy in order to Show Those Fools At The University Who Said I Was Mad.
In other words, Linux exists today mainly because Linus got into a huff over something
a research professor said on USENET.Now, I use Linux for my own system, for raisins, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna ignore the fact that I'm an anomaly. Most people wouldn't use even a relatively friendly Linux like Mint, if only because most of the time they've already paid for Windows (even if many don't actually realize it, because it was already on the PC so it is free right?) and already know it, so they would get very little out of going to something else even if it were significantly better (c.f. Mac v.s MS-DOS circa 1987). Hell, given that most users these days never do anything on their PC that isn't mediated through the web browser, chances are they wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Windows 7 and Mint running Cinnamon even if they did try it.
Assuming they even still used a desktop or laptop PC at all, rather than a tablet or smartphone. That itself is getting to be an anomaly outside of the workplace, these days.
For casual users, Linux is not better. For some kinds of enterprise-y things, yes, and many kinds of programming work, yes, but not for most people who already are using Windows. And considering what a pile of dogshit Windows is, that's a really serious problem for Linux to try and overcome.
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They definitely don't have the skill or manpower to build a specialized OS, so this was the best they could do.
I'm going to have to disagree, here; I've never thought that using a general-purpose OS for consoles, set-tops, or embedded purposes was a good idea, precisely because it takes more work to re-configure something like Linux or Windows to such duty than it would to write a purpose-built OS. Even if that weren't the case, there are other operating systems - such as QNX, eCos, or Menuet - which are far better suited for such uses than any desktop OS would be (yes, I know all three of those have desktop environments available for them, but those are mainly for developer convenience rather than being the primary purpose of the operating systems in question). Many of the problems that exist with smartphones come from the fact that they are not real-time (not even soft real-time), use kernels that had to have large parts of their functionality removed in order to be force-fit into their current purpose, and just aren't the right tool for the job in general. An embedded OS - even one designed for running apps or games - should be more like an exo-kernel or containerizing hypervisor than a full standalone OS, IMAO, and using a desktop or server kernel for that purpose is
.Of course, using the same OS for both desktop and server uses is also
- a lot of server uses probably should use a containerizing hypervisor, too, but with very different client OSes than the embedded systems would use - but that's a different argument all together.And before anyone asks if I am biased on this because I am planning on writing a containerizing hypervisor, the truth is it is the other way around - I decided to write Kelephstis primarily because I concluded that trying to write Kether as both an RTOS and a desktop OS was a bad idea, and concluded that Coronet (the RTOS) should mostly be a separate codebase. In any case, all these projects are a) primarily a hobby-cum-research project rather than a real-world venture, and b) unlikely to actually get finished, so it isn't particularly relevant to anything like this.
