[Hampshire] Steam
Hi Folks, Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is the news that Steam is now available for Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/ Now, my gaming days are long gone but I have just installed the client - and will probably uninstall it later if I am honest - and that seemed to go very smoothly indeed. It looks like you need to be running an nVidia graphics card to get the best out of it, although that's what I have gleaned from the install routine that wanted to pull in jockey and some nVidia drivers despite me having and on-board ATI graphics solution. I also note that a bunch of games I bought way back while running it on Windows don't show up in my Linux catalogue, so I presume that the games available to Linux users are somewhat limited at this point, but it's a start I guess. Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet? And finally, am I right in thinking there's a bit of a kerfuffle kicking off with some of the big game developers and Microsoft recently that has led some of them [the developers] to threaten to go all Linux on Microsoft's posterior? Maybe this is the thin end of that wedge... Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Steam
I believe this is due to how much Valve hate Windows 8 for gaming. And it's been a much requested feature for years. I heard most if not all of Valve's own titles have been ported to Linux and many other games too, but it's still a tiny percentage of the total number of games available on Steam. On 15 Feb 2013, at 08:07, Sean Gibbins s...@funkygibbins.me.uk wrote: Hi Folks, Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is the news that Steam is now available for Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/ Now, my gaming days are long gone but I have just installed the client - and will probably uninstall it later if I am honest - and that seemed to go very smoothly indeed. It looks like you need to be running an nVidia graphics card to get the best out of it, although that's what I have gleaned from the install routine that wanted to pull in jockey and some nVidia drivers despite me having and on-board ATI graphics solution. I also note that a bunch of games I bought way back while running it on Windows don't show up in my Linux catalogue, so I presume that the games available to Linux users are somewhat limited at this point, but it's a start I guess. Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet? And finally, am I right in thinking there's a bit of a kerfuffle kicking off with some of the big game developers and Microsoft recently that has led some of them [the developers] to threaten to go all Linux on Microsoft's posterior? Maybe this is the thin end of that wedge... Sean -- music, film, comics, books, rants and drivel: www.funkygibbins.me.uk -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk -- -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Steam
Hi, On 15/02/13 08:07, Sean Gibbins wrote: Hi Folks, Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is the news that Steam is now available for Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/ Now, my gaming days are long gone but I have just installed the client - and will probably uninstall it later if I am honest - and that seemed to go very smoothly indeed. It looks like you need to be running an nVidia graphics card to get the best out of it, although that's what I have gleaned from the install routine that wanted to pull in jockey and some nVidia drivers despite me having and on-board ATI graphics solution. I also have Steam on 64-bit Ubuntu. It works very well (with one minor exception that a few games that are already in my library where the publisher hasn't correctly filled in the metadata say they are available to install on Linux when they aren't.) I've never seen a game in the store to buy that said it was available for Linux when it wasn't so that's not a worry. This is just old stuff with stale metadata. In fact, they have found Steam on Linux to outperform Win/directx. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/02/valve_games_faster_on_linux/ I also note that a bunch of games I bought way back while running it on Windows don't show up in my Linux catalogue, so I presume that the games available to Linux users are somewhat limited at this point, but it's a start I guess. Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet? I have quite a decent catalogue of games, most acquired as part of Humble Bundles. For those that haven't seen them, Humble Bundles are collections of games that come out several times a year for a limited time. They are generally last year's good games. You get to say how much you want to pay for them and decide what percentage goes to the game developers, to the Humble team and to charity. If you pay more than the average for a bundle you receive extra gifts, such as more games or the soundtrack album. I think they're great. I'm not a great games player but I can get enough good games for $10-15 to last me until the next bundle comes out. And finally, am I right in thinking there's a bit of a kerfuffle kicking off with some of the big game developers and Microsoft recently that has led some of them [the developers] to threaten to go all Linux on Microsoft's posterior? Maybe this is the thin end of that wedge... I think it goes deeper than that. MS, in a characteristic knife-mugging, like the one they pulled on Novell in the past, decided that someone was making a load of money out of their product and they wanted it. If I understand correctly, not all the Windows 8 goodness and features are available to developers unless their software is in the Microsoft App Store. Also titles on other platforms won't show in the store so this seems to be a reasonably transparent attempt to put Valve out of business and for MS to take the revenue share for itself. Also, I believe MS have a policy against adult-rated titles. I understand that a significant number of the most popular games in Europe would be excluded because they fall foul of the more restrictive US definition of what adult is and MS don't want to be the computer filth store. Valve seem to be encouraging developers to port to Linux. It turns out that Valve are working on a game console, dubbed the Steambox, and this console will use Linux as its OS. I kind of got the feeling that there's an element of if you knife us in the back, we're not going to buy a seven-digit number of licenses off you... to it. They've said the hardware will run Windows and they won't stop you installing it but they won't give it to you with the console in the price. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/10/valve_chief_confirms_steam_pc/ Interesting times, Paul. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Steam
On 15/02/13 08:07, Sean Gibbins wrote: Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is the news that Steam is now available for Linux: http://store.steampowered.com/sale/linux_release/ Yeah, it's been in closed then open beta since October. I've been playing with it a bit. Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet? I bought 9 games yesterday for ~22 quid! The sale is the best time to pick up a few bargains even if you're not going to play it right away. And finally, am I right in thinking there's a bit of a kerfuffle kicking off with some of the big game developers and Microsoft recently that has led some of them [the developers] to threaten to go all Linux on Microsoft's posterior? Maybe this is the thin end of that wedge... Not really. Gabe from Valve rather publicly took some pot-shots at Microsoft about Windows 8 and their new app store which clearly competes with Steam. Valve have been encouraging developers to port their games over to Linux. It helps that the 3D development tool Unity 3D (not to be confused with Ubuntu Unity) have added an option to Unity 4 which makes it easy to create Linux games. They can even load their Windows games and spit out a Linux binary very easily. The Steam beta started off with ~25 games and we're now at ~100. That's not bad growth in just a few months. Compare that to the Mac on Steam which has ~550 games and Windows which has ~6300. Steam on the Mac launched in May 2010. It's clear though that Steam on the Linux desktop is a stepping-stone to a SteamBox console that Valve are preparing, and will run Linux out of the box. Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Steam
On 2013-02-15 11:34, Alan Pope wrote: It's clear though that Steam on the Linux desktop is a stepping-stone to a SteamBox console that Valve are preparing, and will run Linux out of the box. my thoughts exactly, although one wonders about the recent layoff of 25 staff: It seems like Jeri Ellsworth wasn't alone as reports have come in that somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 Valve staff have been made redundant.[1] [1] http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-02-13-valves-noted-hardware-team-member-jeri-ellsworth-fired Perhaps this is just some slimming down as they gear-up for Steambox as a side note I have used the windows steamclient under wine on linux without many issues in the past. albeit with a bit of a drop in graphic quality/performance. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
[Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
Ally Biggs bluechr...@hotmail.co.uk asked: The thing which bothers me though about Linux ok it's free and if you have the skills you can do great things but why isn't it being adopted more for everyday use. Most people use their computers for games. Games are more readily available for Windows. So how did you guys learn Linux? I was using Unix long before I had any contact with a PC. When I did have the use of a PC, it had Windows and hardly a working day went by without having to restart it for some reason or other, and it accumulated all sorts of glitches. I decided that if I was going to have a computer of my own, it would have Linux. I thought it would be a lot less trouble, and easier to program, like Unix - and so it is. I don't claim to have learnt Linux, just to being an ordinary user. Peter Alefounder. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
On 15/02/13 12:19, Peter Alefounder wrote: Most people use their computers for games. Back that up :) I suspect the vast majority of Windows installs are not used for games, unless you count Oracle, Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint to be intricate multi-player games :) Cheers, -- Alan Pope Engineering Manager Canonical - Product Strategy +44 (0) 7973 620 164 alan.p...@canonical.com http://ubuntu.com/ -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] Steam
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 08:07:29 +, Sean Gibbins s...@funkygibbins.me.uk wrote: Hi Folks, Coming in on the periphery of the Linux vs. Microsoft desktop debate is the news that Steam is now available for Linux: ... Has anybody out there installed and played anything yet? Installed it last weekend, and found it slightly unstable, and I needed to kill -9 it a couple of times (this was on Kubuntu 12.10, with NVidia) The UX needs a bit of work as well - it's not possible to filter by platform (at least not that I could find in the list of Demos), so scrolling through 100 Windows only titles to find the lone Linux compatible demo was a bit annoying. The demo then didn't work, so I wasn't that impressed. Until a significant number of AAA titles start getting ported though, I'll be sticking with the PS3. -- Be seeing you, Sam (NotASnark). -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
On Fri, 15 Feb 2013 13:15:04 +, Alan Pope alan.p...@canonical.com wrote: On 15/02/13 12:19, Peter Alefounder wrote: Most people use their computers for games. Back that up :) I suspect the vast majority of Windows installs are not used for games, unless you count Oracle, Outlook, Word, Excel and Powerpoint to be intricate multi-player games :) Well, at least one version of Excel had a 3D flight simulator built into it... :-) -- Be seeing you, Sam. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
On 13 February 2013 16:31, Ally Biggs bluechr...@hotmail.co.uk wrote: Do you guys ever think there will be a day that Linux will be as popular as Windows in the desktop market. It's slowly happening. The US and Europe are not the only desktop demographics. Asia and the third world are heavily embracing open source. US/Europe has had the markets shaken up with tablets for common computer tasks. I use both Windows and Linux have a strong interest in both but currently am having a tug of war with my thought patterns career wise. The majority of my thoughts are saying focus on learning Linux starting with Linux+ with the eventual aim of going for the RHCSE. The other half is saying go down the Microsoft route taking a client exam and going for the server 2012 admin certs. I personally don't hire on certs. I want aptitude and experience. I've seen kids who design and operate LAMP stack solutions for their World of Warcraft guild in their spare time, outperform their competition with Windows/Red Hat certs cover some administrative tools and tasks, and OK as introductions to their relative eco-systems, but it doesn't make you battle-ready. But if you had to get a certification in our day and age, I would go for something around Virtualisation platforms. Hyper-V, Xen, KVM, and ESXi are the most accessible for business, AWS and Eucalyptus for web companies. Learning Puppet for Linux, and Powershell for Windows would be much more useful skills in my opinion. I would say that I enjoy Linux more the whole Open source ethos, I actually feel like I am learning when using the cli as opposed to clicking my way through the GUI in Windows. The best Windows admins are the ones who can use CMD and Powershell to administrate system(s). Change Management is very hard to control, and implementation steps are impossible to reproduce flawlessly with a GUI. Computers are after all for carrying out repetitive tasks. The thing which bothers me though about Linux ok it's free and if you have the skills you can do great things but why isn't it being adopted more for everyday use. Money. Dell is a great example. They sell a product, this product has related training and support materials for customer support. If a customer diversifies from the products original attributes you are now unable to receive any kind of useful support. Share holders will put pressure on a company to make sure their end to end sales and support resources are the absolute minimum required to make a buck. Now Dell are going private they hope to change that, one great way to kill innovation is to go public with your business. Also why don't the developers standardise a distribution for the home user i.e same package manager and packages. That's what Ubuntu IS. And likewise CentOS/RHEL is pretty standard for servers. But the point of open source code and permissive licensing is that you don't have to follow anyone's standards and make your own. If my only option to use Ubuntu was with Unity, I wouldn't be using Ubuntu. The problem with desktop Linux I think is when the shit hits the fan and something needs to be configured or a driver needs to be added your average user isn't going to want to sit typing commands in a terminal or spending hours finding the solution into a community. Wow this strikes close to the heart. For this answer I am not going to be polite... Are you bloody joking? The worst thing about closed source systems is when you are the edge case in a bug report, what the hell do you do? Directors don't like shrugs and I dunno's in emergency meetings. This is what comes with using closed systems from ANYONE, Oracle, MS, IBM, all you can do is open a support ticket and hope for the best. Maybe that update will fix, maybe it will make it worst, it probably wasn't a good idea in the first place but nothing was in place (documentation, knowledge, consultancy) that said you couldn't-and-you-did-and-it-broke. Not even Platinum MS and Oracle support contracts are useful in those nail biting situations. So your HP colour laserjet printer driver is crashing an entire windows print server...now what? Your manager will probably say Well when I plug it into my laptop, my laptop doesn't crash. Fix it.. And those blue screens, or multi-lingual grey screens on OS X are soo useful. On the flip side; with Linux/MySQL/Java stacks, I have the ability to go so low level with my bug tickets and support cases I have actually managed to have Oracle change documentation on several occasions. These were generally caused by change I/my team was actually against, but I couldn't prove otherwise without extensive testing, because no formal explanation exists. A week of stack traces, and tcpdumps, a couple of bug reports later , and documentation has been changed to reflect these crazy edge cases to say don't do this because X. If I had a wheelchair to pry myself out of and a stick to wave I would! The other problem I
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
The documentation for various systems and services are generally fantastic, show me a bad example. pygtk. I have others... Often the documentation, testing and implementation efforts are the most deserving and go unnoticed. I don't use python much, but my goodness that's some great documentation. Not entirely. IME, the straightforward stuff is well documented. But they've omitted to mention things like *which* exceptions are thrown, and under which circumstances. Many a time and oft, I've had to go diving through source code to try to find the (unhandled) exception that causes a particularly esoteric error message at the bottom of my traceback... Vic. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
On 15 February 2013 15:17, Richard Bensley richardbens...@gmail.com wrote: snip *applauds* Post of the Year. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
Most people use their computers for games. They do? News to me. So how did you guys learn Linux? Just to complete the set: I was a DOS user when I was assigned to look after PC/IX. I quickly decided that UNIX was the only way to go and have never regretted the decision. Then followed AIX, SCO UNIX and finally Linux following retirement Chris. Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/**mailman/listinfo/hampshirehttps://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --**--**-- -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
On 14/02/13 17:21, j...@osml.eu wrote: On 2013-02-13 11:31, Ally Biggs wrote: The other problem I found is the community alot of people expect you to be some kind of command line genius who is capable of reciting the whole encyclopaedia of man pages. So when you ask for help or guidance you often get a dismissive response. I being an encyclopedia of commands bothers you, I would advise against RH exams. I take issue with that statement (see below) :) Assuming you have taken those exams, without breaking your NDA, would you care to explain that particular statement and why you specifically single out RH exams in that area? (I know the OP mentioned them, tbf) [disclaimer: as you can probably tell from my sig, I *have* taken those exams. In fact I was the senior trainer examiner in the UK for Red Hat for quite some time, so I'm not without bias here myself] In any case, being an encyclopedia of commands doesn't in itself make one an arse, that just seems to come more easily to some than others.** In fact, that level of knowledge can be quite handy at times. Thankfully it doesn't seem (to me) that arsiness and insult is as common now as it once was in the IRC and web forum arenas. Regards, Stuart ** this is not directed at anyone in particular, just to be clear and avoid misunderstandings :) -- Stuart Sears RHCA etc. It's today! said Piglet. My favourite day, said Pooh. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
Re: [Hampshire] The future of Linux / career advice
On Wednesday 13 Feb 2013, Ally Biggs wrote: Do you guys ever think there will be a day that Linux will be as popular as Windows in the desktop market. By which I assume you mean in the UK? Linux is very popular in some place already. If you include tablets, then Linux kernel powered devices are eating domestic PC sales alive... Personally I can't see this happening anytime soon. This isn't a personal attack on Linux just want to get some thoughts and inspiration. You are probably correct that the UK PC market isn't going to see a big switch to Linux any time soon. However it is possible that the PC market may die a lot faster than people think in which case it will become a moot point. The problem with desktop Linux I think is when the shit hits the fan and something needs to be configured or a driver needs to be added your average user isn't going to want to sit typing commands in a terminal or spending hours finding the solution into a community. I would say that the same is true of Windows. I know lots of people who get a new PC because the new printer won't work with the old PC (or vice-a-versa). Most people have no idea about computers of any kind and are totally thrown when it doesn't work the way it did yesterday. In many respects Linux is no worse than Windows. The other problem I found is the community alot of people expect you to be some kind of command line genius who is capable of reciting the whole encyclopaedia of man pages. Being able to use the command line is important if you are administering computers. You can do with a few keystrokes what it would take you forever with a point and click interface. For a single computer you don't need to use the command line much if at all if you are just using it. I know plenty of computer illiterate pensioners who are happy to use Linux and have never typed a command in their life and I don't expect them ever to have to. You can learn the CLI slowly and it will pay dividends, you'll be amazed how easy some things become when you know how to do it with a script...! So when you ask for help or guidance you often get a dismissive response. While that can be common in some places, I sincerely hope that isn't the case here. Documentation is horrendous aswell especially if you are making the transition from Windows. Pick up a starting to learn Linux book and a couple of pages in you end up with the worlds worst headache. I would ignore the transition from Windows aspect to start with. Most documentation for most things is terrible, doesn't matter what it is, Windows, Mac or Linux. There is good documentation and that's where you need to start. The second problem is that in my opinion Windows teaches you a lot of bad habits and concepts and unlearning them is painful. So how did you guys learn Linux? Slowly and by asking a friend. Has anyone else made the transition from Windows? Yes. Now I look at Windows 7 and cringe it's so crude and frustrating in so many ways. Or what are the key areas to focus on to develop a good foundation. Need some inspiration if I go down the Linux route would I be missing out on much? Please help me resolve the tug of war it is driving me mad :) You need to decide what you actually want to do. Do you want to become a system administrator? Do you want to do servers or desktops? Do you want to do scripting? Do you want to concentrate on a sub system like databases or web servers? -- Adam Trickett Overton, HANTS, UK Norton Wipe Info uses hexadecimal values to wipe files. This provides more security than wiping with decimal values. -- from the manual of Norton Systemworks 2002, pg 160 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- Please post to: Hampshire@mailman.lug.org.uk Web Interface: https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/hampshire LUG URL: http://www.hantslug.org.uk --
