Finally got the survey in September. And since I haven't used Windows once since the first week in August, I know it definitely counted against the linux total. Still, there are reports of windows users getting prompted regularly, and this is my first survey since Dec 2012! Admittedly, I hardly ever got prompted on Windows either...

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Loved that video. You're using almost exactly my system to do the test too (processor, graphics card), so it's pretty depressing to think that the highest quality setting on Unigine can pretty much cripple my system!

I may have to download that benchmark and give it a try though! Is it freely available, or a purchase?

Great video - well done.

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Just watched their trailer on Desura - it looks absolutely stunning! Now do I buy it on Desura, or wait for it on Steam...

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Quoting: Quote from tweakedenigma

Quoting: Quote from Anonymous

Quoting: Quote from SabunA possible temporary Linux & SteamOS exclusive[...]?

Valve would be crazy not to do exactly this.

Not if it is advertised right, Call it Early access and SteamOS is the only officially supported OS (and just happens to work on Linux). 

Windows/Mac/Linux all get access to the finished product when it officially launches.

Yeah, that might work. Platform exclusives aren't Valve's style generally, I think, but there must be a section at Valve furiously thinking of ways that they can make this a SteamOS exclusive without incurring the backlash of angry Windows gamers.

Ultimately, they know who butters their bread, and while they definitely want SteamOS to succeed, alienating their current customers is a risky venture.

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Nah, it's not ridiculous, Samsai, it's based on valid concerns over DRM, that's all. I'm a realist about this now and I use Steam, but I have no grudge over people who don't feel the same way.

And Valve didn't "make Linux gaming a thing", I'd argue that Humble Bundle did that and Valve saw an opportunity that was aligned to their business needs (closed markets forming on Mac/Windows that would shut them out). So even though I like the company, let's not be going all holier-than-thou with them - their decision are based on economic drivers, not passion for the platform.

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Not amazingly on topic anymore, but I guess that if there's one negative here it is for the Steam-haters. There exists the potential that future games don't support "linux" but do support "SteamOS". At that point, the developer is only distributing his game through Steam and not really making it natively available to all distros.

I mean, yeah, it's available to all distros, but only "supported" on Ubuntu and only via Steam.

But given what Valve have brought to the table here, I'm happy with the situation.

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Quoting: Quote from edgley

Quoting: Quote from scaineMust have been a closed beta you heard about there - it's still not available generally (unlocks tomorrow 3pm GMT), and it's listed as Windows only right now (edit : sorry, I missed that you'd already mentioned that!). Hopefully that will change in the remaining 17 hours...

Erm... Just brought, installed and played.

Still locked here. Still Windows only, so I won't touch it.

Quoting: Quote from mongrolSteam only. No sale.

Another steam-hater, eh? And why not. I was like that once.
Then I started using linux and realised that you didn't have to visit each driver-site to download their updates, one at a time as you did in Windows. You didn't have to visit each shareware site you downloaded each utility from to update to the latest version. You didn't have to visit getfirefox.com or whatever every couple of of weeks to see if there was new version. You just "apt-get upgrade" and off it went. Amazing.
Steam's like that for games. So now I have Desura, Steam and absolutely not a single locally installed game. Excellent.

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Must have been a closed beta you heard about there - it's still not available generally (unlocks tomorrow 3pm GMT), and it's listed as Windows only right now (edit : sorry, I missed that you'd already mentioned that!). Hopefully that will change in the remaining 17 hours...

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Quoting: Quote from Hamish

Quoting: Quote from liamdaweDisrespectful to who exactly? This is an editorial so it all comes from my personal experience and personal observations, It's not disrespectful to know how bad AMD's drivers can be from experience, my rig has an APU in it remember, I tried using it before I finally got an NVIDIA card, it was god damned awful.

AMD is a large and varied company, so it can seem disrespectful to paint it all with one big brush - I would say that the likes of Marek Olšák, Tom Stellard, and John Bridgman are actually quite popular with the Linux community (in the case of Olšák one is even tempted to say amazingly popular).

And as I said, you are fully within your rights to say what you said, but AMD has been making huge contributions to the Linux community, and not just in the graphics space. And Nvidia is far from universally loved in the Linux community, as Linus Torvalds has theatrically shown on at least one occasion.

Ah, Linus. Not sure you should ever rely on him to back up your well reasoned views. He did no one a favour when he flipped Nvidia a finger. Not him, not linux, and certainly not Ubuntu or Valve when they have to ask Nvidia to support technologies like Mir. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that negotiation.

Mantle? I think Liam summed it up nicely via XKCD. I'd love to proven wrong, but I can't see it.

As for Hamish pointing out AMD's "huge contributions", I'd have to see examples. All I had was an HD7950 PCI-Express card and even under Windows, the bugs and bluescreens were painful - maybe "two crashes a week" doesn't sound that bad, but when I replaced it with an Nvidia GTX670 about a year ago, I've yet to see a crash (although I very rarely use Windows any more).

And as for the HD6750M in this laptop. Goddam. I have to hold back an xorg version permanently or I lose my desktop. No one should have to jump through such ridiculous hoops (http://askubuntu.com/questions/205112/how-do-i-get-amd-intel-hybrid-graphics-drivers-to-work [External Link]), just to make their laptop work under linux. Nobody.

AMD might be making huge strides, and I genuinely would like to know more about that, but for me, it's almost certainly too little too late. They've cost me money, they've lost my confidence and I won't likely buy anything from them again.

There you go, mirv. Now THAT was a rant. You're welcome!

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I'd quite like to be sitting 4 feet away from my big 40" TV playing driving games, so this is great. A decent gamepad on a dedicated SteamBox. Magic.

I'll likely be keeping my PC for proper FPS games though, although as I said in another thread here on GoL, I have no real problem playing FPS on a gamepad - but if you gave me a choice, I'd probably choose keyboard/mouse.

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