Phoronix Member
Don't get me(us) wrong. I would really really like to use the OSS driver. The reality of it is that my HD4850 performs more like an HD4850 with FGLRX than it does with the OSS driver at this time. With the higly progressive rate of the OSS driver; there will be little reason to use FGLRX in the near future.Originally Posted by MaestroMaus
Senior Member
World of Goo sales seem to suggest that there is quite the demand for Linux games. After 2 days, Linux version downloads had already accounted for 4.6% of all downloads. That's 4 times the percentage of Linux users worldwide, so apparently Linux users are more likely to buy games than Windows users.
Phoronix Member
I would suggest that in raw data, there is probably a lot more pirates in the windows camp than on Linux percentage wise. One of the many reasons I use linux is so that I don't have to pirate windows. After paying good money for 95, 98, 98se and a couple of XP oem licenses, I don't see the value in paying money again and again to a giant that I don't want to support, and that frankly doesn't give 2 $#!7s about any of their users and their needs as long as their stanglehold on the market is strong.
And I have 152 games in my steam games list.
For most users using ubuntu, the games on steam vs the OSS games in the repository represents an unfair advantage in favour of steam for the most part; because that's where the money is. The equasion is also pretty simple: money = better games.
I'm sure there will be plenty of paying users from the Linux camp.
Even if Linux only accounts for 2%~ish of the desktop market. I'm sure that 1 year after steam come to linux, that 2% might look more like 4-5%.
I find it quite genius that Valve is coming to linux even if it ends up costing them a lot in the short run. Getting a great big foothold before mass adoption is sure to win them the market when it develops. And I was ridiculed not too long ago for suggesting that Steam might make it's way to Linux fairly soon :P I WIN!
Senior Member
Have a look at this thread. Essentially it's working since a few days, and hasn't been broken yet. So quickly go grab a git-snapshot and get to compiling.
Junior Member
I agree with BlueKoala. I use Linux and I don't pirate software. While I support the F/OSS ideals, I am also pragmatic. Honestly, if GNU/Linux cost money and Windows was free, I would pay for former, simply because I feel it provides a nicer computing experience and fits my needs better. I also have spent roughly $1000 dollars on steam games over the past years and I would love to play them (or at least a subset of them) on Linux.
Phoronix Member
that's called «premature assumption» !
(In your face, pal
Senior Member
funny, i seem to recall half life 2 and portal running quite well on AMD hardware / Catalyst - and that was in wine, and on integrated graphics, i would imagine the situation would be far better with it running natively.
sure, from current reports i would imagine evergreen hardware might have some issues - but r600/700 hardware should have no problem with the games....
Senior Member
Not sure what's your point.
If ATI wants to compete on my money (And I'm not talking about one workstation a year...), they can and -should- do better. I find it unacceptable that their binary driver has yet to support Xorg 7.4 (F12) when 7.5 is out (F13 in ~2 weeks) and 7.6 is on its way.
Of-course, they could choose to drop their binary driver, and like Intel (Minus Poulsbo [sp?]), go fully OSS driver.
Make no mistake - I respect ATI/AMD's decision to release the complete documentation and help the development of the OSS driver. Trust me when I say that if the R800 drivers were to give ~50% of the performance of their Windows counterparts, I wouldn't have been sitting on the pre-order list for GTX 470's...
- Gilboa
Senior Member
We're talking about running binary only games on Linux. What does it matter if we use binary only drivers for those games?
You see, it's not just drivers people are making the trade-in with. Once you make one exception to run a closed source program, what's the difference if you run additional closed binaries? (You've already excommunicated yourself from the pure, open source only, absolutists.)
There are plenty of good reasons to use Linux over Windows. Gaming isn't one of them, but people would like that to change because there are such good reasons to use Linux over Windows. Having source is one of the many good reasons for using Linux. While it's a darned good reason, it's not the only reason. Now this may be offensive to some, but it's true. More people use Firefox because it is a decent browser than because it is open source.
If it upsets you that someone would choose quality over source availability, too bad. Not everyone is an uncompromising absolutist.
Also, not everyone who chooses to run a closed binary (be it a game, driver, or even Adobe's Flash plug-in) is a freedom hating bastard. Many that choose such a compromise would prefer not to and are supportive, enthusiastic, contributors to open source projects. It's not that they don't care about open source. It's that they don't care about it with an exclusive all or nothing attitude.
Kanotix Developer
Basically I think steam on Linux would attract more gamers to pay for games they could play on their favorite plattform.
But i do not understand what that client has to do with grafic drivers. Does it feel better to play a game with slower fps/less effects on pure FOSS drivers? Usually in world of benchmarks driver developers try to tune everything to increase speed to have more fps than the competitor as people usually pay money more for highest speed. Just in the Linux world some people self restrict their decisions by open source/documentation announcements, while it is absolutely sure that parts of the chip will not be unveiled like the uvd parts and will never be feature complete.
And those ppl will most likely complain then that the games would run too slow compared to what their are used to - all because of idealogy. What's good about that?
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