Linux is not ready for Steam

[darkphoenix22]

This is already possible. Just launch the app with pasuspender <app>. Then you lose all PA sounds during the game. I'd be fine with that as the solution for games that use legacy audio libraries. Note that the new versions of these libraries do work with PA. So this whole thread is pretty much a non-issue.

This isn't a proper solution as the sound daemon should not have to be bypassed for applications to work. And like what has been said before, even some newer libraries do work with the PA approach in all cases.

Anywho, I'm leaving this thread as I have said all that I want to say. After 481 posts and 49 pages probably all that can be said by both sides has been said. It seems like the thread is just becoming trolling (from both sides).

Good day.

[darkphoenix22]

Gah stupid edit limit:

This isn't a proper solution as the sound daemon should not have to be suspended (or really even bypassed) for applications to work. And like what has been said before, even some newer libraries do work with the PA approach in all cases.

Anywho, I'm leaving this thread as I have said all that I want to say. After 482 posts and 49 pages probably all that can be said by both sides has been said. It seems like the thread is just becoming trolling (from both sides).

Good day.

[darkphoenix22]

LOL I made a repost and didn't even fix the issue:

This isn't a proper solution as the sound daemon should not have to be suspended (or really even bypassed) for applications to work. And like what has been said before, even some newer libraries do *not* work with the PA approach in all cases.

Anywho, I'm leaving this thread as I have said all that I want to say. After 483 posts and 49 pages probably all that can be said by both sides has been said. It seems like the thread is just becoming trolling (from both sides).

Good day.

[chaperon]

This is already possible. Just launch the app with pasuspender <app>. Then you lose all PA sounds during the game. I'd be fine with that as the solution for games that use legacy audio libraries. Note that the new versions of these libraries do work with PA. So this whole thread is pretty much a non-issue.

1. "pasuspend" is not out of the box. PA disabling should be done automatically.

2. When working with PA, these libraries eat 30% of my core 2 duo, which is too high. It also eats the system bus because of interrupt latency (PA requires twice as much interrupts because of its design). IMHO, PA design is flawed for games, which don't need its features.

[Remco]

1. "pasuspend" is not out of the box. PA disabling should be done automatically.

Games don't develop themselves either. The game publisher is responsible for disabling PA.

[chaperon]

Games don't develop themselves either. The game publisher is responsible for disabling PA.

The game publisher uses OpenAL, not PA : disabling PA if needed would be the role of the distro, or OpenAL, or even PA, not the game. That's pretty much my point in most of my posts : game studios don't care about details, they just flag the platform as "unsuitable" if it does not work right. SEGA Saturn died because it was hard to program (among other reasons), Windows 95 rocketed with DirectX 3 because it was easy to package and deploy. All platforms since then somewhat mimic the mid-90's PC, which is seen as ideal because of its flexibility and deployment ease. Gaming industry wants to make money by delivering good games, not by solving technical issues.

Linux is not considered as a gaming platform because it simply does not work well enough for that task and because of all negative reasons expressed in this thread.

[IsawSparks]

Games studios do develop games for Linux. The majority of the most successful indie games of this year and the last were launched on Linux. Corporations like EA and Activision do not develop games for Linux because Linux runs contra to their DRM sales oriented plans. The complexity of simplicity of Linux has no baring for them. The openness of the platform does.

VALVe will indeed support Linux because they are smart enough to know that the more way they can sell their own and other products via Steam the more money is to be made and the stronger the Steam brand gets. I wouldn't be surprised if Steam made it to Android etc eventually too.

[Remco]

The game publisher uses OpenAL, not PA : disabling PA if needed would be the role of the distro, or OpenAL, or even PA, not the game. That's pretty much my point in most of my posts : game studios don't care about details, they just flag the platform as "unsuitable" if it does not work right. SEGA Saturn died because it was hard to program (among other reasons), Windows 95 rocketed with DirectX 3 because it was easy to package and deploy. All platforms since then somewhat mimic the mid-90's PC, which is seen as ideal because of its flexibility and deployment ease. Gaming industry wants to make money by delivering good games, not by solving technical issues.

Linux is not considered as a gaming platform because it simply does not work well enough for that task and because of all negative reasons expressed in this thread.

If game studios die because they have to configure one thing in deployment of their app, then they should not be able to make any money at all. Disabling PA for legacy library versions is not the end of the world at all. Modern OpenAL works fine with PA.

[Kano]

Did anybody removeing the precompiled libopenal.so* and using the shipped version instead in case of problems? In some cases a symlink might be needed.

[Dragonlord]

Shipping such libs with a game is anyways big time bull-crap.