Valve Confirms Linux Steam Box Will Be Open Platform

[Nille]

Its AMD APU inside, so its either catalyst or opensource.

I doubt that the foss driver will be chosen.

[entropy]

I doubt that the foss driver will be chosen.

Are they allowed to ship the box with the proprietary drivers?
Isn't it more likely that they ship it with the open drivers and provide a manual installer for the proprietary drivers which
downloads and installs them on behalf of the user? They need at least some kind of "disclaimer", don't they?

[Apopas]

Is it really that hard to accept that we won't be getting anything open sourced from either AMD or Nvidia for the time being? Not everything needs to be open source. And I find the idea of imposing open source no different from the tyrant that you say is closed source.

Intel's drivers are opensource and while for a lot of people Intel's GPUs are fast enough, then the concept of working in a totally open environment is already a reality. Is difficult to see that this is only good?

[Nille]

Are they allowed to ship the box with the proprietary drivers?

Sure, why not?

[Apopas]

Its AMD APU inside, so its either catalyst or opensource.

Where did yoy see it?

[Nille]

Where did yoy see it?

Technical Documents talk about an Trinity APU. Currently is the xi3 website down so i cant link the informations:/

[Mike Frett]

I've been getting more and more disappointed with this. At first I thought it was a Console, only to find out it's just a PC. And there was so much Linux talk, but now they say you can just install Windows. At first glance it looks like people are throwing a $400 price around to which I say: If it's going to compete with other Consoles, it has to be under $200 or it's DOA.

This whole thing has been a scam it seems. I really thought Linux was going to get a boost, what a let down.

[BO$$]

Who cares what it ships with?

Most people don't know shit about linux and wouldn't know to install the proprietary drivers. That would be a huge disservice to valve.

[BO$$]

Are you really that stupid?



You do realise that the majority of the work done on all open source drivers is PAID for by company's like Red Hat i.e. not the people TRYING to make money on Linux but the ones that ARE making money on it.

There are two people in this world the naysayers and the doers. You my friend are a naysayer, and judging by your posts you always will be. Its just sad really.

Both you and I know that Red hat isn't really that interested in graphics drivers since in enterprise you don't usually worry about Fps. Since the open source drivers are so much worse than the proprietary ones we can only conclude that there are 3 types of people that use open source drivers: the ones that get the default open source driver and don't know any better, the ones that can't get the proprietary driver to work and the open source zealots that use arguments like freedom and other bullshit arguments to justify that using proprietary is somehow evil. The last category is the one that creates problems. Why do I have to install the proprietary drivers manually after installing Ubuntu? Why don't I get them by default? The fact is that open source is hardly a match for an army of true professional programmers. As long as the open source drivers suck they should not be promoted. They should be marginalized and hidden out of sight for it's one of the weaknesses of linux and people coming to linux will be disappointed int the current state of affairs. As long as proprietary are better they should be the default. It is only pragmatic. Anything else is bullshit.

But wait! The open source idiots using arguments like 'linux is evolution not intelligent design' by God Almighty keep changing X.org so that the proprietary drivers need to be updated every month or so. So basically, AMD and Nvidia who don't owe linux shit but still provide us with drivers even when they don't need to, have to change their drivers to accommodate the changes in X.org. Because they can't publish a stable interface. There are 2 reasons for that: 1. They really are assholes and don't want to help the proprietary driver makers in any way (meet them halfway) or 2. They really are incompetent programmers. So which one do you like best? I like 2. since I don't think there is any conspiracy. What seem like bad intentions most often is just idiocy. And knowing that the open source drivers suck compared to proprietary, along with the changing interfaces every month, all point out to them being idiots. Now I hope you finally understand why I consider them idiots and why I am not in awe with their work just because it's open source. Being open source isn't an excuse for sub par work.

[Hamish Wilson]

Most people don't know shit about linux and wouldn't know to install the proprietary drivers. That would be a huge disservice to valve.

Are you seriously suggesting that most gamers don't know how to install vendor supplied graphics drivers?

The last category is the one that creates problems. Why do I have to install the proprietary drivers manually after installing Ubuntu? Why don't I get them by default? The fact is that open source is hardly a match for an army of true professional programmers. As long as the open source drivers suck they should not be promoted. They should be marginalized and hidden out of sight for it's one of the weaknesses of linux and people coming to linux will be disappointed int the current state of affairs. As long as proprietary are better they should be the default. It is only pragmatic. Anything else is bullshit.

But people have stated plenty of pragmatic reasons for shipping and supporting FOSS drivers (not that "pragmatic" arguments are necessarily better than moral ones), such as proper system and kernel integration, maintainability, sometimes better 2D support, sometimes stability, sometimes better card support, etc.

And why should people see this as a Linux weakness, when a default Windows install does not ship with full fledged vendor drivers either? By the way, I am not entirely sure how it works, but I thought Ubuntu had Jockey?

But wait! The open source idiots using arguments like 'linux is evolution not intelligent design' by God Almighty keep changing X.org so that the proprietary drivers need to be updated every month or so. So basically, AMD and Nvidia who don't owe linux shit but still provide us with drivers even when they don't need to, have to change their drivers to accommodate the changes in X.org.

They are not doing it for charity, and they are not doing it for you. They are doing it for 3D Workstations - so yes, the enterprise. We do not owe them anything either - and since they do in fact make money of the Linux market, they can actually be said to owe us. Not usually the desktop market, but still.

Straw man, Hamish. My point was to caution against blind adherence to advocate positions because it's cool to do so. Is the point of advocacy, at least in part, not to upset the status quo in an attempt to work toward becoming the majority position? And once this is obtained, then do you not run the risk of the tyranny of that majority? One could argue that is precisely the position we are in now, but trading one foaming-at-the-mouth dictator for another with slightly differently colored spittle is not an improvement.

Yes, but saying advocacy is tyranny is still a tyrannical position in of itself, and a position which has promoted tyranny a lot more often than these "blind advocates" (speaking of strawmen...) that you make mention of. The main thing that keeps tyranny going is apathy, which is what a lot of people who state they are on the side of "pragmatism" often accept and promote. You can complain about someones actions, you can even criticize another's words, but please don't tell me someone can not promote a position for fear of tyranny. Because really, is that not the censor's argument, that we need it to prevent the spread of dangerous ideas in society?

Some of the noise being made here on this subject (and their numbers are, thankfully, few) sounds remarkably like that of a dictator without a sufficiently large fan club. In common parlance they are oftentimes referred to as "wackos and nut jobs". I fear them with power, because they haven't demonstrated temperance with the "you're either with us or you're against us" stand on using proprietary drivers. Such hard-line stances are rarely appropriate.

And then there are people calling out FOSS users and developers saying they are idiots or tyrants, and that they are actively conspiring against these hardworking innocent hardware vendors. Seriously, have you not read a Phoronix thread before?