Valve's Steam Box Will Most Likely Use An X.Org Server

[AJSB]

All next gen consoles , PS4, XBox Next, are PCs with locked hardware.

As for SB...

Don't confuse unlocked to excessive liberal freedom of hardware...

AFAIK, SB will have freedom of OS and maybe some margin for amount of RAM, size of box, format of box, SSD or HDD and capacity, etc. but there must be restrictions in hardware specs.

If not, THERE WILL BE problems of box A runs very well game A and B but fails in game C and box B runs very well game A and C but fails in game B and so on.

That's one thing that doesn't happen with other consoles (i.e. a XBox 360 is a XBox 360 .period.) and will hurt hard SB if hardware specs are not to some point locked.

[kaprikawn]

A well thought out and convincing article. The message that I took from it is that Mir is going to fall on it's face...thankfully.

When I read all the Mir articles, my worry was that the only way it was going to gain traction was if it was necessary, or just beneficial, to Steam. If Valve stay away from it for the time being then there's no advantage to Mir. As if Canonical can convince Nvidia and AMD to support their universally hated tech! So it's going to crash and burn.

As a person who got into Linux through Ubuntu (and I still have it on my old netbook), it's sad to see them slip into irrelevance through their crazy antics. My only worry is no universally accepted goto distro for beginners, unfortunately Ubuntu still occupies that niche. The baton needs passing to a more sensible distro (Mint maybe?).

[AJSB]

Funny that you mention Mint because , besides Slackware (witch is not exactly M$ refugees friendly), it's my favorite distro....they also , no matter are a derivative from UBUNTU, maintain a critical approach to UBUNTU options and rejected that abortion called Unity and found their own solutions that are way more Linux mainstream.

I'm sure that Linux Mint will continue that path.

...it's also easy to install Steam on it....i done it and played Steam games on it even when Steam client was on early stages of Beta and i was one of the "bypassers" (we were not invited to the Beta but "bypassed" the "security" and participated to some degree on it).

Personally, i consider Linux Mint the new ( and much better) UBUNTU, the distro that we should recommend to M$ "refugees" as an easy introduction to the Linux world....

[vitiv]

To me this seems as the most sensible approach. Wayland is promising and I fully support it, but not yet production ready especially due to the somewhat lacking support for toolkits, gl especially the Nvidia blobs. Meanwhile Xorg is the most supported and stable of them all. Also don't even get me started on Mir - WTF, Canonical, you have the most popular Linux distro at the moment, live up to that standard, stop fragmenting the ecosystem.

[prodigy_]

I sincerely hope that Valve will use X.Org and that others will follow suit. Even if this will postpone our migration to Wayland for a decade. It's a small price to pay to see Canonical crash and burn.

[AJSB]

I sincerely hope that Valve will use X.Org and that others will follow suit. Even if this will postpone our migration to Wayland for a decade. It's a small price to pay to see Canonical crash and burn.

Valve will use X for SURE.

Mir is in (too) early stage (assuming that will deliver in the end).

Wayland is designed more in the direction of open source drivers
(NVIDIA and AMD don't seem too keen to support Wayland with their blobs any time (if EVER) soon).

Open source video drivers are a big NO NO for gaming and will stay so for a long time (if they will ever be any good for any serious gaming...personally , i believe that FOSS video drivers will lack ALWAYS compared with blobs).


So, X is the winner for some time at least.

[kaprikawn]

Funny that you mention Mint ... no matter are a derivative from UBUNTU....

I'm not entirely sure about the politics and technicalities of it, but if I were Mint dev I'd think about migrating to becoming a derivative of Debian, instead of the increasingly bizarre and misguided Ubuntu.

[AJSB]

I'm not entirely sure about the politics and technicalities of it, but if I were Mint dev I'd think about migrating to becoming a derivative of Debian, instead of the increasingly bizarre and misguided Ubuntu.

Oooohhh, but they are doing it already for some time....didn't you heard of LINUX MINT Debian Edition ?!?

http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

They smelled that s**t was hitting the fan long ago and started to not put all eggs in the same basket long ago

[GreatEmerald]

As a person who got into Linux through Ubuntu (and I still have it on my old netbook), it's sad to see them slip into irrelevance through their crazy antics. My only worry is no universally accepted goto distro for beginners, unfortunately Ubuntu still occupies that niche. The baton needs passing to a more sensible distro (Mint maybe?).

Nah, Mageia has that niche covered. It just doesn't do as much marketing, but it's a brilliant starting point for beginners.

[dee.]

I sincerely hope that Valve will use X.Org and that others will follow suit. Even if this will postpone our migration to Wayland for a decade. It's a small price to pay to see Canonical crash and burn.

No it's not.