Atomic Systems

Posted: **Sat Aug 04, 2012 10:58 pm**

This thought has come to after finding out Valve ARE working on this on the steam client side of things, I'm in favour because if Railworks was compatible I would not have Windows in the first place, but what does the rest of the forum think?

Posted: **Sat Aug 04, 2012 11:15 pm**

Support for Linux sounds a good idea, but which distribution would you suggest RSC optimise for/ensure compatibilty for?---and who's going to support the large number of users who'd have absolutely no clue about how to run any version of Linux?

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 12:02 am**

Why would RSC even bother with porting to an operating system no one uses? I remember all the hype about how Linux would take over the world when it was first released way back, and apart from a hard core of enthusiasts it has never hit the main stream and from recent reports the percentage of users is dropping all the time.

Hits on my web site, which are mainly from RailWorks and ham radio enthusiasts who are likely to be technically savvy show 0.4% of users with Linux (all types), 2.5% with Mac and the rest with Windows.

Mike.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 12:04 am**

If they can do it right, then I'm fully in favor of it.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 12:13 am**

It all would depend on what valve are working on, at the moment the chosen distro is ubuntu. the team setting it up have a blog set up.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/
The reason they are setting up a linux steam seems to be because Gabe does not like the upcoming Windows 8 as microsoft are talking about including a store similar to the steam client, or that the gist I get from news reports on the matter. In regard to why would RSC bother I agree that it would be unwise to switch as Linux may be great for many things but Gaming, and in my experiance modding is a much less easy and rewarding experiance using it. Still unless Valve do something drastic like quit windows over a spat with microsoft I see it as unlikely.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 1:12 am**

Seems like it would be a good idea, however I don't think RSC could do it at a reasonable cost since RW is based on quite a few windows only libraries (physx, directx, EAX) and so it would need almost a complete rewrite. Also I haven't tried it in a while, but RW1 worked in WINE, but not very well. So as far as I can see RW will continue to be a windows only game.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 1:52 am**

Much has been written about, and speculated upon what Gabe Newell meant, and what he actually said at Casual Connect....

during a dinner speech on Tuesday at the Casual Connect conference in Seattle, Newell discussed a number of topics. One of them was Windows 8, which Newell clearly doesn't care for at all. He stated:

"I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space. I think we’ll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that’s true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality."

Newell apparently didn't go into detail on exactly why he thinks Windows 8 would be, in his words, a "catastrophe". However, he seemed to hint that his views on Windows 8 were part of the reason that the company is working to port Steam and its games to the Linux platform. He states, "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It’s a hedging strategy."

From: http://pikigeek.com/2012/07/28/valve-an ... windows-8/

Former executive of Palm and Apple Michael Mace wrote a very thorough analysis of Windows 8 on his blog, Mobile Opportunity (http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.co.uk ... ows-8.html). He states:

“From a user perspective, Microsoft Windows is being killed this fall and replaced by an entirely new OS that has a Windows 7 emulator tacked onto it… It combines an interesting new interface with baffling changes to Windows compatibility, and amateur mistakes in customer messaging. Add up all the changes, and I am very worried that Microsoft may be about to shoot itself in the foot spectacularly. Even the plain colorful graphics in Windows 8 that looked so cool when I first saw them are starting to look ominous to me, like the hotel decor in The Shining.”

Windows 8 uses an interface known as “Metro”, which turns everything into an app. Windows 8 is trying so hard to be a tablet-compatible UI that it undermines itself. Business Insider writes:

“Worst of all, the traditional desktop is buried — it’s just another Metro app — but there are still some things you can only do from the desktop, and some only from Metro. That means you have to switch between the two interfaces frequently. That’s not nearly as smooth as it should be.”

This means that programs like Steam won’t be able to run on Windows 8 without turning itself into a Metro-friendly application. Furthermore, all of the applications will be full-screen, although you can adjust them to 1/3rd or 2/3rd of the screen, which isn’t really an improvement—forget about moving a window out of the way to view another, and forget about the Start button: there isn’t one, not even on the desktop. And for those of you with battle stations: Windows 8 doesn’t currently support multi-monitors, so forget about playing a game on one screen while browsing online on the other. One screen has to be devoted to Metro at all times.

In short, the primary issue with Windows 8 is that it’s not designed for PCs. It’s meant to be used with tablets, and then only Windows 8 compatible tablets (if you have a Vista-based system, you’re out of luck). Microsoft won’t even allow you to simply test the OS out and decide later—you can’t remove Windows 8 after you’ve installed it. You need to have the original installation disks that came with your computer and risk wiping your hard drive to do a new install from scratch.

Imagine, then, being a developer like Valve or EA that have programs like Steam or Origin, trying to decide whether they should invest the time and money into figuring out how to get their program to work with what is essentially a mentally disabled iPad in a PC’s body, especially when the future of the program is extremely uncertain.

Your guess is as good, possibly better, than mine as to what impact all this *posturing* has on the average user, or how much of the *doom and gloom* will actually happen----a bit like RSC's announcement of gamepad support means we'll all be playing RW on our kids GameBoys next year.....

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 5:10 am**

I can't imagine porting RW would be particularily easy, although I don't know how unix is doing with Windows compatibility these days. Would make more sense to port it to the XBox if you're going to port it, surely.

There are an awful lot of linux servers out there; depending on who's survey you look at it might be up to 60% of the current approximately 666 million sites* ( although don't forget a fair number of those will be multiple sites on one server ). Linux on the desktop... yeah, that's a speciality market. My previous career was writing unix software, and although I had a unix desktop at work, no way would I use one at home ( having said that, running remote desktops from unix machines was built in from the start so it wasn't like you lost out ).

Half ( at least, how popular is each side of your site? ) your hits are going to be from train simulator users though, Mike, and they're pretty much all going to be windows users anyway unless they're masochistic enough to reboot when they're not gaming.

* Taken from the current Netcraft figures, who try and avoid counting multiple sites on one server. And yes that really is what the figures round to this month.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 5:29 am**

One rumour I heard, I think on the PC Pro podcast, is that M$ is intending to lock Windows 8 to any content that does not arrive via its app-store, meaning services like Steam would be unable to access it unless it changes its delivery system and give M$ a cut. Add that on top of this new interface and it isn't hard to understand why Valve are so concerned. I haven't tried a W8 beta but I've not heard much that's positive for desktop or laptop users. M$ clearly see the future as being a tablet-style, touch-screen interface with an Apple-style, closed framework instead of the wide-open framework we've seen right back to DOS.

Keith

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 5:44 am**

As long as it don't effect how RW works with Windows then I couldn't care less, it certainly won't make me change operating system, as I am perfectly happy with Windows.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 8:06 am**

I saw W8 described this weekend as a completely new OS with a W7 emulator built in, which doesn't bode well for a start. I've now found the reference I mentioned before, in PC Pro magazine, July 2012, page 55. It's in an article about creating Metro apps and it says "...to use a Metro app that hasn't been installed from the Windows Store you currently need a developer's licence installed on the local machine. When it's released, the Enterprise edition of Windows 8 should be able to install and run Metro apps without going through the Store, but to keep things secure it's expected that this won't be possible in other editions." In other words, Steam could easily become obsolete in a short time if all its content has to be converted to some kind of Metro format - which I'd guess won't be backwards compatible so how many versions do their creators have to maintain? - and passed through the Store, with M$ taking a cut of the money. If W8 doesn't go the way of Windows ME and becomes established then the era of gaming on a PC will be largely over as far as Windows is concerned.

I do wonder about the future of M$. The PC Pro podcast discussed Office 2013 recently and had little good to say about its interface and operation. Has it dropped the ball?

Keith

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 9:02 am**

Rockdoc2174 wrote:One rumour I heard, I think on the PC Pro podcast, is that M$ is intending to lock Windows 8 to any content that does not arrive via its app-store, meaning services like Steam would be unable to access it unless it changes its delivery system and give M$ a cut. Add that on top of this new interface and it isn't hard to understand why Valve are so concerned. I haven't tried a W8 beta but I've not heard much that's positive for desktop or laptop users. M$ clearly see the future as being a tablet-style, touch-screen interface with an Apple-style, closed framework instead of the wide-open framework we've seen right back to DOS.

Keith

Hmm if true Windows 8 will go the same as MS Flight, Which the studio was recently closed for various reasons. One of the main ones looking on FS forums due to lack of 3rd party support etc.

I have been using the Win 8 release preview and so far steam works fine. Just have to make sure a desktop icon is available. But compared to Win 7, Vista, XP it is a maze to try and get around it. You have to mess about in Metro (what is annoying) to even find My Computer links and for system etc.

For Linux support it will be interesting but low chance of happening since RW uses Direct X doesn't it? So it would have to become a OpenGL based game.

Chris

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:10 am**

I downloaded and installed Windows 8 Yesterday,

And while it does seem snappy, it is a dog to navigate , and Steam just Baulked at it, couldnt get it to run RW at all , Granted i only gave it a few hours , but first impressions were not good

Its looking like this release will be WINME and Vista Debacle rolled into one.

Couple this (no pun intended ) with M$ Killing "Home Server" (£49.00 ) and replacing it with Server 2012 essentials ( £460.00 ) , makes you wonder weather the competion has infiltrated M$ and set the self destruct button.

On the linux front, Ubuntu is quite good , but still not ready for main stream (IMHO )

Cheers
Brian

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:44 am**

Linux will never go mainstream before the 'hardcore' userbase gets rid of its anti-newbie and anti-any other OS-attitude.

Posted: **Sun Aug 05, 2012 11:59 am**

USRailFan wrote:Linux will never go mainstream before the 'hardcore' userbase gets rid of its anti-newbie and anti-any other OS-attitude.

Hard to view Linux as a 'newbie'.... but the biggest hurdle is the fact that the vast majority just want to be able to turn the PC on, stick a DVD in, click the 'GO' button and within an hour the OS is installed, and installing programs being a mini version of that---no configuring, no command line etc.
We've seen a drive to make PC's more intuitive, but of course you could see this is a more polite way of saying 'dumbing down' and this means that that vast majority has been conditioned not to think.

Atomic Systems

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