Softpedia reports
Steam is the world's largest digital game distribution platform, supporting all major operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux or SteamOS, Valve's own distribution derived from the acclaimed Debian GNU/Linux OS.
[...] There are approximately 6,500 titles in the Steam library. Almost all of them are being supported on the Microsoft Windows platform, a little over 2,300 have support for the Mac OS X operating system, and 1,500 titles offer support for Valve's SteamOS and any other GNU/Linux distribution out there.
[...] Even more good news: [...] Many other games will have support for the Linux platform soon, mainly because Valve will finally release its Steam Machines gaming console / personal computer in November, which will be powered by the company's Debian-based SteamOS GNU/Linux operating system.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday September 21 2015, @08:31PM
Even though:
A. I use linux all the time for my webserver
B. I am totally competent with it
C. Gaming is plentiful on linux
D. Microsoft has been making using windows as gigantic a pain in the ass to use as possible
I still don't use linux for day-to-day stuff. I can give no justification for this, but it's true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @08:43PM
I use Linux all the time but you can call it Android if you want.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Monday September 21 2015, @09:33PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by elixir on Tuesday September 22 2015, @12:16AM
I personally do not consider android to be a form of Linux. Sure it uses the Linux kernel, but it goes against everything that Linux and UNIX stands for.
I sit here strong running either Slackware or LinuxBBQ on all of my machines. From day-to-day tasks, to homework from my university, to gaming, I use GNU/Linux for it all.
I live just fine in an apartment with no windows or apples :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @01:16AM
I see Android as a security stripped, dumbed down version of Linux. Kind of what Windows stands for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @03:22AM
And no significant other?
(Score: 2, Touché) by elixir on Tuesday September 22 2015, @06:13AM
Indeed, with a significant other. My wife chooses to run GNU/Linux as well.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Gravis on Monday September 21 2015, @08:46PM
Maybe you're just super retarded. [tumblr.com] :P
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Refugee from beyond on Monday September 21 2015, @09:19PM
It is time then.
Instantly better soylentnews: replace background on article and comment titles with #973131.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday September 21 2015, @09:22PM
but but but but my complacency!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Monday September 21 2015, @11:48PM
Get off your 'but' and do it! ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Monday September 21 2015, @10:31PM
Stockholm syndrome.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @12:44AM
I still don't use linux for day-to-day stuff. I can give no justification for this, but it's true.
I use both. There is 0 reason not to. I use my OSs to start other programs. That is why it is not important to you. You do the same. But you have others trying to convince you 'only one OS is needed'. I need an OS to start programs. Thats it. If windows runs the programs I use then I use it. If linux/bsd/osx have programs I need, guess what I use?... Do not worry about the 'true believers'. Just keep doing what you are doing. There is no reason for you to feel guilty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @03:51AM
There was a time when my hard drive died and I used Ubuntu from a flash drive while I was waiting on a new hard drive to come. It took me 2 or 3 weeks after receiving the new drive to actually get around to installing it and going back to Windows.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Tuesday September 22 2015, @09:25AM
I had a similar experience. A year later that machine was still on Linux and I could find little reason to switch.
However, my employer bought me a Windows laptop for work which was vastly overpowered and had a gaming graphics card in it (and an overclock button - obviously a serious business machine!). I gamed on Windows but brought things like Open/LibreOffice over instead of MS Office and so on. I ran that setup for five years. When it broke, I just booted up the old Linux machine and carried on.
Linux is a perfectly viable OS for almost every use. Gaming is a struggle, but Valve are working on that more than anyone else.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday September 22 2015, @10:03AM
I find myself in the same situation.
I have a unix-like workstation at work with a tiling window manager at work for coding, and it's like the best setup I've ever had for work.
OTOH my home pc usage pattern is substantially different, so I find it comfortable to use a "traditional" window manager on MS Windows. I probably use the commandline just for connecting to the raspberry and nothing else. I just can't get myself to go through all the formatting and drivers and everything.
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 21 2015, @09:04PM
As the title says, it is not easy to mix FOSS with proprietary software; while maintaining any semblance of security.
Sony deciding to remove "Other OS" from the PS3 convinced me of this truth. The difficulty for Sony was that they could not trust FOSS code once people started making progress in breaking out of the sand-box. Similarly, when you run proprietary software on your FOSS system, you are not able to trust the proprietary software.
Of course, unless you are using a Free BIOS, your system is probably running proprietary software. However, that does not imply that you have to deliberately introduce additional proprietary software onto your system.
I have started to come to the conclusion that: if you really insist on running proprietary games, just getting a console may not actually be a bad way to go about it. If your prefer using the mouse, you can either buy a cheap Windows computer, or build a Steam box. That way your gaming can't compromise your other day-to-day activities.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday September 21 2015, @09:43PM
If your prefer using the mouse, you can either buy a cheap Windows computer, or build a Steam box.
Geeze. Doesn't have to be that hard. For 15+ years I've had a drive tray in my main machine and I swap in the drive/OS I want. Used to be PATA now SATA. Used to be spinning rust now SSD. Its pretty cheap. With the rise of "home raid arrays" this gear it cheaper and more available than ever.
On the shelf I have FreeBSD, Debian Linux, windows 7, Windows XP and I use them in about that order. I have some weird hardware like eprom burners and the like that only run under windows or even more specifically winXP, thats about all I do with those. Minecraft works fine on freebsd, I mostly use feedthebeast on linux out of laziness in setting it up. I also run dwarf fortress and factorio on linux, again no reason other than laziness about setting up on freebsd.
Anyway it makes life very easy.
You can wire up two drive bays and insert one boot drive and then "do stuff" to the second drive with little effort, which can be fun. At one point I had three PATA bays so I could do "dumb" things like boot linux and copy olddrive to newdrive, thus using all three slots. Some weird / old BIOS get all wound up about drives being shuffled around or disappearing; not so much recently.
WRT my "home directory" that used to live on openafs but there were some PITA things and freebsd is not 100% stable with openafs so back to legacy NFS home dirs. Works pretty well across multiple OS. I don't use windows enough to concern myself with mounting NFS home dirs on windows but presumably its possible somehow.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @01:12AM
The problem for Sony wasn't that they couldn't trust FOSS code. The problem for Sony was that they couldn't trust their users. If Sony's requirements weren't "maintain ownership of user's hardware" they wouldn't even have had that problem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 22 2015, @07:56AM
Sonys problem was that they forgot why OtherOS was included in the first place.
Right from the start, they knew people would want to run Linux on the PS3. The Linux community has some really hardcore technical people, that can get Linux running on basically anything that catches their interest.
The game pirating community is easy to keep out compared to the Linux community, because the Linux community has a lot more resources. The game pirating community is basically 99.9% "leechers" and 0.1% breakers. The problem is that the kind of "copy" protection used in consoles doesn't care about copying, it cares about running, and thus both communities want to break it with the purpose of running stuff. If the Linux community breaks it with the purpose of running Linux, a week later the same trick will be used for running pirated games. You can't separate the two because of the way the protection is designed.
OtherOS gave the Linux community what they wanted without needing to break the protection, and thus the pirating community was on their own with their few resources.
This strategy worked. It kept the pirates out for as long as OtherOS existed. When the pirates finally got through the first layer, somebody at Sony panicked. OtherOS was removed, the people who had been running Linux on their PS3s got pissed off, and suddenly Sony was up against not just the Linux community but a pissed off Linux community. The remaining layers of protection were gone in a few weeks.
Though in the end, it may have worked out to Sonys advantage after all. The Linux community got so pissed about OtherOS that they are refusing to buy PS4s, and thus have no interest in breaking it.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday September 22 2015, @02:10PM
Sounds believable. I heard a story about emulation. Yeah I know this is Sony and I'm mixing the streams, but consoles like to sell oldgen stuff at the usual premium price, while otheros could run MESS. So how you you sell SuperMarioBrosRemake-2015 on the PS3 for the usual $50 if someone can just stick linux, MESS, and a snes rom of the original MarioBros for "free"? (Free in quotes in that the snes rom is technically illegal)
I played with my retro-pi for a couple weeks till I got sick of it. Probably dig it out and fool around some more later. Chopperlifter and the original mariobros and for some reason the earlier the arcade ripoff the better the gameplay so out comes missile command and pacman and asteroids. The "modern gaming experience" sucks compared to asteroids on Atari2600 (in an emulator), even if the modern stuff has higher resolution.