Steam is just a launcher. Launching a game from steam is really no different than running a command line on clicking an icon on your desktop.

Some games can be launched directly, without Steam running, if they don't need to talk to the steam client to validate their DRM.

Linux gaming at best follows way behind Mac gaming, and that is only because porting to OSX from Windows means you've done a lot of the work. The only remaining work to do to go to linux is figure out which abstract set of libraries you need to use in order to get the basics of sound, video and input.

Surprisingly, I've found dealing with the 18 different ways to do everything in Linux to be the hardest part of the porting process.

Either way, you're still far behind 2nd place. Linux has always had 'games' by this standard, some of them rather good. Currently Steam doesn't do anything to really change Linux gaming. I think it will long term possibly have an effect, especially if Valve goes Linux Console with it, but right now, Steam on Linux is an academic exercise, nothing more.

...

As opposed to the open source kernel that OSX uses?

Or the kernel source for Windows that Intel has had access to for longer than it has been called Windows?

So ... you mean pretty much like it is now?

Apple also doesn't want to have its customers deal with the 'new driver a day' race between nVidia and ATI.

Point updates come often enough that its not actually a problem.

And miss out on built in compiler farms, opencl, and xgrid?

No, you won't.

Why do people like to pretend you buy a computer for a single number based on a specific type of test that has no actual relation to the real world?

OSX performance only 'lags' if you compare unlike feature sets.

Since the Linux driver does not support the same OpenGL extension set, its pretty hard to make a valid comparison.

Great, so Linux can render an untextured triangle faster ... doesn't actually help since it doesn't support extensions required by the apps I want to use anyway.

Yes, these apps do run on Linux ... I wrote them. My iPhone has better extension support.

And I know this is going to piss off the fanboys but ...

This question is exactly the type of question that is the answer to 'why its not the year of the Linux desktop'

Seriously, why the fuck does it matter? Can no one make software that works well across the board? Does Apple and Microsoft have that much better of a development team that they don't need 18 different forks of the same damn software all with their own individual quirks, strengths and weaknesses?

If OSS is so awesome, why does Microsoft and Apple continually produce what appears to be better code.

You should not have to ask such a question.

The performance problem where you compare orange peels on Linux to Apple Pie on OSX or Windows and pretend its the same thing.

Seriously, your Linux drivers dont' support all the features available to OSX and Windows and you pretend its faster?

Great, you can render a blank screen faster, awesome. Get back to me when I care about the fact that that your system doesn't actually support half the features people use everywhere else.

DOS is infinitely faster than Windows since it can be completely removed from the equation, but I don't fucking run DOS either since it offers me basically no API (by modern OS standards) of usefulness.

Right, when not everyone follows your 'give away the keys to the kingdom for free' mentality, they are 'bad citizens'.

Linux doesn't deserve good drivers. When the kernel developers actively work against someone because they 'zOMG NOT OPEBNSORES', then you what you get is what you have. You deserve shitty drivers because the Linux mentality is 'do it our way or we will do everything we can to make you seem like a shitty unfair evil company'.

If the Linux kernel team actually believed in openness, they wouldn't actively do things to hurt anything that didn't follow their letter of the law.

If you guys didn't have your head so far up your collective GPL'd asses, you'd get a lot further a lot faster.

Wrong.

Intel engineers know what tricks they had in mind when designing the chips. Apple engineers can not gleen that from the silicon no matter how hard they try or what equipment they have. Apple's engineers will never have an advantage over Intel engineers as long as Intel is actively researching and developing new features.

Apple is not God. They didn't get the piles of cash they have by reverse engineering. They got there by building quality equipment WITH the help of the hardware providers. Intel works with both Apple AND Microsoft to develop the built in drivers. Doing this for Linux is no different.

It is Intel's best interest that ALL OSes have the best driver for Intel video output since Intel video output is the lowest performing option. They need the best performance possible out of the least energy possible so they have SOME reason for you to buy their graphics solution over nVidia or ATI.

Sigh. The ignorance here is amazing.

What? Who the hell made that stupid statement? Whoever did hasn't used OSX since 10.1 it would seem, since you know, X window managers have been copying it since about then. X isn't capable of doing what OSX or Windows are capable of doing, you can't actually compare speeds unless you compare the same things. You can not compare X to Windows or OSX rendering contexts for this reason.

Yes, games run faster on Linux because the driver doesn't support all the features the windows version does, so you end up not doing nearly the work as the windows version.

If all you can do is render a single texture to a few triangles, of course its going to run faster than multipass/multitextured/geometry shader powered/ultra-ultra-shiny versions. The Linux version doesn't do the same thing as the Windows version, of course it runs faster. No, those aren't real examples, but as someone who does OpenGL game engine bits for fun and profit, I can tell you the reason you get a higher FPS in Linux is because you're getting a different picture than you are in Windows. The same is true on OSX, which is why it generally has higher FPS rates than Windows, but slower than Linux. OSX is much much closer to feature parity with Windows drivers.

Yes, because of idiots like you.

When someone says Ubuntu ... if you recognize the name at all, you know they are speaking of Linux.

When someone says Fedora in a discussion about operating systems, you know they are speaking of Linux.

Slackware ... same.

The truth is, everyone who calls any of these distributions by name ALREADY KNOWS THEY ARE REFERRING TO LINUX.

No one talks about Ubuntu without knowing it is Linux. Most of that is because no one talks about Linux distros in general outside of the Linux fan club.

You just have no idea what people outside of your pretty little box think.

Its wrong to imply Timothy Lord is different than Homo Starbucksii.

Both are devoid of intelligence.

You have to be a freaking idiot to not realize RMS tries to politicalize EVERYTHING HE CAN, especially the Linux kernel.

Linus himself has spoken about this and how RMS needs to keep his grubby hands to himself.

Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong again. 'GNU' was adapted after the fact and was not the first user land that Linux had. But don't let reality cloud your fantasy. GNU porting came as people realized HURD was a joke that was never going anywhere.

Next time, open your eyes and stop viewing the 'facts' with RMS tinted glasses. And just go fuck yourself anyway, trolling or not, you're still too ignorant to be telling others to go fuck themselves.

RMS should be greatful anyone at all still listens to him. He is so far out of touch with reality he does 10 times more harm to Linux and the FOSS movement than anyone else alive, including all the companies who work directly against it. RMS is a bigger asset to Microsoft than ANYTHING Microsoft could do against FOSS.

You have to be fucking blind to not see that. RMS regularly causes himself and anything he is working on/with to develop and be accepted slower. Just because some of you idiots have a cult like worship of him doesn't mean the rest of the world is that stupid. The rest of us keep him as far away as possible, and that includes MANY in the FOSS movement like myself.

RMS is a liability, not an asset. He is well past his point of usefulness. He, much like Assange use 'the cause' to keep themselves 'in the spotlight'. Get a clue, stop being his tool.

Technically, you can run the rasppi versions on a 644 via external storage and the ATmega ARM emulator.

Takes hours to get to an Emergancy she'll, and days to get to X but it has been done.

QEMUs soft emulators will run on just about anything given a little effort.