I read about this earlier today. Great news. Plenty of Steam games already natively support Linux on PC so as long as they don't decide to charge again per platform (doubt it) then this will make a lot of people very happy.

If you want to be nit picky about it.

However, I don't know many people that get just the kernel without an additional GUI or a shell :P and those tend to repeat themselves from one distro to the next.

And anyways, desktop games usually interface with the kernel only and some graphics library like openGL, making the distinction doubly moot.

From there, you can make a distro specific installer, but that's less than 1% of the work anyways.


Making games cross-OS compatible is not witchcraft (at least, not between Windows and Linux).

Basically, the more the platform sticks to the C++ standard and put the platform specifics into Kernel calls, the easier it is. Windows and Linux's main compilers (Visual Studio and g++) have done a good job with that. Console-specific compilers (usually modified gcc)... not as much.

You just need to use the C++ standard library as much as possible (which got greatly expanded with C++11) and for the rest, you use wrapper classes (or typedefs) inside of which you can put precompiler branches to compile under various platforms.

Either way, I'm a big fan of open source for general purpose things (OS, browser, etc) where having something that is open and free becomes doubly important, but I'm not sold on it being viable for very specialized software (like games)... at least not on release.

That's not feasible anyway, the Linux kernel can't do anything on its own. No, the GNU system is a kernel + the GNU build environment and a shell with some additional software like text editors and, as you say, a GUI. Of course, neither of these things can work on their own so the FSF was just lucky that Linux came around when it did to act as the GNU kernel.

But the point is that anything can replace Linux. Theoretically, NT could replace it, or the Mac kernel. In practice, we have BSD which is a living example of a Linux replacement for GNU. Soon, Hurd will be in a position that it can act as the kernel.

This is exactly it!! Client software is meant to be agnostic whether it is open source or not. I don't even fully understand why Windows has managed to win over so many developers. I can't program, but I do know that install and configuring a GNU build system on Linux is far easier and efficient than Visual Studio. The only thing I can think it has over GNU is its GUI, but then there are IDEs for GNU...

Seriously. Just compile your goddamn code with GCC and we'll all be happy.

The combination of these two words does not parse.

A lot of peoples who uses Linux today uses it because "Microsoft is evil" rather than because they care about open software.

Personally I can't help to smile at the idea of one of the world biggest and most used DRM being ported to Linux. I am sure that Richard Stalmann must be rolling in the grave he is not yet in.
"BSD is a Linux replacement", never EVER say that near BSD fans unless you want your life to end violently.

Just a little side note, is there anything stopping Microsoft from using GCC instead of that abomination for C++ they wrap with Visual Studio? You know, like lincese or anything? Or is it just Microsoft developing their own standards for the sake of it again?

I believe he was talking about Debian kFreeBSD. Uses the FreeBSD kernel with the GNU userland.

http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD

I'm talking about the BSD kernel. It acts as a kernel for the GNU system in exactly the same way Linux does.

Absoluely nothing. GCC is available for Windows as it is. If Microsoft wanted to build their software with it, they can. If they want to bundle it with their software, they can. The only obligation they have with the latter point is to include a copy of the GPL with said software.

Why would they ? there is nothing wrong with Visual C++ and given the amount of legacy or current code using it would be stupid (not to mention suicidal) for Microsoft to do so.
Maybe, but still, I know several BSD apologists who would have killed for less :) .

I have used Visual C++ native compiler for roughly a month, and within that time I have ran into several aspects of C++ that should be supported and weren't, or just plain didn't work (For example, I've had an assigment that directly demanded me to use global dynamic array of structs. The 100% working syntax was broke under Visual C++ compiler. It worked well with GCC.) I won't touch Visual C++ compiler with a 10ft pole ever since that.

Well the equation seems quite simple to me. GCC's level of C++ standards is quite high, when Visual C++ is often blatantly incapable of following it's own 'standards,' whatever that might be. Microsoft could simply bundle Visual C++ compiler for legacy applications and GCC as a default compiler - it would actually make things LESS work.

That wouldn't make much sense, they have their own long developed compiler which is fully integrated with their development environment, is compatible with their and others SDKs made for Windows, and not to mention used by thousands developers out there.

Why would they brake all that just for the sake of using GCC ?

If GCC was providing a tremendous improvement in performances and/or compilation time maybe, but until now it's not the case.

Better move to Clang instead, I believe it is more compliant than GCC is.

From TFA,

His level of Linux interest and commitment was incredible while his negativity for Windows 8 and the future of Microsoft was stunning. In fact, as soon as I return to my office this weekend I plan to try out Windows 8 simply to see if it's as bad as Gabe states and because he's curious about my opinions of this latest Microsoft operating system.

Five minutes with Linux and he's already a fanboy!

I suspect this has much more to do with him filling his pants over Xbox Live, GFWL integration in Windows 8 than anything else. Why else would he bite the hand(platform) that feeds?