Valve confirms Steam and Source coming to Linux this year!

[nstgc]

Dude, this is a torrent tracker site and all you could think of as an alternative to a full priced OS is an OEM? Hell that implies that I bought a complete pc instead of building my own. I almost feel insulted.

If I remember correctly, the last time I used a legal version is back in the win 98 era. Even when an OEM comes with a laptop, I still always install Win7 Ultimate on all computers that my family has.

I have an use a 100% legal copy of Windows. They had a promotional thing for my unversity where they sold Windows 7 Pro for $25 and it cost an estra $15 for a disc.

I on the other hand got mine without charge, legally .

How? Please, do share (work? MSDN?)!

[Path]

The wonders of MSDNAA.

[AceHigh]

What matters is that MS thinks I have a fully legal Windows, so I get all updates and all benefits as the legal users. It's indistinguishable from legal version, so I don't see why I shouldn't pirate it. (No moral excuses from me: I do it because I can)

[megido-rev.M]

How? Please, do share (work? MSDN?)!

The wonders of MSDNAA.

^That: part of my university program. Although, my tuition is so high that I'm essentially be paying for it anyway >_>.

[Pagonis]

After all OpenGL is in many ways better than DX API.

Name those many ways, please.

Even a long time OpenGL guru Carmack, who long time ago said "we don't need no stinkin' Direct-X", now admits that "Direct3D is now better than OpenGL".

Also you do realize that Direct-X not only handles rendering like OpenGL, but also sound, input and such?

I think that you're just another Linux zealot.
Speaking of Linux - no one bloody cares, despite 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012 being "the year of linux on desktop" and Android on a wave, Linux is still a non factor.

As a user, I don't care about Linux.

As a developer, I hate Linux. Such a mess. No consistency. Everything gets deprecated after 2 years. Sound API - non existant. There was OSS, then there was ALSA, then OSS again, now I see some hack called PulseAudio. Low latency audio? JACK sucks.

Three or four years I ported one application to Linux. Half of the users refused to use because of Qt3 dependencies (qq think about my pure GTK desktop), other half - because it wasn't open source. Fine. Enjoy <1% market share.

Nowadays it doesn't even compile. Old binaries run, segfault on several now deprecated functions/libraries. Meanwhile on Windows, over a decade old VB apps run without problems... Yeah, who needs consistency and backwards compatibility and support for more than 2 years? Again, enjoy <1% market share.

---

And no, I'm not a Microsoft employee. I'm thinking about buying new MacBook Pro with retina display (well, they say it's better than new iPad, and iPad's screen is simply gorgeous). Also, I have this for my file storage (every computer in the house has only a 80-120 gB SSD for storage, 4 terabytes network drive comes in handy, also accessible from internet in case friend forgot to bring good music)/torrent server/VPN server (only idiots connect to public wifi hotspots and then check their stuff without using VPN):

[root@AeriePeak ~]# uname -a
FreeBSD AeriePeak 9.0-BETA2 FreeBSD 9.0-BETA2 #2: Tue Sep 13 06:02:58 EEST 2011     root@AeriePeak:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/apkern  amd64

FreeBSD is great. It isn't plagued by stupid GPL ideologists (if it's not GPL, it's not in the tree! altho yes it would benefit us very much <- LOL), they don't hestitate signing NDAs and implementing closed source drivers in the kernel. Also, it's way more organized (I mean when I went from Debian to FreeBSD, suddenly all these /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, etc directories started making sense): they have a Base System...


Peace out, hipster linux boys.


edit: a lot of students in my time didn't knew about https://www.dreamspark.com/ - Microsoft's software for free for educational purposes.

edit2: forgot, my main smartphone is Nokia N900 - a real Linux phone (fu android).

[megido-rev.M]

Were I to start out some graphics programming I'm likely going for OpenGL unless DX has something that interests me.

[Pagonis]

Were I to start out some graphics programming I'm likely going for OpenGL unless DX has something that interests me.

DX has more tutorials, more learning material and all your questions have been asked by someone else on some dev forums and got answered.

Yep, the way I see it, DX has a lot that should interest you.

[megido-rev.M]

Were I to start out some graphics programming I'm likely going for OpenGL unless DX has something that interests me.

DX has more tutorials, more learning material and all your questions have been asked by someone else on some dev forums and got answered.

Yep, the way I see it, DX has a lot that should interest you.

Oh, really? Does OpenGL have that little community or is it simply that DX has the bulk of the developers?

[Pagonis]

Were I to start out some graphics programming I'm likely going for OpenGL unless DX has something that interests me.

DX has more tutorials, more learning material and all your questions have been asked by someone else on some dev forums and got answered.

Yep, the way I see it, DX has a lot that should interest you.

Oh, really? Does OpenGL have that little community or is it simply that DX has the bulk of the developers?

Yarly.

Altho I would suggest XNA instead of Direct-X for starting writing games. Grab a book like this and you're golden (pdf ebooks suck imo, I might just be old school tho).

Also heard good things about writing games in Python.

[rkruger]

After all OpenGL is in many ways better than DX API.

Name those many ways, please.

Well, I can name one important one: Portability.

Also you do realize that Direct-X not only handles rendering like OpenGL, but also sound, input and such?

For that, there is SDL.

Speaking of Linux - no one bloody cares, despite 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012 being "the year of linux on desktop" and Android on a wave, Linux is still a non factor.

I care. That said, I don't care what you run, as long as I can run what I want on my computer.

As a developer, I hate Linux. Such a mess. No consistency. Everything gets deprecated after 2 years.

What about POSIX?

Sound API - non existant. There was OSS, then there was ALSA, then OSS again, now I see some hack called PulseAudio. Low latency audio? JACK sucks.

You should use a library like SDL to cover the implementation details. That way you don't need to care about low-level details like what kind of sound API or daemon is present on the system.

FreeBSD is great. It isn't plagued by stupid GPL ideologists (if it's not GPL, it's not in the tree! altho yes it would benefit us very much <- LOL), they don't hestitate signing NDAs and implementing closed source drivers in the kernel.

Closed source drivers part of FreeBSD, really? That's news to me, do you have a reference?
That's certainly a different path from their cousins at OpenBSD.
Check out: http://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html#39, and listen to the song while you're at it, it's quite catchy.

Altho I would suggest XNA instead of Direct-X for starting writing games.

I read something a while back about XNA being phased out in Windows 8. Not sure if it's still true though.

Peace out, hipster linux boys.

Peace.