Linked by boldingd on Tue 29th Jan 2013 23:12 UTC
It seems to have so far escaped OSNews' notice (if the top few hits for a site-search for 'Steam' is any indication) that Steam for Linux is now in Open Beta; you can get the Linux steam client from steampowered.com. So far, they appear to only be making an Ubuntu .deb available, and the client will require closed-source GPU drivers in order to work.
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RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage
by Spiron on Wed 30th Jan 2013 07:38
in reply to "RE: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2011-03-08
Take another look. The majority of the newer cards have most of their features implemented or in progress, with only Video Decoding, TV output, Video input and SLI not implement for NV50 and NVC0 cards series. the main one with the redblocks are the absolute newest cards series.
Read into the details and you would avoid this sort of a mess
RE[3]: Comment by Darkmage
by lucas_maximus on Wed 30th Jan 2013 12:47
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2009-08-18
All the kinda things you want from a premium graphics card. Nvidia's Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD drivers have been far better than Open Equivalents for 3D for ages, especially in terms of performance.
I use Nouveau on Fedora because I do my gaming in Windows and it is fine for desktop stuff, but I wouldn't want to play any Triple A games on it.
Titles like Crysis 2 and FarCry 3 pretty much take any system resources you got (I have a GeForce 660 GTX card and one of the better Core 2 duo chips, and it uses anything it can grab).
Crysis 3 gets launched next month and I am pretty sure I will have to over-clock the CPU.
Edited 2013-01-30 12:50 UTC
RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage
by 0brad0 on Wed 30th Jan 2013 09:11
in reply to "RE: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2007-05-05
RE[3]: Comment by Darkmage
by lucas_maximus on Thu 31st Jan 2013 11:13
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2009-08-18
RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage
by edwintorok on Wed 30th Jan 2013 20:55
in reply to "RE: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2009-11-01
there is now OpenGL 3.0 shipping on ALL Intel/ATI/NVIDIA cards in Open source drivers.
And in the next version they'll probably support 3.1, the radeon driver already has it in Mesa git:
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RV730
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.1 (Core Profile) Mesa 9.1-devel (git-0642437)
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 1.40
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 9.1-devel (git-0642437)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
(Note that you need a new glxinfo to show anything above 3.0 for these drivers as they only support >3.0 when requesting a Core Profile).
"The NVIDIA cards for instance have implemented 90% of all card functions across the cards in the last 4 hardware generations.
Hardly. Even Nouveau's own wiki still paints a lot of red: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix
"
Radeon has more features implemented: http://www.x.org/wiki/RadeonFeature
RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage
by Valhalla on Thu 31st Jan 2013 01:00
in reply to "RE: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2006-01-24
Hardly. Even Nouveau's own wiki still paints a lot of red: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix
Well, if you would have looked a year ago there would have been alot more red which has now turned into orange/yellow/green.
Naive.
I don't think that the open source drivers will have overtaken the proprietary ones but I'm certain that they will have decreased the gap further.
RE[3]: Comment by Darkmage
by lucas_maximus on Thu 31st Jan 2013 11:16
in reply to "RE[2]: Comment by Darkmage"
Member since:2009-08-18
I don't think that the open source drivers will have overtaken the proprietary ones but I'm certain that they will have decreased the gap further.
Not with the latest cards. While some games that are 4 or 5 years old will probably run okay on lower end hardware you just miss out on performance on the faster cards. My 8800GT while very good when I bought struggled with modern games, I had to upgrade to a 660GTX.
ATi cards while slightly cheaper and higher performing for some games have always had crap drivers. Nvidia closed drivers is the only one that gives me everything cross platform.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2006-02-15
While in the meantime the closed-source drivers ship OpenGL 4.3.
Hardly. Even Nouveau's own wiki still paints a lot of red: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix
Naive.