2015, will you go Windows 9 or steam OS?

[Lonbjerg]

should i look up steamOS?

Steam, the company which keeps your games in the cloud, and which will occasionally lose your passwords, your settings, and/or ban you from playing games which you own ?

Oh wait, not "own", but "rent". Ok then.


OTOH, Windows 9, sure, why not. I've finally grown out of the XP mentality (which, you will excuse me, was perfectly reasonable back in the 90s, as most operating systems were s**t), and i'm ready to adopt if there are improvements.

I'm on 7 x64. I haven't adopted 8 or 8.1 because the reviews simply state "no real improvement". I doubt the UI would give me any troubles, but why bother when it's identical to 7, but less familiar - that would be changing for change's sake.

But if 9 gives me a trimmer OS, better performance, anything measurable, really, i'll take it.

I went from 7 x64 to 8.1 x64 + "classic shell" and havn't looked back since.
It's improved in key areas...enough to jump ship on 7

 

[Lil Frier]

I think "no real improvement" is dependent on what you do. If you won't touch the Windows Store at all, it's DEFINITELY not worth the $100 upgrade. I would have said it was worth the $40 upgrade at the time that offer was given (and that's why I recommended it to my sister).

The performance gains aren't huge, but they're legitimate, in some cases. The new Task Manager's cool, showing you more about what's going on where. The Start Screen is hit-and-miss, depending on your usage patterns. I personally work MOSTLY with keyboard shortcuts, and I don't use a wide variety of programs all the time, so the Start Menu didn't serve me much purpose. A right-click of the Start Button (8.1) or Start Area (8.0) gives me a menu that functionally did 95% of what the Start Menu did for me, and a quick press of the Windows key gives me the other 5% in a manner I like more.

So I wouldn't have spent $100 going from 7 to 8, but I would have paid $40 for it. Luckily, my school gave it to us for free, so I didn't have to worry about it. Of course, I'll graduate this year, so I won't get that luxury for Windows 9...

 

[HeXen]

Neither. I'll have a console and will just wait towards the end of their lifespans to see the direction gaming is taking.
At this point it just appears that gaming is becoming more diverse and fragmenting it's players more and more.

 

[cmdrdredd]

RIGHT NOW.

As I said, this is something Valve would do in the future, once it has solid Linux support.

It's not up to Valve, it's up to developers. That's the key...

 

[cmdrdredd]

http://www.shacknews.com/article/81897/microsoft-promises-more-core-games-coming-to-pc-than-past

At least on paper, Microsoft sounds like it is doing the opposite. They're saying, in that article, that they want to look into getting your Xbox self onto all of your devices--Xbox, Smartphone, PC. They want to look at getting their headlining titles (Halo? Age of Empires return? Forza?) onto the PC.

I think that Microsoft understands that the alleged "post-PC" era could turn into a "post-console" era as well. If you could get a tablet/hybrid strong enough (and the Surface Pro is kind-of the start of that), you could launch a game on it (maybe from your phone?), grab a wireless controller, and stream the game to your TV, or play it in the car.

They're probably exploring every avenue to stay relevant long-term, and that includes giving up some of the stranglehold the money-losing Xbox has on its first-party games. If they could release a Windows Box to combat the Steam Machine AND the PlayStation, it'd be a great thing. Make it run Windows, and have a Games Hub that runs an Xbox OS inside of it. Microsoft is in the rare position of having a foothold in basically every consumer tech market, large (Windows) or small (Windows Phone). They really could do some crazy, impressive things, if they put the effort in, and it sounds like they just might.

I think Microsoft wants to leverage some Windows 8 adoption on games. It's already functionally similar to the XBox One since the XB1 runs a version of Windows 8 with reduced feature set. I can imagine a time in the future when a 10" tablet has the power of a PS4 or XB1 or greater and you can plug it into a TV via MiniHDMI or even wirelessly and play full fledged console games on it. Of course I hate wireless for online gaming and rather ethernet and wired connections if I can help it. Of course there will always be a market for full fledged PCs and I think Microsoft certainly is aware of that.

 

[alcoholbob]

Unless SteamOS runs Microsoft Office and mainstream web browsers, I think It'll be Windows 9 for me...

 

[Skel]

It's not up to Valve, it's up to developers. That's the key...

Gabe has a bazilliontrillion dollars and will create the perfect OS that will play every game, even the ones you haven't even imagined yet because he has nothing but money to throw at it. He also wants to create the perfect OS for us to have because he loves us and just wants us to be happy and figured out the only way to do that was to make the OS. Only the evil (possibly socialist) EA type companies, who are only in the market to make money and pay people wages, would even think of not getting on board. As you can plainly see it's not about the Devs.. it's about how awesome Valve is.

 

[sandorski]

If all my games work on it, including my Origin games, I might be tempted. However, I seriously doubt that's gonna happen.

 

[Lil Frier]

The above post is trolling, everyone.

 

[Lonbjerg]

The above post is trolling, everyone.

So DX10 (and above) games run under Linux now?

 

[Lil Frier]

Sorry, I typed that while sandorski was posting his comment. I was referring to the statement about the never-ending benevolence of Gabe Newell, and how his endless stacks of money will make us all eternally happy.

 

[Doppel]

Windows 8 has pretty much cratered. 8.1 just seemed to piss me off more, what the forced MS account logins.

lol wut. I hadn't heard of this, so just looked it up. Who TF makes decisions to make users do this kind of thing?

Now despite a couple posts after this one saying it isn't forced, I just googled and apparently a lot of people installing 8.1 have struggled to not do this, so it doesn't appear glaringly obvious as an optional requirement.

Sorry, I typed that while sandorski was posting his comment. I was referring to the statement about the never-ending benevolence of Gabe Newell, and how his endless stacks of money will make us all eternally happy.

I saw it as lay it on thick sarcasm, which isn't necessarily trolling

 

[ejjpi]

I'll stay with windows 7, or 8 if it gets any better meanwhile

 

[Qwertilot]

Well I've been doing the Linux (Mint recently)/Windows dual boot just for games for a while now. I just rather prefer Linux as a general desktop.

Being strategy/rpg heavy I can actually get most of the old things I'd want to run working in Wine and don't care much about the recent games I can't run.

So I didn't use my windows install very much last year (just to see what Skyrim was like for a bit iirc. Fun for a bit but wouldn't want to go back.) and actually don't currently have one. Given the already existing/announced games I'm probably expecting to last the year without putting one back again.

As for SteamOS, well maybe if there's a desktop first version of it by then. Or some distribution with its kernel etc underlying things.

Longer term we'll have to see how it goes. A couple of years can be an awfully long time in tech.

 

[DeathReborn]

I'll go Windows 9 when something requires it that I want to get, I only just went 8.1 (owned 8 since launch but stuck to 7) & will stick to it until 9 is either an improvement in UI or that killer product requires it.

SteamOS... well I will DIY that only when that killer game won't run on windows acceptably. Steam Machines are just so ridiculously overpriced it's insane, I am actively telling people to avoid it until it costs less than £300 & they want it badly.

 

[pong lenis]

Gabe has pretty much unlimited resources to throw into this project. This is not some kid who does linux development on the side. Gabe has the money and resources to make things happen.

Microsoft has 70,000 employees, Valve has about 300.

And "an operating developed by gamers for gamers", I play dota 2, a valve game, and it has some of the worst stutter and performance issues I've seen with a video game, so I don't trust them in making a stable OS for gaming if they can't even make a one-map game work properly.

 

[Texashiker]

Microsoft has 70,000 employees, Valve has about 300.

And "an operating developed by gamers for gamers", I play dota 2, a valve game, and it has some of the worst stutter and performance issues I've seen with a video game, so I don't trust them in making a stable OS for gaming if they can't even make a one-map game work properly.

That is like saying since windows 98 first edition and ME was crap you will never buy a microsoft product.

You do use other versions of windows after ME and 98 first edition,,, right?

 

[pong lenis]

That is like saying since windows 98 first edition and ME was crap you will never buy a microsoft product.

You do use other versions of windows after ME and 98 first edition,,, right?

Bad analogy.
Valve didn't start making games yesterday, they've been at it for 16 years, but every time a new game comes out its PC optimization is worse than the previous one.
And they don't give a crap. For example we keep telling them on the Dota 2 forums about the hero-selection and item-buying stutters, and they reply "It's an engine issue, we're working on it", but in fact it's been more than a year and they didn't do a thing, actually the game's performance becomes worse with every update.
So if they can't properly code games, do you expect them to make a fully fledged gaming OS stable?

 

[Texashiker]

the game's performance becomes worse with every update.

That must be everyday, 2 and 3 times a day.

It seems that my steam downloads a dota2 update everytime the computer is turned on.

There are bugs in l4d2 that have been there since launch and have not been fixed.

 

[Raduque]

In 2015, I'll be running Windows 8.1, maybe 8.2 if it's a free upgrade like 8.1 was.

 

[PingSpike]

It is going to be a long time before you can simply do away with Windows. Even if every new game released after today had a Linux (and therefore SteamOS) version, you would still have a massive backlog of games missing.

Actually, if that is what was going down I would have already jumped ship. A second video card using pass through or even a second entire machine running windows with a KVM would let me make a clean break. The trouble is, its a lot messier than that. There's a lot of games coming out (particularly indies which seem to be my primary buys these days) that support linux but there's lots of other games that don't. And even the ones that do support linux seem to have more problems when running under it.

One thing is for sure though, I don't like where the Windows train is going and I'd really prefer to get off it.

 

[cronos]

Probably still Windows 7, and then possibly Windows 9 after service pack 1 (or as the current trend is to call it '9.1').

 

[PowerYoga]

Based on the microsoft trend of Shit OS - Good OS cycle, Windows 9 will probably be a pretty good upgrade.

 

[smackababy]

Based on the microsoft trend of Shit OS - Good OS cycle, Windows 9 will probably be a pretty good upgrade.

And exactly what cycle are you referring to? Let's look at recent Windows past: ME, utter shit and it's MS' fault; XP, utter shit until SP1 (which everyone loves to forget), Vista, shit due to everyone else taking a long as time to write proper drivers with ample time; 7, Vista with a new name and color scheme, which was so amazing...; 8, new UI and massive under the hood improvements, but considered shit because the troglodytes have to press a single, large button to get to desktop mode...

Yeah, cycle not found.

 

[mizzou]

All of the "office" programs I use are open-source anyway...so Linux platform would actually not be a big jump out.

now , "After going through windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2k, xp and now windows 7, I am getting tired of learning a new OS just to play my games."
....What exactly do you have to relearn just to play games? If anything, the problem is not having old games work anymore when you switch over. Windows, on the forefront, really hasn't changed much since 95. Recycle bin, start menu, shortcuts, etc.

I'll go with whoever has the most stable and fastest OS for video games...that's all I pretty much care about. If Valve pulls it off with SteamOS, you will see me there. If Microsoft pulls it off, I'll stay on Windows.

Competition....will only be good for all of us.

I don't share Gabe Newell's doom apocalypse scenario on the windows app market... I just don't understand how it ruin's gaming...in all situations, Steam I'm sure would be allowed to exist? How could Microsoft say, "you can only buy "apps" from our app market. You cannot download a third party program to purchase "apps"."

Nevertheless, Microsoft is an elephant in the room when you talk about flexibility and efficiency in video game coding. They unfortunately will have a dog in the fight when it comes to anything video game related for their XBOX line, phone line, and PC line... So lately if it's not multi-console portable, it doesn't have much of a chance of existing.