Steambox Rant

You say "Steambox, Steambox, Steambox" and I say to you "Games, Games, Games". Yes Games, where are they?. So Valves Steambox is going to be Linux based, specifically Ubuntu 12.04 or most likely some core version of Ubuntu with a custom GUI for the Steambox console.

So we have a Console from Valve called Steambox that's based on Linux. Now tell me, besides the 50 or so platformer and other 25 or 30 puzzle games; where is the real Beef?. I'm talking about AAA quality games. If Valve wants their console to succeed, it's going to take more than the Indie games currently being offered in Steam for Linux.

Hey Valve, I'm a die-hard Linux user but I hate to break the news to you; I'm not buying your $500 console just to play Games that look like some graphical return to 1991. Let's take Desura for instance whom was recently bought out by the makers of Second Life. Desura actually sells some AAA games for Linux, to name a few; Descent, Freespace and Fallout. Not to mention, pound for pound, Desura has more games than Steam for Linux. Some of them totally Free!.

The Specs being tossed around for the Steambox are overkill for the games currently offered in Steam for Linux; It doesn't take an Intel i7 to smoothly run Organ Trail. Not to mention Controller support for many of these games are less than stellar. Good luck getting those small Indie teams to rewrite their games to better add Controller support for Steambox.

I've got this funny feeling, Steambox is going to fall flat on it's face and take all the progress Linux has made in Gaming with it. Valve would totally need to make Half-Life 3 a Steambox exclusive at this point. The Linux community would revolt in mass against Valve if they happen to screw this up. Valve really needs to step up it's act to get Developers to port their games to Linux and get Video card drivers up to par and I'm not not seeing either right now. It's a complete mess to be quite frank.

There is one thing I can tell you for certain, I'll never go back to Windows knowing what all of us know now, that all those rumors about Backdoors and monopolistic behavior from Microsoft the NSA and Prism, are totally true. Using Windows at this point is like spitting on the graves of all those Men and Women that died for our Constitutional rights. I'd rather use Linux and have complete Freedom and lack of Games, than to use Windows and give up my Freedom in exchange for Slave Chains and stale AAA Games from Companies who sell you the same game every year with a new skin.

The Linux Diet (Part 1)

Allow me to help you leave the Microsoft world by following my Linux diet. The first thing you want to do, is make up your mind to make the full-time switch to Linux. Make sure to make a final backup of all the things you want to keep. Burn it a Disk or USB drive and take all your Microsoft Software and put the backup and the Software in a Box, seal it and throw it in your closet.

Download, and pop in a Copy of Xubuntu and reboot, making sure you have your BIOS set to boot to the device you are installing Xubuntu to and make sure Secure Boot is OFF. I highly recommend version 12.04 LTS of Xubuntu. Go though the install process until it asks you how you want to partition the drive and tell it you want to use ALL of the drive, no dual booting, it’s highly important.

Dual booting is a no-no due to hooks Microsoft has to pull you back to dirty Windows, the same tactics Cigarette makers use to get you to smoke just one more. Now that you have Xubuntu installed, on first boot you will need to install a few hundred MBs of Updates and Reboot.

You are going to see something similar to Mac, you probably don’t like this, neither did I. So let’s change it. Right click the bottom Panel and select Panel Preferences. You can delete this Panel by clicking the remove Icon next to the ‘+’. Go to Panel Preferences for the top Panel and Unlock it, then drag it down to the bottom, lock it again.

In the post below I show you how to change a few other things. If you would like a Quick Launch we can add one manually, the built in one sucks. Go to Panel>Panel Preferences and click the Tab called Items. Here there are things you can remove, when you click ‘+’ there are many things you can add. I’m hoping you are smart enough to figure most of this out, so I will tell you the basics.

After the Applications menu you will have a Separator, followed by 6 Launchers and another Separator. For mine, after that last Separator, I have Window Buttons, Network Monitor, Separator, Notification Area, Weather Update, Separator and Date and Time. Right click each blank Launcher and click the ‘+’ where you can search or browse through for Apps to add.

Here are some tips: If you don’t like your monitor going blank and powering off, In the Apps menu go to Settings and Settings manager and click Screensaver. Click the Advanced tab and unselect Power Management.

Go back and click Session and Startup, in the Application Startup tab uncheck ‘Network’. This is useless if you have an always on Ethernet connection. And the Network Monitor I showed you before is better for this and has Flashing Lights.

Back in the Settings, click Power Manager, Under ‘On AC’ you can put all the sliders on ‘Never’ if you dislike things powering off automatically. Of course, this is all how I like mine, feel free to adjust things the way you want them. And never install ‘Nautilus’ in Xubuntu, it can cause stability issues.

Your File Manager is called Thunar, Thunar has an issue where on 1st open it will take a VERY long time to start. Here is the Resolution for this:

“Edit the file /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount (as root) and change AutoMount to false. This disables the Network browsing when Thunar starts up, but still lets you mount network storage such as Samba shares on demand.” That will take care of your problem.

Ipconfig in Linux is ‘ifconfig’. CTRL+C will end a command in the Terminal window, Like a never-ending Ping request. In the Terminal, ‘free -m’ will show your free memory (-/+ buffers/cache under 'free'). And ‘df’ in the Terminal will show Hard Drive info.

This concludes this part of Me, helping You move away from a truly evil company. So, welcome to the Linux Club. The first rule of the Linux Club is; you don’t talk about Microsoft!.

Developers and Users

Tip of the day: Windows is a placeholder on a new computer to download a Linux ISO to Install. --Mike Frett

Any Developers read my Blog?. If you are a Game dev, I would like to propose something to you, as follows.

Let's say you make a video game on Direct X and decide you want to port it to Mac and Linux, It's going to be difficult you know. Let's say you make that same video game using OpenGL. You have now saved yourself lots of back-breaking coding. Not to mention the 5-20% you saved by not paying licensing fees to Microsoft. You should also look into cross platform game engines such as Ogre and Unity.

Devs, Linux welcomes you with open arms and freedom. Valve has seen the light and realizes the users are sick of Microsoft and want a divorce from their chains.
Yes, Linux has some problems, but so does Microsoft. That $200 sound card you bought two years ago? Yeah, it won't work on the new Windows OS; and you can't fix it because the source code is closed. But Linux welcomes your Audio card.

It's also known now that regular Ubuntu inserts Amazon ads into search results. Now listen, this is a non-issue since it's Open Source and can/has been changed. A far cry from Windows 8, which natively has MANY ads coded into Apps you install. Try changing those on that closed system!.

Microsoft is now also testing the water with something called 'Blue'. They want you to buy a new PC/Upgrade EVERY YEAR now and support for these products will end faster, and drivers will be unavailable quicker than ever. That means more endless searching on the Internet to figure out how to make your two year old add-in card or Webcam work. When all you have to do in Linux is simply plug it in and it works.

I hate to say it (not really hehe) but Microsoft is increasingly irrelevant. It's time for users to move on to a platform that doesn't punish and spy on you. It's time for Linux.

I have been using Xubuntu 12.04 (an Official! *Buntu) for one year now and can never see myself going back to a closed Microsoft OS, EVER. I hope, from now on, I can post tips here to help Linux users migrating from dirty Windows to Linux. From one Newbie to another.

Happy Computing!