Steam and nVidia go serious in their reaction to Windows 8
 

As they already announced in reaction to the licensing scheme of Windows 8, Steam has just released the closed Beta of Steam for Linux. Simultaneously, nVidia released serious optimizations of drivers for Linux. While nVidia may be happy to run on both trains, Steam's action must be seen as a direct reaction to Microsoft preparing to turn the open PC platform into a closed app-world.

http://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/3676732/

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nvi...ing-2012-11-06

Didn't Microsoft doing something of a similar nature a few year back and get penalised in the courts? :hmm2:

Cannot remember a legal case, but they tried tablets before, and it also is not the first time they predict that desktop computers will disappear within very short time. Financially, they got sunk over both claims. Their current "Surface" tablet gets very mixed feedback. Enthusiasm looks and sounds differently.

Finally!

NVidia hasn't had useable Linux drivers in years. Mind you, I still don't think gaming can move to Linux (one of the core technologies is DirectX), but I would like to see more CUDA in the datacenter.

Yeah a unified API for multimedia like DirectX is for Windows would probably help a lot to get games from bigger developers to Linux.

OpenGL will take over from DX unless Microsoft goes back on this as it is already more efficent than DX, the main reason for DX dominance is that gaming is done on Windows machines, that will change in light of Microsofts blunder, though the change will not be overnight.

Well DirectX isn't only Direct3D, but yeah OpenGL can look just as pretty as Direct3D

http://imageshack.us/a/img222/2183/48fsd.jpg

Both API's have same features though their implementation is different, that said, OpenGL is more efficient even under Windows when properly implemented with proper drivers.
http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

Just read more about it, can it says that for now, steam is Ubuntu only?!:down:
ever since kubuntu wound down, centos became my distro of choice. Steam better bring it to the other distros quickly. You really don't want to target 20% of the 1% of users.

At least it is a start, hell, the entire project is no more than a couple of months old and has just entered a closed beta testing phase. The only thing that has kept me personally on Windows is gaming, if Linux becomes a viable option, regardless of distro, I will migrate and hopefully so will others. Hell, if they did it on BSD I would move to that because I do not like the way MS is headed with their product, becoming Apple II.

OpenGL can go "lower level" so to speak, and target individual cards. DirectX abstracts most of the hardware specific stuff away, but has a higher "average performance" so to speak.

This is why on the PC, DirectX was always the API of choice (even though OpenGL is also available). Also, the most popular implementation of OpenGL in gaming is probably the PS3's openGL wrapper.

Why is it highly popular on the PS3? This is precisely where OpenGL shines. the PS3 is one specific set of hardware, and openGL's hardware specific features allows developers to "push the hardware harder" so to speak.


Also, I don't know how true this is anymore, but when it comes to the hardware itself, the Quadro line was optimized for openGL, whereas the GTX line gets better performance with DirectX.

I was under the impression that devs on the PS3 still went with the native API instead of using the OpenGL due to performance issues, but may have misunderstood. Anyway OpenGL can go adress specific hardware but there is no need real need to do so anymore.
All that said, I am a complete novice when it comes to any of this "stuff" so am likely to make a lot of mistakes but this certainly has peaked my interest so will be spending a lot of my time looking into it more.

OpenGL was popular earlier in the PS3 lifespan, since there was shall I say "performance to spare". Also, because early on, devs didn't really know the native api.

I don't really know much either:D

No one i think is predicting death of desktop computers.
Thete is a lot of work peaple do for which tablets are too weak and the touch only interface is unsuitable.
Yet tablets are great as substitute for regular everyday web browsing or as media device...
You totaly miss the point here....