Wine looses a bit gaming and wins mobility?

Ben Klein shacklein at gmail.com
Wed May 5 19:07:03 CDT 2010


On 6 May 2010 10:01, Evil Jay <wine at eternaldusk.com> wrote:
> On 05/05/2010 02:34 PM, André Hentschel wrote:
>> Hi Folks,
>> Steam seems to add a Linux client in the near future, so maybe Wine will not be needed anymore for that. or did i get something wrong?
>> That might reduce our "market share" a bit as i guess that many Wineusers play steam games.
>> On the other hand Intel presented its Z600, which is basically x86 but without IDE, SATA or a BIOS. Thats the reason that it cant run Windows.
>> So Linux runs and so should Wine i guess. So we might see some mobil advantures in the near future?
>>
>
> I would not hold my breath waiting for that Steam client, there's still
> been no official announcement and it could just as well be something
> they just play around with as a side project for the next half decade.
>
> Phoronix has been claiming Steam for Linux was imminent for 2 years...
> but for how many years did they (and even the developers) say that UT3
> was right around the corner?  A few 32-bit god-awfully incomplete
> binaries that can't even launch the actual GUI is not near enough to
> start me waiting in a virtual line.
>
> To take the Devil's advocacy a step farther:  For all we know, Steam for
> Linux is not even being actively developed;  They may have started it
> with the Mac port and abandoned it as too resource intensive for the
> expected payoff.  The few updates that we've seen (before the Linux
> build was pulled) may well be the result of of the automated package
> builder recompiling the Linux files due to changes in some shared
> upstream code (being changed for the benefit of the Mac or Windows client).
>
> Now, personally I am hoping like crazy that Steam for Linux does
> materialize in the next year or two.  But, if it does, it will hardly
> put a dent in Wine's use for gaming.  Steam's not a game, so naturally
> we must assume that Valve will port the Source engine too, so that they
> will have some games to sell.  That's great, but how many games in the
> AppDB are using the Source engine?  How many games sold through Steam
> even use it, and will the non-Valve developers take the time to build
> Linux packages?  Wine has plenty of gaming left in its future.

The other solution is they pull a Picasa/Google Earth manoeuvre and
bundle Wine with Steam (or rely on Wine to play the games).

> -J
>
>
>



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