[moetech]

Valve needs to partner with Google and launch a Chromebook/Steam Machine hybrid. It's in the interest of both companies to kill Windows. Google is already adding support for native Linux programs to Chrome OS, they could make a Chrome/Android hybrid that pulls all of the weight of the Android ecosystem and adds to that the weight of Steam. It would be a success and could seriously hurt Microsoft.

[philliphaydon]

I couldn't think of anything worse than Valve and Google partnering.

And I don't know why you would want to 'kill' windows. What Valve is doing is great, its making more competition, that puts pressure on Microsoft to be competitive too. But killing off windows completely hurts everyone. No competition is bad.

[drb91]

> But killing off windows completely hurts everyone.

Who the hell is competing with windows? Linux can’t meet its standards, and its main draws are being cheap and able to run popular software when macs can’t (I’m being reductive, but it doesn’t really matter much for my point). It already has no competitor. Each OS has its niches where it clearly excels, and they aren’t looking to be competing in the future.

Note, I use all three; I’m unsatisfied with all three. If this is personal, it’s not against just Microsoft.

So, Valve + literally anyone but Apple or Microsoft is amazing news in my book. GNU/Linux/whoever else benefits can use all the help they can get.

[xfer]

> Linux can’t meet its standards, and its main draws are being cheap

It's not cheap for personal computing, most people using linux buy windows laptops and run linux on it.

[moetech]

I want Windows dead because it's a proprietary surveillance machine that has stayed alive thanks to really strong lock-in and network effects. I don't trust Google and Valve either, but even if they go full evil empire after after killing Windows, a monopoly built on Linux and Vulkan is a much better place than where we are now.

Google already has a near-monopoly in the smartphone space and it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop. Android being built on tons of GPL software means they have to contribute changes back to the benefit of the FOSS ecosystem. It also means you can easily make/use a custom Android ROM without any proprietary components.

[quantummkv]

You have drinking too much google-aid. I have no love for windows but I am not sure as hell gonna replace it with something under Google's control. The windows surveillance machine pales in front of Google's monster.

> it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop

Android monopoly on the smartphone is the worst kind of monopoly. At least windows give a damn about your security patches and small things such as being able to run the latest version of the OS without invoking arcane rituals. Making a custom ROM without any proprietary components? Not a chance.

I am all for Linux dominance on the desktop but not with any Google DNA in there.

[moetech]

>You have drinking too much google-aid.

I have no love for Google. I don't even have a Google account.

>Making a custom ROM without any proprietary components? Not a chance.

Lineage, Copperhead, and Replicant exist and work well. And they are all 100% Google-free.

[dogma1138]

None of the OSes you’ve mentioned work without proprietary blobs if your phone is not supported tough luck.

[bopbop]

This is true, but they do completely remove the google spyware from your android device where they work, even with the proprietary blobs.

It's also possible to get an AOSP device de-googled, or to de-google one.

[dcbadacd]

There's no reason not to go half the way rather than nowhere.

[josefx]

> I want Windows dead because it's a proprietary surveillance machine

I hope you are aware that anything Google touches is at least a hundred times worse in that regard?

> Android being built on tons of GPL software means they have to contribute changes back to the benefit of the FOSS ecosystem.

Android is built around a ton of proprietary Google technologies and services, the number of which keeps growing. Alternatives will have to be written without industry support since Google forces phone makers to only sell Android phones with full spyware suite active by default and running at 100%. Any phone maker that tries to provide an alternative to Googles services will be cut off immediately, leaving them with warehouses full of bricks. Google is the new Microsoft.

[Zamicol]

Sorry I don't mean to poke bears or aid trolls, but how so with "Google touches is at least a hundred times worse"?

[SmellyGeekBoy]

Surveillance is Google's entire business model, Microsoft just see it as a nice add-on.

[pm90]

They track absolutely everything they can.

[aruggirello]

Except that Google might soon ditch Linux for both ChromeOS and Android in favor of Fuchsia, which they have direct control over - probably against the long-term best interest of both the community and (hopefully) Valve.

> you can easily make/use a custom Android ROM without any proprietary components.

Uhm... easily? Most phones and tablets cannot even be unlocked / rooted.

[viraptor]

Looking windows would create the same incentives for Valve. There's no reason to believe a monopoly in any sector of IT doesn't create a proprietary surveillance machine. 2+ competitors create a better environment for that than killing the old machine and replacing it with a new one.

I'm not sure why you think Google is better from the proprietary surveillance point of view than Microsoft either. Being that machine is literally how Google makes money.

[c487bd62]

> Google already has a near-monopoly in the smartphone space and it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop.

Like half the useful apps have problems running without Google Apps being installed. GCM errors, apps refusing to run if the Play Store is not installed, Google making decisions that impact ROM developers. That's what I read about it anyway and discouraged me from trying AOSP without Gapps.

> it's much better than the Windows monopoly on the desktop

Steam is DRM. Gabe bus factor: Microsoft buys Steam and renames it to GFWL Redux

[ahartmetz]

> Steam is DRM

Nitpick: Steam offers DRM to developers who want it, it does not force games to use DRM. Many games installed via Steam run completely without Steam. The DRM-free games are mostly indie games.

[Fnoord]

microG is indeed a cat and mouse game which you cannot safely rely on. (I'm using it though.)

[astrowilliam]

I'm truly interested and curious. Can you explain to me why being on the internet where all your actions are being monitored by your ISP is OK, but Windows is bad? I mean, no matter how many precautions you take, someone is watching you some how. Use web-based email? There's a record somewhere with all your past emails and they are making a marketing profile about you, same with search.

And what about smart phones? Android has you locked into Google surveillance and Apple is closed so we have no idea how much they know. Send a text? Your provider had to send that data and the person on the receiving end... well, you never know how secure their systems are.

Just some food for thought, would like to hear why Windows is so bad, I'm a Windows/Apple/Linux user and I don't hate on any of them.

[moetech]

>Can you explain to me why being on the internet where all your actions are being monitored by your ISP is OK

ISP surveillance is not OK, but ISPs only know the domains I access, not what I do on them. I can prevent them from knowing even that by using a VPN, Tor, or any other kind of proxy. I believe encrypted DNS might also become a thing in the future. Also, I'm not locked-in to my ISP.

>no matter how many precautions you take, someone is watching you some how

That's what we're trying to fight.

>There's a record somewhere with all your past emails and they are making a marketing profile about you

A lot of my email accounts are fake-identity and temporary and I try to use encryption whenever I can, but I admit email encryption has a long way to go. There's no lock-in here though.

>Android has you locked into Google surveillance

It doesn't. Custom Google-free Android ROMs are a thing and work well.

>Send a text? Your provider had to send that data

Use encryption. I recommend Matrix/Riot.im for encrypted chat. There is also a program called Silence that can encrypt SMS.

-

If you want to know the point of all this, there's a lot of material online, but you can start by watching the short talk "Why Privacy Matters" by Glenn Greenwald

[paavoova]

Windows is "bad" for the same reason all that you listed is. It's a fallacy to excuse anti-user, anti-privacy practices under the argument that "Well, others do it too".

[beagle3]

ISPs are many, Microsoft is one. Regardless of how corrupted and corruptible ISPs are, that’s a huge difference - especially in parts of the world where you have choice of ISPS.

[drb91]

> a monopoly built on Linux and Vulkan is a much better place than where we are now.

No, it’s not. There’s nothing infallible or timeless about either. Linux is already showing its age; vulkan is designed around hardware you can find today, around technologies that are already commoditized. It will also show its age soon, if it has not already.

[severino]

Well, currently there's no much competition with Windows around, right? They managed to get a ~90% share in the desktop market, using debatable practices, which to me looks like a monopoly. It's very difficult to get in there when virtually every PC manufacturer bundles their product.

[flukus]

Why would valve want to replace an OS where MS controls the app store with one where google controls it?

Every threat the MS poses to valve google does as well. Especially when it seems google is angling for Fuschia to be the future.

[whywhywhywhy]

Why would the owner of the largest and most profitable software store on Windows want to kill Windows?

There is some weird fan effect with Valve similar to the Google early days where people see them as a universal force for good that will free PC gaming from Microsoft and has the users best interests at heart.

Honestly feel the actual drives of Valve couldn't be further removed from the desires and beliefs of Valve fans.

[davemp]

> Valve needs to partner with Google and launch a Chromebook/Steam Machine hybrid.

This disturbing chimera would be such a disaster for computing privacy and agency.

Steam and android are both horribly mismanaged from a technical user standpoint.

[vecinu]

> It's in the interest of both companies to kill Windows

Sorry why is it in both of their interests to do so?

[moetech]

The whole Steam on Linux thing is believed to have started because Valve saw the Windows Store as a threat to their business model. IIRC, at the time it looked like Microsoft would disallow installation of programs from outside sources.

As for Google, well they are just big competitors in a lot of areas. I'm sure they would love to beat Microsoft on the desktop like they did in the smartphone space.

[Sylos]

The official version is that Gabe Newell thought Windows 8 to be a catastrophe, presumably due to the horrible UI. That Microsoft would single-handedly crash the PC market and take down Steam with it. So, they wanted to become less dependent on Microsoft in general.

Windows 10 is somewhat less of a catastrophe in the UI department (though there is something to be said about mostly being able to ignore the mobile UI in Windows 8), but it's still controversial with its often illegal data collection. I mean, it's probably not going to happen, because the entire world depends on it, but theoretically countries could still block the sale of Windows 10.

But yeah, I don't believe myself either that the Windows Store is not seen as a threat. When you own a platform, you can push pretty much any software to be dominant on it.

[Klover]

Would Valve not rather have Microsoft than Google then? Windows users have administrator accounts and can install steam and its games without issue. Google play store would directly compete with steam.

[moetech]

No, because Google doesn't wield the same power over Android that Microsoft wields over Windows. If Google decided to disallow Steam from Android, Valve could just fork Android and carry on. They can't do that with Windows.

[Sylos]

That's optimistic...

Google exerts a lot of power over Android.

The EU did recently punish Google for that, so theoretically Google now has to stop with it, but up until this point, they forced manufacturers to only ever preinstall the Google version of Android (or permanently lose their license to preinstall the Google Apps) and also forced manufacturers to always install the whole Google app bundle, not just the Play Store.

To put their power into perspective, just remember that Amazon has been in the game of distributing an Android fork and alternative app store for a while now. And Amazon is magnitudes bigger than Valve.

[moetech]

It's not optimistic, just simplified. Surely you agree that Valve could escape Google's claws on Android much more easily than they can escape Microsoft claws on Windows? Heck, they could even partner with Amazon!

[gregknicholson]

Do you mean Android the open source project that pretty much everyone agrees is mostly useless on its own? Or Android as in Google Play, the proprietary software that Google controls fully?

It was easy. They just started using the same name, “Android”, for loads of proprietary stuff, and the geeks didn't care because they were too busying sucking up to Google for not being Microsoft.

[moetech]

AOSP is not "useless own its own". I don't know how you got that idea. Custom ROMs are every bit as capable as Google-flavored Android.

[Fnoord]

You can't "just fork Android". Android devices come pre-installed with Android right now. OEMs aren't allowed by Google to distribute a non-official Android version. Its Microsoft all over again.

[naibafo]

That is a ridiculous statement

[ReverseCold]

Time spent not in a browser is time spent where Google might not be able to see what you're doing.

Considering that their business is watching what you do all the time...

[foota]

As far as valve goes, the windows store is a potential competitor to steam.

[astrowilliam]

I'm an avid gamer and would never buy anything from the Windows store. Casual players even use Steam. I'd like to see the sales stats between the WS and Steam to compare.

[uomopertica]

I can confirm that! I had to download Gears of War 4 from the Windows Store because it was distributed there. I had a terrible experience: account not logging, download not initiating etc. In the end I had to download it on my laptop whose Store was seemingly working better and transfer the files over to the Desktop. My experience is that WS is very fragile and much less reliable than Steam.

[dogma1138]

That something I never understood the Xbox store works pretty much flawlessly. How hard do you need to work to screw up something that already works just fine.

[gmueckl]

If I had to guess I'd say by having it reimplemented in a different department... MS in the past has shown very severe symptoms of NIH between teams.

[beagle3]

You are talking about the next month, but this game plays over a decade. I remember the mid. And even late ‘90s when gamers said they would never ever run games in windows, DOS is forever!

Times change.

[oliwarner]

The Chromebook is the polar opposite of what's required for mainstream gaming. Wrong architecture, super-low perf, low storage.

The only way this happens is via streaming. You can already do that.

[GenericsMotors]

> Valve needs to partner with Google and launch a Chromebook/Steam Machine hybrid.

"Valve needs to"? Or you'd like Valve to?

> It's in the interest of both companies to kill Windows. [...] It would be a success and could seriously hurt Microsoft.

Ah, there it is, your real motive. Valve will do whatever will make them money and keep their users mostly happy. I doubt they have much incentive to "kill Windows", and they definitely won't do it just to pander to an anti-MS zealot such as yourself.

[remir]

There were rumors not long ago about Google working on a game console or streaming service.

[paavoova]

Kill Windows...and replace it with Steam/Linux? Don't pretend that a proprietary data mining platform that licenses titles behind DRM is in anyway better than Windows [1].

No, my fears are that this will only serve to grow the proprietary ecosystem on Linux and make general users reliant like Google has done to Android. Yes, Android runs on a base Linux kernel and userspace, but what use is that when users are totally reliant on Google services? Likewise, if users require Steam, etc, than the core OS running underneath that application matters little.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/privacy_agreement/

[..] information about the device you are using, including what operating system you are using, device settings, unique device identifiers, and crash data.