Oh dear.
I had become quite excited by the fact that Half Life and Steam creators Valve announced they were working on Steam Operating System based on Linux.
For too long people have created Linux OS's that do not come up to expectations. After a long pause without using it myself I kept hearing a great deal about Ubuntu and decided to give it a go.
However after a nightmare few weeks I discovered that the very thing a Linux OS had going for it, speed and stability, was now terrible. The thing it missed previously, a good graphical user interface, was now quite good?!
The other thing is that of proprietary drivers. The one thing an OS simply MUST DO is work. If you enjoy the fact that it dies not work immediately and have to tinker for days then your missing the whole point of the very idea and term of operating system. Basically because it is not operating making many look somewhat foolish.
When this involves a standard and necessary piece of hardware whereby there are only TWO companies, though it could be argued there are three, this is even worse! No is and buts but ridiculous. Linus users may love the idea it is a novelty but the fact is that anyone who creates a Linux OS dearly wants it to go mainstream. The End! When you have installed it into an already outdated laptop and the drivers do not work it is not really an OS, as you are not able to operate the system. In fact it was quite the opposite and my laptop over heated and shut down several times and I never even had games installed?! Good know how much extra per it sucked from the wall socket and I dread to think.
At a time when Microsoft have screwed up three out of for operating systems an opportunity appeared to pass the Linux bridge by. But then Valve, who must have spotted this, announced Steam OS.
Unfortunately though and from what I read in the report below I think Valve will not do as well as they think that they will? As some guys got to mess around with a beta version of Steam they discovered many things that have had me scratching my head...
1 Users seem to be locked out of many things, including repositories that are not Valve's...uh-oh!
2 It looks and feels exactly like the Stream client on Windows or other Linux machine...uh-oh!
3 To get to something resembling a desktop you had to alter something in settings...uh-oh!
They may have been one or two other things but the first thing I thought was oh dear it is that cash cow creation thing going on again. This is the one thing users do not like and many Linux stalwarts in particular. I asked a Linux guy once why he died not like posting for software and he simply said "so you can spend more on faster hardware" though I can understand this it is not really workable. They sound like socialists of the computer world?
Yes OK Microsoft, and Apple, are extremely greedy and much of their software is expensive. Though with Apple it is the hardware. But I do not think it sensible to expect to pay nothing for something that could take a few years to create for a team of people.
Well you could if the software was boosted with advertising. Oddly enough I saw the Amazon Kindle tested by a woman who inspects hotels and she went mad at the adverts that kept popping up. Yup would drive me batty too. Turns out you had to pay them a fee of £10 to have them removed. I did not like the sound of Tesco tablets nor Argos Tablets for the same reason and that the OS on these devices have Bern created by them. Even if things start of great you have no way of knowing if this will suddenly go downhill with an update? My guess would be YES!
Case in point, my faulty and used Motorola Atrix suddenly showed down after around 18 months and now runs slower than the Motorola Defy I owned before hand. But the Atrix is dual core 1Ghz while the Defy was single core and 800Mhz?!
Added to this I have even reinstalled the Operating System several times to cure it's various ills to no effect whatsoever. Yet when someone hands me their new phone and this applies to cheap single core entry level phones to they go so fast they make my Defy look like it is going backwards in time.
I really DO NOT like updates. They drive you bloody nuts to be updated for no real visually noticeable improvement and seemingly every five minutes. Before long you do notice changes as the software starts paying up or refused to work altogether.
That leaves me with such a bad taste in my mouth I want to vomit repeatedly!!! Why? Because this behaviour is no different to that of pick-pockets stealing things from you in the street.
At least pickpockets have done excuse or other at times, like they are starving or drug addicts!! Not because a few million in a few years is not good enough or not fast enough.
Yes a very bad taste.
So Valve appears on first impressions to be going down that street of shame but I cannot say I am surprised. I never did like the Steam client and thought it would not work. Several years to early.
Let us hope things improve but after reading this, albeit early report, I salt very much doubt it.
Maybe the price of twinkies have gone up?
In Depth: First look: Valve SteamOS - http://pulse.me/s/IgBRn
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