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Windows 10 Technical Preview

I think the linux ecosystem simply doesn't lend itself to gaming very well.
The good thing about Windows is that everyone has the same Windows: the one from Microsoft. Which also allows Microsoft to have full control over DirectX.
With linux, you have all sorts of parties making all sorts of variations of the same thing. So you never know what kernel version you have exactly, what patches may or may not be applied to it, or what implementation of OpenGL you have, to name but a few things.

I think for that reason, something like SteamOS may fall apart eventually. Valve can make their own distribution, but they do not control all the code they use. So if new versions of the kernel, XFree86 or any other parts cause problems, Valve will either have to stick to older versions indefinitely, or create their own patches/forks, and maintain those indefinitely.
Because it will be unacceptable if new versions of SteamOS can no longer play existing games, that people paid good money for on Steam.

It's a house of cards.

Your comments on Linux varieties are very true. But, how about a certain flavor of Linux just for gaming. I think that would be very cool. One of the big game developers could go to AMD and Nvidia and possibly get something going. Imagine, a dedicated OS just for gaming. I won't hold my breath though.
 
Your comments on Linux varieties are very true. But, how about a certain flavor of Linux just for gaming. I think that would be very cool. One of the big game developers could go to AMD and Nvidia and possibly get something going. Imagine, a dedicated OS just for gaming. I won't hold my breath though.

Isn't what you are describing an XBOX???
 
Isn't what you are describing an XBOX???

I don't think so. I believe XBOX is Windows based. You'd want a full blown OS, along the lines of Linux, something that M$ didn't have its fingers in. Linux with a tune-up maybe.
 
I thought the XBOX had its own OS but as you say its Windows based. Not sure what you think is missing from Windows as an OS. The NT stream , which is what all current Windows are derived from was largely designed by Dave Cutler who was poached from DEC by Microsoft. Its a perfectly good OS.

I think one of the issues with Open Source platforms and Gaming is that the Games Producers want a locked down platform to limit piracy etc, and they don't get that with Linux.
 
I thought the XBOX had its own OS but as you say its Windows based. Not sure what you think is missing from Windows as an OS. The NT stream , which is what all current Windows are derived from was largely designed by Dave Cutler who was poached from DEC by Microsoft. Its a perfectly good OS.

I think one of the issues with Open Source platforms and Gaming is that the Games Producers want a locked down platform to limit piracy etc, and they don't get that with Linux.

All of your points are valid, and I don't think anything is really missing from Windows. The problem with Windows, as far as gaming goes, is all of that bloat in the system. And XBOX doesn't cut it for the enthusiast, as you need the leeway to customize your rig as you wish. M$ tends to leave the gaming industry to flap in the breeze. Seldom if ever does M$ issue a fix for gamers. It always up to the video people to adjust things through driver workarounds and all. The next big thing is going to be an OS that will run on most any platform (you heard it here first) and it's going to spawn some (m)(b)illionares along the way. Just hide and watch (lol).
 
I think the next big thing will be a desktop version of Android. My new android 5 tablet does everything a windows 8 laptop can do.

It's been done and the customer response has been less than encouraging. HP, Acer and Lenovo brought out desktop Android machines in 2013/2014. You hardly hear about them.

If you want Android on your desktop, but don't want to give up Windows, you might look into Andyroid
 
Because of the way Android is built its hard to build low-level emulators, so you can't run SIMH or Hercules...
This is an interesting thing to hear; I could understand not having advanced hardware VM features available to user-level programs or the like, but why is it that you couldn't run a simple entirely-in-software emulator?
 
It is proved numbers of times that, the later version of Windows 7 unable to take the market, actually numbers of bugs have in these versions, especially in Windows 10.
 
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