The question at the heart of this: what stakeholders exist that are incentivized to create a Linux-exclusive game?
Halo was XBOX-exclusive because Bungie was owned by Microsoft; their specific goal was to make an XBOX-exclusive title, and there was a very real incentive for them to funnel energy into the platform. DICE (and to a much lesser extent, Valve[1]) gets nothing specifically from having a Linux version besides the slightly larger target audience (and PR); there's nothing in it for them to spend massive development time on a AAA game and not release it on Windows + Mac + Consoles as well.
Am I missing something?
[1] From what I understand, Valve's pursuing non-Windows options to try and avoid a shootout between them and Windows Store. That's pretty understandable in of itself.
I get the impression you've missed the announcements of SteamBoxes and SteamOS.
Valve do have triple-A titles, and they do -they may- have the incentive to release it exclusively on Linux/SteamOS.
What concerns me about SteamOS is their (supposed, as I don't know if it's been actually confirmed yet) Ubuntu base.
I personally loathe Ubuntu, it and all its derivatives seem bloated and unstable, I get the same feeling using it as I would get using Windows Vista.
Remember the extra hoops Vista introduced to get to basic network settings?
Ubuntu might be Open Source, but it's not open, user-friendliness should not equate locking down an OS, there must be -and is- a better way. I feel GNOME on my Arch install does the job admirably, so much so that friends want a piece of the action.
I am confused on a few points myself. Granted I am the much quintessential Windows user but I have explored alternatives over the years in the realm of Linux. I must say picking up Red Hat at Fry's was indeed fun, but part of me wanted that boxed copy of Windows for Workgroups I saw nearby even more. The OP talks about bloated and forgive my ignorance but I though one of the most vaunted features GNU/Linux was it's user customization features. So why should Ubuntu really matter, or any distro. Why not give the user something easy to work with regardless of bloat or extraneous features as they can mature in knowledge and alter their OS to their hearts content.
I am not trying to say one is something over the other. I'm just saying I use Windows and have for years and for my needs, cost and all, it really seems to fit the bill. I have used many flavors of Linux over the years but I rarely find it compelling enough to move beyond LiveCD or Pi usage.
tl;dr Does distro matter, can the user not just customize at some point?
The distro matters in that 95% of users don't customize anything, but, yes, other than that, Ubuntu is just as customizable as any other Linux distribution.
To be honest, if it were SteamBox exclusive I would not buy it. I don't buy exclusives. Gaming is about fun and convenience to me. Having to buy hardware always factors into my gaming, I am very content to not spend money on hardware, especially niche hardware.
I was tempted to go with a PS/3 back in the days because I could offset the cost of a dedicated gaming machine with the fact I could play Blu-Ray. So unless this Steambox is insanely cheap or provides a significant other use and does those other uses really well I will factor its cost into the game I want to play.
I was thinking earlier they might sell livebooting usb3 sticks with SteamOS and HL3 on them, alongside the actual Steamboxes. They could bundle it with the controller. Then release it for windows/mac a month later.
If they could get it to boot in like 5 seconds, and it came with the ability to play a range of existing steam titles, it might be a winner.
I had thought of this as well, but one of the major benefits of Steam (access to all your purchased games) is lost if you can't play them due to resource constraints (not enough storage on the usb stick for persistence, long load times for large games that need to be downloaded each time you boot).
The killer app probably wouldn't be a steambox exclusive but a steam exclusive. Which means that you'd be able to play it on practically anything you can throw at it. PC, Mac,Steambox, and it won't surprise me if you'd be able to pair up your steam controller to your tablet and be able to stream the feed from your PC ala nvidia shield. In terms of convenience, tying it to steam will do way more than it being exclusive to other systems.
You've never bought an exclusive game on a platform you already own? Given that some of the best games ever made have been exclusive to something or another, this seems rather self-defeating.
Did you mean to say you've never bought a console because of exclusives? This strikes me as still quite unlikely (else why did you buy it in the first place?), but much more reasonable.
I agree. It seems the biggest gripe with Ubuntu is Unity (and some of Gnome 3, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms). I've been on Linux Mint - Ubuntu / Debian based - and it's closer to Windows 7 than Ubuntu's Vista.
That's a fair question, and the answer is no. Unity was an instant turn-off the minute I upgraded, yes, but pulling down another DE isn't exactly hard.
The whole OS has just never worked out in the long run, and has always felt bloated and sluggish. A myriad of odd patches and poorly implemented automation made even the simplest problem solving a major gripe. I just couldn't stand it.
This is all anecdotal of course, you obviously have a completely different experience.
You should only be upgrading every four years, between Long Term Support releases. Non LTS releases are more for Linux developers and power-users.
Upgrading between non LTS releases is not meant to be seamless. To make it so would take a lot of unnecessary effort. There are LTS releases for a reason.
You don't see Microsoft coming out with a new OS every 6 months.
With a Microsoft OS you're not pegged to versions of 3rd party software for the duration of the support life. Using the LTS version of Ubuntu on a daily use desktop/laptop would leave you with a very frustrating application availability experience.
Yes, and the reason is servers. On a computer you use, you generally want the new functionality (like, for example, the ability to read and write to a nexus 4).
I've upgraded ubuntu a few times, including once from LTS to LTS. It ranged from unpleasant to awful ("why has everything been uninstalled?") each time.
It is strange. I often upgrade my distros or those of my other not-informatized friends and I never had a single problem.
Writing now from a ubuntu 13.10 upgraded since 11.04
Microsoft no, but I do see Apple doing new osx releases every 1-2 years. Upgrade only every 4 years? Surely you're joking, LTS is for servers not desktops.
i dont really like ubunt for various reasons but you are using the wrong arguments here. you can easily change the ui in ubuntu and make it much more reactive if you dont like unity. use mate or cinnamon then. plus ubuntu is very stable, i dont really know what gripes you have with it in terms of stability. Ubuntu is used almost as is in several companie like Google and I seriously doubt they would go for something unstable.
Valve gets their platform launched. Strategically, in the long-term, a platform is worth far more than any individual AAA title, or even a franchise. Note: not a "linux version", a "steambox version".
Yes, no one has the incentive to push Valve's platform but Valve. They might pay someone else, but any game of comparable interest to HL3 would be very expensive. They aren't as wealthy as Microsoft. No one is. So, really, HL3 absolutely fits - this even makes sense of its curious delay.
They can always port it later (though, not foreshadow, and well after the initial publicity, or its force will be dissipated).
Back when HL2 came out, I didn't want to install Steam, but ultimately I wasn't going to miss out on the sequel to the best FPS ever made. Then again, it's far easier to install Steam than it is for the average person to abandon Windows. I guess that's where the Steam Box comes in.
But that would be Steam OS exlcusive, not actually on any other Linux distro. So while it might trickle down to better game dev tool support in linux, it wouldn't on face effect adoption rates.
If you say that SteamOS means a game is Linux exclusive, you can say Metal Gear Solid for was CellOS/BSD exclusive[0].
You need to think about this not on a simplistic single-game game theory model, but more specifically, creating a linux exclusive game would be part of a broader long term strategy. Boosting the popularity of an open gaming system would reduce the rents that can be charged by network holders on gaming companies. This would, obviously be a short term money loser, but with firms like Valve, that have a major foothold and could take the short term hit, boosting a open system/network could pay dividends in reduced future costs (granted, i'm not in the industry, and this is purely speculative).
But Ubuntu is open-source, so if Ubuntu tries to lock anyone in, Valve just forks and has full control. The very nature of Linux and open source distros is what Valve likes, Ubuntu is simply the most accessible and easiest to recommend. Steam works just fine on a number of other Linux distros BTW (I've run it on Arch and openSUSE machines too).
It only has to be exclusive to the Ubuntu store, doesn't stop people playing Steam games. Valve forking Ubuntu, doesn't give them right distribute the game.
I do think however that if Linux is going to take off because of a game, it'll be a SteamOS exclusive. The advantage of Steam is that it runs on every Linux distro, (even automatically solving dependencies), versus the Software centre which is an Ubuntu exclusive.
The example of Halo for xbox has the important distinction that Halo was an exclusive title.
Almost by it's very nature Linux is not conductive to exclusive software, simply because when you build something for Linux you are likely building on top of open source dependencies which have far less legal and technical barriers to being ported elsewhere.
For example most Windows titles rely on DirectX which is only supported on MS systems. If the game development culture on Windows revolved around OpenGL we would likely have seen more Mac/Linux ports of games already.
> when you build something for Linux you are likely building on top of open source dependencies which have far less legal and technical barriers to being ported elsewhere.
Porting something Linux -> Windows is likely much easier than the other way around. For example you can run GTK/QT on Windows but you can't run Win32 on Linux without relying on something like Wine.
So you would need to have something that was either designed to be cross platform from the get-go , or you need to re-engineer around different APIs.
The fact that it's easier to port from Linux to Windows, could be great incentive to build for Linux first then port out. As a converted Ubuntu user for the past 1.5 years, I'm rooting for this to happen. I could fully drop Windows if it does.
It's all dependent on vendor choice. Nothing says they have to use GTK, QT, or any other multi-platform windowing toolkit, and if they do, nothing says that they have to build and distribute Windows or OS X versions of their software. It's just as easy to say "Windows apps written in QT are really easy to port to Linux" as the other way around. If someone writes their own code to address X11 directly, Windows wouldn't be able to run the software without an X Server, which requires the installation of a bunch of other crap through cygwin and would still probably have performance issues (that is, it'd be very much like using WINE to play Windows games, but probably much crappier).
A Linux exclusive can be made, and running an unauthorized "Windows port" can easily be made to exceed the technical skillset of your average gamer.
> Porting something Linux -> Windows is likely much easier than the other way around.
True I'd say (though I have no experience in porting huge software projects), but why is this? Isn't it just because the Windows platform is so much larger? I guess Linux will still keep things open since it's not part of a for-profit company, but easy portability to Windows in the future is no given unless Microsoft starts to make things that way.
And I mean "future", like, when Microsoft's lock-in products like Office and Windows have a <50% market share. After that it'll be over soon altogether, or Microsoft must come up with something brilliant.
Hmm, something brilliant that must be. In the past they bought stuff they didn't have themselves. Good luck buying (and selling) LibreOffice or GNU/Linux :D
There have been applications that have been ported to Linux through using Wine as a library. Alternatively, if your app is c#, you can use the system.windows.forms stuff in Mono.
Later Halo franchise games were X-Box only, but given that I played the entire game on Windows, I think I can confirm that the original Halo was not an X-box exclusive. (It was the only console it was released for, though, so in that sense it was more exclusive than games which are ported for all three console platforms.)
I wonder if at the end of the coming console cycle there will actually be no need for new "consoles" per se. That is, effectively a "steambox" which will likely just be a well designed, well integrated PC will be cheap enough and powerful enough to compete directly with whatever new console comes out.
Essentially the PC eats the console market?
Removing windows from the equation would be a necessary step in bringing down the price of such a device and would allow Valve to squeeze every last drop of performance out of a device in the same way that Sony and Microsoft do with their respective console OS's.
Something I've been thinking about is the smartphone release cycle verse the console release cycle. Valve could inflict a lot of damage on Microsoft and Sony's market share just by releasing an incrementally better Steambox once a year.
Consumers don't want to buy a new $1,000 computer once a year, but many are close to doing it with their phones. The subscription/contract masks to cost to a degree. I'm not sure what the economics will come down to, but a new Steambox once every 6 years seems quite unlikely.
As SteamBoxes are modular much like a regular stationary computer, I should think the GPU would see more upgrades than the rest, making the annual upgrade budget much lower than that of a smartphone...
Huh? Since Gamers are only a tiny fraction of the PC User space that statement makes zero sense. Linux on the Desktop is dead because most of it's common apps either suck, or are already available (with a much better UI) on Windows/Mac.
Don't underestimate the 'halo' effect (not Halo, though it may also apply) that games have on a platform. Much of MS Windows' early success and dominance was a result of having many more games available than Mac OS.
If this were truly the case, it would have been long ago since we had Quake and Unreal on the platform already. Linux gaming is only going to succeed if Steam does.
If you bought a mac to play Q3Test, surely it's not beyond the realms of reason that someone with PC, would dual-boot Linux to play a game (since it's no cost).
I think more in terms of having a breakthrough in mindshare. A big game that is exclusive to Linux, at least for a few months or more, could give Linux the buzz and mind share it needs.
Saying "Battlefield 4 will be released for Windows/Mac/Linux" doesn't mean nearly as much for Linux as saying "Battlefield 4 will be released for Linux-only this year".
Linux needs to be sold in department stores like Walmart and Best Buy to explode. I think this guy seriously underestimates how disconnected everyday people are with tech. Everyday people don't understand the point of installing Linux when they have Windows. However when shipped on devices out of the box people don't need to question the purpose. (Take android's success as the key example of this.) Even Linus addresses this as the key problem with Linux's market share (or lack therefore of).
(Perhaps it was meant GNU? But I would assume it was assumed this killer game would not be freedom software. Then how would that help GNU explode? No, what would help GNU explode, is more people able to program, and asking for freedom software).
I don't think that's at all realistic without massively subsidized hardware from Valve so the linux version can be the 'best' version, or someone risking hundreds of millions of dollars on exclusivity so the linux version can be the 'only' version.
Yeah, I don't think this is a fair metric either. If anything, I think it illustrates that Linux users, on average, are more generous than their compatriots. It doesn't say anything about whether Linux is "ready" (for some value of "ready"). That said, as an Arch user, I'd love it if more games were ported to Linux (or developed there first, then ported to other platforms). I dislike having to boot to another OS just to play a game...
However, from a pure market standpoint, the Humble Bundles do point out that there's money out there to be made from Linux gaming. Niche markets can be lucrative, and it's even better if the people in that niche have money they're willing to spend. Whenever I see games on Steam that are multiplatform (that includes Linux), I'll buy them over anything else. But, I think that's also something of a confirmation bias--and the fact that I buy them on principle. (I'm not really an avid gamer, and I don't bother much with AAA titles, either.)
Of course, there is one major downside. The Linux market is relatively small compared to Windows and OSX which brings with it other disadvantages.
On the whole, I think this is a positive development. At least someone in the industry seems to be recognizing the need to embrace platforms beyond Windows or consoles.
The problem with getting any 'killer' app on Linux is that most killer apps, outside of a specialized subset, aren't going to be Linux-exclusive, so there isn't any reason to go for Linux in particular...yet. Steam on Linux may shift the ecosystem enough to make it a prefered platform, but it's too early to tell.
Right. Nobody is going to make an Linux-exclusive major game. On the other hand, Linux has already taken off, just not for desktop usage. And BSD Unix is successful in gaming, as the PS3 and PS4 are BSD Unix with their own shell.
Valve could strike a deal for a very short exclusivity deal to push Linux. Would PC gamers install Linux/SteamOS to play Call of Duty a few days early? Yes, I bet a lot would.
Very few gamers would switch to Linux just for one game. We use Windows, not because we like it especially - hell most gamers I know, use Mac OS X for their professional work - but because it's on Windows (or consoles) all the games are. I predict Steam Machines will become a big hit tho, if the controller is as good as I hope.
because yeah , i'm going to just ditch the 60+ games i own for windows, install linux just for that one game ? oh .. c'moon
I know dual booting is possible , but why bother ?
Not you. But I only play with basically one fame, okmarguably not a game, but a flight simulator, and if ran on linux, I wouldn't have a MSWindows box.
The comparisons drawn in this article are far from accurate. Comparing the Xbox taking off vs the ps2 is a far different comparison than of Windows vs Linux. If we are talking in terms of gaming by itself, it still is a bad comparison. The Xbox and PS3 had a comparable quantity and quality of games at the point when Halo was released. The buyer was already making a choice between two fairly closely matched (in terms of cost, available games, and features such as online experience ETC.) machines. One game MAY have been able to persuade them to purchase one system or the other, but this is a far different situation.
Windows has 20x (probably more) good games than linux, is as stable, comes already loaded on almost every machine you buy, has a far larger choice of other apps, Everyone is used to the windows experience (although win 8 changes that), and maybe most importantly - it has a user base that is 20x that of desktop Linux (you won't be able to play most of your friends in a Linux exclusive game today).
The claim in this article may be true someday, but today is not that day. Linux has a LOT more ground to make up before this article/premise can actually hold water.
Get real. Linux needs a better user experience to explode. The amount of work needed to get even a 'user friendly' distro like Ubuntu up and running is ridiculous when compared to getting OS X and Windows in the same state. Simple things, like listening to music, watching video and browsing the web are harder. I haven't tried to set up a gaming rig with Linux, but I imagine it will be like trying to play games on DOS 3.0 back in the 90s. At this point, it's easier to just buy an iMac and boot into Windows to play games.
When was the last time you actually installed Ubuntu? It mostly installs itself with little to no input from the user.
>I haven't tried to set up a gaming rig with Linux, but I imagine it will be like trying to play games on DOS 3.0 back in the 90s.
Install Steam, install game, play game.
>it's easier to just buy an iMac and boot into Windows to play games.
As someone who actually does dual-boot a Mac using Bootcamp for gaming purposes, and who also games on Linux, the former was far more difficult to set up (installing Windows on a MBP from a USB stick is a fool's errand).
In short, you simply don't appear to know what you're talking about. The trouble with gaming on Linux is selection, not anything intrinsic to Linux itself.
I've been trying ubumtu since 8.04, revising it every year or so. Just tried 13.04 and it's the same old pile of... I encounter problems everywhere - updates crashing some program, alt+tab not working, drivers crashing, removing myself from sudoers file by accident, problems with flash, java is a pain to get going, etc. I need to do work and the OS gets in the way. I need to google a problem every day and that breaks my workflow. It's a terrible experience honestly. Very disappointed, because I love the idea, but hate Cannonical - so many years and so many supporters and they cann't figure this thing for 7+ years.
As a general rule, it's important to remember that Linux is an OS made by amateurs and hobbyists. If a 5-year old kid shows you a drawing, you would say it's great, while it's actually piece of shit. Same mentality should be applied when reviewing Linux distros.
Linux has been hacked on by some of the most brilliant men and women of our generation and powers an enormous amount of the world's network infrastructure. Calling this an "amateur" project just demonstrates a staggering level of ignorance.
Either your comment is dripping with sarcasm of hidden depth or I wandered off news.ycombinator by accident for a second and have stumbled over some fine /. style flame-bait or you are trolling or you are unimaginably ignorant.
On the off chance (though I find it hard to believe) that it is ignorance it may be of interest to you that this site runs on Linux. So I guess you'll be leaving our piece of shit forum now that you know.
Wow, this comment just appeared through a time portal from 2001! Linux is firmly established in a variety of professional markets here in 2013. Please educate yourself before wasting time commenting.
Well my attempt at running Ubuntu 12.04 convinced me that Ubuntu is Satan:
- Both network and wireless drivers weren't working, so I had to go to a different machine and dig up some some sources from some obscure blog, copy them to a pen drive, go back, compile and install.
- What's that, you want to update anything? Well fuck you, I'll rollback the network drivers you installed.
- What's that, you're trying to watch more than 5 youtube videos in a row? Fuck you, Compiz has crashed!
- While you were sleeping last night, I threw away all the stuff that you had on your desktop. Also, you can't right click on it anymore. What's that, did you right click more than 5 times in anger? Fuck you, Unity has crashed!
- You're trying to search the web for solutions to all these crashes? Fuck you, Compiz has crashed! Also, your mouse and keyboard don't work anymore. Have fun rebooting by holding your power button.
- What's that, you didn't pay attention to me for more than 5 minutes and I went to sleep? Well I'll just replace your screen with gibberish.
- What's that, you want to step out without people replacing your desktop background? Well I'll just hide this password prompt and show you a nice picture of your desktop background instead.
- What's that, you're trying to listen to music? Don't you just miss the old days when the cd would skip on a regular basis? I sure do! Besides, I don't like your music so as a bonus, Compiz has crashed!
- What's that, you're in a dark environment and you want to reduce the brightness? Well fuck you, everything has crashed. But here, I'll just run this awesome flashlight app that maximizes your brightness. Have fun going blind, asshole.
This last occurrence is the moment when I decided to format this hellspawn and go back to Mint.
In short, you simply appear to be an active-aggresive douchebag. Just because something works for you, doesn't mean it does for everyone.
You still have to actively check Ubuntu's hardware compatibility list [1] before buying/building new PC's, and avoid hardware that hasn't been confirmed. Sounds like some or all of your system - the network drivers especially, maybe video too - didn't have support yet.
Definitely still a user experience problem inexperienced Linux users, but on fully supported hardware the user experience is good as Windows.
>In short, you simply appear to be an active-aggresive douchebag.
Yeah, a lot of that going around these days, isn't there.
I was using an i7-3770k with an HD4000. It doesn't get any more generic than that. I'm not going to go out of my way to check if hardware is "Ubuntu cerftified", unless I'm going to lose my mind someday. There simply is no benefit in doing so, as long as other distros such as Mint (at least for me, I've heard of people having lots of issued with Mint too) or Windows work pretty much flawlessly
That Ivy Bridge processor may be completely mainstream now, but it was released after the code freeze for the distribution you were trying to install. That basically guarantees that you'll have at least some driver related issues, either due to immature drivers or undiscovered quirks in the new hardware. But you can also expect things to get much better in only a few months time.
>I've heard of people having lots of issued with Mint too
It's based on Ubuntu, so probably shares some of the same problems, especially when it comes to driver support.
Network and audio hardware is most often the main culprit, lots of no-name brands out there that mobo makers toss on to keep costs down, unlike CPU's and GPU's where there are only a few well known, well-supported options.
I know several people who are your average users (use their PCs as a VCR and Facebook machine) who were convinced to switch to Ubuntu a few years ago and have since been enjoying it much more and have found it more intuitive than Windows.
Ubuntu has everything set up out of the box for you, and the feature that everyone seems to like the most is indeed, a Unix advantage: centralized package management.
In Windows, they had to hunt down binary installers from all over the web to get some piece of software. Now they just head over to the APT/dpkg frontend (Ubuntu Software Center) and do everything in a flash.
How is listening to music and browsing the web harder? You have a graphical DE that makes it point-and-click just like any other OS intended for consumer/mass use.
Perhaps you were installing a minimal Ubuntu without X11?
I recently installed linux mint 15. It has been a bit problematic.
One problem is that it wouldn't shut down. I had to edit the grub2 config to get it to shut down.
Also, at one point the sound randomly stopped working. Would only see the dummy output. Had to reboot to get the sound back. So I don't think I fully fixed that issue.
I was using xubuntu before, and it's really hard to resize the windows. There's a weirdly small area to click on, which is frustrating. There was also a problem with the right mouse click which needed to be fixed with a config change.
It's just buggy, where I would expect things to work.
I will say, sound issues I've had with every OS I've run, Windows Mac and Linux. Sound drivers are shit in general. Your other issues are completely valid, though I've not had issues like that for about three years now.
I switched my mother to Ubuntu 3 or 4 years ago... No more wiping viruses every month. Actually, support calls dwindled from every 2 weeks to basically never. Ubuntu does everything she wants (browser... Email... Watch videos... Download camera photos... View them...) without any problems.
As someone who just yesterday spent 90 minutes on the phone with Microsoft Tech Support just trying to get his legitimate copy of Windows 7 activated, I feel like Ubuntu's user experience is now miles ahead of Windows'. If it wasn't for Netflix and Blu-ray (to some extent, it's still a bit better supported in Windows), there'd be no reason not to remove my Windows partitions entirely.
Ubuntu is really easy to install - not sure when you last did this. It will find the Nvidia binary driver for you and get it. Browsing the web is easy, you've got firefox and chrome right there, youtube works (which is all the video most want).
Windows 7 on the other hand is hard, it installs with virtually no drivers leaving you to find them from all over the web, it's a awful experience.
P.S. I played DOS games in the 90s it was harder than Ubuntu is now.
1. Insert disk (as always)
2. A:
3. DIR.EXE
4. Type in the name of the exe
Precise commands were often printed on the label. Having to manually figure out a correct SET BLASTER command was rare but sound cards came with a useful manual to keep you going. No one seemed too bothered by the lack of a GUI. Now people ask me if they should click the left or right mouse button all the time and I have to tell them to single-click hyperlinks and buttons. Heck, some don't even see them until I point them out. Does a GUI really enable them to use a computer more easily or would they more easily adjust to a written language akin to commandeering a dog?
Was the last time you set up Linux in the 1990's? The hardest part of installing Ubuntu is downloading it and burning the startup disc.
The installation takes about 15 minutes (less with a USB stick). Installing media codecs is an option at install that requires one box to be ticked.
Installing Steam requires downloading the Steam installer from their website, double clicking it, and hitting the 'install' prompt that Ubuntu sends you (ie. at least as easy as Windows). Once Steam is installed, it's the same experience as on Windows.
As far as things like Nvidia drivers go, it's also very easy with Ubuntu. Peripherals are mostly plug and play.
As long as you don't have extremely old, obscure hardware, it will be a very easy, smooth experience.
And installing Ubuntu on a computer is much easier than setting up OSX/Windows to double boot...
Whatever. That hasn't been an issue for me in literally years; even my unsupported AMD APU with a weird wireless chipset worked on first boot (though I did install my own drivers for better performance). I've had more issues with Windows and drivers in the past that Linux for the last few years.
My experience: I have a completely stock Linux Mint, grabbed Steam.deb, installed it by double clicking on it, logged in, installed Left4Dead 2 just like I would on Windows, and played a campaign without any problems. That's about as good as you can expect things to be, in my book.
I have an different experience. When I install Ubuntu or Fedora I have things like an office suite, a PDF reader, Photomanagment, etc. If not I tick a few checkboxes in the software app and "Install". With Windows i have to download a bunch of setup.exe files and click through... every time. I admit that i have not used windows 8 so far, so maybe it has become better nowadays...
> At this point, it's easier to just buy an iMac and boot into Windows to play games.
I've personally had really bad luck doing this. The Mac Windows drivers seem to be very sub-par, and my recent Macbook heats up like an oven and the fans go nuts. I've only attempted to play a few games on a 2011 iMac, but the performance hasn't been very good as a whole (TF2, StarCraft 2) and there still appear to be heat issues. Meanwhile, I can fire up my 2010 gaming rig and play brand new AAA titles without so much as a stutter in Windows, and performance is decent under Linux as well.
As far as the games I have purchased on Steam, I actually have more that are compatible with Linux than Mac OS. I just don't think gaming has been a high priority for Mac OS (they make a ton of money with it on iOS). They seem to be very sluggish about updating their GPU drivers, and they fell pretty far behind in OpenGL support (10.9 is supposed to bump this up a little).
Comparing it to OS X is a little unfair because it's literally impossible to buy a Mac that doesn't have OS X pre installed, but compared to the average Windows bootstrapping on a clean system Ubuntu is far more user friendly and it's been that way for many years.
Whilst I agree with the broader point that there is room for improvement in the Linux user experience I find that the "out of the box" experience on a modern ubuntu is far more complete for many uses than Windows is.
For example after a Windows 7 install you need to go and install a plugin before you can watch youtube videos and you need to install a viewer for PDF documents. Both of these things are provided by default on an Ubuntu machine.
Windows 7 shipped in 2009. You're comparing a current product to one that's 4 years old. For reference, both of your complaints are addressed in Windows 8/8.1.
People on this thread that did move to Ubuntu a few years ago found it far better than the naysayers would have them believe - smooth install, better GUI, more useful software with a repository. They haven't had to look back or 'need' this new Windows thing you use and they don't cling on to legacy Windows programs. So Windows now able to open files without having to install arcane plugins first is a bit 'meh' to those that can't be bothered with Windows cruft any more.
Is there a reason that in 2009, Microsoft thought it was t necessary to make it convenient to watch YouTube videos or view PDF files? As far as I recall PDF and YouTube have been pervasive for years proceeding 2009.
To install Ubuntu, I insert a usb stick, boot, and answer a few questions. It auto-detects all my hardware, unlike Windows which has no clue what to do about my printers without downloading dozens of MB's of drivers.
If I want something I don't know whether comes as default or not, I press the Windows key, start typing a keyword. If anything matching is installed, it shows up, or I pick the "applications" tab to get a list of not-yet installed applications available from the software centre.
I'm listening to music now, browsing the web of course, and regularly watch videos, none of which took anything more than the above.
(I don't know about a gaming rig either, as I don't play many games)
It sounds to me like you last tried a Linux distro 5+ years ago, or hav been extremely unlucky.
Halo was XBOX-exclusive because Bungie was owned by Microsoft; their specific goal was to make an XBOX-exclusive title, and there was a very real incentive for them to funnel energy into the platform. DICE (and to a much lesser extent, Valve[1]) gets nothing specifically from having a Linux version besides the slightly larger target audience (and PR); there's nothing in it for them to spend massive development time on a AAA game and not release it on Windows + Mac + Consoles as well.
Am I missing something?
[1] From what I understand, Valve's pursuing non-Windows options to try and avoid a shootout between them and Windows Store. That's pretty understandable in of itself.