Those of you that play CS:GO will have seen that two days ago, the CS:GO update package changed large chunks of the system to prepare for the linux client.
So probably CS:GO will come to linux after ESL One NY or something. I hope Valve has the brains to bring it out just before W9 comes out in September...
Once CS:GO hits linux, that will change a lot of things, first of all because CS is a very popular franchise, with a vivid community, that can obviously get a lot more done in linux than in a software console, and second of all, because it will make a difference for competitive players, who will obviously prefer the reliability, lack of background mystery processes that cause lag, and faster networking of a linux client to get the competitive edge. Since the CS:GO MLG's are just about the most popular players out there, especially in Europe, this will cause a lot of gamers to switch to linux for their gaming rigs also, which will cause them to dump Windows altogether.
People with CPU's that have more than 2 cores, will undoubtedly see the difference in performance between software consoles and the linux. CS:GO is mainly CPU-dependent, not so much GPU-dependent, and many players hold on to low resolutions anyway. Software consoles like Windows are really bad at thread load balancing, whereas this is one of the ultimate strong points of *nix-systems.
I dunno dude some of those CS players aren't exactly wiling to embrace change. I've read posts from CS players who still play on CRT's, so switching OS might not be very appealing to them.
Nice, those are very good news! I am waiting for this a long time now. You are right this could be a game changer. IMO Valve is just slow, to get the best product out. And because its different to develop for Linux instead of Windows (which they are used too) maybe.
This would be fabulous. CS:GO is the game i play most often. It runs great on my 6 year old MacBookPro so i can only imagine how buttery smooth it would be on my Linux machine.
That was because of the refresh rate of 75 Hz vis-à-vis 60 Hz on digital panels. A lot of that was solved with 75 Hz support over VGA that almost all panels have now, and of course by 120/144 Hz panels, which are very popular with CS players. CRT's aren't all that common any more.
As far as the game playing experience, besides the obvious performance and stability upgrade, there is no difference between linux and software consoles. In fact, the steam client looks exactly the same, the game looks exactly the same, the only difference is the better video quality because of OpenGL and the higher performance and lower latency and lag because of linux. There is no actual change in interface or gameplay. Also mumble works just fine in linux, including positional audio, AMD TruAudio works just fine in linux, etc...
CS changes all the time, things are being added, changed, etc... continuously. Players just have to adapt.
In fact, I bet it's perfectly possible to play CS:GO with AMD KMS drivers at 200+ fps in 1080p. That would really be a game changer. Can't wait to find out how well it performs without binary blobs.
Pardon my ignorance as my linux knowledge is almost zero (something I keep meaning to correct), but isn't there also an issue with Nvidia cards running on linux, which would also mean people having to change hardware too?
I think it's because of a few things: CS GO is a Valve game, Valve on Steam, SteamOS is linux based. It'd be a bit weird if they didn't put it on there seeing how remarkably popular it is. Secondly (this is connected with the previous point) it could be just to show off the steam controller and how it's "comparable" to a mouse in terms of control. And thirdly, putting it on Linux has been requested for quite a while.
Actualy, game wise this is all i need to switch over, im pretty sure i can get sc2 to work on wine and alot of games that are coming out will support linux, except gta5.... :( but i can live without it.
My main concern is actually hardware compatibility, I usually stay up to date hardware wise and this has always given me headaches with Linux, I REALLY want to get rid of windows, I'm still running windows 7 ( i hate windows 8, im not giving up usability and customization for performance) and i promised myself i will never get another windows so i got my eye open but untill hardware makers have a line supporting Linux i don't see it happening soon.