Google to reveal Stadia pricing, games, launch info and more on Thursday

Im I excited? Yes!
Will I use it? No!

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: truebluewooSo I am in complete agreement with @Nanobang

Every opportunity google has had to make a proper linux product, it does something insidious with it. they cannot get past data gathering / data monetisation its sickening.

They had the proper opportunity and resources to create a competing desktop linux platform, instead they build chromeos and chromeos is completely useless. They could throw some weight into wayland or even built and released their own version like canonical tried with mir, or worked with mir. In all cases nope instead they went down the selfish route of chromeos, which only they benefit from, it may run on linux but it did nothing to help desktop linux.

Android again does absolutely nothing to help with desktop linux, sure you can develop apps on linux, but can you run those same apps on linux as well ? Is there a native google apps for linux ? Nope, again its completely selfish.

Here now they announce stadia, great it runs on linux using vulkan, but instead of helping current efforts to improve gaming they build their own api, if this ever becomes succesful they will build out their own api make it completely incompatible with anything available on linux, contribute nothing useful back and infact make the situation worse.

Google suck, they have had so many opportunities to actually invest in a proper useful linux desktop platform, they could have either taken gtk or qt / kde and spent a year producing an amazing linux desktop experience and then building and selling custom hardware for it (like their pixel laptop) they could have integrated android apps, created a google drive sync made all of this available for any linux desktop distro and / or user to integrate and sell solutions for the normal novice to get behind, but instead at every opportunity all they can see is monetisation of data, basically they are as bad as microsoft they only use / abuse linux they do nothing useful for us.

Here is the real kicker, chrome was based off of webkit (which apple took from kde konqueror), they then forked from webkit and created blink, is anything from blink useable on kde ? I think not At least when Apple forked from konqueror and created webkit they gave back to the kde community, Google never gives back anything useful, everything gets wrapped into their shitty advertising platform and their shitty data gathering platforms.

It's almost like Google is a business that wants to make money. Weird.

OK, I'm being slightly tongue in cheek. I don't trust Google, and I don't like their way of doing business, but unfortunately, the "Linux way" of free software (as in speech and in some cases beer) does not lead to untold riches. It's why companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google continue to dominate with their anti-consumer lock-in business strategy while Canonical and Red Hat are small peanuts in comparison.

Hey look, I get they are a business, but you miss the entire point I am trying to make - google cant see the wood for the trees. It cannot see past advertising and data mining and this has hurt its reputation in every other market they try to enter, because its a matter of trust.

Also FYI RHEL was a multi-billion dollar business, its not small peanuts in comparison and they are owned by IBM and IBM is certainly not small peanuts, also IBM has done a great deal for Linux especially in the server space.

You also miss another massive point, Google owes its existence to Linux and open-source, without it they would have never been able to grow to scale as quickly as they did. If it wasn't for open source tech there is no way they could build white box machines, cluster them together and provide search results at scale.

big businesses will not use google apps because of trust issues, they insisted on data mining emails even for corporations paying money for google apps services, this completely stunted its growth, they reversed this decision a year or two ago, but talk about being completely single visioned - they had an opportunity to basically take over corporate emails and they squandered it because of this instance on data mining.

Same thing with Google Cloud Compute, again its market share is poultry, again when they initially released it every single instance had a little google bot on there ready for data mining, which they then removed. Its a matter of trust you hurt your reputation, you build no trust when you insist that everyones data belongs to you.

This same insistence is why chromeos could have been massive if they made a proper linux desktop os, helped the open source community to actually build out either kde or gnome, integrated play store and sold it by selling hardware (like apple), it would be massive, but again they just are incapable of seeing other revenue making ideas, of getting away from this single focus on monetizing data, there are many ways to make income and some of those ways can be done without being seen as being "EVIL" ("DO NO EVIL")

Infact the one company that has done exactly this is Valve - I have so much respect for what valve have done over the past few years for desktop linux as a whole.

I am also being very harsh on google, there is a reason in spite of everything I am saying I still use their products:

* golang - makes them no revenue but its a brilliant programming language.
* python - the creator of python works at google so basically google funds python development.
* linux kernel - google and google engineers have contributed a great deal to the kernel.
* kubernetes - basically started off in google

there is probably a tonne of other stuff google have developed and been a part of which they dont get credit for, and they are a genuinely innovative company, I dont hold hatred for them, its just they need to think outside of just data mining as their only revenue source.

I hold out hope that they at least get vulkan renderers added to all game engines.


Last edited by truebluewoo on 4 June 2019 at 11:01 pm UTC

Quoting: F.UltraYeah, boo on Google for providing a service that people might enjoy and want to pay

Excellent point! That's exactly what I wasn't talking about. It's probably frustrating to have so much to say but to never be able to actually really join any conversations, isn't it?

Quoting: F.Ultra... if happens to be a success it's only because people are not as smart or hip as you.

Obviously. Yes. But don't let it get you down, if you really apply yourself you might get there one day.

Kisses <3


Last edited by Nanobang on 5 June 2019 at 12:22 pm UTC

I think a nice point that was hinted at the discussion is how Google likes to close down their platforms despite using "open source" software. Android runs on a Linux kernel, but not only is it incompatible with GNU/Linux but they have moved as much as they could into their own proprietary app suite to make it harder to distribute a non-Google version. It is a big example of the distinction between the "open source" and "free software" philosophies: they actively work against user choice and interoperability.

We may hope that the move to Vulkan and Linux builds for stadia will help push desktop versions of games. But software made for Android and OpenGL doesn't exactly work on desktop GNU/Linux... and I don't think Google will be interested in making sure the games built for Stadia will work outside of it.

While everyone was trying to see who would win the gaming wars - Consoles, Computer, Handhelds, Mobile....the true winner has always been browser.

Think about all the people, mostly kids, that jump on to all kinds of rigs and hit a browser based game. Even me as an adult, I've played a ton of browser based games back in the early days of Linux gaming when I tapped out all of my old Windows CD games and got a little tired of running DOOM and UT99.

Currently, I have a few hundred hours in surviv.io. I have no doubt that this will be a success if they get the latency issue down and they deliver. But even if Google fails this seems to be where the majority of video gaming is going.

Me? I'll be on itch.io and Humble Bundle rocking DRM-FREE games til the wheels fall off. With a sprinkle of these browser based goodies.


Last edited by Mezron on 5 June 2019 at 4:55 pm UTC

Quoting: eldakingAndroid runs on a Linux kernel, but not only is it incompatible with GNU/Linux but they have moved as much as they could into their own proprietary app suite to make it harder to distribute a non-Google version.

As far as I know, you can install GNU utils on your Android device. Android has it's own DE and uses a lot of stuff that is not common on desktop installs, but that doesn't mean that the kernel is not compatible. Non-Google versions do exist in many variations. You can't install software that depends on Google Services, though. But that's up to the developer of the software.

The main problem of Android is incompatible libc, and completely different higher level graphics stack. If Android would have used glibc and Wayland, it would have provided a lot more synergy with desktop Linux. However it created a rift on a deep level, so who cares, if it shares the kernel, it's a completely different beast in result.


Last edited by Shmerl on 5 June 2019 at 5:16 pm UTC

Quoting: Doc Angelo

Quoting: eldakingAndroid runs on a Linux kernel, but not only is it incompatible with GNU/Linux but they have moved as much as they could into their own proprietary app suite to make it harder to distribute a non-Google version.

As far as I know, you can install GNU utils on your Android device. Android has it's own DE and uses a lot of stuff that is not common on desktop installs, but that doesn't mean that the kernel is not compatible. Non-Google versions do exist in many variations. You can't install software that depends on Google Services, though. But that's up to the developer of the software.

They use different standard libraries (especially libc). It has the Linux kernel, but not the rest of the GNU operating system; it is a completely different OS (that share the kernel).

There are custom Android versions (I myself use Lineage OS), and it is technically possible to remove google apps. It is, however, a major limitation to not have them, and removes many of the advantages of using Android. You lose access to a large portion of apps and many of the most useful features of the OS. The proprietary parts serve to make non-Google versions of the "open source" OS not compatible with the Google versions, make it much harder to fork the OS or change some elements (as you would need to rebuild a lot of core functionality instead of just changing what you want). And the proprietary parts enable Google to sign restrictive contracts with manufacturers and carriers, that restrict them from releasing their own versions in a way that shouldn't be possible with free software.

My point is that the idea that Stadia using Linux will translate to games for Linux desktops isn't very sure. Just like Android having the Linux kernel doesn't translate into Android apps being available for mobile versions of GNU/Linux. It is not only possible, but maybe in Google's interest, to make them not compatible.

Quoting: Nanobang

Quoting: F.UltraYeah, boo on Google for providing a service that people might enjoy and want to pay

Excellent point! That's exactly what I wasn't talking about. It's probably frustrating to have so much to say but to never be able to actually really join any conversations, isn't it?

Quoting: F.Ultra... if happens to be a success it's only because people are not as smart or hip as you.

Obviously. Yes. But don't let it get you down, if you really apply yourself you might get there one day.

Kisses <3

Ok, so please explain to stupid little me how exactly "This latest outbreak, Stadia, is just the latest ploy to harvest money and data from its dewy-eyed herd of human ruminants" is "exactly what I wasn't talking about" when I wrote "Yeah, boo on Google for providing a service that people might enjoy and want to pay".

I mean how can what you wrote be interpreted in any other way? Now you might have meant something completely different and I'm willing to give the benefit of a doubt here but you wrote those exact words that I replied to.

if we think that microsoft is mad, just wait for the future of cloud gaming.
it could either be an utopy or an distopy.