> You can run many instances of a dedicated game server (roughly in the hundreths mb of ram usage) on the same OS, or through virtual machine so it could be moved.
As this very blog post explains, Valve's dedicated servers have always supported Linux.
> Console - probably customized version of Linux, and if possible the game running in ring 0 with the kernel. Drawing almost directly to the hardware, without going to API's, user and then kernel functions. (Avoid vertex/index buffer checks, and many other things).
A system like that would be so different as to barely benefit at all from the reality of what Valve is doing.
As this very blog post explains, Valve's dedicated servers have always supported Linux.
> Console - probably customized version of Linux, and if possible the game running in ring 0 with the kernel. Drawing almost directly to the hardware, without going to API's, user and then kernel functions. (Avoid vertex/index buffer checks, and many other things).
A system like that would be so different as to barely benefit at all from the reality of what Valve is doing.