News - Valve reveals SteamOS, a Linux for your living room

[crossy]

I have no interest in running this OS on its own, maybe if I VM it I would install it. Cant see me ever buying the Steam box or installing the OS for just one machine, even dual boot is pointless for how I use my PC for gaming and such. This is very confusing, I cant see a point of it as PC gaming doesn't involve a TV all that much. Hmmm maybe someone will find this useful.

First off, this isn't a "proper" OS as such - instead it's a focussed distro - like Parted Magic OS, FreeNAS, etc. Although in this case it's focussed onto gaming with a little bit of media consumption.

Secondly, no one's said that this is purely for a TV - sure it has "big picture mode", but you do know that you can run that on your current Steam client on your PC using your PC's monitor?

Thirdly, as directhex points out - there are lots of PC games that will work quite well thank you in keyboard-less mode. Pretty much any of the cross-platform titles will do, and there's also a little thing called a "wireless keyboard" . Last four titles I've played with my current Steam-on-Windows install have been Just Cause 2, Bioshock:Infinite, Far Cry 3 and Saint's Row IV - all of which have been perfectly playable with the XBox-style controller and the only time I've needed the keyboard is to login to Windows.

So, when you see a SteamOS or SteamBox, don't think "PC", instead think "open source console" instead!

[Noxvayl]

If I can manage to get Netflix working on it and have Libre Office I might swap Ubuntu for SteamOS on my uni laptop. Although I may have a play with it on my gaming machine, it isn't doing anything else at the moment.

[DanceswithUnix]

I have no interest in running this OS on its own, maybe if I VM it I would install it. Cant see me ever buying the Steam box or installing the OS for just one machine, even dual boot is pointless for how I use my PC for gaming and such.

This is very confusing, I cant see a point of it as PC gaming doesn't involve a TV all that much. Hmmm maybe someone will find this useful.

Games are the only thing that keep Windows on my PC. All my work in under Linux. Yes, this is useful

[crossy]

If I can manage to get Netflix working on it and have Libre Office I might swap Ubuntu for SteamOS on my uni laptop. Although I may have a play with it on my gaming machine, it isn't doing anything else at the moment.

Libre and printing for me. Then again if - as rumoured - this is merely Ubuntu under the hood then Libre's a shoe in and I'm pretty sure HPLIP will work. Netflix, so I'm told by those who use it, can be done on Ubuntu via something called Pipelight (because apparently the browser version needs Silverlight). However, there's a lot of talk on the various forums I lurk on that IF SteamOS looks like taking off then Valve will probably approach Netflix to see if they can get app-style access. Remember that one of the things they (Valve) were pushing was media content.

Games are the only thing that keep Windows on my PC. All my work in under Linux. Yes, this is useful

Ditto. Although some of that could be down to the hefty Windows PC taking an age to boot compared to my cheap n' nasty Linux box (6way PhenomII and 8GB RAM v's C2D and 4GB). Both have the OS on SSD - although the Linux PC also has apps etc on SSD. If I CAN run those A list titles on SteamOS then Windows gets demoted to a small VM. I already use "Linux compatible" apps for mail, web, etc so really the only things I'll miss on Windows are Nero and dbPowerAmp.

Heck, I'd be willing to pay Valve £150 for an OS that ran my Windows games without any unexplained BSODs like I get with my current Windows setup.

[Steve]

If my laptop had a graphics processor instead of a small guy with colouring pencils inside it, I'd definitely give it a go.

[kalniel]

Surely this is more like a thin client?

It's going to have enough to run linux enabled Steam games, which are a growing number, but for the rest it's an optimised streaming environment which interfaces with your own computer for now, and possibly cloud servers in the future, so I'd expect it's nicely optimised for low latency type stuff.

[Noxvayl]

@ crossy

I currently use Netflix Desktop on Ubuntu which runs through Wine to get things working. Microsoft Silverlight is being discontinued so Netflix are already working on another option which I hope is HTML5 so will work on everything. I guess the only other thing I'd need from SteamOS would be Dropbox/Google Drive support because I like having things synced between computers.

I was surprised by the announcement, thought Valve would support Ubuntu rather than create their own OS. Perhaps creating their own OS is better because they can take out unnecessary things and ensure that everything a gamer needs just works which would make computer gaming a lot better. We'll see what happens but I am interested in the OS for my own use.

[DanceswithUnix]

Surely this is more like a thin client?

It's going to have enough to run linux enabled Steam games, which are a growing number, but for the rest it's an optimised streaming environment which interfaces with your own computer for now, and possibly cloud servers in the future, so I'd expect it's nicely optimised for low latency type stuff.

I am being a bit retro atm playing Might and Magic 6 via Steam. That would play quite nicely in a Windows VM running on a Steam box given how old it is, and I wonder how may other games could do that.

But otherwise, I see the thin client bit as a fallback not a main feature. People have been porting games to Linux for years, I used to have a few Loki ported games back when they were doing it. The porting effort always seems to end up with the Windows version going faster and being more stable as well as producing a Linux version so it really doesn't seem to be a hard sell to get tell devs they should port their games.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ste...e-3,24388.html

"If you were wondering what Nvidia was unveiling soon that wasn't a video card, this is it. They're the first choice for Steam Box hardware. (We even set it up so that it rains on AMD's video card announcement, kek). Expect extremely good Linux drivers from them over the next few months. AMD is… hesitant to comment.

If that statement is by an actual Valve employee,then sorry I am out,and I have a GTX660.

What is the point,when a Windows license will give you years of usage for around 70 quid(you can still run DX11 games on Vista which is 7 years old for example),and simply has better hardware support?? Windows 7 and Windows 8 were dirt cheap at launch. People spend way more on hardware over 5 to 7 years than the OS they use.

I want hardware choice in my DIY builds,which is the main reason I do them,not a Hobsons choice,which ends up potentially costing me more.

[DanceswithUnix]

Calm down Cat, you must be getting stressed to post that in two threads.

Have you read the Valve employee handbook? Google for it, they seem to take hiring people very seriously and the rant from this anonymous person doesn't fit that sort of culture.

Edit to add: Do adults use "kek"?

[kalniel]

AMD is… hesitant to comment.

They didn't think that one through...

So what’s on AMD’s plate for tomorrow? Hardware aside, according to Raja we can expect news on Eyefinity, Crossfire, and Linux driver support.
..
We’re told that tomorrow’s announcement [from AMD] will make Linux users/developers especially excited

[DanceswithUnix]

They didn't think that one through...

Thanks, I hadn't seen that on Anandtech. It is what I was expecting (they must have known this was coming for ages) but then we have heard before that they were fixing their Linux drivers. I will watch with hope, though I won't sell my Nvidia card just yet.

For those who don't know what the fuss is about here, the AMD drivers under Linux are slow compared to under Windows by a large margin.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...ubuntu13&num=2

Edit to add: Nvidia have for many years used the same driver on Windows and Linux, so performance is very similar.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag..._geforce&num=4

[DanceswithUnix]

So, this is the Nvidia announcement. Nvidia will probably at some point supply more information to open source driver writers. They have started with information that is mostly already known.

Warning, contains a big picture at the top of Linus Torvolds flipping the bird to Nvidia. Might be safe for your work, might not.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...source-driver/

[crossy]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ste...e-3,24388.html

Originally Posted by supposed Steam employee
"If you were wondering what Nvidia was unveiling soon that wasn't a video card, this is it. They're the first choice for Steam Box hardware. (We even set it up so that it rains on AMD's video card announcement, kek). Expect extremely good Linux drivers from them over the next few months. AMD is… hesitant to comment.

If that statement is by an actual Valve employee,then sorry I am out,and I have a GTX660. ...
I want hardware choice in my DIY builds,which is the main reason I do them,not a Hobsons choice,which ends up potentially costing me more.

Hmm, I'm very doubtful that this supposed Valve employee's quote is the genuine article. Aprt from the fact that's it's posted as Anonymous on 4chan, it's not consistent. Plus I cannot see any reason why Valve - who it's claimed want to be able to use AMD graphics as well - would turn around and do something calculated to p off the very folks that they need cooperation from.

And if they use NVidia as the reference design then big deal - as long as they're not making it a "green team only" party, then choosing NVidia as the reference surely can only act as a incentive for AMD to get their ... effluent ... together and get their poor drivers for Linux improved.

I was surprised by the announcement, thought Valve would support Ubuntu rather than create their own OS. Perhaps creating their own OS is better because they can take out unnecessary things and ensure that everything a gamer needs just works which would make computer gaming a lot better. We'll see what happens but I am interested in the OS for my own use.

Not a Netflix user, so I'll take your word about the Silverlight stuff (although swapping it out for a nice standard HTML5 interface makes a lot of sense). Last time I saw anything about the basis of SteamOS - Ubuntu WAS the base layer, but Valve wanted to strip out all the unecessary cruft (like Unity and the Ubuntu Software Centre). Makes sense to do this in my opinion (although perhaps a Debian base would have been "cleaner") since it's not as if it's a novel approach - Mint, Bodhi, Zorin, Lubuntu, etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

NVidia saying they have been helping with tuning for SteamOS.

Interesting that they talk about helping to optimise controller latency. That only makes sense to me if they had involvement in the controller. How much does Shield cost?

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2013/09...r-living-room/

[Chadders87]

If O is SteamOS, [O] is SteamOS in a Box aka SteamBox, I'd guess O + O is SteamOS talking to other SteamOS devices and a more detailed announcment arround the future of Steam Streaming.