Steam Link hub?

[LapsedMemory]

Watching Linus' livestream of Hollow Knight, it looked like fun and I bought it.  Since it's controller based, it would be a great game to play on my entertainment center.  

 

I have an Industrial fanless PC with an Atom E3950 and 8GB of RAM that is currently sitting on a shelf with nothing to do, and wondered if this would make a great Steam hub.  I understand it's probably not powerful enough to install SteamOS on it and expect to be playing Control natively or anything, but would this work as a Steam Link box?

 

It's currently got a Windows 10 installation on it, but I thought wiping it and installing Linux with the SteamLink app might give the hardware more of a fighting chance (less OS overhead to deal with).  Or would it be better to try and get SteamOS on it and just stream the games from my PC that are too hungry for the built-in hardware?

 

Anyone have any experience with this?  It would be nice to have some direction before I go down this rabbit hole if there's something in my thought process that clearly won't work.  

[GuiltySpark_]

Yeah, just install steam and login on both it and your gaming PC, ensure game streaming is on on the gaming PC and boom, games should show up on the other PC.

 

If the gaming PC has an Nvidia card, I find Nvidia Gamestream/Sunshine on the gaming PC in conjunction with Moonlight on the remote PC to be a little better performance wise but both work.

[LapsedMemory]

2 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

Yeah, just install steam and login on both it and your gaming PC, ensure game streaming is on on the gaming PC and boom, games should show up on the other PC.

If I install SteamOS on it, will I be able to pick and choose which games are streamed from my desktop and which ones run natively?  I have a fairly large library of arcade/controller type games that would probably run just fine on the fanless PC.  

[GuiltySpark_]

1 minute ago, LapsedMemory said:

If I install SteamOS on it, will I be able to pick and choose which games are streamed from my desktop and which ones run natively?  I have a fairly large library of arcade/controller type games that would probably run just fine on the fanless PC.  

I can't speak to SteamOS, zero experience there. I was just referring to having Steam installed on Windows. You don't need SteamOS to locally stream games, just install it for Windows and is game streaming is enabled on both PC's, the remote PC will show all the gaming PC's installed games. And yes, if you locally install games, they'll both show up. In fact the big green/blue (i can't think of it right now) "Play" button turns to "Stream" if its not a local game.

 

[LapsedMemory]

2 minutes ago, GuiltySpark_ said:

I can't speak to SteamOS, zero experience there. I was just referring to having Steam installed on Windows. You don't need SteamOS to locally stream games, just install it for Windows and is game streaming is enabled on both PC's, the remote PC will show all the gaming PC's installed games. And yes, if you locally install games, they'll both show up. In fact the big green/blue (i can't think of it right now) "Play" button turns to "Stream" if its not a local game.

 

I think this answer has nearly everything I was looking to know.  I'll give it a shot and mark this as the solution if it works.  

 

I would imagine SteamOS works pretty much the same way a normal Linux installation with Steam client would work.  So based on your description, I'll dump SteamOS on it and give it a shot.  Sounds like it won't be a waste of my time.

[SpookyCitrus]

13 minutes ago, LapsedMemory said:

I think this answer has nearly everything I was looking to know.  I'll give it a shot and mark this as the solution if it works.  

 

I would imagine SteamOS works pretty much the same way a normal Linux installation with Steam client would work.  So based on your description, I'll dump SteamOS on it and give it a shot.  Sounds like it won't be a waste of my time.

I have a little experience with SteamOS, the current version at least, the last time I tried it about a month ago is nowhere near what is available on the Steam Decks. AFAIK that version is yet to be released. SteamOS for desktop isn't that great at least it wasn't when I tried it last. I would recommend Windows if all you're trying to do is Steam link or a regular version of Linux that supports proton. I believe both PCs that you want to Steam to link and stream to have to be the same operating system and I have only been able to get it to work between Windows PCs.

[LapsedMemory]

3 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

I have a little experience with SteamOS, the current version at least, the last time I tried it about a month ago is nowhere near what is available on the Steam Decks. AFAIK that version is yet to be released. SteamOS for desktop isn't that great at least it wasn't when I tried it last. I would recommend Windows if all you're trying to do is Steam link or a regular version of Linux that supports proton. I believe both PCs that you want to Steam to link and stream to have to be the same operating system and I have only been able to get it to work between Windows PCs.

Thanks for the heads up.  It would have really sucked if I had gone through all that re-install only to find out I should have kept Windows on it to begin with.