SteamOS Opinions

[x Relentless Xx]

 

SteamOS

 

 

 

Anyone use SteamOS? if so, what are your opinions?

 

Is it smooth?

how functional is it?

how is it compared to windows with games?

 

Im looking to build a LAN Party SteamOS rig and i just want insight about it before i jump on it and find out its not worth it

[bradscoolio]

It's debian with steam big picture as the default desktop environment.... You'll find more functionality with a real install of debian and running steam as a desktop application just as you would with windows.

Don't get me wrong, I like steam os for the idea and the innovation of the linux desktop. Tough, as of it's current release, it's a fucking horrid distribution with and extremely convoluted install process.

 

It's smooth.

it's not very functional at all.

it runs games just as well as windows but only 20% of steams entire catalogue is linux compatible.

[Master Disaster]

It's debian with steam big picture as the default desktop environment.... You'll find more functionality with a real install of debian and running steam as a desktop application just as you would with windows.

Don't get me wrong, I like steam os for the idea and the innovation of the linux desktop. Tough, as of it's current release, it's a fucking horrid distribution with and extremely convoluted install process.

 

It's smooth.

it's not very functional at all.

it runs games just as well as windows but only 20% of steams entire catalogue is linux compatible.

Unless you've got an AMD or Intel GPU in which case don't bother.

[Satlen]

Just install a distro of debian that you actually like and tell it to launch steam on boot. Thats all steam os is.

[Pomfinator]

It's just Debian on the bottom, something like Mint or Ubuntu would do it's job just as well without the weird-ass install process, and will be more friendly to people not accustomed to Linux.

[Humbug]

SteamOS is designed to make computers work as pseudo-consoles. Providing an on-screen big picture mode steam interface which can be navigated with a controller. It will also take care of things like GPU driver updates automatically and give the user an out of the box gaming experience similar to a console despite running on a PC. That is the purpose it serves; to be bundled with Steam Machines. If you want to yes it does allow you to exit Steam and go to the Linux desktop, open a browser, access the terminal  and customize etc... you can do all that since it's not locked down, but that is not it's purpose.

 

Valve clearly states that it is not intended to compete with fully fledged desktop operating systems such as Windows. In the Linux world that is the job of the other desktop Linux distro's such as Ubunutu, Mint, Solydk etc... You can also run steam on those and play all the steamOS games on those since it's all linux.

 

Yes it's smooth and functional once you set it up. But the install process is not designed to be user friendly since it's meant for pre-builts. Also it's still in beta. For a LAN party you want a desktop OS, not a stripped down console OS.

 

With regard to game performance on Linux, Nivida is ok, AMD drivers are an absolute disaster in terms of performance on Linux- they don't seem to care enough; they run at less than half the speed of Windows drivers in modern AAA games such as Mero Redux, Civiilation BE etc...