Let's try SteamOS

[porina]

I haven't had enough sleep... it's getting late... I should move to bed... I know, let's build a box to try SteamOS! Why does my brain work like that?

 

I've got an old i3-4150T with stock Intel cooler, MSI H81M-P33, 8GB ram currently inactive as it was too noisy in the case it was in. So just moved it to a slightly nicer case, exhumed a 1TB hard disk from a long unused USB caddy, and am getting the install USB drive ready now. Initially I'll just use the built in Intel graphics. I know, it'll suck, but will look at other GPUs later as I'm not sure I have anything faster enough spare that wont kill the PSU. Intel graphics might be slow, but it is still good enough for undemanding or older games.

 

Oh, the PSU is an Enermax. Anyone remember them? Don't seem to hear much from them now, but their website still exists. On the PSU there's a warranty sticker with a date on it. 2004! Is the PSU 12 years old? Well, it has a 4 pin power connector for the mobo so that's good. The main connector is 20 pin, not 24 pin but it still seems to work ok in the mobo (the extra 4 pins are for more power). There's plenty of molex connectors but no SATA. Was SATA even around then?

[LLOYD-AF]

Let me know how it goes, Ive been thinking of using it on my spare pc.

[porina]

Had a bit of trouble booting from install USB flash drive at first. After a quick google, I tried disabling legacy boot support and that did it. I selected the "Automated install" which is supposed to do everything for you.

 

The installer stopped on a screen not long later. It said it was started in UEFI mode, but there might be legacy OS on HD, and there were some options on trying to keep compatibility or nuking the disk. Nuke please. The SteamOS automated installer intentionally takes the whole drive anyway. And away we go again...

[LLOYD-AF]

The only reason Ive not done it yet is the amount of games supported on steam os is still a lot lower than windows, I wonder if it will ever be equal?

[IsaacDaGrazin]

2 minutes ago, LLOYD-AF said:

The only reason Ive not done it yet is the amount of games supported on steam os is still a lot lower than windows, I wonder if it will ever be equal?

linux is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay lower for some fucking reason linux masterrace and yes, i am back bitches, was moving house no internet for like fucking 3 years

[porina]

Just now, LLOYD-AF said:

The only reason Ive not done it yet is the amount of games supported on steam os is still a lot lower than windows, I wonder if it will ever be equal?

This is in part why I want to try it out... just how many games are on there that work? That I already have that is. I don't have time for what I have, without buying yet more. I have 339 games, of which a large number were from Humble Bundles, so quite a lot of older or simpler titles.

 

Should add at this point, I don't have the official controller, and I hope the cheap copy of xbox controller I have will suffice. Failing that, I don't mind keyboard + mouse.

[LLOYD-AF]

3 minutes ago, porina said:

Should add at this point, I don't have the official controller, and I hope the cheap copy of xbox controller I have will suffice. Failing that, I don't mind keyboard + mouse.

 

We all know the Steam controller is rubbish, I use KB+M or Xbox One controller.

 

Edit : Xbox controller works perfect in big picture mode.

[porina]

The install mostly completed without intervention. I had to plug in a network connection to allow it to update to the latest version of Steam, and I had to initiate a manual reboot after it made an image of the install. I saw it reporting somewhere over 700GB free disk space of the 1TB disk after the install, so are there enough SteamOS compatible games to fill it?

 

Once booted in, I could sign in with my account and look through the list of games I had. It wasn't massive, but it was in some kind of category view. I haven't looked to see if I can change it yet. The list of games wasn't bad but I'm not sure if it was complete as it only showed 3 games per category.

 

Minor problems wise... The monitor on my test setup was an old 1280x1024, so very square. It turns out SteamOS is optimised for widescreen so it only used like 60% of the vertical height. Also the clock is very wrong. Presumably it thinks I'm in a different time zone than I am, and will need to tweak this somewhere.

 

As a quick test I installed Goat Simulator. I could do other things while this downloaded in the background, so I just poked around some of the options and things. When it had finished I started it up. Game defaults were too low fps to use, I'd guess it was in the single digits. Into the game options, I dropped both physics and graphics from high to mid, restarted and... much better. Still no idea what framerate it is running, but at least it was enough now. Resolution at this point was 1280x768 I think, or was it 720? I messed around a bit and got "Involuntary QA" achievement, which is supposed to be awarded if the game crashes. It didn't crash, but I did head-butt an exploding tank just before it awarded it.

 

So, I knew the built in GPU wasn't going to be the best but it may be adequate for 720p at medium settings. I'll install more games on it shortly and give it a bigger workout. I probably should also connect it to my 4k TV... no, I don't expect it to do 4k, but at least I'd have the right aspect ratio.

[LLOYD-AF]

So Steam Os only shows games it can play? it wont show say GTA V but have it greyed out etc?

[KaasKop]

6 minutes ago, LLOYD-AF said:

So Steam Os only shows games it can play? it wont show say GTA V but have it greyed out etc?

By default yes it will do that.

We have an extra category called "SteamOS + Linux" these are the games we can install and if we want to see all of our games we have to select "Games".

As you can see in the screnshot I can see GTA IV but not install it.

 

[porina]

Installing more games onto it now. I was surprised at the long list, until I realised it picked up another steam install on my main PC and was offering to stream games from that. I shut down the PC instance so I was only looking at native SteamOS installs. Still a fair list but much reduced. I'm installing a bunch of random games now.

 

While that's going in the background, I tried the youtube player. Here I found the user interface is broken as far as keyboard+mouse is concerned. It basically shows you a web browser window. I went to click on the search box, and an advert popped up. I couldn't find a way to get from the popup back to the original window. Clicking on the tab buttons didn't do anything. Then after some experimenting, I suspected the mouse point on screen didn't match up with where the OS thought the pointer was. So, broken. I speculate this might be related to me not having a 16:9 display.

 

Another flaw was when I was in the store. I had to scroll down to read more, but every time the graphic at the top of the page changed, it jumped back to the top again.

 

These flaws are disappointing, since it looks like there is quite a lot of effort gone in to give it a polished feel, but I can't but help also see it as a beta product.

[LLOYD-AF]

49 minutes ago, porina said:

 I suspected the mouse point on screen didn't match up with where the OS thought the pointer was. So, broken. I speculate this might be related to me not having a 16:9 display.

 

What are you using? my pc monitor is ultra wide 21:9 so I'm assuming it should be fine, I know big picture works with 21:9 but never tested Steam Os. Windows10 is ok but not perfect.

[porina]

1 minute ago, LLOYD-AF said:

 

What are you using? my pc monitor is ultra wide 21:9 so I'm assuming it should be fine, I know big picture works with 21:9 but never tested Steam Os. Windows10 is ok but not perfect.

1280x1024 (5:4) monitor from long ago.

 

I still haven't bothered to try and connect SteamOS to my TV. On that note, I'll try it now.

[LLOYD-AF]

Just now, porina said:

1280x1024 (5:4) monitor from long ago.

 

I still haven't bothered to try and connect SteamOS to my TV. On that note, I'll try it now.

 

Ha yeah that display will let you down