1st countdown came to an end! Valve announced the Steam OS

[obsidian1200]

I'm reserving judgement until I see exactly what titles are going to be supported. I'm assuming all Linux-compatible titles, but I don't think they've been specific enough about windows/mac titles for me to make a judgement call. I know they said you need a mac/windows computer to stream some games, but I'd like to know which ones. If all Windows games need to be streamed to SteamOS, I don't see the point of it aside from saving the cost of an OS for gaming computers :\

[ianh83]

Yes, you are going to really enjoy those EA and Ubisoft games that require Origin and Uplay. Hours of fun.

 

Much better off without shitty Uplay/Origin. I hope everyone eventually leaves for SteamOS; then Uplay, Origin and Windows can become a distant memory of the darker days of gaming.

 

The bottom line is an open source gaming OS would be better for all of us. Who would actually choose to stick with an expensive proprietary OS which isn't optimized for gaming over a secure, opensource, game-optimized OS? That's what Valve is promising and if you don't believe they can deliver, at the very least you should be praying they somehow manage it as it would be good for everyone who loves games if valve succeed. Talking it down makes absolutely no sense.

 

It's not bad... But I think I'd prefer a Windows-based HTPC in order to get access to all of my content rather than just games. I don't really see anybody giving up Windows for this, and unless they have media streaming and a GOOD web browser built in or available for free I don't see how it would be even equally good as hooking your computer to your TV directly.

 

People need to understand SteamOS will still be linux. You will have the choice of chome (chromium) or firefox, you will have all the great media apps available for linux such as VLC, you'll have tighter security, as well as free office software, free software for image editing, audio editing, video editing, file conversion, desktop publishing etc., plus much more.

 

Linux will be better than windows (it already is in most ways)

[DirkaFat]

Much better off without shitty Uplay/Origin. I hope everyone eventually leaves for SteamOS; then Uplay, Origin and Windows can become a distant memory of the darker days of gaming.

 

The bottom line is an open source gaming OS would be better for all of us. Who would actually choose to stick with an expensive proprietary OS which isn't optimized for gaming over a secure, opensource, game-optimized OS? That's what Valve is promising and if you don't believe they can deliver, at the very least you should be praying they somehow manage it as it would be good for everyone who loves games if valve succeed. Talking it down makes absolutely no sense.

 

 

People need to understand SteamOS will still be linux. You will have the choice of chome (chromium) or firefox, you will have all the great media apps available for linux such as VLC, you'll have tighter security, as well as free office software, free software for image editing, audio editing, video editing, file conversion, desktop publishing etc., plus much more.

 

Linux will be better than windows (it already is in most ways)

What's so bad about origin?

[totjup5]

With the streaming I no longer need an nvidia shield. I can just stream to my laptop.

[LAwLz]

With "alot of People" I mean alot of PC gamers that already use Steam on daily bases so about 5-10 million People World Wide.

No, a lot (it's two words by the way) of those will not switch. Hell, most people who use Steam are very clueless and would never even dream of reinstalling a new OS.

 

About the bit-tech article, I got a few issues with it:

 

 

'It's funny,' says AMD's worldwide developer relations manager of its GPU division, Richard Huddy. 'We often have at least ten times as much horsepower as an Xbox 360 or a PS3 in a high-end graphics card, yet it's very clear that the games don't look ten times as good.

That's because of the diminishing return. Here is a good example of this:

 

Another issue I got with the article is that it acts as you need to use DirectX or other APIs to make games. You don't. You can "program directly to the hardware" if you want. The reason people don't do that is because it's extremely hard (at least on PCs, oh and consoles do in fact use API very often) and much more time consuming than using already made API. You also have to take into consideration that without APIs (which you will still need on SteamOS) you would have to program the game to run on specific hardware. Not sure if you remember how games used to be, but when I grew up it was very common that before you started the game you had to select what kind of hardware you had. If your hardware wasn't on the list then you might not get sound, or you might not get graphics, or your input might not work. It works for consoles because you know what hardware it will run on.

Developers doesn't even use all the features DirectX offers, because implementing them are time consuming. Now imagine if they had to spend 10 times as much time just to implement something, and then they had to adjust that so that it works on let's say 100 different computers. Making games would suddenly require maybe 100 times as long time, or games would go back to "only compatible with X and Y graphics cards, nothing else works!"

 

Even if you removed the Direct3D and OpenGL APIs from games, you still have use the GPU driver APIs (in two stages in fact), and the context queue will vary from system to system (how fast it gets filled and emptied)

 

 

I am by no means an expert in programming (only knows a bit of C and C#) but to me that article sounds like a lot of bollocks. Seems like a lot of people in the comments agrees:

 

I hate to be the voice of doom once more, but this article contains more bovine excrement than a particularly successful manure farm. Please, for instance, reconcile "getting the API out of the way" with "virtualizing GPU access."

Possibly there is a grain of sense under it all somewhere, but I can't shift the impression that this was created by two people (a PR guy and a journo), neither of whom really have a low-level understanding about how any of this works.

 

 

Programming direct-to-metal is only feasible when there are limited hardware configurations to consider (i.e: consoles/iphones/ipods etc) and/or a large enough market for each to make it profitable. When you have to account for hundreds of different possible options the development time and therefore costs become prohibitive. This also applies to patches etc, and if you happen to upgrade to a newer card. you're up the creek without a paddle.

BAD idea from someone who ought to know better.

 

 

What a load of bullshit. Seriously.

I definitely see the plus side of getting rid of all APIs and coding direct to metal, but does this AMD guy even live in this world? Does he even see the current state of gaming? Developers can't even be arsed using the API to achieve greater things in PC games, because the consoles are just so much easier. Now he expects them to code for every possible graphics card out there? Is he nuts?

I'm all for anything that gets me more value for money out of my hardware, but I really don't see this happening any time soon, at least not for major game releases where a dev is expected to have the game working on every possible configuration.

 

 

Sorry if I am all over the place in my post. It's really really late and I basically just wrote down whatever I thought of. My post is, you can't get rid of APIs in SteamOS, because it would either require a huge amount of work and it would only work on a very very small amount of hardware. The reason why it works on consoles are because they use the same hardware in all systems. Even when they do some developers decide to use DirectX and OpenGL for their games, because it's a lot easier (the X in Xbox comes from DirectX).

[dalekphalm]

I'm very intrigued.

 

What I'd like to see is SteamOS with BigPicture interface, plus Plex Media Center for Linux integration. Hopefully it'll have good IR Remote Control support, which will make it quite the Media Center solution.

[rashdanml]

The Free software are mostly (that means, not all) junk, to be honest. But that is my opinion.

Many open source projects, tries to please everyone, so they have no focus. 

Focus isn't necessarily a good thing. The issue with focus results in more programs doing separate things - which clutters up the desktop space and requires developers to figure out how to interface between the two. Combining tasks into a single application makes sense - and you'd be surprised how many free and open source software actually deliver a perfect unified experience. Blender is a solid example and I'm certain I can look up many more productivity tools that are along the same lines. 

[Humbug]

Yes, you are going to really enjoy those EA and Ubisoft games that require Origin and Uplay. Hours of fun.

EA and ubisoft can release Linux versions of origin and uplay which would run on this. Along with the games. They won't be locked out, it's still a pc. Although valve needs to convince them that it's worthwhile.

[Kamil]

People need to understand SteamOS will still be linux. You will have the choice of chome (chromium) or firefox, you will have all the great media apps available for linux such as VLC, you'll have tighter security, as well as free office software, free software for image editing, audio editing, video editing, file conversion, desktop publishing etc., plus much more.

 

Linux will be better than windows (it already is in most ways)

 

Do you KNOW that? Valve's announcement is just that it's BASED on Linux, which doesn't make it any more likely to run a given Linux application than Android is.

 

Now, it's POSSIBLE that SteamOS will be compatible right off the install with the things available for any given build of Linux (I'm no expert, but I believe that even within things which are all still considered "Linux" the same programs can't necessarily run on all of them) but there's not guarantee of that. Unless I'm missing something and there's an announcement somewhere that SteamOS is just a skin on Ubuntu.

[jrfox87]

This all sounds great and everything, but I'm not convinced this will get enough traction and really take off. And even if it did, I think it would at best result in a war against Microsoft. I think that'd turn out great for us, but I'm not sure it would turn out that well for Valve.

[LAwLz]

My biggest issue with SteamOS is why would anyone use it? If you are going to stream games from your Windows PC (since barely any games are compatible with GNU/Linux), why not just use Windows? It would have higher quality graphics, less input lag and higher performance (compared to streaming).

[Rekx]

As fredy said. This OS wont be a full OS exspiriense like Windows or Ubuntu. But hey its ment for a mini pc in the living room and not you're dekstop gaming pc.

 

This is awesome for mini itx pc in the living room not you're everyday pc. 

[madcow]

SteamOS will likely support whatever steam for Linux currently supports which probably isn't enough to keep hardcore gamers interested. That being said it has to start somewhere and I think Valve has been making great progress. I do hope this succeeds.

 

I'm not a hardcore gamer so this is very interesting to me

 

I'm most curious about the streaming feature. I'm a regular Linux user but I haven't heard of any software that can stream games from win/mac to Linux. At least not very well. I'm wondering if it is something Valve developed. I want to eventually try combining this with GPU virtulization (passthrough) to set up a Windows or OSX gaming VM with a SteamOS front end.

 

I will be trying steamos on my HTPC.

[ttam]

Everyone is trying to find fault with SteamOS. I say stop being annoying and let the damn company that has more experience in this than all of us combined multiplied by 99999999999999 and multiplied by 9287349827394. Yeah. That freaking much more experience and knowledge. They are doing it for a reason. 

 

Would be nice to see a thread where someone doesn't try to nit pick every freaking thing.

[TheProfosist]

So am I the only person who isnt suprised at all with the direction they went with this? Also I really dont necessarily see it as a step forward especially for PC gaming specificaly. What I do see it as is Valve trying to grab console market share and make a big load of cash, or is that just me?

[TheProfosist]

My biggest issue with SteamOS is why would anyone use it? If you are going to stream games from your Windows PC (since barely any games are compatible with GNU/Linux), why not just use Windows? It would have higher quality graphics, less input lag and higher performance (compared to streaming).

Who would use it you ask? People who would normally play on a console. As for the streaming feature I really dont get it one bit because the you have to have a gaming PC and a Steam Box or PC running Steam OS. If you played your PC on the TV most of the time youd just have it hooked up to it. Most multiplayer games that can be played by the multiple people on the same screen on PC are usualy not intensive and can probably played directly on the steam box. The other thing is that the people who would move from consoles to this probably wouldnt have a PC much better than the steam box if it is better. I think they through that feature in so it might get the same attention as the nvidia shield.

 

The last this I though of is I really dont know how many people they are going to get to move from consoles and if they do how long theyll stay. The reason I say this is that even though PC gaming has become much easier in recent years it is by no means as easy as just poping a disk in or downloading a game then starting to play. This is especially the case when problems start to arise. I really wonder how Valve is going to handle this with Steam OS without locking it down to be nothing shy of a console.

[TheProfosist]

Another thing I thought of is this may actually lower the quality of games depending on the requirements of Steam OS. Just like a F2P game games compatible with Steam OS would be made to be able to be run on the minimum requirements decently in order to get the most money out of the broadest audiance.

[Humbug]

So Gabe Newell goes back to his roots. He started his career as a programmer writing code at Microsoft for the early versions of Windows. Now he's back working on operating systems.

 

Do you KNOW that? Valve's announcement is just that it's BASED on Linux, which doesn't make it any more likely to run a given Linux application than Android is.

Valve is not stupid enough to break compatibility with Ubuntu etc, and they are not stupid enough to anger the Linux diehards... They also spent a lot of manhours porting their games over to existing Linux distros. They wouldn't have done all of that for nothing. Also Linux has a huge ecosystem of software applications for all kinds of purposes, and Valve needs all that to convince people to use their OS.

 

Let me quote one of the few independent people who has actually worked with SteamOS

Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin, said, "With all due respect to the others, which I love, this could be the best Linux distribution yet." Zemlin added, "The gaming industry has often been a driver of innovation around computing performance and this is a huge win for Linux."

http://www.zdnet.com/steamos-the-linux-for-games-is-coming-7000021059/

[WereCat]

I found this image with some forum thread. Im not sure how much legit it is but here it is http://i.imgur.com/pqqyicR.png

 

Last message box ... HL3?

[Humbug]

So am I the only person who isnt suprised at all with the direction they went with this? Also I really dont necessarily see it as a step forward especially for PC gaming specificaly. What I do see it as is Valve trying to grab console market share and make a big load of cash, or is that just me?

How is this not a good thing? The current segregation of PCs in the bedroom, and consoles in the living room; is a very artificial segregation.

This move would be bad if Valve does it in a way that cuts out competition. But so far they don't seem to be doing that (and they would fail if they tried to).

By the looks of it other publishers using stuff like origin will be free to sell games on steamos without a single cent going to valve. This is a good thing because it expands PC into the living room while ensuring the PC remains a more open platform than consoles.

[Humbug]

I found this image with some forum thread. Im not sure how much legit it is but here it is http://i.imgur.com/pqqyicR.png

 

Last message box ... HL3?

LOL, that's pretty funny, whether it's legit or not. Maybe fake, or some real Valve employee who has a lot of anger pent up.

[Humbug]

delete this post

[TheProfosist]

How is this not a good thing? The current segregation of PCs in the bedroom, and consoles in the living room; is a very artificial segregation.

This move would be bad if Valve does it in a way that cuts out competition. But so far they don't seem to be doing that (and they would fail if they tried to).

By the looks of it other publishers using stuff like origin will be free to sell games on steamos without a single cent going to valve. This is a good thing because it expands PC into the living room while ensuring the PC remains a more open platform than consoles.

Please read the two posts I made after the one you quoted as they cover an answer to this.

[rashdanml]

Another thing I thought of is this may actually lower the quality of games depending on the requirements of Steam OS. Just like a F2P game games compatible with Steam OS would be made to be able to be run on the minimum requirements decently in order to get the most money out of the broadest audiance.

 

You missed the part where AAA titles are going to be on SteamOS as early as 2014. The requirements would be game dependent, much like it already is with a Windows desktop. The difference is, you can build your own machine and put SteamOS on it, as opposed to just buying a Steambox with SteamOS on it. Since SteamOS is free, just about anyone can develop a commercial hardware solution. 

 

As for the streaming issue - a large number of games are already compatible with Linux (Valve said something along the lines of 200). Future AAA titles will come to Linux as part of the release. Older AAA titles may or may not get ported (Metro Last Light will be, Metro 2033 may be), depending on the complexity of the port. In-house streaming is a way around that as a temporary solution until such time as older games get successfully ported to Linux/SteamOS. 

[zombiepixel]

build a gaming computer just got way cheaper.  B)