Ars Technica are usually quite interesting, but this latest SteamOS post bugged me a bit. The author tried out a Zotac's SN970 and had an issue with it.
Honestly, it sounds like he got sent a duff unit to review by Zotac, or his TV has a setting somewhere for low resolution inputs which is messing with the HDMI. The author didn't even mention those could be an issue either, which is a little alarming for a writer on such a well known and respected website.
The whole issue is this:
QuoteThe graphics, however, were interlaced, with distracting artefacts that occurred every time I moved the mouse pointer with the Steam Controller.
For which the article gained the headline "Hey, Valve: What’s the point of Steam OS?". So the author is slamming an entire ecosystem due to issues with this one unit and a 4K monitor, monitors with that resolution aren't even close to being normal right now.
QuoteThat, however, was easier said than done. Trying to type using the Steam Controller and the on-screen keyboard with its weird split layout is difficult enough at the best of times, but the visual artefacts made it nigh on impossible. I gave up and fetched a USB keyboard and mouse from the cupboard.
I get the visual issues are annoying, but how did he not realise you can use the stick normally to select letters, like you can on the Xbox, WiiU and PS4?
I do hope they try it with a more standard monitor or TV, and be honest about their results with it then. It's one thing to slam something, it's another to try it properly and admit if you're wrong, or show if the unit itself is in fact broken.
The comments on the article are also not in the authors favour by the looks of it.
The author also tweeted out:
QuoteFYI: do not fuck with Linux guys. And I thought games was tough.
I won't link to him directly, or comment on that as we all know my thoughts on people's silly remarks by now.
Update:
As I suspected, a hardware issue as pointed out by a comment on their website.
QuoteTo bang on the "try a different monitor" issue, looks like the monitor he was using has known issues with hdmi connections and requires 2 hdmi cables to display at 4k. That's hardly a mainstream situation. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/asus-pq321q-4k-monitor-review,3698-4.html
If only the author of the article at Ars did a bit of research. The monitor is technically two monitors stitched together, so it's not surprising it has issues. Even with one cable for below 60HZ and 1080p it's not a normal monitor, and nothing close to what most people will be using. There's 4K, and then there's a 4K monitor that's actually two together. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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lucifertdark Jan 29, 2016
just because someone has a Journalism degree doesn't mean they know what they're talking about when it comes to SteamOS or Steam Machines.
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Quoting: Mountain ManWhat's happened to the tech industry? Used to be that technological advances like a dedicated Linux-based gaming OS would have been celebrated, and tech journalists would have eagerly dug into it to explore all the new possibilities. These days, anything that challenges the status quo is ridiculed instead.
It's a shame.
Well you sort of answered your own question. These new 'reviewers' are journalists in the loosest possible sense, basic mouth pieces with no prior training or knowledge, not techsperts or even remotely interested in doing anything other than being self entitled. If you look to established media often at the very least they have media training / degrees and then research into their fields ( politics, science etc.. ) talking with real people who work in those areas, the internet lowered the bar so far down that anyone can publish a crap piece and get views.
The problem with the millennial 'smart everything' generation way of thinking is that nobody actually has to be smart or think. The point was to introduce technology to the masses that you didn’t need a computer science degree to understand, which is all fine and good but now some in this demographic think they have an automatic right to an opinion on how it works or should work .. even when they didn’t bother to learn the basics of how to get something to work in the first place.
Ars should be fairly ashamed. Rep damaged.
Last edited by on 29 January 2016 at 2:18 pm UTC
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Just got Aspyr's GameAgent newsletter (http://blog.gameagent.com/weekly-roundup-questioning-steam-os/, and they link to that story with the only comment
Quoting: GameAgentZotac’s SN970 is great hardware, but Valve needs to take a long hard look at Steam OS.Admittedly, GameAgent describes itself as a "Mac gaming hub", but since they sell Linux games and Aspyr ports games to Linux, I would not have expected them to just buy into that Ars Technica article.
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Quoting: ricki42Just got Aspyr's GameAgent newsletter (http://blog.gameagent.com/weekly-roundup-questioning-steam-os/, and they link to that story with the only comment
Quoting: GameAgentZotac’s SN970 is great hardware, but Valve needs to take a long hard look at Steam OS.Admittedly, GameAgent describes itself as a "Mac gaming hub", but since they sell Linux games and Aspyr ports games to Linux, I would not have expected them to just buy into that Ars Technica article.
Wow, yeah that's a shame they just rolled with that, bit surprised.
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Quoting: KeyrockThis doesn't surprise me one bit. This is the latest in a string of articles from Ars centered around gaming where it was readily apparent the person writing said article was woefully underqualified/underinformed and they've been dipping into click-bait territory with their article titles.
Dude, I'll tell you one thing, you've got the most legitimately disturbing user icon I've seen in a while. a weird looking man-ape with a thick black mane and a 1980's "brick" cell phone, what the f******... ;-) It gets your attention though!
This ars article is a joke. I'm on a low end Alienware Steam Machine, the i3, with SteamOS as my main distro for months now. After running the Professor Kaos scripts that add the full Debian repos and a few other hacks, SteamOS makes a fine Linux gaming desktop OS. There's not a single app that I can run in Ubuntu that hasn't also loaded just fine in SteamOS. But I'm on a 1080p monitor, maybe there are issues with 4K, since I've never owned a 4K monitor yet, I wouldn't know.
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Crazy Penguin Jan 30, 2016
Quoting: TheBossQuoting: ricki42Just got Aspyr's GameAgent newsletter (http://blog.gameagent.com/weekly-roundup-questioning-steam-os/, and they link to that story with the only comment
Quoting: GameAgentZotac’s SN970 is great hardware, but Valve needs to take a long hard look at Steam OS.Admittedly, GameAgent describes itself as a "Mac gaming hub", but since they sell Linux games and Aspyr ports games to Linux, I would not have expected them to just buy into that Ars Technica article.
Wow, yeah that's a shame they just rolled with that, bit surprised.
Is it? IMHO GameAgent is right. SteamOS still needs lot of work to be done. At its current state it's a shame what Valve delivers. Zotac should be ashamed too. For bundeling such an great hardware with such a crap, which isn't even optimized for it.
Is is that complicated to build an optimized kernel for my hardware? IS IT? No, it is not! But did they care? No, they just delivered that ugly fat und slow kernel from SteamOS. There are many bugs and other annoyances too. After a week I kicked that **** from the drive and replaced it with a normal linux distribution including newest drivers and my own kernel. Which gave it a "little" extra boost xD It is like releasing a brake.
SteamOS is on its way, but Valve has still a lot to do.
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Quoting: Crazy PenguinIs it? IMHO GameAgent is right. SteamOS still needs lot of work to be done. At its current state it's a shame what Valve delivers. Zotac should be ashamed too. For bundeling such an great hardware with such a crap, which isn't even optimized for it.
Is is that complicated to build an optimized kernel for my hardware? IS IT? No, it is not! But did they care? No, they just delivered that ugly fat und slow kernel from SteamOS. There are many bugs and other annoyances too. After a week I kicked that **** from the drive and replaced it with a normal linux distribution including newest drivers and my own kernel. Which gave it a "little" extra boost xD It is like releasing a brake.
SteamOS is on its way, but Valve has still a lot to do.
The problem isn't that they are linking to an article that is critical of SteamOS or Steam Machines, unbiased reviews and constructive criticism are generally a good thing. The issue is that the article neither, it's bashing SteamOS for a problem that's caused by the author's monitor and is in no way a general SteamOS problem. The folks at Aspyr really should know that it is very much possible to connect a Steam Machine to a monitor and use it to play games, so I would have expected them to either add a comment explaining the problems with the article, or, preferably, just not link to an obviously flawed article.
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StianTheDark Feb 4, 2016
Never had any hopes for SteamOS. Never had any hopes for Steam.
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