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Here's something awesome to see, the Valve demo of the HTC Vive on Linux was using Kubuntu, and we have some pictures.
Thanks to Daniel Blair for the pics.
As mentioned before, SteamVR on Linux will use Vulkan and not OpenGL. This is probably one of the main things that held up SteamVR/HTC Vive support on Linux.
I'm really pleased it was shown off, as it now means Linux will stop missing out on this new hardware. It's one less barrier for people wanting to game on Linux.
What's interesting is that they didn't use SteamOS for the demo, what are your thoughts as to why they used Kubuntu?
I imagine it's due to Kubuntu being a more desktop-friendly OS just to "get it done" until support is properly ready in SteamOS. As for Kubuntu itself, probably just developer-choice.
No word yet on when the VR support for Linux will be officially released. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Thanks to Daniel Blair for the pics.
As mentioned before, SteamVR on Linux will use Vulkan and not OpenGL. This is probably one of the main things that held up SteamVR/HTC Vive support on Linux.
I'm really pleased it was shown off, as it now means Linux will stop missing out on this new hardware. It's one less barrier for people wanting to game on Linux.
What's interesting is that they didn't use SteamOS for the demo, what are your thoughts as to why they used Kubuntu?
I imagine it's due to Kubuntu being a more desktop-friendly OS just to "get it done" until support is properly ready in SteamOS. As for Kubuntu itself, probably just developer-choice.
No word yet on when the VR support for Linux will be officially released. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Kubuntu is one of the few distros that delivers a pure KDE, without any customization, as showed in the images.
Yes, it even comes with a Qt browser: Firefox... wait...
Anyway, it probably is Kubuntu, because the *buntus are still considered to be the golden standard, unfortunately.
I don't think Firefox make it unpure, the theme and wallpaper are still untouched :-)
But, what choice did they have? Both Konqueror and Rekonq went MIA a long time ago, and there is no other QT browser well maintained and integrated with KDE, so the best is to stick with Firefox or Chromium.
The Gnome folks have Epiphany, but I wonder how many stick with it instead of Chrome or Firefox.
Last edited by M@GOid on 14 Oct 2016 at 5:22 pm UTC
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Waiting for Vulkan to become stable and widely available makes sense, and its encouraging to see the dev's playing the long game rather then rushing something out. Shows some long term commitment and planning.
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Well, to be fair, we don't even know if it's kubuntu (the tweets aren't from the computer's owner, AFAIK). It could even be that they decided to switch to KDE for their next SteamOS release, who knows?
Kubuntu is one of the few distros that delivers a pure KDE, without any customization, as showed in the images. And as Valve uses Debian as platform for SteamOS and Ubuntu as a target distro, I think is safe to say it is Kubuntu.
Or it could be Neon, Debian, Arch, or a whole host of other distros that have a truly 'pure' KDE desktop. At this point Kubuntu is one of the worst choices for a KDE distro - it is still an entire version behind in Plasma/KDE/QT.
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Waiting for Vulkan to become stable and widely available makes sense, and its encouraging to see the dev's playing the long game rather then rushing something out. Shows some long term commitment and planning.
That is true but they could as well hurry up a bit just to show developers again that they are serious :D But ofc this is not how open-source works... It will catch up eventually and when it does proprietary shit will be a joke for game devs :)
Last edited by MaCroX95 on 14 Oct 2016 at 5:57 pm UTC
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ElectricPrism 14 Oct 2016
Well, to be fair, we don't even know if it's kubuntu (the tweets aren't from the computer's owner, AFAIK). It could even be that they decided to switch to KDE for their next SteamOS release, who knows?
Kubuntu is one of the few distros that delivers a pure KDE, without any customization, as showed in the images. And as Valve uses Debian as platform for SteamOS and Ubuntu as a target distro, I think is safe to say it is Kubuntu.
Or it could be Neon, Debian, Arch, or a whole host of other distros that have a truly 'pure' KDE desktop. At this point Kubuntu is one of the worst choices for a KDE distro - it is still an entire version behind in Plasma/KDE/QT.
Agreed - KDE on Arch is a dream, KDE on Kubuntu is a nightmare. Pacman vs PPA, the thought makes me shiver.
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I don't think they need to use SteamOS for desktop demo. KDE is just fine for that purpose.
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slaapliedje 14 Oct 2016
Actually thinking about it, there are probably more distros that have standard KDE than have weird custom ones (I can really only think of Suse based ones off the top of my head)
Regardless, where is my working SteamVR? Would love for a fully supported Talos Principle in VR! Pretty sure games like Dying Light would make most people yak. But then I can play windlands without spewing.
Regardless, where is my working SteamVR? Would love for a fully supported Talos Principle in VR! Pretty sure games like Dying Light would make most people yak. But then I can play windlands without spewing.
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Really, it doesn't matter too much which distro is being used, as Valve has made accommodations for more universal Linux support with the Steam Runtime to begin with. I doubt that the HTC Vive will have much(if any) distro-specific issues when support for it releases.
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slaapliedje 15 Oct 2016
Really, it doesn't matter too much which distro is being used, as Valve has made accommodations for more universal Linux support with the Steam Runtime to begin with. I doubt that the HTC Vive will have much(if any) distro-specific issues when support for it releases.
That's exactly right. I think it's the little game I think we all play where we try to guess which DE, which Distro, etc is being used in a movie/presentation/demo/etc. I know watching Mr. Robot, I do that a lot.
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BitSpaceDann 15 Oct 2016
So this was obviously super early for a demo. The reason it is on Kubuntu is because it is one of their dev machines. You're not going to run Steam OS on a dev machine unless you're testing specifically that, otherwise any debian based OS is probably fine for general development.
I did ask how close this was to a preview, beta, etc for developers and got the expected "as soon as possible" it does seem to work really nicely although there are some issues with it being run as a second display so they had to grab windows off the Vive's display a few times. Also there is no room setup yet so calibration is manual which is obviously not user friendly.
Since this was not a consumer demo, it was a developer demo I was just happy to see it on Linux.
I did ask how close this was to a preview, beta, etc for developers and got the expected "as soon as possible" it does seem to work really nicely although there are some issues with it being run as a second display so they had to grab windows off the Vive's display a few times. Also there is no room setup yet so calibration is manual which is obviously not user friendly.
Since this was not a consumer demo, it was a developer demo I was just happy to see it on Linux.
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I don't think Firefox make it unpure, the theme and wallpaper are still untouched :-)
But, what choice did they have? Both Konqueror and Rekonq went MIA a long time ago, and there is no other QT browser well maintained and integrated with KDE, so the best is to stick with Firefox or Chromium.
The Gnome folks have Epiphany, but I wonder how many stick with it instead of Chrome or Firefox.
KaOS uses QupZilla. In fact, KaOS has its repositories set up to contain as few GTK applications as possible. If I wanted a pure KDE distro, that's where I'd go.
Not that there's anything wrong with Kubuntu per se (besides being based on Ubuntu, of course).
It's still better to have *a* golden standard than no at all. At least game devs have a fixed system to test against. Otherwise they may have been scared off by the excessive amount of choice.
Yeah but... Fedora. If you want any distro to be standard, go with Fedora, it's backed by a big player (Red Hat, the original big fish in Linux), often set the standards followed by other distros (Pulseaudio, SystemD, Wayland,...), and, most important of all, actually has up-to-date packages. Arch would also be neat, but it's not always super stable and it hasn't got a big player backing it.
Note: I don't run Fedora because I vastly prefer KDE over anything GTK based.
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I don't think Firefox make it unpure, the theme and wallpaper are still untouched :-)
But, what choice did they have? Both Konqueror and Rekonq went MIA a long time ago, and there is no other QT browser well maintained and integrated with KDE, so the best is to stick with Firefox or Chromium.
The Gnome folks have Epiphany, but I wonder how many stick with it instead of Chrome or Firefox.
KaOS uses QupZilla. In fact, KaOS has its repositories set up to contain as few GTK applications as possible. If I wanted a pure KDE distro, that's where I'd go.
Not that there's anything wrong with Kubuntu per se (besides being based on Ubuntu, of course).
It's still better to have *a* golden standard than no at all. At least game devs have a fixed system to test against. Otherwise they may have been scared off by the excessive amount of choice.
Yeah but... Fedora. If you want any distro to be standard, go with Fedora, it's backed by a big player (Red Hat, the original big fish in Linux), often set the standards followed by other distros (Pulseaudio, SystemD, Wayland,...), and, most important of all, actually has up-to-date packages. Arch would also be neat, but it's not always super stable and it hasn't got a big player backing it.
Note: I don't run Fedora because I vastly prefer KDE over anything GTK based.
You can always use a Fedora spin, Fedora KDE
I use the Fedora MATE spin, as I am not at all fond of Gnome3/Unity
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