SteamOS has a minor update to test the waters before a bigger update

Quoting: Whitewolfe80Oh i agree I also dont believe the ones that dual boot to play hl3 will stick around once hl3 gets boring it would take a sustained program of platform exclusives to keep people on linux.

I'd say it's fine if they don't stay on Linux. Just getting hundreds of thousands of people to hear about Linux and some of them to try it out first hand, no matter the reasons or for how long, is good publicity. There are countless people in the world who would be interested in something like Linux but have no idea that it exists or haven't really been shown what it is, so they stick to what they know. Anything that increases awareness at a large scale and puts an open OS in people's hands is a step in the right direction.

Case in point: I'd been mindlessly using Windows all my life because, well, that's what you do with a computer, right (unless you want a Mac as a status symbol)? At some point my uncle showed me Ubuntu, which he happened to be trying out at the time, and gave me a live CD after extolling some of the things it did that Windows didn't (he was particularly enthusiastic about the desktop cube, but I don't remember the rest). I gave it a shot, but it didn't really stick. But later on I started dual booting it, probably around the time XP was reaching end of life. Then it became my main OS and I tried out other distros. Then I deleted my Windows partition.

In short: it's a process, and anything that gets people started on that process is a win in my book.


Last edited by Salvatos on 10 July 2018 at 4:36 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestThink $5 million vs. $100 million.
Present that to a board of directors and guess which one they will choose.

That depends on the type of company: If it is a public company like EA or Ubisoft, maybe you are right, but if it is a private company like Valve, the owner make the decisions...
GabeN has a fortune of about 2000 million dollars, according to Forbes... With that money you can fund a lot of AAA Linux games..

The problem here is that GabeN is not a linuxian; linux is just a plan B in case of microsoft implement the Windows store as a mandatory requisite for to install software on windows 10.

Quoting: skinnyrafOr even less intrusive, yet efficient idea: Linux-exclusive early access :)

And Hidden Steam achievements for play the game entirely on Linux or mac...
The army of obsessive achievement hunters will install Linux and play the game on it just for the get the achievement.. they will back to windows, but at least they gave Linux a try.

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoAnd Hidden Steam achievements for play the game entirely on Linux or mac...
The army of obsessive achievement hunters will install Linux and play the game on it just for the get the achievement.. they will back to windows, but at least they gave Linux a try.

This would be a cool move.


Last edited by jens on 10 July 2018 at 5:37 pm UTC

Quoting: jens

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoAnd Hidden Steam achievements for play the game entirely on Linux or mac...
The army of obsessive achievement hunters will install Linux and play the game on it just for the get the achievement.. they will back to windows, but at least they gave Linux a try.

This would be a cool move.

Well, only cool in the direction favouring Linux. Imagine if there were achievements in place if you played on Windows and Mac. So you'd have to play on all 3 to get 100% - Not something I'd favour.

Quoting: g000h

Quoting: jens

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoAnd Hidden Steam achievements for play the game entirely on Linux or mac...
The army of obsessive achievement hunters will install Linux and play the game on it just for the get the achievement.. they will back to windows, but at least they gave Linux a try.

This would be a cool move.

Well, only cool in the direction favouring Linux. Imagine if there were achievements in place if you played on Windows and Mac. So you'd have to play on all 3 to get 100% - Not something I'd favour.

It could get some people out of their conform zone and let them try something different. Of course this could work in favor of Mac and Windows too, but I'm confident enough about Linux that at least some people would visit Linux more often after a slight push into the very first steps to get to know Linux.

Quoting: YaroKasearI like the sound of major updates. Does this mean major updates to Steam for Linux itself or ONLY Steam OS?

I won't lie, I kind of feel like Steam OS should have been Arch-based from the beginning. Debian's nice and stable and everything but even when it has a new major release its kernels tend to be on the old side. Not a good option for a gaming-centric Linux distribution that could be running on computers on the leading edge of hardware. Does Nouveau even properly support a GTX 1080 Ti yet? I still see slightly-aged Linux distributions fail to initialize KMS properly on a GTX 1080 with Nouveau.

I know I'd end up using the proprietary driver, but until its installed you're at the mercy of the limited support of Nouveau. And who knows if you're using a very new motherboard? A lot of the sound chipsets on new gaming motherboards today are not your typical Realtek HDA chips which have been supported for a dog's age but are often stuff like Creative X-Fi.

Had Steam OS been based on Arch Linux we'd have been able to pretty confidently assure ourselves up-to-date hardware support pretty much every time Steam OS would update.

Does Steam OS backport new kernels? I don't see how it'd get the best gaming performance out of an old kernel.

Could you imagine the support nightmares of using Arch as a base for a commercial product? Yes, Debian/SteamOS both backport kernels. Probably one of the reasons they went with Debian instead of Ubuntu. That and a few year life cycle vs 6 month (or 2 year for LTS Ubuntu). Really surprised though that SteamOS hasn't become Stretch based yet. Maybe they're just waiting for Buster? Looks like Buster is estimated to hit freeze in Feb of 2019, So it's probably about 8-10 months away? Anyhow, Stretch comes with 4.9, but has backports for 4.16. But then again being 'Debian based' doesn't mean SteamOS can't just roll their own kernel, from what I understand they do that anyhow. Using Debian as your base only entails the package availability and core stability and security support.

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: TheRiddickMost steam machines where upgradable in every respect except for the Motherboard. It would be nice if they went with a ITX standard however!

It's pretty simple --

$260 -- Dan a4 SFX

Yes I know about those cases, BUT JEBUS 260USD for a case? common man, that is seizure inducing expensive!

Anyway I have a Silverstone FT03-MINI case (the smaller one), the biggest issue is the GPU fan is not suited for it and I don't want a vacuum blower style fan so will be upgrading the 1080ti mini card with a GPU waterblock soon. (there is a way to mount a 140mm radiator loop in it, requires some minor modifications)

I was on the fence about doing that because the waterloop upgrade will cost $300 alone and the waterblock will likely be throw away once new generation hardware comes out.

GOOD news is that next gen hardware that is worth a damn is still close to a year away, and I don't think anything Volta is worth it. Will likely wait for a Vega 128 or the sun to explode, whichever.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 13 July 2018 at 11:21 pm UTC

Quoting: TheRiddick

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: TheRiddickMost steam machines where upgradable in every respect except for the Motherboard. It would be nice if they went with a ITX standard however!

It's pretty simple --

$260 -- Dan a4 SFX

Yes I know about those cases, BUT JEBUS 260USD for a case? common man, that is seizure inducing expensive!

Anyway I have a Silverstone FT03-MINI case (the smaller one), the biggest issue is the GPU fan is not suited for it and I don't want a vacuum blower style fan so will be upgrading the 1080ti mini card with a GPU waterblock soon. (there is a way to mount a 140mm radiator loop in it, requires some minor modifications)

I was on the fence about doing that because the waterloop upgrade will cost $300 alone and the waterblock will likely be throw away once new generation hardware comes out.

GOOD news is that next gen hardware that is worth a damn is still close to a year away, and I don't think anything Volta is worth it. Will likely wait for a Vega 128 or the sun to explode, whichever.

This was the same reasons I gave anyone that the Ataribox or Steam Machine should be a viable thing, because just 'build your own' Linux box to sit under a TV is NOT easy, nor cheap. You have to take into account cooling / noise, get special cases, hopefully you can find a board powerful enough, etc. Unless you're just going to slap a full tower that sits on it's side (or a 'desktop' system, it's not easy to find that happy middle of performance vs size vs noise.

Hell, even the PS4 is a loud whiny beast when you're playing anything intensive on it. They supposedly fixed some of that with the Pro and even more so on the Slim at least.

Allot of those problems go away when you start integrating everything into a slim motherboard all-in-one package.