Despite it still sounding a long way off, the Atari VCS console which will have a Linux-based OS along with the ability to boot another normal Linux distribution is coming along.
As a reminder, what was originally called the Ataribox was renamed the Atari VCS and eventually made it onto IndieGoGo where it raised a little over three million in funding.
In their latest post on Medium, they put out some thoughts from Rob Wyatt, the System Architect for the Atari VCS who previously worked on the Xbox, DirectX, Insomniac Games and more.
The post contains his thoughts on what they're currently doing with the system and some of it's quite interesting. It doesn't really sound like you're going to be able to install Ubuntu or anything directly onto it. Instead, it seems like it will need you to run things from a USB drive:
Something along the lines of: if you plug in a bootable external USB drive our hypervisor will boot from it, otherwise it will boot the internal Atari OS. This keeps both OS’s completely separate and makes supporting multiple OS’s really easy, there is no risk of the internal storage getting corrupted by the other OS.
They will eventually release example code showing exactly how to do this. To get to that stage though, they need to finish their own Atari VCS Linux distribution.
The post goes on to detail how they will support as many "standard APIs" as they can, including OpenGL and Vulkan. However, their actual work still seems quite early on, they even said it's rather "crude" right now. Their current aim, is to get all the Atari stuff to take up no more than 1GB of storage leaving the rest for users. However, they do have audio working via ALSA and apparently OpenGL and Vulkan rendering is already working.
At the end of the post, was this teaser:
What’s next? We want to announce a Linux open source project and encourage our backers, fans and interested parties to help us with something that will actually be part of the Atari VCS operating system. More on that soon.
I wonder what they're up to? Could be interesting. Will keep an eye on it.
I still have a lot of reservations about the Atari VCS but I'm keeping an open mind about it. If it's a hit, that's good for us since to be on it the game would need to support open standards and be little work to get on Ubuntu and other distributions. It's also nice to see them post so openly about what they're doing.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
slaapliedje Nov 23, 2018
Quoting: elmapuli like the idea of the hypervisor, but i still think its an scam.
even if its not, sony will announce ps5 soon, microsoft may already be planing the next xbox and switch just launched, i'm afraid there is no rom for this thing, even if it have, it will not bring many new gamers to the table, we will have the ones who already play on ¹linux + the ²atari fans
¹(wich means we will not receive new games because the install base was not increassed and we will waste money on hardware wich have an cost per unit, instead of games)
²(there arent many anyway)
i think the Intellivision new console has an better proposal than this thing, at least its unique.
I guess it depends on what you consider Atari fans. Certainly there aren't really any for modern Atari (who used to be Infogrames). There are many of the Atari 8bit and ST line of computers, and certainly far more than that for the original VCS/2600.
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TheRiddick Nov 24, 2018
By spinning their own version of a distro, they can control the configuration and experience more so the troubleshooting is less of a issue. If you let people use just any old distro your going to get lots of issues.
So I can understand why they want to custom build a distro to suit the system and optimizing things, minimal problems down the line with users.
So I can understand why they want to custom build a distro to suit the system and optimizing things, minimal problems down the line with users.
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I just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
3 Likes, Who?
slaapliedje Nov 26, 2018
Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjeWhile the steam link is arm don't forget that the desktop client also supports streaming and that's x86. All they need to do is make a stripped down version of that.Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Nov 28, 2018
Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeWhile the steam link is arm don't forget that the desktop client also supports streaming and that's x86. All they need to do is make a stripped down version of that.Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
Yeah, but I mean how stripped down can you get compared to the Link? The Link does (if I recall) run a Linux kernel already. So yeah it wouldn't be hard to just port that. Though I think others have reported that their AMD based systems ran poorly with it, and the VCS is AMD based, so not sure where the streaming would be hardware accelerated at that point.
Either way, I ordered another Link, and I found a 'hack' online that tells you how to tweak the maximum throughput. I haven't tried it yet though.
0 Likes
Quoting: slaapliedjeInteresting? I have an AMD system but I don't stream my games to it since it's my primary gaming machine however I would think performance should be fine. I'd have a really hard time believing valve was doing anything weird enough to warrant a performance degredation like that. Also yes, the link does run Linux.Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeWhile the steam link is arm don't forget that the desktop client also supports streaming and that's x86. All they need to do is make a stripped down version of that.Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
Yeah, but I mean how stripped down can you get compared to the Link? The Link does (if I recall) run a Linux kernel already. So yeah it wouldn't be hard to just port that. Though I think others have reported that their AMD based systems ran poorly with it, and the VCS is AMD based, so not sure where the streaming would be hardware accelerated at that point.
Either way, I ordered another Link, and I found a 'hack' online that tells you how to tweak the maximum throughput. I haven't tried it yet though.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Nov 29, 2018
Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeInteresting? I have an AMD system but I don't stream my games to it since it's my primary gaming machine however I would think performance should be fine. I'd have a really hard time believing valve was doing anything weird enough to warrant a performance degredation like that. Also yes, the link does run Linux.Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeWhile the steam link is arm don't forget that the desktop client also supports streaming and that's x86. All they need to do is make a stripped down version of that.Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
Yeah, but I mean how stripped down can you get compared to the Link? The Link does (if I recall) run a Linux kernel already. So yeah it wouldn't be hard to just port that. Though I think others have reported that their AMD based systems ran poorly with it, and the VCS is AMD based, so not sure where the streaming would be hardware accelerated at that point.
Either way, I ordered another Link, and I found a 'hack' online that tells you how to tweak the maximum throughput. I haven't tried it yet though.
What I had read was the streaming to the Link uses nvenc, which is missing on AMD systems, so they don't work as well. So it's specific to the streaming component, not AMD performance itself.
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Quoting: slaapliedjeNVENC is a proprietary Nvidia technology. I doubt the link has that.Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeInteresting? I have an AMD system but I don't stream my games to it since it's my primary gaming machine however I would think performance should be fine. I'd have a really hard time believing valve was doing anything weird enough to warrant a performance degredation like that. Also yes, the link does run Linux.Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeWhile the steam link is arm don't forget that the desktop client also supports streaming and that's x86. All they need to do is make a stripped down version of that.Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
Yeah, but I mean how stripped down can you get compared to the Link? The Link does (if I recall) run a Linux kernel already. So yeah it wouldn't be hard to just port that. Though I think others have reported that their AMD based systems ran poorly with it, and the VCS is AMD based, so not sure where the streaming would be hardware accelerated at that point.
Either way, I ordered another Link, and I found a 'hack' online that tells you how to tweak the maximum throughput. I haven't tried it yet though.
What I had read was the streaming to the Link uses nvenc, which is missing on AMD systems, so they don't work as well. So it's specific to the streaming component, not AMD performance itself.
0 Likes
slaapliedje Dec 3, 2018
Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeNVENC is a proprietary Nvidia technology. I doubt the link has that.Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeInteresting? I have an AMD system but I don't stream my games to it since it's my primary gaming machine however I would think performance should be fine. I'd have a really hard time believing valve was doing anything weird enough to warrant a performance degredation like that. Also yes, the link does run Linux.Quoting: ScooptaQuoting: slaapliedjeWhile the steam link is arm don't forget that the desktop client also supports streaming and that's x86. All they need to do is make a stripped down version of that.Quoting: AnanaceI just realized that if they collaborate with Valve a bit, this could make a great Steam Link device as well - seeing as they seem to be sunsetting that hardware, just write up a Steam Link app version for the Atari OS and add support for the native Steam Controller communication. (should be possible with a regular bluetooth chip and custom firmware as that's what the controller itself uses)I think the Steam Link is an ARM device, isn't it? So there would be needed some porting. But could be a nice minimal thing.
Or heck, just connect the controller over bluetooth, since the Steam Link already means network streamed games a tiny bit more latency (4-5ms) for the bluetooth stack won't be noticeable.
Of course, you should just be able to run the regular steam client in the other OS, but never hurts to support such things natively.
Yeah, but I mean how stripped down can you get compared to the Link? The Link does (if I recall) run a Linux kernel already. So yeah it wouldn't be hard to just port that. Though I think others have reported that their AMD based systems ran poorly with it, and the VCS is AMD based, so not sure where the streaming would be hardware accelerated at that point.
Either way, I ordered another Link, and I found a 'hack' online that tells you how to tweak the maximum throughput. I haven't tried it yet though.
What I had read was the streaming to the Link uses nvenc, which is missing on AMD systems, so they don't work as well. So it's specific to the streaming component, not AMD performance itself.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam_Link/comments/5315v0/higher_display_latency_when_using_nvenc/
Sure looks like it's an option.
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