After a bit of a false start with an announcement made too early, Google has now announced Steam for Chrome OS and Chromebooks and now Valve has done their own brief announcement. So it's all officially official now.
From Valve's announcement:
As of Monday this week, an early version of Steam for Chrome OS has been made available to developers. Google and Valve have been collaborating on this project, which will ship to end users sometime in the future. Because Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system, it can leverage much of the work that Valve has recently done for Steam Deck to allow games to run well even when they don't have a native Linux build. Google engineers have worked to greatly expand the capability of Chrome OS to make this possible.
Much like for Steam Deck, Valve has made it clear that developers don't actually need to test their own games, as it's "up to Google and Valve to make sure compatibility for Chrome OS is as robust as possible". That said, nothing stops developers ensuring their native Linux builds are in good shape or testing their Windows builds with Proton on a Linux desktop / Steam Deck. If developers do test, they can report issues directly to [email protected].
Again, this is fantastic news for Linux gaming as a whole because Steam on Chrome OS is the Linux client. This gives developers more of a reason to care about Linux (on top of Steam Deck), and gives Valve another reason to keep the Linux client in good shape.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
mr-victory Mar 26, 2022
Quoting: denyasisI was always under the impression that most/many of the Chromebooks were lower powered ARM chipsets? I'm assuming this is for x86 systems only?Steam for ChromeOS is only for a few select devices, the reauitements for Steam on ChromeOS is i5/i7 CPU and 7 GB RAM. So very few of the Chromebooks.
Quoting: mr-victoryQuoting: denyasisI was always under the impression that most/many of the Chromebooks were lower powered ARM chipsets? I'm assuming this is for x86 systems only?Steam for ChromeOS is only for a few select devices, the reauitements for Steam on ChromeOS is i5/i7 CPU and 7 GB RAM. So very few of the Chromebooks.
Oh wow, thanks. Yeah I'm pretty sure that's totally beyond anything or local school systems use. Everything's web based, so the systems seem pretty basic.
Quoting: denyasisI was always under the impression that most/many of the Chromebooks were lower powered ARM chipsets? I'm assuming this is for x86 systems only?I also assumed that this is for >ARM< based systems...
So, no Steam for ARM yet?
Last edited by Boldos on 26 March 2022 at 4:34 pm UTC
Quoting: denyasisYeah, why the little buggers are so cheap. I mean, I don't think all that much of ChromeOS, but my wife has one and when we bought I was going "It costs how little?"Quoting: mr-victoryQuoting: denyasisI was always under the impression that most/many of the Chromebooks were lower powered ARM chipsets? I'm assuming this is for x86 systems only?Steam for ChromeOS is only for a few select devices, the reauitements for Steam on ChromeOS is i5/i7 CPU and 7 GB RAM. So very few of the Chromebooks.
Oh wow, thanks. Yeah I'm pretty sure that's totally beyond anything or local school systems use. Everything's web based, so the systems seem pretty basic.
So, the numbers of people using this will probably be pretty low even though there's a surprising number of Chromebooks all told.
However, every so often there are signs that Google want to gradually migrate Chromebooks up the food chain. This is probably more about future, beefier Chromebooks than current ones. I presume they've realized that as soon as they have Chromebooks with enough oomph that they cost like a normal laptop, they will face questions about whether it can do anything, and specifically noticed the problem desktop Linux has been dealing with all these years--people won't shell out for a real laptop if it won't play their games.
mr-victory Mar 26, 2022
"Google vs Microsoft! Round 2! Fight!!"
Round 1 is obviously the market for smart phones. And we know the winner
I suppose current Chromebooks might make a good streaming client, right?
Quoting: mr-victoryThis situation sounds to me like this:
"Google vs Microsoft! Round 2! Fight!!"
Round 1 is obviously the market for smart phones. And we know the winner
That fights over, I think. I have a number of family and friends in education. I also moonlight at a local college. Google owns the primary school market in my country. Microsoft's position is they'll pick them up at the college and university level and they own that space.
It makes for some funny moments. Since new college students don't understand certain computer concepts, like saving thier work, having never had to do it before with Google. One of my friends, a university professor, almost always has a few students every year that lose their first paper because they never saved it when they exit Word.
I'm glad I've never had to deal with that. Hardest thing I run into is trying to update and make PowerPoints using LibreOffice, lol
tuxintuxedo Mar 26, 2022
Quoting: BoldosThat would change nothing. Wine (Proton) still doesn't work on ARM.Quoting: denyasisI was always under the impression that most/many of the Chromebooks were lower powered ARM chipsets? I'm assuming this is for x86 systems only?I also assumed that this is for >ARM< based systems...
So, no Steam for ARM yet?
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