Valve announce Linux based gaming OS for 2014

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

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Thousands of games, millions of users. Everything you love about Steam.
Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room.
Steam is coming to a new operating system

As we?ve been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we?ve come to the conclusion that the
environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself.
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.

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Interesting. I wonder how they'll solve the hardware problem (most people don't have their PC in the living room; attached to the TV, the HTPC form-factor is a niche market), and also the software problem: lack of DirectX, lack of linux binaries.
Then, of course, there's the hardware-software problem: linux graphics drivers suck.

It's definitely going to be tricky.

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Originally Posted by iddqd

Interesting. I wonder how they'll solve the hardware problem (most people don't have their PC in the living room; attached to the TV, the HTPC form-factor is a niche market), and also the software problem: lack of DirectX, lack of linux binaries.
Then, of course, there's the hardware-software problem: linux graphics drivers suck.

It's definitely going to be tricky.

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Some games will be made FOR the SteamOS.
The majority of the games in your Steam Library, at least initially, will have to be streamed to your SteamOS PC.

It sounds awesome to me. A cheap PC running this OS in your living room will allow you to keep playing from the sofa.
Well done Valve!

i think this will be valve games and indie games only at first, the things that are easier to code for, or where they are the developer. then over time other companies might try better to support the OS.

Games already running on Linux should be easy to port to Valve's new OS.
And Valve has enough cash to make it happen...

I wonder what they built off of. Debian? Arch? Gentoo? :p

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Originally Posted by El Mano

Games already running on Linux should be easy to port to Valve's new OS.
And Valve has enough cash to make it happen...

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This is not a new OS. It's a custom tailored Linux distro build around the Steam client. There's a few AAA games already available or soon to be available on Linux(Metro: Last Light is coming soon, Football Manager 2014 will make the series' Linux debut, Dota 2).

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Originally Posted by Darakian

I wonder what they built off of. Debian? Arch? Gentoo? :p

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Ubuntu seems the most likely candidate as they've encouraged Ubuntu 12.04 compatibility for all games so far.

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Originally Posted by iddqd

Interesting. I wonder how they'll solve the hardware problem (most people don't have their PC in the living room; attached to the TV, the HTPC form-factor is a niche market), and also the software problem: lack of DirectX, lack of linux binaries.
Then, of course, there's the hardware-software problem: linux graphics drivers suck.

It's definitely going to be tricky.

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Supposedly Valve has been working very closely with ATi/nvidia developing new and better drivers, but we'll see.

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Originally Posted by BrowncoatGR

This is not a new OS. It's a custom tailored Linux distro build around the Steam client. There's a few AAA games already available or soon to be available on Linux(Metro: Last Light is coming soon, Football Manager 2014 will make the series' Linux debut, Dota 2).

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No :banana::banana::banana::banana: Captain Obvious! That's exactly my point and what I just said: since this OS is based on Linux, porting games that already run on Linux should be easy.

The steam games on ubuntu are already faster than on windows.

And quality is same.


L4Dead is a good exemple ...

I think that valve is gonna make a huge succes story with this.

Personally, i think this is bloody great.
The PC I'm on now (see signature....it's a little old) would be perfect for this when I get my replacement that's in the works.
one thing that bugged me though was the BBC's comments

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"While Valve has experimented with bringing games to a more TV-friendly user interface with its Big Picture mode, many PC games will not translate effectively to console controllers so this remains a challenge to overcome."

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While true to an extent with some games like RTS's etc, a lot of games start life on the console and have controller support.
and even then, the people likely to be using this will have a wireless KB / M to hand anyway.

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Originally Posted by El Mano

No :banana::banana::banana::banana: Captain Obvious! That's exactly my point and what I just said: since this OS is based on Linux, porting games that already run on Linux should be easy.

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Well if it's a Linux distro, then there is no need to port anything, as the SteamOS is a flavour of Gnu/Linux. Which was my earlier point. It makes no sense for Valve to create something radically different from the popular distros as that would just increase the support burden on Valve and require them to have a rather large team to work on the OS.

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Originally Posted by El Mano

No :banana::banana::banana::banana: Captain Obvious! That's exactly my point and what I just said: since this OS is based on Linux, porting games that already run on Linux should be easy.

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Until the graphics drivers are up to date, they will have issues.

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Originally Posted by El Mano

Games already running on Linux should be easy to port to Valve's new OS.
And Valve has enough cash to make it happen...

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More than easy, essentially ready to go.

Edit...haha I only read as far as your post and just had to say something (being a programmer)....then I read the post above mine and saw that this whole thread so far is people bashing what you said...yes linux, IOS, whatever mac calls their os...are all the same thing. I thing in mac's os you have to initialize primitives (e.g. integers to zero) or you get an error.

And yet another reason to ditch the :banana::banana::banana::banana:e that is MS these days

New playstation games can be ported to steamOss with almost no effort

Ino they should just call it GladOs instead

Looking through the list of games on steam that run on linux it is essentially just Valve stuff + Serious Sam 3 and Killing Floor + around 300 or so indie games...

Valves promise of various AAA titles supporting SteamOS in 2014 better turn out to be true or it will end up being nothing more than streaming solution.

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Originally Posted by Manicdan

i think this will be valve games and indie games only at first, the things that are easier to code for, or where they are the developer. then over time other companies might try better to support the OS.

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That's not what is going on exactly.

Native linux games can be run off the box, Windows games can be... streamed from a Windows box. Obviously the better this does and the longer it lasts the less of a need there is for said Windows box. Which is good as the Windows over head and fail sauce this is directX and other api's you have to go through have always been severely knee capping hardware to only a fraction of it's power in game. AMD, Carmac, and others have been pointing this out for ages. Though sadly as long as we have upgradable boxes some of that will have to be dealt with.

Long term it makes sense to get the hell away from Windows, it also makes sense to consolise the hardware and OS for PC gaming as different hardware and the mess that is Windows have always been kneecapping things. Plus given that at first it will just stream, it's a nice starting point.

This could work out great for them.

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Originally Posted by Darakian

I wonder what they built off of. Debian? Arch? Gentoo? :p

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SteamOS is based on Debian.

Also :

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This week at XDC2013 NVIDIA made one of the biggest surprise announcements... NVIDIA will begin publishing NDA-free GPU programming documentation. They already have released some documentation and more is on the way as they seek to assist the Nouveau graphics driver developers in writing a full open-source 3D Linux graphics driver for GeForce GPUs.

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http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ2NzY

Idk though, I have a HTPC that plays games already, why the need to stream stuff to them?

Unless they're talking about having this run on something like a NUC?

-PB

For those complaining. Linux graphics drivers are fairly decent, the problem is that each vendor ships their own openGL implementation and that needs to stop.

If by "fairly decent" you actually mean "barely good enough to draw the UI", then yes!

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Originally Posted by iddqd

If by "fairly decent" you actually mean "barely good enough to draw the UI", then yes!

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That really varies a lot from (hardware) vendor to vendor and application to application. Also, in the case of some vendors at least, heavily from driver version to driver version.

Your sentiments don't mirror my overall experience. Care to share some specific cases?

--Matt

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Originally Posted by Olivon

SteamOS is based on Debian.

Also :

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ2NzY

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You think AMD might be going down the same route?

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Originally Posted by tbone8ty

Chris Pirillo ‏@ChrisPirillo

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https://twitter.com/ChrisPirillo/sta...07680424001536

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Originally Posted by Olivon

SteamOS is based on Debian.

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Any chance you have a reference for that?

just what the pc needed.. an extra OS to make it harder for devs to port games, as if having two different graphic companies along with different hardware wasn't enough

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Originally Posted by Loque

just what the pc needed.. an extra OS to make it harder for devs to port games, as if having two different graphic companies along with different hardware wasn't enough

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So XBox is using X86 and DirectX, while Sony are using X86 and OpenGL... so porting to a OS using X86 and OpenGL is going to be very hard then?

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Originally Posted by Iconyu

So XBox is using X86 and DirectX, while Sony are using X86 and OpenGL... so porting to a OS using X86 and OpenGL is going to be very hard then?

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No, it's going to be very easy. To both Linux/SteamOS and Windows. All have OpenGL built-in. Also games run somewhat faster in OpenGL than DirectX.

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Originally Posted by Iconyu

You think AMD might be going down the same route?

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AMD already did it back in 2007 http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online...Release-by-AMD, and they did it even better, they even released 3D specifications, UDV and HDA audio gpu documentations. The last 2 they released later though.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...urce_uvd&num=1
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...tem&px=MTQ2NjU

What AMD is probably is going to announce is, same day new hardware release and open source support, that's a first for AMD. It always took some time, but now they caught up.

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Originally Posted by Darakian

For those complaining. Linux graphics drivers are fairly decent, the problem is that each vendor ships their own openGL implementation and that needs to stop.

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b-but my freedoms.. :p:

Isn't DirectX more powerful than OpenGL in terms of what it can do (Shading, AA) or am I mistaken ?

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If you guys are delivering an OS to hardware manufacturers, why is Valve also making its own box?
We're conducting a beta of the overall Steam living-room experience, so we needed to build prototype hardware on which to run tests. At Valve we always rely on real-world testing as part of our design process. The specific machine we're testing is designed for users who want the most control possible over their hardware. Other boxes will optimize for size, price, quietness, or other factors.

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What are the specs of the Valve prototype?
We'll tell you more about it soon. Remember, there will ultimately be several boxes to choose from, with an array of specifications, price, and performance.

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When will the prototypes ship?
This year.

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http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

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Originally Posted by Scubar

Isn't DirectX more powerful than OpenGL in terms of what it can do (Shading, AA) or am I mistaken ?

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Newer versions of OpenGL have comparable features.

Much more importantly, DirectX has a way bigger software ecosystem.

So we're announcing who knows what, which we'll release to the public who knows when. Classic Valve right there.

More importantly guys, the unfathomable and intangible mysteries of Valve Software may be hidden within their strange images of their newly announced products.

http://i.imgur.com/BYNy9F8.gif

:D

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ste...e-3,24388.html


It will support all hardware. All CPUs, all GPUs -- from three generations ago at the oldest for Nvidia, two for AMD and all going forward," the unnamed employee claims. "The release design, however, will have a Nvidia GPU and an AMD CPU.

So that's part two of the reveal: a certification program for hardware builders looking to provide full solutions, and a reference design for the ideal "Steam Box". As revealed on Monday, Valve is also releasing the SteamOS platform not only for Valve partners for creating a complete package, but for PC gamers wanting to build their own Steam Box. He said that the reference design doesn't use Intel because the company wanted to be paid for its involvement while Valve in turn would be marketing Intel's hardware for free.

"[Nvidia] reached out to us and have been extremely cooperative," the employee said. "They even let us use their streaming tech ? the one they showcase on the Shield (which is getting Steam integration, btw, as are all Tegra devices), even though we told them it would have to work on AMD cards. If you were wondering what Nvidia was unveiling soon that wasn't a video card, this is it. They're the first choice for Steam Box hardware. (We even set it up so that it rains on AMD's video card announcement, kek). Expect extremely good Linux drivers from them over the next few months. AMD is? hesitant to comment."

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ste...e-3,24388.html


It will support all hardware. All CPUs, all GPUs -- from three generations ago at the oldest for Nvidia, two for AMD and all going forward," the unnamed employee claims. "The release design, however, will have a Nvidia GPU and an AMD CPU.

So that's part two of the reveal: a certification program for hardware builders looking to provide full solutions, and a reference design for the ideal "Steam Box". As revealed on Monday, Valve is also releasing the SteamOS platform not only for Valve partners for creating a complete package, but for PC gamers wanting to build their own Steam Box. He said that the reference design doesn't use Intel because the company wanted to be paid for its involvement while Valve in turn would be marketing Intel's hardware for free.

"[Nvidia] reached out to us and have been extremely cooperative," the employee said. "They even let us use their streaming tech ? the one they showcase on the Shield (which is getting Steam integration, btw, as are all Tegra devices), even though we told them it would have to work on AMD cards. If you were wondering what Nvidia was unveiling soon that wasn't a video card, this is it. They're the first choice for Steam Box hardware. (We even set it up so that it rains on AMD's video card announcement, kek). Expect extremely good Linux drivers from them over the next few months. AMD is? hesitant to comment."

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4chan and especial /v/ as source... oh boy here we go...

http://tof.canardpc.com/preview2/46f...644554636c.jpg

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The most prominent elements of the Steam controller are its two circular trackpads. Driven by the player?s thumbs, each one has a high-resolution trackpad as its base. It is also clickable, allowing the entire surface to act as a button. The trackpads allow far higher fidelity input than has previously been possible with traditional handheld controllers. Steam gamers, who are used to the input associated with PCs, will appreciate that the Steam Controller?s resolution approaches that of a desktop mouse.

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http://store.steampowered.com/living...eamController/

and so much for the "leak"... :ROTF:

As for the controller... I don't know, layout is pretty standard, but touch pads... even when they say its a new generation I remain skeptical. Nothing can beat real feed back.

I'll try it out. I use a thumb trackball on my second computer and I like it. I wouldn't pick it over a mouse when playing CS:GO but I can manage myself decently in RTS games.
I find this gamepad very exciting, I'll probably buy one.

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Originally Posted by Hornet331

4chan and especial /v/ as source... oh boy here we go...

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Especially funny since Tajoh knows that an Anandtech Forum troll is claiming to have posted it.

Controller seems nice, if they can sell it for <$40 I'm interested.

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Originally Posted by LordEC911

Especially funny since Tajoh knows that an Anandtech Forum troll is claiming to have posted it.

Controller seems nice, if they can sell it for <$40 I'm interested.

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Anandtechs is the last forum I would visit, never go there so I don't know who the trolls are except rollo who I believed got banned from there. However, there has been other talks of the steambox using similar technology to shield for game streaming. Considering Nvidia usually isn't open about sharing technology for free, I could see them leveraging this technology to get into the steambox. The new found linux support from Nvidia seems they really want to get on the steambox.

any chance to see mantle on the steam box ?

hope this works out for the peeps who use & love linux for everyday boxes. could be a few years before "perfection" but still a worthy cause imo.

from what ive read from some of the devs who played with the beta controller and how i understand the technology behind the trackpads to work, it should feel like you are moving something around with your thumbs. So the sensation of physical feedback will be there with the improved accuracy of a touchpad. I think that it uses fairly similar methods to production line technology for small parts feeding. Where a highly controlled vibration is induced into a surface to move small parts along the surface. And by controlling the waveform of the vibration you can change the speed and direction of the parts

Attachment 131374

I don't much care for the design of the controller.
Seems like like it could work alright for movement but everything else, say fighting games or really anything it doesn't seem to me like its a good design.

The main buttons are like in the middle of the controller.
I see alot of people on the net say give it a chance, learn to evolve, and etc.
But I don't think its about that, I just think its not really functional :\.

Just think about it, how much of a pain in the butt is it to use with the games you play?
Plus I think it might be a little sloppy on the movement part, you try to do a special move in a fighting game and screws up everytime, that's what I'm thinking..

Regardless I'm all for the idea's if it gets linux in the gaming arena.
I hate steam, and I don't really like the controller, but still ^^ :O :).


And btw that is one goofy messed up comic thingy posted above...

All I hear is- "It is new, it is different, I don't like it, I don't want to give it a chance."

I have yet to see a controller that can beat a mouse for FPS.

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Originally Posted by Sparky

I have yet to see a controller that can beat a mouse for FPS.

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True, but I have a feeling this is going to close the gap against more traditional controllers.

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Originally Posted by Sparky

I have yet to see a controller that can beat a mouse for FPS.

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Agree

This controller is a step in the right direction at least though.

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Originally Posted by STEvil

Agree

This controller is a step in the right direction at least though.

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Hopefully.

But we don't know that yet.

Here are the specifications for Valve's 300 prototypes.

The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:
GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel : i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

I wonder will those components be cheaper from valve or just buy them on your own?

In b4 people scream at 450W and titan :ROTF:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/04/v...ecs/#continued

A bit more Details. Pretty odd that AMD got locked out of the steambox. I guess AMD lack of support for OPEN GL and poor linux drivers in general did it.

Seems to balance things out a bit better for AMD and Nvidia. With AMD getting consoles, this at least helps(but it doesn't come close to equalizing things for Nvidia) helps Nvidia a bit.

What this could do if Nvidia is willing to put its foot forward is it gives them a real chance to counter Mantle. If I were Nvidia, i would give Valve an insane amount(20 million, considering the figure thrown around for other deals lately) of money to get involved in building the next source Engine and build it around Nvidia hardware and a new low level API.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/04/v...ecs/#continued

A bit more Details. Pretty odd that AMD got locked out of the steambox. I guess AMD lack of support for OPEN GL and poor linux drivers in general did it.

Seems to balance things out a bit better for AMD and Nvidia. With AMD getting consoles, this at least helps(but it doesn't come close to equalizing things for Nvidia) helps Nvidia a bit.

What this could do if Nvidia is willing to put its foot forward is it gives them a real chance to counter Mantle. If I were Nvidia, i would give Valve an insane amount(20 million, considering the figure thrown around for other deals lately) of money to get involved in building the next source Engine and build it around Nvidia hardware and a new low level API.

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Where do you see AMD locked out of anything?
Nvidia is simply supplying their hardware for 300 prototypes...
There will still be many Steambox designs using AMD hardware.

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Originally Posted by LordEC911

Where do you see AMD locked out of anything?
Nvidia is simply supplying their hardware for 300 prototypes...
There will still be many Steambox designs using AMD hardware.

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I guess not locked out, but not being put into the prototype reference design seems odd considering they are sending these out for free and the higher cost associated with using Intel and sort of using Nvidia. Considering how buddy buddy Valve and Nvidia have been lately. I could see Nvidia at all costs, trying to get into the steam machine considering the shrinking desktop market and AMD getting the consoles. I could see Nvidia putting some serious cash down(an amount AMD couldn't afford) to ensure that Steam alliances are tied to them. Nvidia could write a cheque to valve for 100 million dollars and easily afford it. Nvidia said in a recent interview that Nvidia is collaborating with Intel and it seems like this would be it.

What would give Valve a reasonable reason outside of cash to do put Intel and Nvidia hardware is steam statistics. A larger majority of users that make up steam hardware survey are Intel and Nvidia users. It would make sense for Valve to use the brand more commonly found in their own stats.

In addition, these boxes are being used to beta and find bugs in the software and hardware. Considering AMD's reputation in regards to their linux drivers. I would think they are in need of testing most of all. So if I was valve and I was truly going to be hardware agnostic(and the low price of AMD hardware ), I would have sent AMD steamboxes along with the Intel/Nvidia ones.

In addition, I think at the very least, this rules out the idea that Mantle was going to be the defacto standard for the steambox.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

SNIP

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Sure Nvidia could try to do that but it seems unlikely that Valve would accept an offer like that.

The fact that Valve is stating you can "buy/build your own Steambox and configure it with any hardware you want," would mean a pretty big backtrack on Valve's part and would go against the entire idea behind this project.

I don't recall anyone saying Mantle would be a defacto standard, at least anyone in reality, but it does fit into the equation quite well, so it seems likely it will be used.
I expect people/gamers of a budget concise mind will be using pretty old components they have lying around to build their Steamboxes, especially if can only stream most of your Steam Library initially, don't need much of a system to stream.

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/04/v...ecs/#continued

A bit more Details. Pretty odd that AMD got locked out of the steambox. I guess AMD lack of support for OPEN GL and poor linux drivers in general did it.

Seems to balance things out a bit better for AMD and Nvidia. With AMD getting consoles, this at least helps(but it doesn't come close to equalizing things for Nvidia) helps Nvidia a bit.

What this could do if Nvidia is willing to put its foot forward is it gives them a real chance to counter Mantle. If I were Nvidia, i would give Valve an insane amount(20 million, considering the figure thrown around for other deals lately) of money to get involved in building the next source Engine and build it around Nvidia hardware and a new low level API.

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Definitely not locked out. In an interview with AMD, they're just less vocal about it.

I wonder how linux users are with AMD these days. A guy I know who uses linux and AMD GC said everything that has been said about how terrible AMD is on linux is false (he's on HD 7950).

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Originally Posted by blindbox

Definitely not locked out. In an interview with AMD, they're just less vocal about it.

I wonder how linux users are with AMD these days. A guy I know who uses linux and AMD GC said everything that has been said about how terrible AMD is on linux is false (he's on HD 7950).

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AMD drivers works quite well, tho i have not tried 'em for gaming

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Originally Posted by Evantaur

AMD drivers works quite well, tho i have not tried 'em for gaming

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I tried linux myself. Drivers work pretty well, don't see any bugs, I tried stepmania but I need to try more games. AMD driver problems are honestly the least of the issue in linux. There was some sort of tearing when moving windows around, unlike Window's impressive DWM which is silky smooth but I think this is the desktop manager's problem rather than the drivers themselves.

Here are the problems that Valve needs fixing in linux. I used Crunchbang for testing. I admit that this is not the most widely used linux distro, so I'll try Ubuntu next, as that's the majority.

1) Audio is a pain in the ass to switch (an understatement, it's a lot worse). I had to restart a few times and go into a few command lines, cfg files and a lot of googling. A normal user would've been clueless. Nice thing is though, they support native audio duplication, meaning you can play the same audio on multiple sound cards at once.
2) Multimonitor is a bloody NIGHTMARE. If you switch between single and double monitor frequently (i.e. laptops).. don't.. just.. don't. No auto-fallback that windows does. Nothing whatsoever. Though, this might be desktop manager dependent. This is not driver dependent.
3) Plug and play-ability. This is related to 1). Plugged my USB DAC in, no way to switch.. had to go into some command lines and cfg files, and restart linux.
4) Linux not giving the game the maximum performance, as mentioned, my OpenGL performance on a weak laptop was not as good as in Windows on the same laptop. The next hardest thing I found to do in linux is running a game in full screen. Pretty annoying. Game I tested with is Stepmania btw, and they run in OpenGL
5) Lack of fallback. This is related to 2). I managed to kill my linux installation by switching between two and one monitor back and forth. Now the desktop is rendering for two screens although I have only one screen plugged in (the laptop screen). What does that mean? It means I can't see the freaking login screen and can't log in.
6) Permission problems. IDK if this is related to an app permission or what but apparently a user-run application can't seem to edit files in the ~/.whateversettings folder. It reads settings from there, but it tries to write in a read-only superuser-only folder apparently. This might be application specific but Windows seems to handle all this legacy better.
7) Buggy file manager. Again, this is app related but if Valve really want this to go well, they have to ensure that their QC team is very, very detailed. I can't even drag and drop copy. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V didn't work either. Right click copy, right click paste didn't work either! (options are there)

I'm going to try out Ubuntu next and report my results I understand Crunchbang is somewhat a minority, hence take this with a grain of salt. This time, I'll take a majority and post my test results. Though, you see, this is why I use Windows despite myself being a power user, and very, very capable of running linux.

That ends my experience with linux for 8 hours straight. Again, going to try ubuntu next, so I'll have a lot more hours of experience with desktop linux (I only deal with linux in Android, servers or compilation VMs).

If Valve could fix all this with SteamOS, I'm in. Funny thing is, I wasn't bothered about the inability of using windows app. I was more bothered by the fact that a lot of standard stuff is pretty damn broken. My list of problems probably won't matter for Steam Machines because they're more like consoles rather than a real computer.

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Originally Posted by blindbox

I tried linux myself. Drivers work pretty well, don't see any bugs, I tried stepmania but I need to try more games. AMD driver problems are honestly the least of the issue in linux. There was some sort of tearing when moving windows around, unlike Window's impressive DWM which is silky smooth but I think this is the desktop manager's problem rather than the drivers themselves.

Here are the problems that Valve needs fixing in linux. I used Crunchbang for testing. I admit that this is not the most widely used linux distro, so I'll try Ubuntu next, as that's the majority.

1) Audio is a pain in the ass to switch (an understatement, it's a lot worse). I had to restart a few times and go into a few command lines, cfg files and a lot of googling. A normal user would've been clueless. Nice thing is though, they support native audio duplication, meaning you can play the same audio on multiple sound cards at once.
2) Multimonitor is a bloody NIGHTMARE. If you switch between single and double monitor frequently (i.e. laptops).. don't.. just.. don't. No auto-fallback that windows does. Nothing whatsoever. Though, this might be desktop manager dependent. This is not driver dependent.
3) Plug and play-ability. This is related to 1). Plugged my USB DAC in, no way to switch.. had to go into some command lines and cfg files, and restart linux.
4) Linux not giving the game the maximum performance, as mentioned, my OpenGL performance on a weak laptop was not as good as in Windows on the same laptop. The next hardest thing I found to do in linux is running a game in full screen. Pretty annoying. Game I tested with is Stepmania btw, and they run in OpenGL
5) Lack of fallback. This is related to 2). I managed to kill my linux installation by switching between two and one monitor back and forth. Now the desktop is rendering for two screens although I have only one screen plugged in (the laptop screen). What does that mean? It means I can't see the freaking login screen and can't log in.
6) Permission problems. IDK if this is related to an app permission or what but apparently a user-run application can't seem to edit files in the ~/.whateversettings folder. It reads settings from there, but it tries to write in a read-only superuser-only folder apparently. This might be application specific but Windows seems to handle all this legacy better.
7) Buggy file manager. Again, this is app related but if Valve really want this to go well, they have to ensure that their QC team is very, very detailed. I can't even drag and drop copy. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V didn't work either. Right click copy, right click paste didn't work either! (options are there)

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1) If you use pulseaudio, KDE or both you can actually switch between audio cards using a graphical interface
2)Actually this IS driver dependent and is an issue for Nvidia afaik.
3) Is simply not true. You just have to use pulseaudio, which Ubuntu does by default, and use "pulse audio volume control" to select the default audio output. This should work for all pulseaudio aware applications.
4)Well that depends on both the drivers and the app. Regarding 3d AMD and most Intel hw will have worse performance. Nvidia will be about the same.
5) You can get access to the command line by switching TTY using Alt+CTRL+FX(e.g. F2). F7 is were the graphical desktop usually resides.
6)That is not legacy stuff. It's a security feature. You can run any app with superuser permissions to allow them to write to those files.
7)Were you running a beta? That should not happen and is not a common issue at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by BrowncoatGR

1) If you use pulseaudio, KDE or both you can actually switch between audio cards using a graphical interface
2)Actually this IS driver dependent and is an issue for Nvidia afaik.
3) Is simply not true. You just have to use pulseaudio, which Ubuntu does by default, and use "pulse audio volume control" to select the default audio output. This should work for all pulseaudio aware applications.
4)Well that depends on both the drivers and the app. Regarding 3d AMD and most Intel hw will have worse performance. Nvidia will be about the same.
5) You can get access to the command line by switching TTY using Alt+CTRL+FX(e.g. F2). F7 is were the graphical desktop usually resides.
6)That is not legacy stuff. It's a security feature. You can run any app with superuser permissions to allow them to write to those files.
7)Were you running a beta? That should not happen and is not a common issue at all.

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I solved 1), 3), and 7) by going Ubuntu. Remember that I did all the above on Crunchbang and not Ubuntu.

As for 4) it was my bad, I found out how to set game to full screen.
Number 5), I know that already, but that doesn't mean I actually know how to reset the graphical desktop if it royally screws up.
Number 6), I didn't need superuser permissions to overwrite anything in the home folder. All I need to do is make sure I'm logged in while editing it. Why would an app that i am running with only user permission not do the same? I can't deny the possibility of a buggy app though, and maybe that the file was set to read-only.

I don't have my 2nd monitor with me to try 2) again with ubuntu. I'm on ATI, btw.

Also, a quirk about the installation was how unobvious things are. With Windows, the advanced mode gives you guidance on what to set. Hell, you just pick a blank space and it will partition that properly and not touch anything else. With Ubuntu, I didn't know that you have to set one partition to / and another partition to swap if you so prefer to use the advance mode. The help button tells you absolutely nothing. So, fine, I picked the easy mode, where it says it will replace the installed OS with Ubuntu.

Well... easy mode also deleted my ntfs data partition while at it. That was painful, although luckily I have already backed up what's important. This is kinda unexpected given the instructions where it says it's just replacing the old OS. Sigh, still, a pain now that I have to restore everything again. Have another PC for reading wiki ready to really understand what everything means before installing. I googled it out and find out I wasn't the first one caught by this trap.

I'm staying on ubuntu for a while to try out wine, but I think I should get another laptop just to try ubuntu out instead. This is my work machine.

Among other things that will make people stay are video encoding and the whole encoder/decoder chain. madVR is quite painful to leave but I guess for people not obsessed with quality, they won't mind.

Now that I think about it, I might not leave Windows 7 for SteamOS at all. All depends whether I could use madVR with wine or not.

EDIT: To sum it up, despite my negativity, I don't really see a problem with SteamOS if you're strictly going for gaming. It might not be too bad but I can't leave Windows and all the tools that I use in Windows. It's simply too big of a deal breaker. There's probably isn't much left for them to fix from what I just experienced.. but damn, losing a partition still hurts whether you have a backup or not.

EDIT2: Aaannd my testing with ubuntu comes to an end. I've fixed all the issues I've listed. My only gripe is the fact that ubuntu is slow in updates. Their firefox build is 20, but mozilla has already released version 24. This is also affecting the drivers. While it is unimportant for most drivers, graphics card drivers preferrably needs regular updates.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blindbox

I wonder how linux users are with AMD these days. A guy I know who uses linux and AMD GC said everything that has been said about how terrible AMD is on linux is false (he's on HD 7950).

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Is he using the binary drivers or the open source drivers?

I tried both the open source and the binary drivers. Desktop experience is more or less the same for both Windows and linux (linux is a bit worse in stutter in dragging windows or scrolling but doable. A better graphics card should fix it.). What I have the most problem is with their video player. Stuttering and jitter is terrible in them. As for games, I didn't test the frame rates but I could enable vsync in an opengl game without a problem to get rid of the jitters. Take this with a pinch of salt as I only tested a game: I tested openGL with stepmania and it's stuttery although the fps looks fairly high. This is probably my weak laptop card, as I was barely managing to get Stepmania to be smooth on a Windows system with directx8. Can't compare the two when the rendering pipeline are different though.

So what's up with the jitter? I tried to find a way to enable vsync in the various video players but none of them has that feature. I even tried to get mpc-hc running with wine, but that didn't work too well.

Keep in mind that I've tried a lot of things(latest linux catalyst beta, latest kernel), and this is my experience with a Radeon card. My concern is less on the gaming side, but more on the desktop experience. I won't replace my OS if all it does is be good in games, unfortunately. I would love to hear from an enthusiast with nvidia cards or a better radeon card that took a plunge into linux. Most of the people in the ubuntu forums doesn't seem to be the kind of person who tries every single cfg to get the best out of his card, or is hugely pedantic about the smoothness of video playback like I am (loving my XySubFilter + madVR + MPC-HC + LAV setup).

EDIT: You're talking about the guy I know? He's using the binary drivers, and he does most of his gaming with WINE. Seems to him that video playback is very smooth. As for my problems, there's also the likely chance that hybrid crossfire is causing issues.

I am very excited for this OS, i have a spare 64GB ssd which i will use for the steam OS

http://www.maximumpc.com/valve_steam...ve_nvidia_2013

we already knew they wouldnt be

Some video players are naive in their approach to performance.

When it gets hard I use mplayer with prebuffering, e.g.
`mplayer -cache 128000 video.avi`

I used to use `mplayer -cache 128000 -framedrop -mc 100 -autosync 30 video.avi` when playing HD-DVD on too wimpy systems. Dunno whether any of this still does anything real but worth a try.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by uOpt

Some video players are naive in their approach to performance.

When it gets hard I use mplayer with prebuffering, e.g.
`mplayer -cache 128000 video.avi`

I used to use `mplayer -cache 128000 -framedrop -mc 100 -autosync 30 video.avi` when playing HD-DVD on too wimpy systems. Dunno whether any of this still does anything real but worth a try.

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Sorry for turning this thread into a linux discussion but anyway, I will try your recommendations. I'm currently dual-booting to linux mint. Is that mplayer or mplayer2?

Apart from the non-smooth video, I also have tearing, and these are with the latest drivers (tried everything, tried to force vsync and use opengl, tried to use sudo aticonfig --<stuff> etc). I've checked that Hybrid Crossfire are not working (you can't enable them), so perhaps it's just the drivers not being good enough. I kinda expected 13.4 drivers on linux to be equivalent to a 13.4 driver on windows. That's pretty dumb of me.

Are you on an AMD card? If you don't experience my problems, then maybe my laptop card isn't just well supported on linux. Also, you have to try madVR with smooth motion force enabled. I couldn't watch another video without it again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blindbox

Sorry for turning this thread into a linux discussion but anyway, I will try your recommendations. I'm currently dual-booting to linux mint. Is that mplayer or mplayer2?

Apart from the non-smooth video, I also have tearing, and these are with the latest drivers (tried everything, tried to force vsync and use opengl, tried to use sudo aticonfig --<stuff> etc). I've checked that Hybrid Crossfire are not working (you can't enable them), so perhaps it's just the drivers not being good enough. I kinda expected 13.4 drivers on linux to be equivalent to a 13.4 driver on windows. That's pretty dumb of me.

Are you on an AMD card? If you don't experience my problems, then maybe my laptop card isn't just well supported on linux. Also, you have to try madVR with smooth motion force enabled. I couldn't watch another video without it again.

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It's a svn version from a couple months back. Not sure when the 2.x cutoff was, but I've been using the above for years.

I don't use AMD video cards except in my work mac.

It's still worth letting mplayer deal with it. If there are problems be sure to gather the output and post it so that we can see what it used.

Another trick is not to use "xv" as the backend, there are alternatives. In some contexts I had best success with "-vo gl" which tells mplayer to use OpenGL as a backend instead. xv kinda stinks.

Given how big Valve has become past all these years and concerning it's primary business activity, I'd say Valve has the resources to make it happen and to mention thousands of loyal customers to back it up. I just hope Valve will not drop support for all other OS's.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Metroid

Given how big Valve has become past all these years and concerning it's primary business activity, I'd say Valve has the resources to make it happen and to mention thousands of loyal customers to back it up. I just hope Valve will not drop support for all other OS's.

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I wouldn't say Valve has the resources honestly. They can barely keep up with all the projects they have going on now, to the point where Dota2 has over 1200 documented bugs, yet some weeks not a single bug gets fixed/patched.

To put it in perspective, EA makes about 2-3x the revenue of Valve, but has 30x the employees. Riot games makes about 1/5-1/7th Valve's revenue but has 3x as many employees.

I'd wager for what Valve's trying to do right now, they're horribly understaffed.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/v...hine-hands-on/

If this is the platform, you can forget about putting Hawaii inside. This thing has like no breathing room for the GPU. A 290 series would either run at 100% fan or throttle so badly, it would perform like crap. It a surprise they can even put titan inside.

Well case is what I expected, they use a itx board with a raiser for the card and a sfx psu. The most interesting part is the shroud around the cooler for the cpu.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/v...hine-hands-on/

If this is the platform, you can forget about putting Hawaii inside. This thing has like no breathing room for the GPU. A 290 series would either run at 100% fan or throttle so badly, it would perform like crap. It a surprise they can even put titan inside.

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The Steam Box will never be for sale commercially. As it says in the article these are for the Steam beta testers only.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lowfat

The Steam Box will never be for sale commercially. As it says in the article these are for the Steam beta testers only.

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I thought its going to be sold next year sometime.

Although this is a protoype, the box steam sells next years should look somewhat similar.

I hope the shipping versions have the option to turn off that light. I like the dark and having what looks like a torch staring at me will not be helpful.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/v...hine-hands-on/

If this is the platform, you can forget about putting Hawaii inside. This thing has like no breathing room for the GPU. A 290 series would either run at 100% fan or throttle so badly, it would perform like crap. It a surprise they can even put titan inside.

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There is plenty of room, especially if the GPU side of the case has vents. Hot exhaust exhausts right out the back, cool air drawn in through the sides. The CPU exhausts its heat through the other side with that weird shroud. The internal temperatures of the machine should be quite low.

Edit: Found the motherboard they're using: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813157374

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

I thought its going to be sold next year sometime.

Although this is a protoype, the box steam sells next years should look somewhat similar.

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From the article.

Quote:

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Take a good hard look at Valve's Steam Machine, because it's the last time you'll see it. Er, something like that. Only 300 of the metal beast above will ship to beta testers, and then Valve says it's cutting off its own supply of Steam Machines. "We're really building this as a test platform, and there are many machines that are gonna be made by third-parties. They're the ones that will be available commercially in 2014," Valve designer Greg Coomer told Engadget.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by lowfat

From the article.

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That's too bad. I liked the look and the modularity of such a small platform. It might be good for 2015.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tajoh111

http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/v...hine-hands-on/

If this is the platform, you can forget about putting Hawaii inside. This thing has like no breathing room for the GPU. A 290 series would either run at 100% fan or throttle so badly, it would perform like crap. It a surprise they can even put titan inside.

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It is a reference design only.
Valve will never sell that particular hardware.
3rd parties will be free to deviate from the physical design Valve is sending out to beta testers.

Attachment 131738

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Fottemberg

Attachment 131738

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And with them linux will have the bug reporters and testers it has always needed ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darakian

And with them linux will have the bug reporters and testers it has always needed ;)

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Yeah, it will be interesting to see whether it becomes more user-friendly in the process.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by zalbard

Yeah, it will be interesting to see whether it becomes more user-friendly in the process.

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But... It's already more userfriendly than windows :-P

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darakian

And with them linux will have the bug reporters and testers it has always needed ;)

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Admin pass = user pass Or, better, no passwords at all.
"Oh no! I have a virus!"

Double click doesn't work
"OMG! My linux is broken!"

(Like "Internet is broken!", when IE desktop icon disappear ...)

Linux Terminal?
"Is it a train station?"

Yeah, gnu/linux programmers need for these feedback. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Evantaur

But... It's already more userfriendly than windows :-P

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For ppl with half a brain ;)

apple users would be lost..................................sorry :ROTF:

So for those of you wondering about AAA games, Football Manager 2014 was released 2 weeks ago, Metro: Last Light was released this week. Total War : Rome 2 was announced by Valve and The Creative Assembly as being ported and Topware Interactive mentioned they are porting Two Worlds 2 and are looking at porting more games from their backcatalog.