Valve announce Linux based gaming OS for 2014

**Iconyu** · 09-23-2013, 09:32 AM

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

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.

**iddqd** · 09-23-2013, 10:21 AM

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.

**LordEC911** · 09-23-2013, 10:29 AM

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.

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.

**El Mano** · 09-23-2013, 11:54 AM

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!

**Manicdan** · 09-23-2013, 12:29 PM

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.

**El Mano** · 09-23-2013, 12:54 PM

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

**Darakian** · 09-23-2013, 01:45 PM

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

**BrowncoatGR** · 09-23-2013, 02:07 PM

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...

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).

Originally Posted by Darakian

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

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

**[XC] Lead Head** · 09-23-2013, 02:09 PM

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.

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

**El Mano** · 09-23-2013, 02:22 PM

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).

No

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.

**madcho** · 09-23-2013, 02:25 PM

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.

**himaro** · 09-23-2013, 02:36 PM

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

"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."

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.

**BrowncoatGR** · 09-23-2013, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by El Mano

No

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.

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.

**bearcatrp** · 09-23-2013, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by El Mano

No

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.

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

**DefStar** · 09-23-2013, 03:43 PM

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...

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.

**alpha0ne** · 09-23-2013, 09:55 PM

And yet another reason to ditch the

e that is MS these days

**Evantaur** · 09-23-2013, 11:25 PM

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

Ino they should just call it GladOs instead

**naokaji** · 09-24-2013, 05:36 AM

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.

**crash5s** · 09-24-2013, 06:33 AM

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.

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.

**Olivon** · 09-24-2013, 10:59 AM

Originally Posted by Darakian

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

SteamOS is based on Debian.

Also :

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.

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

**paulbagz** · 09-24-2013, 12:41 PM

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

**Darakian** · 09-24-2013, 12:48 PM

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.

**iddqd** · 09-24-2013, 01:10 PM

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

**mattkosem** · 09-24-2013, 03:03 PM

Originally Posted by iddqd

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

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