Hold on...SteamOS download available Dec 13th
polycounter lvl 8
For those interested in the SteamOS, the first version will be made available for download(?) in less than two days.
I didnt see that coming.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/11/5201030/steamos-will-be-available-to-download-on-december-13th
I didnt see that coming.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/11/5201030/steamos-will-be-available-to-download-on-december-13th
Replies
http://www.virtualbox.org/
Been wanting to try its 3d/2d acceleration.
I think they just want to have an OS for their steam machine and also push gaming on other platforms than windows, since gabe seems to dislike it quite a bit now.
Ya prolly right, a basic OS, might not even have a desktop environment, that just fires up steam in big picture mode, right from boot.
That's why they are making the Steam Box. So all they have to do is buy whatever Box is in their budget.
My guess is that installing steamos will be pretty much: 1. insert usb-disk, 2. press enter
You are in miniority. Most PC users don't even understraand how to install windows. Yeah faceplam, for 4 clicks, but hey!. You can charge them for 50$, to just to make few clicks and install drivers. So I won't complain about it.
Installing linux is even easier, as you don't have usually to install drivers.
In anycase im going to look at SteamOS. If that thing won't have normal desktop, I'm sure within week we will see derivative spin with desktop.
it says in the article that this build of the OS won't be that simple.
It would be akin to Sony releasing the OS for the PS4 so other companies could manufacture PS4-compatible consoles.
Seems like a great move to me. It's probably coming out so soon as a step towards the release of the official SteamBox.
Hell, depending on how much is changed from their base distro, even I might make such distro, or in worst case scenario make instructions how to painlessly install desktop.
I hope so.
I wouldnt mind seeing a linux distro with full driver support from the all major players, and one that caters to game development and gamers alike in one more polished package.
I could cry if they released a version for development, be amazing.
There prolly not intending to have kde or gnome, prolly fires up steam in big picture right from the start, or if there is a DE, prolly a really light one like xfce that is heavily themed
As far as I know there's no replacement for Xorg yet other than Wayland that's being worked on.
@passerby
those are desktop environments not window servers.
Mir. Since Valve was speaking to Canonical at one point. Either case x is not going to work well with the variety of disays Valve wants without end user headache. Still not even sure if they are using red hat or Debian base.
I believe it was rather short romance between Valve and Canonical. I think now theya re using debian as base.
Mir is further away from being usable than Wayland, so it's very slight possibility.
They either made their own window server, or using xorg. Xorg is shit beyond imagination, but if only task is to run games, it should be fine as it is completely bypassed by drivers anyway.
IF they would made their own display server, and made it available on some liberal licensee (BSD, MIT etc), that would not be directly tied to their window manager (like MIT) it would be huge. I think most other distros would pick it up.
Because Wayland is going so slow (and have issues with supporting proper drivers), and MIR is going nowhere.
In anycas. Depending what base components they using, making viable SteamOS desktop spin, should be either no brainer, or very hard. I tend to think the first option will be true. We will see few hours. Probably Valve servers are going to die.
Though here is the repository.
http://repo.steamstatic.com/
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/13/5207426/valve-steamos-now-available
http://steamdb.info/blog/35/
There IS a desktop environment!
Found something that seemingly worked.
http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareFolder2Iso.php?page=Download
Sorry Valve, I am not going to install this unto a real machine till I see whats up with it through a Virtual.
Wont boot into BigPicture mode, but can start it manually. So far, other than being its own "OS" not sure what distinguishes this from a regular Debian Install.
(I didn't realize though that Double Fine has ported most of their games!
Would be nice if there could be a catch into wine, *unsupported but happens to be present). To allow attempting to play the windows only games through the Linux Steam client without having to open a Steam Windows client through wine.
Can someone take some screenshots? did they even put a custom wallpaper :P
I also wonder what they mean by this "Custom graphics compositor designed to provide a seamless transition between Steam, its games and the SteamOS system overlay"
AMD and Intel support will come soon and the 500 GB HDD requirement well i always use Linux on my old 80 GB HDD it was always enough, until Steam for Linux came around a few Valve games and Trine 2 and its pretty much full.
And they used a small light weight compositor as base for there own to save resources, keep in mind the Linux distro is really build around Steam and games for maximum speed.
Have to test Steam OS later my self, maybe wait a version or two considering im going to get an AMD card my self soon.
This is the best source that I could find.
OMGTEHSEX
That could very well be so, but I believe valve will still have first party hardware, just that they encourage 3rd parties to have their own versions as well. I could be wrong on this. It seems they are doing more than just controllers as well. In January they are supposed to release info on their VR headset (competes with Oculus maybe?). I hope whatever Valve does, its not over ambitious to the point where their quality and standards start to suffer.
They'll have to be strict on what's acceptable gaming hardware. They want people to be able to have a console experience, that means no effort setup for games, and knowing exactly that this game will run on your box.
Maybe I'm just skeptical about the use of the steam box and steamOS, but could somebody explain what the actual purpose is? The way I see it, console gamers play console games to enjoy the easy setup (which Valve also offers) but more importantly, they play on consoles to enjoy the high quality console exclusives.
Games like The Last of Us, Beyond: Two Souls, Halo, Forza, Ni No Kuni, Mario, Zelda, etc. won't come to PC regardless of if the steambox is successful or not, so that leads me to question what the purpose is. You'd think the biggest benefit of this would be to attract more people to PC gaming, but it seems like that would still be a small number of people.
Then there's the whole question of how good the steam controller is. If you look at the 360 and the PS3, the most played games every single week are always the "competitive" shooters like Call of Duty. Talking from personal experience, CoD on PC (or any competitive shooter) with a controller against somebody using a mouse and keyboard is not enjoyable because you basically have no chance at winning since the other guy will always be able to shoot you with better accuracy. This won't matter in most games, but considering the xbox 360 is basically a Call of Duty box judging by the weekly XBL activity, this would be a big deal for a lot of potential gamers.
You could always set up your mouse and keyboard in your living room, but it would be pretty awkward trying to use a KB+M while sitting on a couch meaning you would probably have to have a desk setup which not everybody likes.
There are too many issues on the gamers' side to make me think that Valve's plan for the steambox is to get people to play PC games. There's the idea that this would encourage others to start making and selling their own steamboxes but then that goes back to the question of use. If the regular steambox itself doesn't have a huge use in my living room, why would any body else's steambox change that?
Sorry for the wall of text.
+ Streaming from your main PC. You could build or buy a low end steam box and stream PC games to the TV. This is great because there is a large number of couch co-op friendly games on Steam, and just opens up more types of games to steam. Also a decent number of gamers want to get a way from PC to play some titles. TV's are naturally a more relaxed and cinematic experience, there's a lot of Polycounts that have said they sometimes prefer playing some games on a TV.
+ Supports any controller or hardware that works on PC. It'll be nice to use my favorite controller and not have to rebuy fight sticks and controllers for different console hardware. This also includes the Oculus rift. I would also assume the rift would work better in living rooms rather than in front of a computer desk.
+ The Steam controller is good for non-traditional console games, it might not bet the best controller, but it's the only one I would play an RTS on.
+ Steam has already basically fully saturated the PC market, they only way they can get more people to open accounts and start using their store is to get in on the console demographic. There's plenty of people that want to try building PCs and getting into PC gaming, but don't know how or think they cannot afford it or it's too technical.
+ Steam games like Dota, TF2, Planetside 2, and MMO's haven't worked well on traditional consoles (TF2 is on consoles, but not updated and patched), so there's a bigger market for their titles. We are seeing some normally PC only genres sneak onto the PS4, but I'm sure we'll see a lot more of it with the steam box.
+ MODS MODS MODS + Steam work shop. This is good for anyone that creates content for games as a hobby, more people to buy your next TF2 weapons, DOTA skins, or download your Skyrim texture pack. Also console gamers will finally benefit from mods and more user created content.
While its true that consoles will have their exclusives, dont forget PC gamers have their own set of exclusives as well and not just with games but the hardware itself.
You have the oculus rift, a handful of haptic feedback devices and other unique devices that work with PCs. There is also backwards compatibility making it have the largest game library for any system to date.
Eventually, the discussion might end up including whether or not the primary console publishers will see more or less profit by being dual platform with their IPs.
Eventually it will be up to the gamer to decide where the most value is for them, and no matter how you look at it, a PC console will offer that. So I dont think its really going to be that hard for Valve to break into the console market. Steam already has millions of users, its growing into being the facebook of gaming and software use as well due to its social features.