Steam OS Thoughts & Opinions

cherryghost

Steam OS gets a public release the same today the Steam Boxes are getting shipped, 13th Dec. Anyone dual booting this baby up to try it out? Apparently they're recommending anyone who has no Linux experience not to try this build yet.

joe_chicken

Will definitely give it a try.

Getting the last piece of a new Core i3 box (the motherboard) tomorrow, so fate smiled on me!

Have quite a lot of Linux experience, very interested to test the streaming aspect, still a bit dubious of it.

Will depend on how much work it is exactly. Hopefully they have things like bootloaders and drivers preconfigured and I won't have to roll my own.

Very interested to see how they handle usual distro stuff like repositories / file locations / network config.

Sierra Oscar

I will give it a go to try it out. I haven't used Linux all that much in the past, although neither have 95% of the Steam users.

death1234567

I will defintely be dual booting it but I will probably wait for a non beta release which I assume this one is. Hopefully its not just a skin and bones OS that just allows you to play games.

witnessmenow

joe_chicken wrote: »

Will definitely give it a try.

Getting the last piece of a new Core i3 box (the motherboard) tomorrow, so fate smiled on me!

Have quite a lot of Linux experience, very interested to test the streaming aspect, still a bit dubious of it.

Will depend on how much work it is exactly. Hopefully they have things like bootloaders and drivers preconfigured and I won't have to roll my own.

Very interested to see how they handle usual distro stuff like repositories / file locations / network config.

I doubt the streaming will be active in this build, there is a seperate steaming beta, which wouldnt make sense if everyone could partake in it with this. Also I assume the current windows steam client isn't capable of the streaming out stuff at the moment either.

wyrn

I'll probably give this a try. I dual boot most of my machines. It'll be interesting to see how much I'll make use of Steam OS. I'm mainly a linux person but I have to use windows for certain software. I don't know if I have the patience to switch between three OS.

joe_chicken

I read an article that said streaming was included, but on second reading I think they don't know what they are talking about.

witnessmenow wrote: »

Also I assume the current windows steam client isn't capable of the streaming out stuff at the moment either.

Yeah, only really thought of that since I last posted ... I was hoping for a quick turn around on the Beta and a sneaky update tomorrow, but unlikely.

Still gonna give it a try, cuz I like messing!

witnessmenow

joe_chicken wrote: »

I read an article that said streaming was included, but on second reading I think they don't know what they are talking about.



Yeah, only really thought of that since I last posted ... I was hoping for a quick turn around on the Beta and a sneaky update tomorrow, but unlikely.

Still gonna give it a try, cuz I like messing!

I cant wait for the streaming stuff to come live, I've wanted it for ages!

Here is a post of mine from nearly two years ago: (talking about the Ouya)

witnessmenow wrote: »

I took a punt on it and donated the $119, I guess i was feeling pretty generous that evening .

My thinking behind donating was

1. Worst comes to worst, It will be a useful low powered media box
2. If GTA3 can run on phones less powerful than this, it has enough power to make most types of games (obviously not to the same level of graphics as the 360/ps3)
3. Power is not everything in terms of popularity, Wii out soled everyone despite being much less powerful
4. People complain there will be no games, there is plenty of games that would work well on this platform that could be ported easily enough. (Super meat boy, Limbo, Altitude etc)
5. This sould have access to all the android video streaming apps (RTE player, sky go etc)
6. On top of streaming games wiht onLive, I think there is room for a local stream application. Yuo could render and run the games on your pc and just use this device as the display and controller input. (I would definitly use this)

I will give it a shot this weekend if it supports my hardware. The initial beta may have limited drivers, well have to see.

As mentioned above, the streaming stuff is more interesting to me. I have a low powered Atom/Ion box under the TV for XBMC. If I could put SteamOS on that and stream games from my desktop i'd do it in a heartbeat.

sarumite

Going to sounds like a stupid question, but what is the advantage over Steam OS and big picture mode?

red_ice

So eh... Where is it?

cherryghost

red_ice wrote: »

So eh... Where is it?

6pm I reckon.

sarumite

sarumite wrote: »

Going to sounds like a stupid question, but what is the advantage over Steam OS and big picture mode?

Big Picture mode is just a 10 foot UI.

5uspect

sarumite wrote: »

Going to sounds like a stupid question, but what is the advantage over Steam OS and big picture mode?

Big Picture is a TV friendly UI for using the Steam client in a living room with a controller. You still need to run steam on a Windows PC and plug it into your TV. Steam OS is an operating system like Windows. It's based on Ubuntu Linux and ideally will be tuned for gaming. (Most games only work on Windows tho so this is why you may need streaming)

I would imagine that the interface will pretty much be the same as Big Picture but much more customisable. The advantage us that you remove Windows And potentially see the performance gains Valve saw with Source running under OpenGL on Ubuntu.

cherryghost

Any minute now...

Meanwhile, leaked pic:

red_ice

I came home early to dl+install this, cant find a link anywhere!

red_ice

red_ice wrote: »

I came home early to dl+install this, cant find a link anywhere!

Apparently this is a link but its incomplete (at present) and probably getting hammered.
http://repo.steamstatic.com/download/SteamOSInstaller.zip

ricimaki

More info here, also has the same download link as above
http://steamdb.info/blog/35/

Spear

Debian based, looks like they want to go very high stability unsurprisingly.

Hardware requirements are a bit limiting at the moment:

Q: What are the SteamOS Hardware Requirements?

• Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
• 4GB or more memory
• 500GB or larger disk
• NVIDIA graphics card (AMD and Intel graphics support coming soon)
• UEFI boot support
• USB port for installation

Nvidia GPU only for now, UEFI mobo and 500GB+ disc. This might rule out a lot of people who were going to try it on a spare machine.

joe_chicken

Anyone any luck installing?

My gfx card (HD 4890) is an old amd/ati card, which can't support the latest catalyst 13.1 driver.

They do include the new ones however, probably not 100% supported, but it is linux, so amd drivers are pants ...

Here's hoping this whole valve thing will put an end to that!

Khannie

joe_chicken wrote: »

it is linux, so amd drivers are pants ...

Pretty sure the drivers for the newer cards are on a par with the windows drivers.

Khannie

Deleted User wrote: »

Nvidia GPU only for now, UEFI mobo and 500GB+ disc. This might rule out a lot of people who were going to try it on a spare machine.

Any idea why the need for UEFI? Seems unnecessary.

cherryghost

Le bump. Steam OS update includes Intel and AMD GPU support, as well as regular bios support and any hard drive size.

Unfortunately I'm having terrible graphic issues on Intel HD4400 right off the bat.