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SteamOS Will Be Available For Download On December 13
sfcrazy writes "Valve Software, creator of Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, has announced that SteamOS will be available for public download on December 13. That's the day when the company will start shipping Steam Machines and Steam Controllers to the 300 selected beta participants. The company said, 'SteamOS will be made available when the prototype hardware ships. It will be downloadable by individual users and commercial OEMs. (But unless you're an intrepid Linux hacker already, we're going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out.)"
Kind of want to try this in Virtualbox.
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
Are they providing a sensible version of GNOME? I very want to shuck Ubuntu, and this would let me have my Steam games *and* a usable desktop system.
(I know there are GNOME alternatives, but I'm hoping for the easy way out.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's been a lot of hype and misconceptions about SteamOS within the gaming community especially. SteamOS isn't a desktop OS, it's a console OS and needs to be understood as such. It won't be a whole lot of use unless you're planning to set up a PC for use as a console.
...if you're doing Linux gamedev or are already using Steam on Linux...you may well be ready for that.
Me?
BRING IT
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I browse Linux commit logs every now and then and these days there are surprisingly many various game controller patches flowing in. Good.
Heh... There's levels of "intrepid Linux hacker"... Some go where angels fear to tread, after all... >;-D
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
lighten up, it's just for games. who cares if a fun game runs on even a closed source console or whatever? they pull the plug on thing in a couple years, so what?
I cry and whine that no one cares that I don't like this and want it to go away
FTFY
...if you're doing Linux gamedev or are already using Steam on Linux...you may well be ready for that.
Me?
BRING IT
If you're serious about gaming on Linux, you're probably already doing that, actually... with a standard system. Unless you weren't actually planning on hooking it up to a TV in the first place (I wasn't).
I can state, for example, that my USB XBoX controller works perfectly on Linux, and is supported by all but one or two of the games I have bought on Steam for Linux. It also works in Steam itself, for Big Picture mode. I also know for a fact that the HDMI out on my desktop/gaming system supports audio and 1080p to the TV. From there it's really trivial to set a desktop up to automatically login and launch Steam at startup, to launch Steam in Big Picture mode, and put it on a TV.
The beta is U.S. Only, and that's a shame. I was hoping for the world wide beta test. But I guess they had their reasons. But at least the SteamOS will be downloadable so I can build my own device. I probably won't be investing too much time or money into it. If I buy Antec ISK300-150 and make a ~400€ AMD APU powered indie game device it would probably serve its duty well (and afterwards be a nice tiny server box). You people can probably recommend something better if this idea seems bad. Or share suggestions for others to read.
Good to see who the mature one is(n't) here.
oh well done! +1 funny (I wasted my mod points today)
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
I guess SteamOS would still work better if you want a "10-foot user interface", i.e. a simple to use living room gaming OS.
And as soon as Gentoo finishes compiling they'll post their responses.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
You are confusing the Free Software community with the Linux community.
I'm quite sure the Free Software community still has your ideals and you will probably find some like minded individuals there. Over the past few years, the "Linux community" now includes millions of people who accept locked bootloaders as standard and install closed source apps from an app store whose goal is to collect as much information about them as possible.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
No, seriously. I can totally justify spending around $350 for a HTPC with gaming to experiment with. Cheaper than my wife's purse.
$150 - AMD A10-6800K (with mobo over at Microcenter). Yes, I know Intel is faster and it's not the fastest GPU either but for $150 it's hard to beat the combo.
$80 - 8GB of RAM
$100 - 3TB hard drive
and I have a bunch of old ATX cases and power supply.
It's Linux, if I don't like it I can always put something else on like Mint.
Did they pick that out or did it just fall that way.
Gentoo?! Bah, real Linux hackers roll their own from source.
I made an app! Shoutium
Except... pulling the plug in a couple of years would be corporate suicide.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
You can always make your casino sim and your fishing sim and try to get them greenlit
Why not get yourself a new midrange graphics card for your Linux box and just install the desktop Steam client?
Because it's not always convenient to run long HDMI cables and a bunch of USB hubs from the computer desk through a wall to the TV. Or because one's existing Linux box is a laptop or small-form-factor desktop that doesn't take graphics cards.
Applications were called apps for short long before iOS 2 introduced the App Store. See, for example, Unleashing the Killer App by Downes and Mui, first published in 2000.
I also know for a fact that the HDMI out on my desktop/gaming system supports audio and 1080p to the TV. From there it's really trivial to set a desktop up [...] and put it on a TV.
I've said this on Slashdot for years. But often, I've been told that the majority are unwilling to build or buy a second computer to dedicate to the TV. Whether computers that ship with SteamOS will change this is still unknown, but OUYA (an Android/Linux-based game console) hasn't made much of a dent.
If you use a normal PC, nothing but inertia prevents the system from dual booting steamos and the desktop of your choice.
If anything, running steamos beside a desktop linux with a shared /home would offer a great many perks.
Just pick a default, and roll with it. When you want the other, just press one of the arrow keys on the grub(or whatever loader you like best) menu, then press enter.
The purpose of steamos is not to replace the desktop; it is to replace a dedicated windows install, that exists only to play games on, but still eats up ginormous amounts of disk, requires constant mothering to protect it from malware, and does not play well with chained bootloaders.
A stripped down linux for games only, akin to a console grade OS, would eat up considerably less disk than a windows partition, would not require the MS tax, would benefit (theoretically) from the improved securty *nix offers, and as a bonus could use the same data volume for /home as the desktop distro it dual boots beside.
I play windows games with Wine on my Mint running i7 in the living room all the time. If I could keep my linux desktop more or less "clean" from wine and other library clutter, i'd be totally down with it. Having a maintained distro specifically for that purpose makes keeping it running well an easier task.
If you use a normal PC, nothing but inertia prevents the system from dual booting steamos and the desktop of your choice.
And it is inertia that makes it so inconvenient. I mean this literally: a desktop computer at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force, such as by being carried into another room. Most people don't want to have to move a desktop computer from the desk to the TV to play a game and then move it back to surf the web.
my Mint running i7 in the living room
You happen to have your computer desk in your living room. Not everybody else does. Some people keep the computer desk in another room in order to preserve some level of peace and quiet.
I've been using Linux a long time (15 years) and as my only desktop for the past 10 years. While I like and prefer the Freedom part, I much more prefer the stability, the free part, the plethora of apps that actually behave and just do what they are supposed to do, etc. IOW, I'd probably be a Mac user if you take monetary cost out of the calculation.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
and when I want to use a computer on "me time", I prefer the recliner.
I want to agree with you. For a while, I ran my PC through an HDTV and put the keyboard on a tray table. But if your family's primary PC uses the living room TV as its monitor, then you can't watch TV while your kids are doing typed homework.
Thankfully [the netbook] is a niche that many workplaces have a need for
Thank you for finding that Toshiba netbook. I'm glad to know that more than just a minority of hardcore geeks have a use for an ultraportable 10" laptop like the Dell Inspiron mini 1012 that I'm typing this comment on, even if it does compromise CPU power. And no, I don't have a problem running LibreOffice on Xubuntu on this netbook. But what worries me on that page is the word "Used". What happens once all the still-working used netbooks on Amazon are bought up?
I think the idea is basically to start freeing the entertainment PC industry from Microsoft's clutches, especially as the trend towards "App stores", centrally DRMed software, and hardware lockdown is making it's way to the PC - both Microsoft and Apple are moving that way, and that puts Valve at a distinct disadvantage as an app store, why go to them when your OS vendor has their store built in to the GUI? So instead they package their own OS streamlined specifically for gaming. After all last I heard Valve isn't looking to sell "Steam Boxes", they're giving the existing PC vendors a new sales front on the PC market - a label they can slap on the box telling consumers they can expect a certain kind of predictable experience, like "Windows Inside" except probably with less vendor expense beyond probably certifying that their boxes conform to certain conditions - i.e. all hardware is compatible and working drivers preconfigured, etc. Maybe even some standardized benchmarking.
So - just want a gaming rig? Go ahead and buy a prebuilt Windows PC if you like. Or buy a "Steam Box" labeled PC instead, which works just as well without adding a "Microsoft Tax" to your purchase price, and quite possibly comes in a considerably more stylish case and is probably much quieter than most PCs as well - after all it's targeted at the living room, not the office. As an added bonus the Steam Box will probably perform better than the same hardware running Windows. After all a stripped-down gaming-focused OS is going to have a lot less of the uneeded (for gaming) general-purpose overhead that Windows has. And that's going to be worth a lot, both at the low end where every frame counts, and at the high end where people are paying hundreds of dollars in premiums for hardware that only gives them a couple percentage points extra performance.
Will it cost more? Maybe. But maybe not. There is likely going to be some unavoidable extra overhead for the tighter thermal and acoustic requirements, not to mention any "bling factor" on the case, but that should be at least partly offset by the lack of a Windows license. And it's in both Valve's and the hardware vendors interest to keep prices competitive with Windows PC - after all Microsoft's stranglehold on the consumer OS market puts them in a position to engage in "unilateral negotiation" with hardware vendors, grabbing a larger slice of the profit margins than they would in a free market.
And let's face it - a lot of these consoles are going to be bought for kids by parents /grandparents/etc, and which are they going to rather buy - the locked down " strictly a toy" Playstation/Xbox/etc, or the slightly more expensive unsubsidized Steam Box that can become a real PC at the flip of a switch, because it is after all basically a standardized PC in a nicer box. In fact I truly hope Valve integrates a graceful multi-boot option directly into their normal boot routine. Or perhaps even better a full desktop environment that runs as a "game". Whatever allows people to gracefully access the flexible power of the box they have sitting there instead of having to get a whole separate box that's basically another version of the same thing just with a different OS and standard controllers.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Hates Steam for DRM. Recommends Origin. Hahahahaha....
And after 8 hours of downloading, downloading patches, downloading more patches and then constantly downloading over 8Gb for one game that I never got installed (freebie with an indie bundle) I gave up. Never seen such a shoddy, bitty interface and download structure (not to mention speed).
I have several big games on Origin that I've redeemed from bundles, etc. and I honestly don't care enough to install it again.
They legally shouldn't even be calling it "buying games" on Steam... you're buying LICENSES only.
Go with GOG.com or even Origin as you would get a hell of a lot better customer services, refunds, and you wouldn't be buying licenses but the actual games themselves, at least in the case of GOG.
Really?
From GOG's EULA
1.License. Company grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Program, but retains all property rights in the Program and all copies thereof. This Program is licensed, not sold, for your personal, non-commercial use. Your license confers no title or ownership in this Program and should not be construed as any sale of any rights in this Program.
I expect Linux is largely an irrelevance here since most of the games are going to be streaming from somewhere else. Of course Valve might encourage game devs to port their game to Linux to benefit from cheaper hosting fees if they release a cloud based platform and that might trickle down to native versions of those same apps.
I expect that in the future when you buy a game on steam that there will be a "play instantly" option. Maybe you can even rent games this way, or subscribe to the service. But by decoupling where the game runs from where it is played, it doesn't matter what architecture or OS the user has. Cloud gaming in other words. Probably something little more complex than a chromecast or raspberry pi would be capable of serving as a streaming client and I imagine that Microsoft, Sony, Valve, Google, Apple all have their eyes set on something of that nature.
Origin do refund games _if you don't like them_. Steam won't refund utterlly broken trash games, except "War Z" which was a disaster. It happened with X:Rebirth very recently: people edit XML savegame to progress through the story. Some others CTD on startup. Steam support won't refund, they say you used the software for 2 hours so they can't and won't, it's alpha quality at best sold 50 USD. Origin would refund, Amazon would refund, Steam tells you to GTFO. I was a rabid Steam fan once, no longer.
I'm a linux user and a free software supporter... i try to install everything as free as possible, even the graphic card drivers.
I try to use FLOSS games (and there are many that are fun!) but also play closed ones. If i have the game without DRM (from humblebundle or desura), i will prefer it, if not, the steam DRM isn't that bad... It would be better without any DRM, but steam is very transparent and most users will never see that it even exists.
Right now it's better to have DRM games than no games at all. Going from a totally closed platform (windows and other consoles) with DRM to a open platform with DRM is a step in the right direction. After people/games start ditch windows, the DRM problem can be fixed, specially by the "wallet voting" (ie: stop buying DRM games)
Anyway, game jump from windows to linux is important enough to allow some slack, specially if the main problem is the transparent steam DRM
Higuita
Fuck this shit. I'm still playing Super Mario on my 8-bit Nintendo!
Not to mention Nethack being a Rogue clone, and Star Control 2 being a sequel. Nothing derivative whatsoever.
yes, Origin is a sad excuse of DRM system... looking at desura and steam, it's so easy to work with... with Origin, it's a never ending install saga of apps (all full of spyware, just check your firewall logs) and then to play, you have to open the browser and install even more plugins (again heavy and with all sort of tracking).
Those guys need to trash it all and learn that KISS is (and stop trying to spy/track their users)
Higuita
[citation needed]
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Grrr... Third such unsubstantiated statement from you on this story. Seriously, do you have any shred of evidence suggesting Steam is planning to centralize the gaming hardware and stream the games from the cloud? Cause you're the only person that seems to believe so.
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
Gaming is kiddy shit (sorry) and it's naive to expect much idealism from from the core audience.
Not that you're not a known troll, but there are now more adult gamers than juvenile ones*, and gaming now brings in more money than movies.
For Linux to reach a larger audience means catering to portions of that audience who just want free stuff.
Oddly, it also means catering to the portions of that audience who just want to give away free stuff.
* According to a 2007 Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey, more than half (53 percent) of American adults play video games, and about one in five adults (21%) play every day or almost every day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Over the past few years, the "Linux community" now includes millions of people who accept locked bootloaders as standard and install closed source apps from an app store whose goal is to collect as much information about them as possible.
Users have outnumbered developers at least since Slackware. Build a bridge, and clamber over it awkwardly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Heh... There's levels of "intrepid Linux hacker"
Hell yes. I have an old laptop that connects to WiFi over the an Intel PRO/Wireless 2200 802.11bg AND print to a printer. When I looked in the mirror the next morning I had a full neckbeard.
so you get a big monitor for you pc
And furniture to sit on, compared to the existing sofa in the room with the TV.
a problem. I must have missed people hating on their Xbox, Playstation, Wii and more generally pc's.
Being a kernel developer I am interested in what there kernel tree looks like. I assume that it is just a recent 3.10 stable or something with some extra drivers and the odd patch in the arch.
But I am curious/hopeful to see if they have done any fine tuning/performance enhancements.
Anyone with an ounce of sense would see this is the direction this is all pointing.
Why else would anyone own a TV in 2013 anyway? To pay $100+ a month to cable companies for a pathetic selection of material to watch (interspersed with commercials every 5 minutes)?
Because live professional and collegiate sports tend to be blacked out online.
Are the eighth-generation consoles also friendly to community-produced game mods, or is the publisher of a game the only entity allowed to make mods for that game? Without Half-Life modding there would have been no Counter-Strike.
Anyone? Really? Sure it may become popular for casual gamers, but there's two major problems with your scenario: bandwidth and lag.
Streaming a 32 bit 60Hz 1080p signal takes a LOT of bandwidth, ~4Gbps uncompressed, and good luck compressing it significantly in real time without dedicating far more computational power than rendering it in the first place. And doing so will introduce even more lag into an already bad situation. Your brain has a lifetime of experience dealing with ~125ms of lag between seeing something and getting a reaction to your fingers. Add even an extra 50 ms between action and visual response and your reactions start going to hell, and that's probably an optimistic number. Add in the fact that the internet is optimized for batch-oriented information transfer tolerant to wildly variable transmission delays and there's just no way you can satisfyingly stream any sort of relfex-oriented game. Remember, you're talking about *gamers* here - the sort of people who avoided cordless mice like the plague for years because the tiny extra amount of rock-steady lag introduced by the wireless transmission circuitry noticeably interfered with their reflexes.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You'd have to hack around it with the usual solution (pipelight) for now, but NetFlix is re-writing their client to drop Silverlight and be fully HTML5. So, in the future it should work natively.
> The whole MS tax thing has been disproven time after time.
Really? Perhaps you are using the term differently than I. Or perhaps you live in a universe where Microsoft gives Windows away to PC manufacturers for free? I guarantee you that if you buy a new Windows PC there will be a chunk of that money that finds it's way into Microsoft's pocket to pay for the copy of Windows. If you don't actually *want* Windows then that's the "Microsoft tax". Yes, there are a few places distributing Linux-based or bare machines, but as a rule they are either smaller businesses who don't benefit from the economies of scale in manufacturing, or small "boutique" divisions within larger corporations such as with Dell and their business-oriented linux systms. In neither case do you particularly expect to see prices competitive with what you could buy an equivalent-hardware Windows machine from the broader market. So you're essentially paying an even higher price just to avoid the "tax", for reasons which have everything to do with Microsoft's heavily dominant market position.
And yes, you can possibly get a refund after purchase, but that takes time and effort in it's own right - and that is after all the "true" currency, cash is simply a more efficient means of exchanging it.
Oh, and by the way - nowhere do I advocate or express a "religious war" zealotry, that exists only in your mind, I consider such things ridiculous and unseemly and rarely partake. As a member of society however it does behoove me to keep an eye on the major forces and trends within the spheres that interest me, and it's hard to deny that Microsoft is one of the 800lb Gorillas in the room when it comes to computers, that they certainly do not have *our* best interests at heart, and their actions impose real costs on society, however large or small those may be. Denying that requires a zealotry of it's own, or at least willful blindness.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
And you think people with lack of bandwidth are happy about downloading 10GB+ games instead? Besides not every game is twitch sensitive and a 1-2Mbps link is perfectly adequate for most games. Sony and Microsoft are well known to be releasing cloud based game streaming services soon. SteamOS doesn't make a lick of sense unless it is ultimately intended as a platform for cloud gaming too.
Have you ever stopped and pondered the fact that the same people that have issues downloading huge games are the same exact people that will get a terrible experience playing with "Cloud" games? From experience, OnLive was terrible. I have 100/25 fiber in my house, and almost every game had extremely noticeable input lag. Even though I had sub 50ms ping the whole time I was playing, it seemed like I was playing online with over 300ms ping. I could compete a 360 look with my mouse before my character on screen moved. The only thing that cloud gaming would be good for is turn based games... at least as it exists today and in the near future.
"SteamOS Will Be Available For Download On December 13"
Still no SteamOS :(
Did I miss it since it's no longer the 13th? I can't seem to find a download link anywhere.