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Valve Releases Debian-Based SteamOS Beta
An anonymous reader writes that, as promised, "Valve has put out their first SteamOS Linux operating system beta. SteamOS 1.0 'Alchemist' Beta is forked from Debian Wheezy and features its own graphics compositor along with other changes. Right now SteamOS 1.0 is only compatible with NVIDIA graphics cards and uses NVIDIA's closed-source Linux driver. SteamOS can be downloaded from here, but the server seems to be offline under the pressure."
An alternate submission links to another article about the use of a Debian base system as well as an unofficial torrent.
The one distro to rule them all!
When will the clods learn... need to share something big to a lot of people? TORRENT!
Seeing as i cream my pants every time Valve announces something, it is now time for some new underwear.
At least it isn't like the time I got an auto-reply to my job application at Valve. Sure, they didn't end up hiring me into their utopia, but if you ask me one shitty bed is a fair price to pay at heroin-like bliss.
Isn't it specifically designed for a specific system that specifies a specific model of nVidia graphics controller?
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
UEFI boot support is in the list of HW requirements, which I've managed to avoid so far. There's no mention of TPM but maybe that's the reason?
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Or maybe nVidia had more engineers to spare to support Valve, what with AMD being busy with the XBone/PS4 launch and all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It seems like since this is only in beta, its a little early to start making the accusations that they wont support ati. Wait till they actually release the full version.
Probably because Nvidia was shamed into better supporting Linux before AMD? Because Nvidia has been working better with Valve on this project? Because the optimization for those AMD cards isn't done?
Had you been paying attention, even in the slightest, in the past few months, you would have known what has been going on and what the plan is for SteamOS. Perhaps you should actually do some reading on it instead of just saying that Valve is "screwing a large group of people."
Like Linus Torvalds said.
NVIDIA, Fuck You!
The Catalyst and Mesa drivers are present on the system, but SteamOS Beta 1 is being advertised as NVIDIA-only.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0MzY
Although Debian is not one of my desktop distros (which are Gentoo and NixOS), I recognize that it has become the most reliable and best supported distro with the largest community and the most respected pedigree. It's also the most common base or parent for other distros like Ubuntu, so clearly it has the largest slice of the pie. And here's a little secret that is no secret: it just works.
I use it occasionally on little ARM boards like the awesome BeagleBone Black, where you have to overwrite the pile of junk Angstrom distro that comes on the board out of the box. Debian is totally painless and just works in that role. If you need a replacement distro that you can depend on, Debian never disappoints.
It's the "distro franca" of Linux, the GOTO choice for those who don't like pain.
They probably don't want to hear any square pegs complaining that they only get 2 fps out of the AMD drivers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's a very early release. I'm not surprised they decided to limit it to just one set of drivers, and Nvidia's drivers, while not that great in an absolute sense, are in a much better state than AMD's (and Intel's hardware just isn't sufficient for gaming).
I really do hope they get support in soon, though I suppose that depends more on AMD than on Valve. I'm not particular to either vendor - both Kepler and GCN are pretty good hardware, and they're each doing some very interesting things in the software side.
Not required, supported. The list is supported hardware. I would assume standard BIOS is supported as well but they wanted to point out that newer UEFI only boards are also supported.
Seems you got modded up, despite being WRONG. UEFI booting is required for the installer, which is why UEFI Support was listed as a hardware requirement in the FAQ you looked at. The requirement is also mentioned further down in the FAQ. Also reference:
http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/valve-releases-steamos-beta-early-build-your-own-system-requirements/
One benefit to this is that people won't be trying to install this on an old piece of crap and then complaining it's slow.
No.
and Intel's hardware just isn't sufficient for gaming
An Anandtech review points out that the integrated GPU in Ivy Bridge (previous generation Intel Core) runs Skyrim playably: 46 fps at 720p. From what I've read about the PS3 port of Skyrim, the PS3 doesn't do much better. And because indie PC games tend to be lower budget, they also tend to be lower detail, which means they just might work on Intel.
AMD's typically shitty driver situation, it's no big surprise that they're proritizing nVidia machinery first. Once AMD grows up, presents some decent drivers, and puts on their big boy pants, I'm sure Valve will be more than happy to include their drivers as a part of the system.
Wait. Were you using the same nvidia drivers that I was using among others for the last year, where it was fubared, beyond fubared. And got so bad at one point, that the drivers were causing hard locks across all 400-500-600 series cards. And to top it off, made a shit mess causing massive crashes, again across the board all the while claiming it was "on the users end" until it finally got so bad that they were offering to pay anyone in the continental US to have their rigs shipped to California so they could test them. There's a very good reason why a lot of people have switched to AMD in the last 6 months.
Om, nomnomnom...
His first sentence is all about ejaculating uncontrollably into his own clothing, somehow because of video games. Interesting, perhaps, but it surely is not insightful.
Actually, his first sentence makes a cognitive leap from observing an involuntary visceral reaction to the Valve branding, to concluding that it is now time for some new underwear. An average slashdot moderator is not in the habit of thinking this far ahead.
You are screwing a large group of people
That large group of people are the ones at fault here.
AMD/ATI has never attempted to even approach NVidia's commitment to make hardware run well with Linux. Yet you people keep buying their hardware. The small cost savings of AMD has always been enough to get even regular Linux desktop users to buy their stuff despite their chronic indifference to anything other than Windows.
The best thing that could possibly happen at this point is for gamers to ignore people like you and buy Steambox compatible hardware, meaning not AMD, in large quantities. Then, maybe, at long last, at least fifteen years too late, that fucking company will finally step up and deal with the problem.
Linus not withstanding, NVidia has provided me with up-to-date, stable, performant Linux drivers for their hardware without fail for almost twenty years. Recently, NVidia has invested even more effort and collaborated with Valve to capture the Steambox platform. If this Debian based, open gaming platform succeeds we all have NVidia to thank. NVidia has EARNED this outcome, and people like you, with your sad-sack AMD crap need to reconsider your behavior.
But you won't. Nope. Instead, you'll download Steambox and try to run it on your Windows-only video hardware, watch it catch on fire and the bitch up a fucking storm all over the Internets about how Steambox is a giant POS.
If Steambox succeeds it will have to be despite you god damned AMD buyers, as always.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
If Steambox succeeds it will have to be despite you god damned AMD buyers, as always.
Oh, but haven't you heard? AMD are the good guys now because they occasionally trickle out some of the information you need to make a half-assed open source video driver which supports some of their older cards.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Okay, so I just drivers for my 7950GT installed on one machine, then went to the other one and reinstalled the latest drivers for the GTX460. Both times, the cards installed in less than 5 minutes. Both AMD-CPU systems, far slower (one's a dual-core 4850e out of an Acer, the other an Athlon X4 620. Both 4GB RAM.)
You've got something configured incorrectly or your operating system is fucking swiss cheese and you need a fresh install.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
They might get in trouble for shipping the proprietary Nvidia drivers if it is shipped together with the Linux kernel which is GPL.
Bullcrap. The drivers have to compile a module. THE MODULE is not a part of the kernel, it is called by the kernel. OpenGL is the reason why the driver includes binary blobs in the modules that do not include source code, unfortunately OpenGL is not really open it is controlled by a trumped up consortium much the same as the MPGLA model. You cannot legally disclose the software api source but you can use it under license. The OpenGL is overseen by the hardware companies that design and make the chips, Microsoft has a hand in it and also releases hardware acceleration for chipsets within the Windows system files called DirectX.
DirectX does not so much compete with OpenGL, rather it sleeps in the same bed. Nvidia has lately been given a rather frosty pist from Microsoft because they have had too much of a smooch session going on with Android and have also made inroads into peoples living rooms on other devices with tegra based graphics used in other devices with the Linux kernel.
All the while the PC gaming market has been torpedoed by Microsoft with the release of an etch-a-sketch OS with lousy high end graphic support called Windows8. Because it is absolute shit for PC gaming, much the same as Vista and the early Win7 OS was.
Nvidia and Valve seeing an opening with high end gaming, has started to experiment with the SteamOS project with a networked gaming system which will not be dependent upon Microsoft's software or OSes whatsoever. Whether or not this will fly is very problematic as the market for high end graphics cards is currently in the tank, so it is a shot in the dark. Seeing that the market for custom made gaming computers is limited and the hardware for them will only become more and more scarce and expensive.
It has always been the case that gaming and advanced graphics, though supported under Linux rely upon the whim of the manufactures to actually work with proprietary libraries like the not so OpenGL. Same thing applies to using the advanced features in software like Google Earth, you can run it in emulation without hardware acceleration but it sucks unless you have the proprietary drivers installed in Linux. Here in the world of Linux we suck on the hind teats and are forced to accept the fact that not every piece of hardware is open source friendly or can be made that way. Same thing would happen if Steinberg's Asio audio API were ever to be ported to Linux, it would be a game changer in professional audio and Microsoft and Apple both know this and actively prevent it from happening. So for realtime audio, advanced graphics and other high end features Linux is very much a non starter because it has deliberately been prevented from coming to the table by the big players.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that ATI drivers for linux have ALWAYS been terrible.
nVidia has already taken notice because they are one of the companies working with Valve: https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/gamedev/docs/Porting%20Source%20to%20Linux.pdf
New things are always on the horizon
It is the distro with the best cutting-edge version
You had me almost sold there.
I wonder what is in the non-free part of the repositorie!
Which nobody sane actually cares about. Graphics drivers are about performance and features, not the legal state of the code of the fucking driver.
I'm not the OP, but thought I'd correct a few misconceptions you seem to have.
You say that like tarballs are a bad idea. It worked well for Slackware. ;-)
Anyway, more to the point, debs are much more than glorified tarballs. That one deb package file contains control information, which specify version information, dependencies, basic package information, installed size, and much more. It also contains scripts to preinstall, postinstall, preremove, and postremove the package. It really is a one-stop shop when it comes to installing programs under Linux. Other than dependant packages, of course.
You can use apt to install packages from source, but the source code must come from the Debian repository. It needs to contain all the info above, and more. A source install is relatively simple to do. Basic process is "apt-get source package; cd package; debuild -us -uc; dpkg -i ../package.deb". So, that's three "debianisms" to download, build, and then install the package. Not as convenient as Portage, but apt/dpkg was not designed to be a source distribution. It probably could work as one, though. Should be simple enough to create a script which does everything automatically for you. If you want a source distro, then Gentoo is definitely the way to go.
Unsure what you find so funny about apt-cache. I use it regularly to search for packages. It works well for me.
Unsure what you mean by "relevant package" or "relevant distro". I just did a search for a package called "clipit", on packages.gentoo.org. It's a program I like to use to copy between X clipboards, and store a clipboard history. Gentoo doesn't seem to have it. Debian does.
One anecdote does not a conclusion make. I've had some very good experiences when dealing with Debian maintainers. In any case, this is subjective. I'm sure other distributions have some great and enthusiastic maintainers, but Debian ranks highly in my experience.
Not quite. Debian Stable achieves its high reliability by subjecting packages to a good testing period. It suffers jokes from the Linux community for being out of date, but that's what you have to do to achieve that level of reliability. Package maintainers even backport security patches to older package versions, to make sure that they don't install newer package versions on a Stable system.
Debian Testi