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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.
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.
For my purposes (and, I suspect, most others') there is a difference between "sufficient for gaming" and "able to run certain games". Any computer can run games - Doom has been ported to damn near every 32-bit system, and many indie games may as well list requirements as "CPU: Yes".
I'm not denying that you can play a respectable number of games on a recent Intel GPU. But it is enough of a restriction that you have to be aware of your hardware limits when purchasing games.
Skyrim, incidentally, is not a very good example. It scales rather well to low-end hardware, especially on the GPU (it is less forgiving of CPU or RAM weaknesses). Looking at the same review, Battlefield 3, at minimum settings, 768p, runs at 37fps, which for a shooter is essentially unplayable. Civilization V was down to 15-20fps at low settings - not even remotely smooth, although I suppose since it's a turn-based game you could technically call it playable.
Don't get me wrong - Intel is improving quickly, and they're already good enough that SteamOS needs to support them eventually. They're already good enough for occasional gamers. But they are not something purchased by anyone who considers "gaming" a primary concern - and SteamOS is purely aimed at gaming. If you're installing an OS that boots into a game menu, you're already in the gaming niche.
That said, one of SteamOS's niches is as a game streaming box. Have a big, beefy (coughWindows-runningcough) box sitting elsewhere in your house, streamed to a small SteamOS box hooked up to your TV and controller. This is right up the alley for an Intel GPU, and I suspect this setup could become a primary use for SteamOS.
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.'"
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
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.