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Valve Removes Steam Machines From Its Home Page (extremetech.com)
Steam Machines were supposed to take PC gaming mainstream by simplifying setup and moving the games in your living room, but they never took off. Today, ExtremeTech reports that Valve has removed Steam Machine listings from the Steam front page due to poor sales. From the report: You can still access what remains of the Steam Machine landing site via a direct link -- not that you'll see much when you get there. It lists only five devices, one of which is no longer available on the manufacturer's site. Several of the remaining systems are arguably not even Steam Machines as Valve envisioned -- they run Windows 10 instead of SteamOS. The final nail in the coffin for Steam Machines may have come from Valve itself. In late 2015, it released the Steam Link. It's a small box that you plug into a TV, allowing you to stream a game from your PC in real time. The original price was just $50, and Valve is basically giving them away right now. Valve is still developing SteamOS, but I don't expect that to go on much longer.
I can use SteamLink for all my games without noticing that it's not running locally. The only thing I'm not able to to there is SteamVR. I really hope there will be a solution soon, but I'm not holding my breath, also as SteamVR probably hasn't taken completely off yet either with VR sets still a bit pricey for the avg gamer.
I don't think it was ever intended to sell well. It was intended to stop the Windows Store in it's tracks.
In that it was quite succesful.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
But come on already, this is the 21st century, and that's starting at -4.5 billion.
What happens if someone with lawyers requests to remove or unlink his or her owned library of Steam-dependent games from the Steam service? Does Steam have the legal right to keep games you paid money to own locked into their DRM garden and DRM client? Or could someone successfully argue "I own these games. I should have the right to leave Steam and keep my games running!" in court? That argument could well be the "design flaw" in Steam's Death Star. One change in the applicable laws, and Steam might be FORCED to let you take your Steam games out of Steam's service and allow them to run like normal, independently executable Windows or MacOS apps again.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
You shouldn't try to game Linux in the first place. Its not good for the security of Linux servers, or the integrity of the Linux kernel. =)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
The hell did you expect? Valve who doesn't even know how to code a game anymore and produced the pile of crap that's poorly coded to this day - Steam, being engaged in an OS? Fucking hilarity.
Not to only ignore that the marketing was poor, but Valve should never have taken it upon themselves but instead taken from the LInux community itself alone and acted as a 3rd party intermediary between game devs and the Linux devs responsible for the distro, including hardware support communication.
The OS would be a hit with merely one directive: One person in charge scrapping all criticisms of Windows on gaming forums and tech forums, and using those features as a counter-marketing venue to pull people over.
None of the things were done, therefore SteamOS was a flop, therefore the machines were a flop.
Really?
So the games already in there doesnt work so well? Have you tried any of them? Any of the 3000 games for Linux on Steam? Some of them may not have the best implementation neither for Linux or SteamVR (as most people still are on Windows), but technically there shouldn't be any limitations.
Was there ever a market for this? It's always the same two Linux enthusiasts who are vocally adamant about there being a market for games on Linux, but who are we really kidding here? Games on Linux is a cute niche, sure, but it is a niche nonetheless. There is absolutely no need for it because it will always have consoles and Windows as competitors, and that just isn't a market you break into half-assedly. If Linux as a gaming platform was 150% better than Windows, then absolutely games on Linux could become a thing. But until then who really gives a fuck? Who's really going to invest the hundreds of millions of dollars that it's going to take to make Linux a competitive gaming platform?
By discontinuing steam machines your basicly sayng use the Windows Store instead, it’s integrated into the OS so why install steam. It looks like valve wants to be Netscaped.
i never really saw the point of steam machines, steamOS is available for free and you can build your own 'machine' install steamOS on it and you're done.
all the people i know that have a steam machine, have build their own. the official ones were either very expensive or underpowered while in the end, they were just plain pc's (alienware was about the only vendor that tried to make it not just a pc).
valve developed a controller and the link, i honestly don't know why they didn't do the same for steam machines.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Where are they giving away steam links? I only see them selling it for about full price.
I bought ZBOX NEN SN970 Steam Box, which is a machine that is smaller than Mac Mini, yet packing a quadcore i5, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 1TB HDD. I used SteamOS as a primary OS, with additional partitions for Win7 and Win10 for games not available on SteamOS nor running under Wine. Moreover, that machine is very quiet and power efficient, so when not running games, I use it for Ethereum (GPU) and Monero (CPU) mining. The 970M there is in MXM format, so it could be replaced by 1070 in MXM format as well if upgrade is needed (e.g. from SteamVR capable to SteamVR ready). And the large Steam logo on white top looks super rad!
I would guess a game platform like on a smart tv sooner or later. Steam machines are a nice reminder that not everything has to be microsoft but i guess the lack of gpu's and Linux support for crappy proprietary drivers say from nvidia did not help.
I run linux (no windows) and even i steer clear of gpu's.
An integrated smart tv (normally linux) with decent games i recon is where the consoles and steam will go next
nope. indie games support linux almost by default. Yeah, there are not many AAA publishers that support linux but there are some. Hope to see more.
Also you're better off using ubuntu lts for gaming.
I'll be probably down-voted by GNU/Linux advocates but it's mostly due to the fact that GNU/Linux isn't suitable as a gaming OS. As an OS it lacks several mechanisms that are necessary especially for complicated interactive/heavy software such as AAA games. For example, Linux threads were poorly implemented as a hack on fork() and as a result thread priority sucks https://www.gamingonlinux.com/... as IRL some threads are more critical like sound threads. Also the notorious bug 12309 where symptoms are sill present or bug 14505 where file descriptors and network sockets cannot be forcibly closed and without unmounting them first it leads to stale mount points, and in certain cases to oopses and crashes. Not even talking about unstable API/ABIs. Windows Mac OS and strangely many BSDs are mostly free from such Linux diseases. Even Google is planning to replace it with Fuchsia/Zircon in future.
You're so mature! I wish I could be as insecure as you!
Disclaimer: I'm not running SteamOS or Steam Machine.
But I AM running Steam on Slackware64 and love, Love, LOVE IT!!
I just auto-got a bunch of new DLC for Kerbal Space Program.
Most fun I've had since Jumpman on the Commodore64.
Thanks Steam!
I think the point is that Linux at heart is a Server OS. Yes it can be used as a Workstation/Desktop OS, and it can play games without a problem. But being that it was designed and its primary use is a server OS means there is little effort in porting games to it.
Windows on the other hand, is a Workstation/Desktop OS in its core. We have Windows Server but it is really just kinda of an hack on the Desktop OS.
Gaming normally wants to bypass a lot of the OS layer hence the popularity of DirectX in gaming engines. As it bypasses a lot of the the Operating System, and directly controls the hardware. Linux Games are usually a little bit behind (older games getting ported) The new games tend not to be a modern designed as the newest windows games. Because Linux wants to act like a server OS, and not give normal users so much raw access to the hardware. Because a server OS wants to run a lot of small applications and run them at the same time and well. Vs running one big program that uses nearly the full computer.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I never expected the Steam Machines to gain much adoption - people running steam already have a gaming-capable computer.
The SteamLink, however - that is a useful device. I have one, I use it, it works very well. It's much better than buying a second separate machine to put in a different room, or trying to do something crazy with long cables through the house.
"The original price was just $50, and Valve is basically giving them away right now." Current price? $49.99. So basically giving them away compared to original price...
I am not left-handed, either!
I was waiting for version 3 of the Steam Machines before I would purchase one, fucking GABEN!
I think it was a JOKE. He didn't say "Don't game ON Linux" or "Don't game WITH Linux", he said "Don't game Linux". It is a play on gaming the system.
There is no real distinction between a "server OS" and a "desktop OS" since decades.
Gaming normally wants to bypass a lot of the OS layer hence the popularity of DirectX
That is nonsense. There never was an "OS layer" to access the graphics card. What exactly should that be?
Because Linux wants to act like a server OS, and not give normal users so much raw access to the hardware.
That is nonsense.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Who wants a steam machine in their living room, the noise, the coal and the risk of CO-poisoning alone.
SteamOS itself has a small amount to do with the failure of these, it was mainly lack of advertising. SteamOS it's valves intent to be separate from windows as Microsoft makes their platform more closed down and monopolized.
I find myself using the Steam Link mostly for streaming non-Steam content like streaming live sporting events from my PC since I cut the cable cord. Works pretty well for that. I haven't found a lot of games that look AND play great except for older titles like Dark Messiah: Might and Magic. That was fun on the big screen. Hopefully, they will allow them to continue to work and not brick them at some point.
Go for nearly nothing, compared to retail, on eBay. I may have to try one of these out. Never wanted to drop the cash on them because of stutters and disconnects on my wifi'd laptop. Maybe it's more polished on the link?
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
It's the year of the linux desktop! For the gnomes that live in landfills.
But they still don't sell any of their hardware to Australia, so thats a bit of a missed opportunity for Steam. I've been hanging out to get a Steam Machine since almost 100% of my gaming is via in-home streaming. I've been waiting for ages for their Vive to be available as well... and their Steam controller (although I eventually caved last year and now have a really good DS4 controller - and as a result probably won't bother trying to find a Steam controller now I've mastered this) but unfortunately, since they don't sell them here I now have an Oculus on the way.
And I guess this is always going to be the problem with Steam. If they can't make their products available to international markets like their competition can (in this case, Sony or Facebook), then their products are always going to be niche obscurities with their exception of their first party titles (HL3 anyone?). And to be fair, Steam's name is garbage in Australia due to the way they keep screwing us which is why the ACCC keeps dragging them over the coals.
Why not bring some useful content instead of bashing on others. Thanks grammar nazi!
FPS and racing games, yeah, I can see the couch being ideal for that... I'd probably buy a console though if I liked that type of game since they are tuned for that type of game.
The trouble with console versions of these games is that you can only play the vanilla game, not community-made mods that extend replay value.
Release Half Life 3.
Make it SteamOS exclusive for 6 months.
Watch the money pour in (if it's anywhere near half-decent).
That they haven't already done this means they have no clue. I love Steam, I think they're great. But they missed the boat by just letting people make Steam Boxes that have... no unique selling point whatsoever. It's just an expensive PC operating as a console using software you can install on your existing PC for free.
Or you could have had the first PROPER set of VR-designed consoles by getting into bed with HTC or someone, and done the same.
They'll still rake in millions, from silly loot boxes and shite, but it bugs me that they aren't in the game-development industry any more. Steam was just a distribution method for HL2. They forced you onto it if you wanted to play HL2 or CS (after shutting down WON).
Now... there's nothing of incentive to move platform.
I honestly don't think Valve had high hopes for it. At the very least, they weren't banking on it. It was more of an experiment to generate enthusiasm and get certain wheels turning to wrest control of PC gaming away from Microsoft; and to that end it seems to have been very effective. The Windows Store hasn't taken over gaming, Vulkan is poised to supplant Direct3D, AMD is open sourcing their Linux drivers, and Linux as a gaming OS (and even as a desktop OS in general) has improved by leaps and bounds as a result of their efforts. Criminy, DX12 wouldn't have even been released if Valve hadn't pulled this stunt; and yet every year the naysayers come buzzing to pronounce the death and failure of the entire effort because they can't see the forest for the trees. Meanwhile development keeps cranking along and more games keep getting Linux support. Will Linux ever truly compete with Windows as a PC gaming platform? Not for a long time, if ever. Does that matter? Not really. At this point it's like a knife Valve sharpens in their spare time to keep pointed at MS.
Be embarrassed for yourself. Full time Linux user here for almost a decade. I have a fast PC with over 3000 games written for my OS and thousands more that run in emulation. I also enjoy a secure OS without telemetry data being harvested but you be special cause it means so much to you. I honestly don't care if you use Windows or Mac feel free I have an OS that I like that does what I need and runs thousands of applications and doesn't spy on me.
that's mostly just because unity supports linux almost by default. if it weren't for that, there'd be a much lower proportion of indie linux games. still a few, but not nearly as many.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
>The original price was just $50, and Valve is basically giving them away right now I just checked the Steam store, it's $49.99. Please let me know about the giving away part, I'd love to pick one up for nearly free or some such.
May your blade chip and shatter.
Nethack, the greatest game ever made, runs on Linux.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I mean sure, Linux won the phone market, home router market, and server market. But we can't call ourselves REAL men until we win the desktop market. Even if we overthrow the PC master race, somehow we'll never be as cool as they were.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
also killed any hope of next DX being store only
I think the tinfoil hat cut off circulation to the thing that passes for a brain.
I think the point is that Linux at heart is a Server OS.... Windows on the other hand, is a Workstation/Desktop OS in its core.
At core, you are woefully uninformed. Windows at heart is Windows NT, a server OS designed by Dave Cutler along the lines of VMS, a server OS.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I think the point is that Linux at heart is a Server OS. Yes it can be used as a Workstation/Desktop OS, and it can play games without a problem. But being that it was designed and its primary use is a server OS means there is little effort in porting games to it.
I love when people try to read into things that which was never there in the first place. Linux (I assume you meant, "GNU/Linux," the complete OS as packaged and distributed by many distribution maintainers worldwide, and not just the kernel, which alone, by itself, without a host of utilities is capable of doing nothing whatsoever..., like a director of a stage-play with no actors, or a producer with no... well, with no director OR actors, sitting glumly and forelorn in an empty theater, with also no audience, since there's no PLAY to see, no actors to perform it, and no director... you get the idea, hopefully,) was and I believe IS, at its heart, a reimplimentation of the original UNIX philosophy. That's it. It's a different way to solve the same problem, in such a way as to allow users (by which I mean whoever is using the computer, not dividing into classes, people who use a computer to do one thing versus another,) to do the same things they could do with a pricey UNIX license, without having to pay for the UNIX license. You see, since Thompson and Ritchie came up with their philosophy for how a multitasking, multiuser OS should be built and function, and published... um... the API? or whatever it was, detailing how processes should communicate with one another, be invoked, and what a program should do and how it should act, it became possible, with lots of effort, to duplicate it, withOUT violating any intellectual property rights or law.
It's kinda like how the first digital electronic calculator was created, and the process for representing decimal numbers in binary and manipulating them was patented, or copyrighted, or whatever... and someone, (who would have either had to pay royalties or been barred from making a competing product,) who wanted to make a competing product, worked out another way to solve the same problem that did NOT infringe, (one was "ten's complement," the other "nine's complement," or something like that, can't recall which is which and NOT looking it up...) both the authors (Linus T. & Co.,) of the Linux kernel, and those of all the various and sundry GNU, UNIX-replacing-but-not-actually-UNIX-in-fact utilities, could do something similar. Use the widely-distributed knowledge of how those binaries worked, even if you couldn't see the innards, the original UNIX source-code, you could cobble together another program, and as long as it reliably gives the same output in response to the same inputs, and has at least the same range of inputs as the original, (and ideally does it as well, as quickly, and as efficiently, or preferably better,) what you have is a drop-in-replacement for that utility or program. Do that for ALL the core programs, and you have a drop-in-replacement for the whole damned operating system. As far as I know, that's what Linux (by which I mean, "GNU/Linux,") was. That is what (GNU/)Linux is at it's heart. The fact that it's popular as a server OS is a side-effect of the fact that it's built to be like UNIX, and UNIX is powerful and works well as a server OS, but is NOT known to be especially user-friendly. In fact, it's RENOWNED for being fairly user-UNFRIENDLY, hence its popularity with computer experts, who feel insulted, I think, by the dumbed-down, crippleware coming out of Redmond, for example.
Just my two cents.
Also, the fact that a LOT of what became the internet had legacy software that works well on or with UNIX, since it PREDATED M$ WinDOS, there was an entrenchment factor here, operating in both directions. You see, early PCs simply COULDN'T run UNIX, as they weren't powerful enough to do so. M$-DOS was a solution to that problem, which I'm not even interested in getting started discussing; suffice it to say, it worke
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Steam Machines were supposed to take PC gaming mainstream by simplifying setup and moving the games in your living room.
HOW did they expect, in this day and age, to get people to buy a computer powered by STEAM? What do they think this is, the eighteen eighties?!? First, there's the fact that powering them with electricity is FAR more convenient, and although modern high-end graphics cards DO seem to produce enough heat to fire a boiler off of, that would imply having a computer powered by electricity already, meaning no need for a Steam Machine... and who wants to be constantly interrupted while gaming, having to feed logs or filthy, dirty coal into the firebox?!? Then you get that crud all over your controller... also there's the risk of steam getting the electrical devices it's hooked up to wet, and while I'm sure steampunk fans would LOVE a Steam Machine, there simply aren't enough fans out there to... what's that? They're NOT literally powered by steam? It's just a name?
OH. Never mind. XD
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
There is no real distinction between a "server OS" and a "desktop OS" since decades.
Actually you will find the design and operation of the process scheduler to be quite different for obvious reasons. You will see the difference exaggerated further if you are familiar with the schedulers in gaming console operating systems.
Gaming normally wants to bypass a lot of the OS layer hence the popularity of DirectX That is nonsense. There never was an "OS layer" to access the graphics card. What exactly should that be?
The graphics card is accessed through Direct3D, the OP was speaking about DirectX of which Direct3D is just a part. Direct access to APIs for audio and input devices (and graphics cards) was restricted as protected memory systems became commonplace so abstractions had to be created to deal with this. It's a very standardized set of APIs on Windows (DirectX) but not so much on Linux, in fact there are a bunch of different abstraction layers for audio and Linux was quite late to the game with the input subsystem for unifying access to USB input devices.
Because Linux wants to act like a server OS, and not give normal users so much raw access to the hardware.
That is nonsense.
It's less the raw access and more the lack of unification. Windows includes all the APIs for direct access to hardware (particularly for game developers) and they are unified as DirectX. Linux provides no such unified collection of APIs, yes you can cobble it together by using the various interfaces: joystick input can come from /dev/input/js or /dev/input/event, audio could be alsa or pulseaudio or jack or OSS, 2D hardware accelerated graphics comes from a myriad of different drawing APIs.
Sure there is/was. The OS layer abstracted the graphics hardware away from the user level programs. DirectX (where the "direct" nomenclature came from) was the ability for user-level applications to interface with the graphics hardware either directly or at a much lower level than before.
The difference between a "server OS" and a "desktop OS" still exists, but the differences a much smaller than they used to be. Server OS's will tend to be on the security side more, while desktop os's tend to favor performance more. Also server OS's will prefer throughput (more work done before a task switch increases efficiency), while desktop OS's will prefer low latency/responsiveness -- usually.
You can read http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1696043806550421224/ to the link being removed.
https://steamcommunity.com/app...
"...we're continuing to invest significant resources in supporting the Vulkan ecosystem, tooling and driver efforts. We also have other Linux initiatives in the pipe that we're not quite ready to talk about yet; SteamOS will continue to be our medium to deliver these improvements to our customers, and we think they will ultimately benefit the Linux ecosystem at large."
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
So no one noticed the obvious meme in shutting a Valve to turn off Steam?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Well,
why don't you simply admit that you have no clue about computing?
That is all wrong ... sorry.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hmmm... Well, I'll just suggest that you brush up on your technical skills. Here is a list of suggested materials that cover the topic:
https://css.csail.mit.edu/6.85...
Pay particular attention to pages 106-128 which discusses the protection mechanisms, 145-149 which discusses I/O privileges, and 152-172 which describes interrupts and exceptions.
If you don't have the time, or the topics are too technical for you, then you can just read this, which granted, has a few faults, but from a high level, it's describes things pretty well without getting overly technical:
https://blog.codinghorror.com/...
As for the second part of my quote, you can read this: https://www.microsoftpressstor... please pay attention to the section labeled "Quantum" (about 1/3rd of the way through the document). That describes in further detail the differences between desktop and server optimizations. Again, old information, but it still applies today.
Enjoy!
Erm,
are you in a google frenzy?
The first link is for an intel 386 ... seriously?
There is no computer related topic that is to technically for me ...
I program them ...
Again, old information, but it still applies today. ... it is the exact same code running on a desktop or a server. Perhaps you mix that up with a mainframe or micro computer?
No it does not. There is no difference at all between a CD that I put into a server and install an OS or into a laptop or desktop. And that is completely unrelated to Linux, Mac OS, HP US, AIX, Solaris or what ever
Mac OS X had a special server distribution up till OS X 10.6. But that only changed the amount of software that was installed (e.g. Kerberus). The kernel and everything else is exactly the same.
You can run iOS or Android as a server OS ... no fucking difference to the "hand held device" version.
There never really was any.
The other two links make no sense either, but your link frenzy clearly shows: you have no idea what OS is ... hence you believe that servers and modern desktops run different kinds of OSes, which they don't.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
There is no computer related topic that is to technically for me ...
Then I suggest you actually read those links so you understand. From you:
Gaming normally wants to bypass a lot of the OS layer hence the popularity of DirectX
That is nonsense. There never was an "OS layer" to access the graphics card. What exactly should that be?
No, that is how the OS actually works. See when a program that is running in ring 3 (or an user-level application... Like a game for example) wants to access hardware, it calls a API call, or makes an I/O request, or read/writes to a specific set of memory. The later will cause an exception (Access exception) while the former will just cause a ring transition, but in either case it is then caught by the OS, when then translates the request into something acceptable to the hardware. That exception handling is very costly in terms of performance (partially because of the ring transition). In order to reduce the number of ring transitions, you can either try and allow more things to be directly accessible from user mode without OS oversight (which then can cause stability issues, especially when you have multiple applications who want access to the same hardware), or you start to allow more drivers to run in a ring above ring 3 (usually ring 0) -- That of course leads to entire system stability issues -- AKA BSOD, kernel panic, or whatever the OS has.
So yes, one of the many things that a "server" OS will do is push as much of the drivers into userland so that a poorly performing driver won't take down the entire kernel. But that almost always has a fairly large performance hit. "Desktop" OSes will push as much of the drivers into kernel space in order to gain performance, but at the expense of system stability. Depending on the OS and what the needs of the OS is, dictates where along line of performance vs stability it will use. Obviously the best performance being that absolutely everything runs in Ring 0, and the most stable is that only the core kernel runs in Ring 0 and everything else (drivers included) get pushed down to rings 1-3.
And yes, in many cases, some of the server vs desktop tuning can changed at run-time and use the exact same binary. And yes, in many cases you can take an OS that is designed to be server-class, and run it on the same exact desktop or vice versa. That doesn't mean there isn't a difference, you've just changed the difference from a compile-time difference to a run-time difference, or of course optionally, running the OS sub-optimally (which apparently you don't seem to care about at all).
You may program computers, but for a long number of years, I actually wrote OSes, so yeah, I kind of understand exactly how they work. Apparently you don't. I gave you links so that you could actually read them, and at least understand the basics of what you are talking about, but apparently you'd rather just continue stating what you ignorantly believe to be true rather than educate yourself.
Using a common slashdot metaphor, you are arguing that there is no difference between engines.. They are all engines, they all burn something and make something go, and you can throw a semi-truck desiel engine in a ferrari or a ferrari engine in a truck and they are exactly the same. Therefore there is no such difference between them, and they work exactly the same and you can't understand why a ferrari engine costs as much as it does when you can buy a honda engine for 1/100 the cost. And since you've driven a car before, well you know what you are talking about, and with $2000 you can win nascar, and put tesla out of business. Good luck to you.
Since I can't actually force you to learn or to stop saying ignorant things, and you apparently refuse to do either on your own, I think I'm done here.
There is no computer related topic that is to technically for me ...
You have demonstrated that even the basics are clearly beyond your capacity.
And that is completely unrelated to Linux, Mac OS, HP US, AIX, Solaris or what ever ... it is the exact same code running on a desktop or a server.
What you don't understand is that almost any computer can be a "server" by some definition of the term. However an operating system designed to be a server has a very different role than one designed to be a desktop operating system. Take a look at the various scheduler differences in Linux the O(n) scheduler, O(1) scheduler and the more recent CFS.
Now consider what are the fundamental differences between server and desktop workloads, do you think they exist or do not exist?
Then consider the implications process autogroups have in the context of server workloads and why a different scheduler is going to mean a difference in performance here.
Since you mentioned Android and iOS, yes you can run a server on them but it will not be as efficient because the operating system is designed for a different task. Continuing on with focussing on the scheduler the reason why Android uses its own scheduler rather than O(n), O(1) or CFS is for the same reason there are differences between server, desktop, mobile and embedded operating systems which is that they have different workloads and there is not one common solution to all problems.
Here I have only talked about the scheduler which is only a small part of the kernel which in turn is only one part of the overall operating system that services different workloads so we can talk about the performance impact of other components if you need help understanding why they are different for different workloads.
Fundamentally you can use a server OS to run desktop workloads and vice versa, in fact you can run server workloads on a mobile OS if you wanted to but given they are designed to do different things you'll find it inefficient to do so.
Just because a "graphic (card) driver" is called a driver, it does not mean it is part of the OS, nor is it technically a driver.
There is no "interrupt" or ring barrier when you call a DirectX routine. Why would that be the case?
While some OSes put drivers into user land, most don't.
So I repeat it again: thee is no "linux server OS" versus a "linux desktop OS" ... they are both the exact same OS.
There is no longer a "Mac OS server OS" versus a "Mac OS Desktop OS", and there never where any differences between server and client/workstation in any of the majour Unix brands.
Your idea is simply wrong. Regardless how much OS programming experience you claim.
If you knew more about it, you perhaps had mentioned Amiga OS and BeOS as "desktop/client" OSes ... but coming up with a link for a 386 processor made you look like a complete fail :D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Moron.
If you knew anything about OSes, you'd know exactly why I put up the link for the 386 processor. I even pointed you to the exact pages to read.
But since you obviously don't know, here it is. The 80386 processor was the first (and simplest) processor that allowed programs to be able to enter and exit into protected mode. Technically, the 80286 could run protected mode, but not without a complete reset. Without protected mode, the computer would act pretty much how you seem to think it does, with all programs having complete access to everything it wants. The 80386 added the descriptor tables which allowed for memory remapping (needed for virtualizing device memory and virtual memory). Maybe you never knew why, or maybe you were around to know, but there wasn't a UNIX or LINUX for 80286 processors, but there was for the 80386. That's why.
So if you want to learn the very basics of how modern operating systems actually work, the 80386 progammer's manual is one of the best places to start. But if you knew squat, you'd already know that.
You never heard about other architectures then ... ...
Just because did not call it 'protected mode' does not mean they did not have it
Why would Linus build a Linux/Unix for x286 when the next best computer he could buy was an x386?
Xenix and many other unix like OSes did run on 80286. The big difference between 80286 and 80386 is the MMU, not 'protected mode'.
Same with 68k and 68030/68040.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why would Linus build a Linux/Unix for x286
Well there is a simple answer to that... He didn't. The first version of linux was written for the 80386. A quote from Linus himself... His announcement of linux:
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
—Linus Torvalds
If you scroll up, you will see that I said the 80286 had protected mode. How is it that you can't read? One of the things (of many) that made the 80386 different from the 80286 was that it could enter and exit protected mode without having to completely reset. Sure, there were other big architecture changes as well, like 32-bit registers, and a MMU that could do page level protections instead of segment level protections like the 80286. But the 80386 was the first intel chip that could (and still can really) run a modern operating system.
The 68000 didn't have a protected mode either. It kind of had a user/supervisor mode, but since the MMU wasn't integrated, it depended heavily on external chips to implement most of the functionality. That wasn't implemented until the 68010 or 68020 I believe (Maybe even 68030). And yes, I wrote a lot of 68xxx code as well as x86 code. I actually started on 6502 -> 68000 -> x86. Haven't done any ARM programming, but I try and keep up with the different architectures. I've run/used Windows on x86, ARM, Alpha, and MIPS. I haven't written an OS for anything other than the x86, but I did a lot of systems programming on the 6502 and 68000 (and x86), including multitasking when the OS wasn't multitasking itself. The concepts aren't all the much different.
Here's an online magazine from 1990 that highlights a shareware project I did on the 68000 in assembly (YMG), in the background. On an OS that didn't support multitasking, and using hardware devices (RS232 port): https://atarimax.com/freenet/f...
I'm too lazy to go googling, but I'm sure you can find references on the web to some of my past projects.. Super fast disk defragmenters, bulletin board systems, file transfer protocols, multi-user systems, online multiuser gaming systems, multitasking/multiprocessing systems for DOS, windows device drivers, proxy servers, conversations with the w3c groups on html and css specs, etc etc. I'm a pretty decent programmer, and I've been around enough to know a lot of things about a lot of esoteric things.
And you?
I program since 35 ... actually nearly 40 years, on 6502, 68k, ARM, SPARC, but recently only in Java and Bash.
I'm absolutely not interested in the historics of one of the worst processor architectures we ever had on the planet :)
In one of your previous posts you said that 386 was the first with 'protected mode' ... now you say 286 was it ... sorry, completely irrelevant to the start of our discussion: a DirectX library does not run in kernel space! It is on the same 'ring' as the application calling it. There is no difference between a desktop or server OS unless your server is a mainframe and runs an OS that is not availabble for desktops.
You disagree ... fine for me.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.