Steam announces Gaming OS

[Deleted]

Source.

So, Valve have announced an open OS combining both Steam and Linux. Its intent seems to be living-room focused, which could get very interesting, what with the XBox One and PlayStation 4 coming out in the next two months.

This could get very interesting, provided that the quality, intuitiveness and responsiveness are good or better.

What do you guys think of this?

[Towstie]

Interesting, I'll probably hook up an old spare computer and try it out.

Although it will not have any impact on Xbox One or PS4 sales and/or player base

[ati87]

My question is how are they planning on selling the box?

One of the issues Sony had with the PSP Go was that it didn't support the crappy UMD disc, meaning retailers had no intensive of actually selling the PSP because they wouldn't be making any money afterwards. Because lets not forgot...the device themselves is only a 1-time thing since retailers, game developers and the company that builds the console (so Microsoft, SOny and Nintendo) make their money mostly by selling games.

Second I think allot of people fail to understand the following. Steam OS isn't actually competing with Windows or PC gaming even if it looks similar, its actually is competing with the upcoming PS4 and Xbox One. Since no person in their right mind will buy a Steam device, hook it up on their TV and say ''right I don't need my PC anymore'', since using the internet on your tv just isn't comfortable.

Finally I also hope that they don't try to build a product that tries to combine the worst of 2 worlds. Namely the need to upgrade your PC every 3 to 4 years (half the lifespan of a console) and the price of a PC. A great thing about having a Xbox or a PS is that you know that whatever game you buy you will be able to play it like it is meant to for at least 8 years (xbox 360 was released Novermber 2005).

[Deleted]

My question is how are they planning on selling the box?

My understanding at the moment is that they are not looking to sell any hardware themselves, their goal is to get people using steam as a console replacement/alternative. They are providing the OS for free and allowing 3rd party manufacturers to sell systems running the steam OS.

The streaming feature they are making a point of means that you can stream games from your main PC down to a budget machine running steam OS and play it on your TV (how this will deal with issues such as input lag remain to be seen). Personally this feature doesn't really interest me but there does seem to be a fair bit of hype starting to surround it already.

The other thing to remember is that there are still two more announcements to come, this could have larger implications than we realise now.

What really interests me is that as this is linux based and gaming oriented, could we at some point see this as a viable alternative to Windows for gaming PCs.
Linux has been getting better for game compatibility but it is still not at a point at which I am willing to jump ship.

[Jargan]

"In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases."

This is the most exciting part to me. Where Windows has moved away from the enthusiast/higher end gaming market, Valve seems to be filling in and supposedly making noticeable improvements on the OS level. Hopefully that means a smoother and more optimized gaming experience where we can boot up Steam OS and game. If anyone else was doing it, I'd be more skeptical, but its Valve. And they say its free, so probably worth a dual boot if we're getting a smoother gaming experience on the same hardware.

[Deleted]

I'm very interested in this, perhaps I can finally dump windows for good.

[ati87]

I'm very interested in this, perhaps I can finally dump windows for good.

Right no.......

Like I previously said, steamOS specificity won't be a replacement of your desktop unless your intention is to use your TV for everything related to the internet.

Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room.

Seems to me SteamOS is a xbox and PS competitor and not a Windows/Mac competitor. Any hardware released by Valve's partners need to be small so that it doesn't stand out to much in the living room, this would also mean that the OS will be optimized to bring out the maximum of specific sets of hardware.

I get the feeling from Valve's own announcement that even if you can install SteamOS on you PC, you most likely shouldn't because the OS will probably be optimised to run specific hardware (just like th PS and Xbox).

[Deleted]

Right no.......

Like I previously said, steamOS specificity won't be a replacement of your desktop unless your intention is to use your TV for everything related to the internet.

But I can dual boot between Crunchbang and SteamOS. One for play one for work. And in my case the computer is also connected to the TV, just a matter of switching the outputs.

[theWocky]

Personally, I doubt much major success. There's not much room for yet another O/S. At least the "living room devices" such as xBox and PS/3 are on a standard piece of kit. If, from what I read, this is going to run on PC, how is it to retain compatibility with the wide variety of components out there.

[Deleted]

Right no.......

Like I previously said, steamOS specificity won't be a replacement of your desktop unless your intention is to use your TV for everything related to the internet.

I expect this to be more or less the case at launch, but considering Gabe's speech at linuxCon which you can watch here I still think we could see it evolve into something that could replace Windows.

And there is nothing saying you have to hook a steam box up to a TV, no reason you can't use it with a monitor (or several depending on what hardware you are running the OS on) like a Windows machine. If this gets to a point where any game you would normally play on Windows will run on steam OS and you have a Linux alternative to any other software that you use on Windows that you are happy to use (media players, web browsers, office, etc) I see nothing stopping you from switching over at that point, even though that point still seems quite a while off.


Also I just watched this video from "the TEK" which seems to explain what we know so far quite well and speculates on what we don't. Might be worth watching for anyone else that is interested.
https://teksyndicate.com/videos/stea...qain-and-logan

[traen]

"SteamOS" is not a new operating system. It's just old good linux with steam integrated.

I really like the idea of being able to play games on my linux machine.
I'm not using any windows features but directx and I'm not using any applications that can't be replaced with linux analogue.
I would ditch windows on a heartbeat and would never return even for free. And there are thousands of people who would love to do the same.

But the problem is that "steamos" just won't make it. GoogleOS can, because it will be used by millions and will have all the functionality needed for a proper operating system.
But SteamOS will be used just by gamers and enthusiasts.
Switching from one OS where you play games to another just to open word document is not an option.

Having "living room PC" is not an option either. And it's not just about having to buy twice as much money for 2 PCs. I just simply don't have a living room Or TV

But worst of all - game developers just won't develop games for yet another platform. Developing games for different platforms requires huge amount of resources. Why bother if ordinary users just don't use linux? How can valve convince them to do that?

But anyway, it's a good news, hopefully more games will be developed for linux and at some point, few decades later windows will lose the leadership to linux and googleos and die eventually. It will be the happiest day of my life

[Cyanotical]

But worst of all - game developers just won't develop games for yet another platform. Developing games for different platforms requires huge amount of resources. Why bother if ordinary users just don't use linux? How can valve convince them to do that?

the PS4 will be using BSD, games for that can simply be recompiled into Linux, and possibly OSX, infact for next gen games, windows8/xbone will be the odd ones out, everything else will be unix based, it would actually make more sense to push development towards unix and away from windows

[Libram]

I wonder how it will handle for those that use a game pad and games that force you to go through their launcher. I remember it defeating the purpose of Valve's Big Picture mode. With Steam Big Picture, the controller won't work for games with mandatory launchers. Perhaps SteamOS will handle the same? I guess it would be up to those that make the games for it though.
Really can't stand mandatory launchers. You press Play in steam to press another Play button in a launcher? I know they are helpful platforms for updating / patching a game, but it would be nice if mandatory updates just simply took action before loading the game without the requirement of a proprietary launcher...

[MrPaladinGuy]

As a Steam user since beta, I don't care about this.

I really just see this as Valve attempting to do something other than patch Steam every other day, troll people with HL3 hints/fake confirmations, and adding more hats to TF2.

I honestly don't see this amounting to much of anything, although I'm not really judging it, meaning, I don't hope it fails or anything such as that.