Valve open-sources its DirectX to OpenGL translation software: Here come the SteamOS and Linux games

[Martini1991]

No way, I wouldn't mind dual booting it soon but as you say very little content at the moment. Very much in it's infancy

It's struggling with even the basics of what it's meant to be though, you can't really run a SteamOS box in your living room because you can't really do anything on it.

It's to "combat" consoles, but with your PS4 etc you can do all sorts ; Netflix etc.

All SteamOS can currently do is play indie games

I'd install Steamos on my 1080p 11.6" ultrabook, but that'd limit its usefulness (I'd be able to play my Indie games/Steam stream/play FM14 )

I do love the Steam Streaming though (Although SteamOS isn't required for it) having my laptop downstairs, streaming 1080p to the 42", very nice.

Although until I spend like 200 quid in better Wifi equipment, 1600x900 streaming is much better.

 

[Silent_Scone]

What is the Playstation operating system aimed at? Dentists? What about the Xbox one? MacOS may not be aimed at gamers but developers often have to write code for that as well, instead of, you know, actually making games.

Can you give me examples of a few benefits I would have, as a gamer, once we get yet another platform, with all the inevitable hassle and porting issues?

PlayStation operating system could probably have more relevance here to dentists, sure.

Unified programming interface for developers to unlock much better performance and potentially at some point, and also possibly Mantle through lack of overhead.

An operating system built around gamers, for gamers.

Written and distributed by a company who understand and cater for gamers

Vendors and developers freedom to submit incremental changes without lengthy submissions and ability to keep communication with the GPU without having to go through stacks upon stacks of Windows / Direct3D bloat.

Free dental care.

 

[Zethor]

Unified programming interface for developers to unlock much better performance and potentially at some point, and also possibly Mantle through lack of overhead.

An operating system built around gamers, for gamers.

Written and distributed by a company who understand and cater for gamers

Vendors and developers freedom to submit incremental changes without lengthy submissions and ability to keep communication with the GPU without having to go through stacks upon stacks of Windows / Direct3D bloat.

Ok so my benefits from SteamOS, as a gamer, are:

- a system built around me, for me - feeling special already.
- a system written and distributed by a company who understands and caters for me - even more specialness!

What can I say? Good luck to Valve in their attempt to sell slogans although I think they should stick to selling/making games.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Open wide :O

It's struggling with even the basics of what it's meant to be though, you can't really run a SteamOS box in your living room because you can't really do anything on it.

It's to "combat" consoles, but with your PS4 etc you can do all sorts ; Netflix etc.

All SteamOS can currently do is play indie games

I'd install Steamos on my 1080p 11.6" ultrabook, but that'd limit its usefulness (I'd be able to play my Indie games/Steam stream/play FM14 )

I do love the Steam Streaming though (Although SteamOS isn't required for it) having my laptop downstairs, streaming 1080p to the 42", very nice.

Although until I spend like 200 quid in better Wifi equipment, 1600x900 streaming is much better.

I think in principle much like Mantle is in alpha form it's forcing Microsofts hand to 'speed up' (loosely) DirectX development. The very fact they're claiming to be able to offer much lesser performance overheads is a good sign, and we have things like this to thank for it.

Steam OS very well might wither and die as we see so many things do, but Valve are more established than anyone else to combat it so I have at least a little faith it will expand into more than just a living room experiment

 

[elJarmen]

Interesting, thanks for posting.

 

[Ragnahex]

You have to remember valve is privately owned and as such is not required to keep shareholders happy... This does allow them a fair bit of freedom to do what the hell they want. As long as it's not making hl3

 

[meldarthx]

I can tell you exactly what Steam OS; its Valve trying to keep PC gaming in their walled garden instead of someone elses. Valve is not gaming friend; they are not here to save gaming; they want your money. If you screw up editing your ini file they'll ban you from that game you've paid money for.

Worst case; ban your account and you lose all your games; I will say at least with EA *yep I'm saying something nice about them* if you get da boot you can at least argue with them about it and they will look at it. Steam nope.

I have a huge steam account; I'm not blind by this at all; neither should you. I'm still waiting on the after game sales Steam has to impliment in the EU *EU done something right there*

 

[Ragnahex]

They only ban for cheating and then most are temp bans... As for permanent bans for cheating. I am not going to cry for anyone in that situation. Had steam since it was released no problem. Maybe we should leave it down to Microsoft for our pc gaming... Because that works so well

 

[andybird123]

It's struggling with even the basics of what it's meant to be though, you can't really run a SteamOS box in your living room because you can't really do anything on it.

It's to "combat" consoles, but with your PS4 etc you can do all sorts ; Netflix etc.

All SteamOS can currently do is play indie games

I'd install Steamos on my 1080p 11.6" ultrabook, but that'd limit its usefulness (I'd be able to play my Indie games/Steam stream/play FM14 )

I do love the Steam Streaming though (Although SteamOS isn't required for it) having my laptop downstairs, streaming 1080p to the 42", very nice.

Although until I spend like 200 quid in better Wifi equipment, 1600x900 streaming is much better.

Not sure if serious?
Steamos is based on Linux and will be able to do everything Linux can, including netflix
Steam boxes will still be fully fledged PCs

 

[Stas823]

I'd rather valve stayed and worked on hl3/tf2/steam client.
Hl3- nothing about it is known
Tf2- crap servers and really rare updates
Steam- constant downtime/slow/errors.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Gabe was due to have talks with Reddit only a couple of weeks ago, might of been some interesting info, but he messed up the formatting on questions and the site deleted them all.

Too many doughnuts on his keyboard.

(Just kidding Gabe)

 

[Martini1991]

Not sure if serious?
Steamos is based on Linux and will be able to do everything Linux can, including netflix
Steam boxes will still be fully fledged PCs

Natively and simply to the same ability of the consoles it's against? It can't.
Given it's "For the living room" to "combat" the consoles, it needs to be as simple, and it's not, not even close.

You can't just go to the browser page, type in netflix and boom off you go, because IIRC, there's no silverlight?

There's no straight forward app ; Consoles/Windows Store/Phones etc.

Needs to be as simple as the alternatives, not jumping through hoops, because then it misses the point.


EDIT : Actually, it's not as hard as I thought ; http://www.reddit.com/r/SteamOS/comments/1vcrd4/netflix_in_steamos_using_pipelight/

But still, your usual console crowd (That SteamOS/Steam machines) are meant to be targeting, it's not good enough.

 

[andybird123]

Steamos will have a full suite of Web/video/audio/etc apps built in as it approaches v1
I dont know how little reading youve done on steam, but yes they really do intend to go toe to toe on functionality

Netflix is pretty specific and I dont know anyone that even uses it, there are ways to get it working and you can bet your bottom dollar that theyll adjust their Android app to run on Linux if it starts to pick up

 

[Boomstick777]

Steam- constant downtime/slow/errors.

Hmm that's not really true is it? I can't remember any period of 'downtime' with Steam since I have been using a PC..

 

[Zairs]

can anyone download the OS?? anyone tried it??

 

[Stas823]

Hmm that's not really true is it? I can't remember any period of 'downtime' with Steam since I have been using a PC..

Playing in the evening me and the people i play with often lose connection to steam and i know its not just us as other people get it too, for example you are playing dota 2 match, your game crashes for reason X, steam loses connection, no one pauses the game and you cant reconnect because of some steam auth ticket, automatic 5 game low priority que which takes like 20 minutes to find a game.

also occasionally you outright cant log in.

 

[Boomstick777]

Playing in the evening me and the people i play with often lose connection to steam and i know its not just us as other people get it too, for example you are playing dota 2 match, your game crashes for reason X, steam loses connection, no one pauses the game and you cant reconnect because of some steam auth ticket, automatic 5 game low priority que which takes like 20 minutes to find a game.

also occasionally you outright cant log in.

Never had a problem logging in, like not ever since Steam started.

I'm not a Dota2 player so can't comment on that. I do know that game has a ridiculous amount of users (500,000+) so you would expect some queuing etc to get into game.

I get problems logging into COD: Ghosts on my PS4 and that has around 50,000 users

 

[Gregster]

Never had a problem logging into steam but do lose stat points in Black Op's very very occasionally but no biggie.

 

[Stas823]

Never had a problem logging in, like not ever since Steam started.

I'm not a Dota2 player so can't comment on that. I do know that game has a ridiculous amount of users (500,000+) so you would expect some queuing etc to get into game.

I get problems logging into COD: Ghosts on my PS4 and that has around 50,000 users

ofcourse you get queuing and im not arguing that its bad or anything, just the difference between 3mins and 20+ minutes is really annoying especially considering its the steam servers fault

valve isn't a company it used to be they don't really update their games anymore, its mostly community stuff. their sales get worse and worse each year both in terms of money off and the events that they have (like coal and winter cards) their support is also really really crap it takes a week to get a response and its always a copy and paste response that is not related to what you asked.

 

[Ragnahex]

I have logged over 1500 hours of dota 2 and can count on my hands the amount of times steam has logged me off during a game. Though I do see a lot of people disconnecting. It's a lot better than the alternatives. At the end of the day steamos is there because they don't want you to have to buy windows because this adds a fair bit to a cheap low spec living room pc