Good, I believe that SteamOS has the ability to bring Linux to the masses, but we don’t need a repeat of last time.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Genuine question: what happened last time?
Steam Machines. They were supposed to bring PC gaming to the living room but didn't live up to that promise.
StreamOS was a bitch to install on an ordinary PC then. I tried multiple times and just got a black screen or it didn't boot at all.
It sucked.
I ran it. it was fine for the games I played but it made my fans rev up like jet engines.
Nothing. Nothing at all.
Steam Machines were something Valve tried to do back in the early 2010’s. If I remember correctly, it was around the time that Windows 8 was coming out, and Microsoft was making noises that sounded like they wanted to run every game purchase through the Microsoft Store. The same way Apple forces devs to sell iOS apps on the App Store, so Apple can shave a cut off the top of every purchase.
Valve basically went “fuck that with a rusty spike. We’ll just write our own OS instead.” So they started working on Steam Machines, which were meant to be an out-of-the-box solution for steam games. They contracted with established PC builders (like Alienware) to provide machines with set specs, similar to the way console gaming works. The idea was that you’d be able to buy a small MicroATX machine which you could plug into any available screen. Valve was hoping that more players would shift towards playing on TV’s with controllers. Basically, they realized that gamers were split into “desk” (PC) players and “couch” (console) gamers. And prior to Steam Machines, Valve had almost entirely focused on targeting desk gamers. So they figured that if they could move PC gaming to the couch, they could capture the couch gaming market.
This is where the Steam Controller came from, as it was developed to help bridge the gap between controllers and mouse+keyboard games. It’s also where the (now delisted) SteamLink came from, which was basically mirroring Valves desire to capture the couch gaming market.
Isn't Android very heavily based on Linux too (even if a lot of it is hidden at the surface level)? I can't think of anything more mainstream than that.
I'm old enough to remember the Phantom Console bringing PC gaming to the masses too. Safe to say the Steam Deck is quite a lot more successful than that, given the only part they ended up making was a keyboard and mouse you could use from the sofa.
Android is Linux. It's funny because this is the rare case where Stallman's pedantry comes in handy. Android is absolutely not GNU/Linux, the OS family known as 'Linux', but the kernel is the Linux kernel.
If people don't see Android as bringing Linux to the masses (which I don't), then it's dubious SteamOS would either. If it's just a container for Steam, it's not really the same thing as Linux adoption. ChromeOS actually is GNU/Linux, but I doubt many would count that either.
Even so, more consumer products with Linux inside means more improvements that benefit everyone.
Because it's not. The kernel is meaningless if the user space is gimped.
As someone who doesn't have or tried steamos, is there a reason to choose it over existing distros? Is anyone here running it on their pc?
SteamOS is an OS for gaming consoles. It's specifically tailored for gaming and it has controller-friendly UI.
You can game on regular distros, but you need to install and open Steam, download games, and, then, launch them, before you can grab the controller.
You could also launch directly to big picture mode for a “console” PC
It's a little more than that.
SteamOS also uses an immutable filesystem and the system updates as a whole. Because of that, there is no risk of something updating separately and breaking compatibility.
It's fairly common for things to update on regular linux distros and break e.g. anticheat support in Proton or some other thing.
Another thing SteamOS does, at least on the Steam Desk, is actually using two partitions. The updates are always installed to the inactive one, so there's always one image that's known to work. Even if an update fails, the device will simply boot into the intact OS image. Regular distros usually don't have much in terms of fail-safes, so if things break, they have to be fixed manually.
Basically, SteamOS is trying to be as reliable and "hands-off" of an OS as possible to provide best console-like experience.
Nice info. Thank you
Mostly just Valve specific software implements to make the experience better. SteamOS has a really good suspend/resume sleep feature where you can just power off the Deck during a game like any other console, then when you hit the power button again it just lights back up to where you were in the game.
Not sure if that's in any other distro
I think on all distros if you suspend, when you turn your device back on, it resumes everything.
The Steam deck is very quick though. I just paused Like a Dragon Gaiden and it took about 2 seconds to go to sleep, left it sitting on the table for an hour or so while I did some errands. Picked it back up and hit thepower button and I was back on the pause menu in about another 2 seconds.
Steam Deck "sleep" is more like locking your phone than it is like putting a Windows PC to sleep
On a generic PC? No.
On a Steam Deck, it has useful hardware related features that are easy to access, like global frame rate limiting and seamless sleep/resume
Such good news. I hope someone can answer this either theoretically or practically as I’m not as knowledgeable in this.
One of the things I love about the steam deck is the ability to just turn it off and back on a few days later and the game is exactly where I left off. If steamOS is on a PC or another handheld deck. Would it still be possible to still have this feature? I guess my question is whether this is a software or hardware feature.
It's software. I'm pretty sure my linux desktop can do this... It's not a special feature, exactly, the system state gets saved to RAM, and then the CPU goes to sleep.
On resume the kernel reads the state from RAM and puts everything back where it was and things continue from the exact same point from which they were suspended. Theoretically.
It's a complex sequence, and windows sleep is famous for getting it wrong on lots of hardware configs. I've had trouble with it on linux, as well, almost always relating to the GPU.
Valve very likely put in some work to have it work as well as it does on SteamDeck, but theres no reason it couldn't work on any given device.
I'm using HoloISO (it's like 95% SteamOS) on a mini PC (all AMD, 680M iGPU because I wanted to get close to the deck specs). I mostly stream games from elsewhere in the house, but it has a few titles installed locally.
The sleep works perfectly so far for local titles. I assume other Arch based distros with all of the steam software installed (like ChimeraOS) work just as well. If the hardware maker who puts it on their box makes sure their hardware is well supported it shouldn't be an issue.
I'm glad to hear they're still working on it, they are one of the few companies I would actually trust to follow through with what they're saying. It is in their best interest to deliver it so I'm sure they will.
That's cool. Install Endeavor for a very close experience (both is Arch btw).
Really liking Endeavour! Finally hopped over from the unstable mess that is Manjaro.
Still not as noob friendly as VanillaOS or some other options. HoloISO or Bazzite are both supposed to be good in that regard, as well.
I don't care for other platform support from the money I spent on steam. I prefer to get some discount instead
No thanks, I'm not replacing proprietary bullshit with more proprietary bullshit