Computer game publisher Valve has introduced their own operating system, SteamOS, which is based on Linux and aimed for living room PCs. This sounds interesting as a video game platform: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/23/4762370/steam-box-os
Nightfox
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system, SteamOS, which is based on Linux and aimed for living room
PCs. This sounds interesting as a video game platform:
Sounds like vaporware! :P
They've been working on this for a while now. The founder doesn't like being tied to one OS for his games, and has been wanting to influence game development for Linux in order to help break Microsoft's major share of PC gaming (or something like that).
This is good news, as other developers will be paying attention. And, with the number of quality titles available, and some real statistics pouring
in, if there's enough Linux users using Steam, perhaps we'll see other developers make Linux releases.
I remember back in the late 90's or early 2000's, Linux titles were
actually being carried in some of the local stores and Wal-Mart. You could buy the OS, a CD of extras, and a couple games. Unfortunately, since at
the time relatively few people had heard of Linux nor had a need/want for something different, they never moved much, and very few titles have been ported since.
On 9/23/2013 10:58 PM, Nightfox wrote:
Computer game publisher Valve has introduced their own operating system, SteamOS, which is based on Linux and aimed for living room PCs. This sounds interesting as a video game platform: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/23/4762370/steam-box-os
Sounds like vaporware! :P
-Mindless Automaton
Computer game publisher Valve has introduced their own operating system, SteamOS, which is based on Linux and aimed for living room PCs. This sounds interesting as a video game platform: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/23/4762370/steam-box-os
I remember back in the late 90's or early 2000's, Linux titles were actually being carried in some of the local stores and Wal-Mart.
The founder doesn't like being tied to one OS for his games, so they decide to develop their own OS? Doesn't make sense to me..
I certainly hope more developers will start making Linux versions of their games. I remember seeing those Linux versions as well in the late 90s and early 2000s. I remember Loki being the company that was releasing most of those Linux ports (Quake 3 Arena, SimCity 3000, etc.). I heard Loki went out of business because there weren't enough customers buying the Linux ports. But these days, the Linux gaming market may be different.
eh, probably going to be hard for them to keep up with all the different types of hardware and the changes.
My understanding is Steam games will run on Windows or SteamOS.
eh, probably going to be hard for them to keep up with all the
different types of hardware and the changes.
I thought about that, too, but I don't think it's as difficult as it was ten or fifteen years ago. Video is the only major hurdle left, and of that I think it's mainly nvidea drivers... and I just read that they're releasing more information for Linux developers, so that'll help out.
I haven't heard anything yet, but SteamOS is likely built on top of Debian or other major system, so they'll have the benefit of all their hardware support. Probably includes in-house and nonfree solutions to boot... heck, could be they even licensed some driver support for maximum performance.
Many (if not all) of their games already run on Windows. And that still leaves MacOS users out..
Nvidia always had good drivers for Linux. Did that change at some point?
I thought about that too. Why would Valve necessarily have to support all the hardware when it's the hardware vendors that create the drivers? The only thing that may make ValveOS better in that respect is doing something like Microsoft does with Windows and having hardware vendors submit their drivers for inclusion in SteamOS.
Perhaps once they finish getting SteamOS rolled out, they'll work on getting the Steam stuff on Mac. To be honest, I've never used anything on Steam, so I really have no idea how all that works. I always thought it was just a distribution channel, until I heard about SteamOS... with the number of titles on it, I highly doubt every title is ported to run on Linux. I don't know if the titles literally run on top of Steam, or if SteamOS has some sort of finely tuned Wine app layer, or what.
My understanding is that Nvidia doesn't release the drivers, you have to use a community produced driver... I forget what it's called at the moment. I think Nvidia had published just enough information for users to use the card for X11 and some limited 2D video acceleration, but you couldn't get the full use of the hardware for gaming like you can on Windows.
Up until recent times, hardware vendors simply didn't release Linux drivers. In fact, most still don't... but luckily, enough developers reverse engineered enough drivers that you'd be hard pressed to find something that doesn't work on Windows (usually odd USB devices).
A good example is network drivers. The most popular are supported, but I have a PCI wireless card that has no Linux driver. You have to use a program called ndiswrapper and use a Windows driver. There's no transparent user-friendly GUI dialog to accomplish this (at least, not that I know about at the moment).
In any case, Valve being such a well known gaming company with so many titles available via Steam, I think they'll have the clout to get vendors to seriously think about creating proper native drivers for Linux.
Many (if not all) of their games already run on Windows. And that still leaves MacOS users out..
Makes sense, since Valve's Steam started on Windows... :P
Perhaps once they finish getting SteamOS rolled out, they'll work on
getting the Steam stuff on Mac. To be honest, I've never used anything on Steam, so I really have no idea how all that works. I always thought it
I read about that - sounds interesting. I'm tempted to take one of my boxes turn it into a Linux media center - can Steam OS act as a MC, too?
well, i'm starting to think steamOS is going to be like that commodore OS. just debian with a theme and a few bells and whistles.
i remember back in the day when everyone was glad to finally be able to just make games for windows because they went through hell coding drivers and working with manufacturers to get drivers to work with their games.
i had one game that i had to switch a jumper on my soundcard... just so i could play it. then i'd switch it back since it was so non-standard.
i dont know if things have changed or if the same people arent there and they didnt go through all the troubles that people have in the past.
My understanding is that Nvidia doesn't release the drivers, you have to
use a community produced driver... I forget what it's called at the moment.
Isn't XBMC supposed to do that? It was too bloaty for the last
system I tried to run it on, but I saw somebody else get it set up real
nice with a remote and everything working over a home LAN and bigscreen beautifully. I've wanted to have something like that for a long time,
just not had the cash for the decent enough A/V hardware.
general) for Windows was that Windows itself used drivers that were system-wide, and software could make use of those drivers by making
standard system calls. Plus, Windows does plug-and-play hardware setup. I believe Linux is the same way.
standard system calls. Plus, Windows does plug-and-play hardware
setup. I believe Linux is the same way.
yeah, but still not as well. i couldnt get the correct video resolution on my laptop and i had nvidia drivers. AND my laptop was neither old nor new.
Mro wrote to Dreamer <=-
i remember back in the day when everyone was glad to finally be able to just make games for windows because they went through hell coding
drivers and working with manufacturers to get drivers to work with
their games.
i had one game that i had to switch a jumper on my soundcard... just so
i could play it. then i'd switch it back since it was so non-standard.
i dont know if things have changed or if the same people arent there
and they didnt go through all the troubles that people have in the
past.
Nightfox wrote to Mro <=-
I remember changing jumpers & such a long time ago too. I doubt
SteamOS will be like that though. The advantage of making games (and software in general) for Windows was that Windows itself used drivers
that were system-wide, and software could make use of those drivers by making standard system calls. Plus, Windows does plug-and-play hardware setup. I believe Linux is the same way.
Deuce wrote to Dreamer <=-
Re: Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Dreamer to Nightfox on Wed Sep 25 2013 03:02 pm
My understanding is that Nvidia doesn't release the drivers, you have to
use a community produced driver... I forget what it's called at the moment.
Nvidia has always distributed an excellent top-notch driver for Linux.
the "pure" distros like Debian won't touch the stuff though because it
has a binary blob, they use the noveau driver which is community
produced and much worse than the official one.
I'm positive SteamOS will include the official closed-source one.
Nightfox wrote to Mro <=-
yeah, but still not as well. i couldnt get the correct video resolution on my laptop and i had nvidia drivers. AND my laptop was neither old nor new.
Yeah, there are still some glitches in the software sometimes. But
your resolution issue isn't necessarily the fault of the driver. The driver might be working fine, but for whatever reason, the software
that detects the possible monitor resolutions might be failing for some other reason.. but certainly a driver issue is possible.
But, after hearing about that Steam Box, I'm thinking it's not going
to include any proprietary drivers by default. Guess we'll just have
to see what they release. Later on I'll have to look around and see
if there's a version of SteamOS available for download yet.
I have to agree. X can be a real pain on certain hardware to get it
going correctly. Several years ago, I was running Red Hat just fine
on one version... I tried to install a newer version, and couldn't get
it to play well at all on my Intel video. I changed to Slackware with
no problem.
A year later, I gave the next release of Red Hat a try, and it
installed with no problem. I read up on what the issue was, and while
it was driver related, there was a small workaround that had I known
about it, would have worked fine... but the scripts, of course, knew nothing about it, until they were pushed down through an update later
on.
I often had the same problem with older Linux distributions: One version would work well with my PC's hardware, and the next version wouldn't, then the next version would work well with it again. I never really understood that - I'd think that once one version got it right, that it should continue working right for future versions.
Re: Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Nightfox to Dreamer on Wed Sep 25 2013 08:02 am
Nvidia always had good drivers for Linux. Did that change at some
point?
My understanding is that Nvidia doesn't release the drivers, you have to use a community produced driver... I forget what it's called at the moment. I think Nvidia had published just enough information for users to use the card for X11 and some limited 2D video acceleration, but you couldn't get the full use of the hardware for gaming like you can on Windows.
Last I checked nVidia publishes Linux drivers that coinside with the
release of the Windows versions, They HAVE to provide drivers because their cards do NOT follow any standards and need to be tweeked every time a new video game is realeased.
Was in the game development biz up until 2005, nVidia card always ran like shit until we submitted the game to nVidia and they had a chance to tweak their drivers to support our game. ATi's? Never an issue, always ran great (in DirectX) out of the gate.
With PCI, there was the capability for the OS to set and control the interrupts, making life a hell of a lot easier. I remember on my
first newer computer having fun in the device manager manually
changing addresses and IRQs...lol...I thought it was so cool at the
time... ;)
With PCI, there was the capability for the OS to set and control the interrupts, making life a hell of a lot easier. I remember on my
first newer computer having fun in the device manager manually
changing addresses and IRQs...lol...I thought it was so cool at the time... ;)
Didn't EISA and VLB do that, too?
Didn't EISA and VLB do that, too?
EISA did, VLB did not. VLB basically hooked the card directly up to the memory bus... which caused problems when bus speeds went up.
Poindexter Fortran wrote to Dreamer <=-
Re: Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Dreamer to Nightfox on Fri Sep 27 2013 11:01 am
With PCI, there was the capability for the OS to set and control the interrupts, making life a hell of a lot easier. I remember on my
first newer computer having fun in the device manager manually
changing addresses and IRQs...lol...I thought it was so cool at the time... ;)
Didn't EISA and VLB do that, too?
I remember my old XT and AT systems, I'd tape a piece of paper to the inside showing which ports and interrupts were in use with which
hardware. Tricky when all the hardware I had was serial (Apple Laserwriter, serial mouse, and 2 modems)
I think you're right. I don't recall a big span of time between EISA
and PCI, though... and, I was thinking VESA Local Bus was mainly for
video (kind of a precurser to AGP).
Poindexter Fortran wrote to Dreamer <=-
Re: Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Dreamer to Poindexter Fortran on Mon Sep 30 2013 01:47 pm
I think you're right. I don't recall a big span of time between EISA
and PCI, though... and, I was thinking VESA Local Bus was mainly for
video (kind of a precurser to AGP).
There were some odd VLB cards (I seem to recall an Adaptec VLB SCSI
card) but since most systems only had one VLB slot, you wanted to use
it for video to get the most bang for your buck.
EISA was around for quite some time before PCI, but was mostly used in servers - not so much in desktop hardware.
I remember my old XT and AT systems, I'd tape a piece of paper to
the inside showing which ports and interrupts were in use with which
hardware. Tricky when all the hardware I had was serial (Apple
Laserwriter, serial mouse, and 2 modems)
LOL, yeah, now that you mention it I had a sticky note somewhere
around my desk with info like that.
Turns out, an EISA card can be plugged into the VLB slot. \
I still have a bunch of notepad papers in the boxes full of my computer parts with the CHS (cylinder head sector) information for the ancient harddrives I have. I don't know which harddrives they correspond to, though :(
Turns out, an EISA card can be plugged into the VLB slot. \
With a hammer, sure.
Turns out, an EISA card can be plugged into the VLB slot. \
With a hammer, sure.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060205120739/http://www.datadocktorn.nu/us_kor tbyt e1.php
Computer game publisher Valve has introduced their own operating system, SteamOS, which is based on Linux and aimed for living room PCs. This sounds interesting as a video game platform: http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/23/4762370/steam-box-os
Nightfox
linux is used for tons of stuff now.
slot machines to arcade games.
Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Corey to Nightfox on Mon Oct 14 2013 18:25:03
linux is used for tons of stuff now.
slot machines to arcade games.
Yeah, I think Linux is pretty cool that way. Anyone can take Linux and make software platform based on it.
Nightfox
Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Corey to Nightfox on Mon Oct 14 2013 18:25:03
linux is used for tons of stuff now.
slot machines to arcade games.
Tivo uses Linux....love my Tivo. I have two of them :)
of paying a subscription for a service to automatically record my TV shows when VCRs and DVD-based recorders have existed for many years that do the same thing for free. :P Tivo is more reliable though, so I'll give them that.
Re: Valve introduces SteamOS
By: Nightfox to Allen Scofield on Wed Oct 16 2013 09:52 pm
of paying a subscription for a service to automatically record my TV shows when VCRs and DVD-based recorders have existed for many years that do the same thing for free. :P Tivo is more reliable though, so I'll give them that.
Dude, a Tivo (or any DVR) is NOT a VCR/DVD, that's like comparing an apple to a grenade, or something non-fruit like.
Anyone that compares a Tivo to a basic video recording decvice has never used a DVR for a prolonged period of time. Being able to STOP a show
(pause) as you're watching was a HUGE game changer for me, not to mention the recorder smartly records stuff based on other shows you like to
watch... VCRs/DVD recorders just don't do that.
Tivo isn't more relable, they have hard drives in them, they crash. Not to mention you have to back up programs you want to keep eventually or you'll run out of space. Of course these days that's probably not that big of an issue thanks to cheap HDs.
My first DVR was the ReplayTV 4400, thing had a skip commercial button! One press and it would find where your program started up every time. They got in trouble for that. Tivo was smart and never implemented that feature. My RTV crashed, I forget what I did with it. Might be in storage...
My first DVR was the ReplayTV 4400, thing had a skip commercial button! One press and it would find where your program started up every time. They got in trouble for that. Tivo was smart and never implemented that feature. My RTV crashed, I forget what I did with it. Might be in storage...
i have this thing called download. i get what i want in 5 mins and there's no commercials. i can pause it or stop it and watch the show or movie another day.
Same here, but 5+ years ago my DVR was the shit.
Same here, but 5+ years ago my DVR was the shit. Had a mod for it that put
a web server in the thing, I could access it from a web browser and tell
it to record stuff. Had it ready to go when I got home. as I recall I
could pull the video files off it to my PC as well. Though for some reason it took a long time.
Tivo uses Linux....love my Tivo. I have two of them :)
Is Tivo still a subscription service? I still can't get used to the idea of paying a subscription for a service to automatically record my TV shows when VCRs and DVD-based recorders have existed for many years that do the same thing for free. :P Tivo is more reliable though, so I'll give them that.
Nightfox
Yes, Tivo is subscription based. I've been with them for 6 years and have two of the Premiere Series 4 units. I agree that VCR's and DVD recorders could do the job for free...BUT, Tivo makes it too easy. My favorite feature is the "Season Pass." I can get a "Season Pass" for my favorite shows and it will get them all without any further action from me. You can pause "live TV" (my wife's favorite feature) as well. All in all, it's very nice and, in my opinion, worth it.
You should try it. They have a no commitment plan for $19.99 a month or sign up for a year and get it for $14.99 a month. Equipment not included.
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