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.
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.
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’d imagine this is something the HW has to support, and the software has to implement a solution via that HW support. I’m really excited to see SteamOS coming up as the next mobile linux platform. With the support from Valve, I’d consider a steam deck or similar over other tablet options.
Good, I believe that SteamOS has the ability to bring Linux to the masses, but we don’t need a repeat of last time.
What was the last time?
Valve tried selling Linux boxes for gaming back in 2013, but noone wanted to sell/make/buy them b/c the library wasn’t there and it’s a hard sell when Windows is already baked into OEM hardware pricing anyways (so it wasn’t any cheaper to buy a pre-made Steam Machine than it was a similar-spec windows box).
Of last time?
Back in 2013 or so, Microsoft launched the Windows Store alongside Windows 8, and was making some noises that sounded a lot like shutting out independent software stores like Steam and requiring everything on Windows to be sold through the Windows Store.
Valve reacted to this by saying “Welp I guess it’s time to start investing in gaming on Linux” and launched Steam Machines, little PCs designed to be connected to a television to bring the Steam experience to the living room couch. They ran a modified version of Debian Linux along with their own tweaked version of Wine that could run some Windows games alongside several (including Valve’s own library) that shipped Linux native versions.
The project itself was a bit of a flop; they relied on other companies to make Steam Machines, like Alienware and such. But a lot of things came from it.
- Valve demonstrated they had the wherewithal to take the gaming market with them if Microsoft got too greedy.
- Big Picture Mode, Steam Link, and the beginnings of Proton among others came from the Steam Machine project.
- The Steam Controller came from this project, which I’ve heard GabeN talk about as a major learning experience they drew on during the design of the Steam Deck, aka why the Steam Deck has perfectly conventional controls.
They spent most of the 20teens adding steady improvements for Linux gaming to the point that we switched from having a list of games that ran on Linux, to a list of games that don’t run on Linux because that became easier to manage. Then they launched the Steam Deck, an unqualified successful Linux gaming platform. Then I came here, and then it was now, and then I don’t know what happened.
Steam machines madre the same mistake the 3DO made I’m glad they recovered and something very good camel out of it.
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?
Mainly that it’s specifically calibrated for running games on Linux. I’ve tried the Steam Deck and it works pretty damn well out the box, compared to any other distros, so a PC version would be cool.
Aside from native proton, being able to do everything (easily) from the controller. It’s amazing how often you still need a mouse, or just the windows key, in windows :(
What I really appreciate is that it’s geared toward handhelds, but has a decent desktop experience and is powerful enough to be a nice mobile media/piracy box with a remote and a USB-C breakout dongle. You don’t even need to change the read-only filesystem if you use WireGuard VPN (this might take some legwork to generate the .conf files you need, depends on VPN provider) and a streaming/torrenting program that comes in flatpak.
EDIT: Also forgot, you can add a custom shortcut to your Steam Library and have (some) programs launch from the SteamOS frontend rather than desktop.
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
I don’t care for other platform support from the money I spent on steam. I prefer to get some discount instead
