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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Of last time?
Steam Box era SteamOS. About a decade ago.
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.
Thanks!
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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.
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Nothing. Nothing at all.
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.
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I get the impression any more urgent gaps will be covered by the community.
I’ve used my Deck in its desktop mode, plugged in a dock, for extended periods when I didn’t have access to my PC, and it was a decent enough experience for the most part.
I could definitely see SteamDeck sized devices becoming standard computers with a dock for larger screen, IO, keyboard/mouse and maybe GPU in desktop mode while sizing down to a portable device for travel. Same games in both configuration just 4K high quality when docked and 1080 medium quality when handheld. Plus with a full Linux os it could become our main device.
I’ve been thinking about this for some time, but rather smartphones as the form factor. It aligns with the trend of converging technologies, where devices are becoming more multifunctional, and users are seeking more flexibility and efficiency from their gadgets. It’s a future-forward vision that I believe will redefine personal computing.
Sounds like what Samsung is doing with Dex
Canonical tried that with Ubuntu Touch a decade ago.
I use dex a fair bit. It's good, but strangely, with all they've spent on it, keyboard shortcuts are missing for a lot of things.
People have floated this idea of “dockable devices” for decades. Microsoft even made a Windows Phone that did it. The only time it worked was the Nintendo Switch, where they sold the dock together - and even then, I think their studies showed that a majority of players only play in one mode.
So it comes down to consumer friction. What do they get in one box, and how likely are they to buy a second?
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?
It provides an alternative UI environment built and optimized for gaming. It has a separate windows manager, a complete ui, and a set of menus to simplify customization of whatever is needed for gaming and power saving.
And quick access to steam store.
It is extremely convenient if you like a console-like experience, but, if you are a tinker gamer, it has anyway a lot of nice additional features.
It is inconvenient as general purpose desktop os, because on update you basically lose packages not installed as flatpack
Sounds nice for the telly. I love my nuc under the tv, but a nice, controller friendly interface would be sweet.
Is it any different than kde plasma + steam big picture?
I don't know if steam big picture use gamescope https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope.
I would guess it doesn't, but I cannot be 100% sure, I haven't used steam on my laptop since ages
yes, it doesn't run plasma when it's in big picture, it runs it in https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope along with other tweaks, so it's lower overhead and game windows tend to behave better
it also handles updates to os as well as to steam so you don't ever end up with an update that breaks steam, they're always in sync
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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.
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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.
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.
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
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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 :(
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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.
Sure, that just sounds like sleep mode, which PCs have had for decades.
The important thing is for the OEM to actually implement it properly.
Sleep has almost never worked with games, though. I'm not aware of any games that can survive wakeup without crashing on windows.
One of the ways Valve was able to expand the OS in a manner they could never have if the steamdeck ran windows.
It's a lot easier to make sleep work when your target system has only one (now two) possible APUs
Sleep mode outside of SteamOS has been rough for games, because they tend to resume from sleep ungracefully and crash.
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 thing the linux community already has pretty much all of their concerns covered? Linux already works on regular computers. I have bazzite, which is a drop in replacement for steam os, on my deck and my laptop, and in regular use you would never know the difference. It even has read only root like steam os, but you can install system packages that survive updates.
There is, IIRC, at least once other distro that I believe can do deck as well as regular PC installs, but I haven't tried it and don't know the pros and cons.
SteamOS has, in my experience, avoided a lot of problems that any desktop OS has with being a gaming-only device, Windows or Linux. Stuff like applying updates or needing to alt+tab to address notifications that are major pains in the ass to do with a controller.
ChimeraOS and HoloISO. I haven't heard of Bazzite but I'm going to have to go look now in case HoloISO gets abandoned. Should be an easy replacement.
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.
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