StreamOS available to download on the 13th!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/announcements/detail/1930088300965516570

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2079500/valves-gaming-focused-steamos-available-to-download-december-13.html#tk.fb_pc

When it's ready, you can download it here:http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

I guess now we're one step closer to Linux becoming mainstream, and having an OS designed from the ground up to kick consoles to the curb.

How many +1's can this blog entry get for the announcement of availability for SteamOS?

EDIT: It's here, it's here, it's hheeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrreeeeeee *insert unintelligible yodeling* eeeee...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/14/download-steamos/

http://repo.steampowered.com/download/

As soon as I finish downloading the installer and then breaking my desktop, and spending countless hours trying to get everything to work as it should, then I'll let you know how it turned out. =)

EDIT (2) : Here are the minimum requirements (link to source: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/ )

  • Intel or AMD 64-bit capable processor
  • 4GB or more memory
  • 500GB or larger disk
  • NVIDIA graphics card (AMD and Intel graphics support coming soon)
  • UEFI boot support
  • USB port for installation

Having UEFI support and an nVidia graphics card takes away my ability to run this, as my motherboard isn't UEFI-enabled.

But I think this will definitely be a big thing. I'm also confused as to why Steam OS requires UEFI and an Nvidia graphics card? Maybe this is some deal with Nvidia and Intel to help get them onboard with the Linux train and to release better drivers for Linux in general? 

I'll download it to see what it actually is. If it's not open source, I'll pass, because there is no benefit at all in it. The Steam client for regular linux distros has just been improved last week, and Valve has open sourced quite a bit of things, and they are a member of the linux foundation since last week. All of that put together means one of two thing: 1. they are serious and want to work towards fully open source, efficient and high performance gaming tools, which would be the greatest thing ever, and want to work out a non-spyware and non-DRM system of logging author copyrights on content, so that authors can act with respect of the judicial systems all over the world and protect their rights, and don't have to preemptively treat every customer as a criminal, or 2. they are just windowdressing and are trying to wedge a trojan horse into the open source software community, in which case they should prepare themselves for a dishonorable death.

Between Microsoft's record and Valve's record here, I'm sticking with Valve for the time being. The "fool me once" saying somes to mind at times like these (oh no, not *that* song again).

*cough*stream os*cough*

 

Yeah, I haven't seen any real nefarious stuff from Valve either, and Microsoft is just none of my concern because I don't really use their malware anyway (I've actually even lost interest in running Windows in VM to play games also, the games that I think are worth playing, older games, run perfectly fine in wine or have linux native clones or ports, it's been months since I last started up my Windows VM, and I'll probably delete it altogether), but I still run the Steam linux client in a container on my machines, because it does have DRM and it does use an old firefox client that has tries to access the Mozilla folder, even if that is completely empty on my machines. I don't have Adobe Flash player either for the same reason: it uses DRM, and I find that to be a huge infringements of civil rights of both users and content creators, especially for creators: if you release CC content, it's a bloody outrage that companies impose their own DRM on that content, effectively derogating the creator's clear intent to provide the content under a CC license. It effectively is theft, and at least infringement of property rights. With CC 4.0, the road to class action against DRM is now fully open, and I hope that they really make Adobe and Microsoft pay for their insolence and lack of respect for people's rights. If someone puts CC 4.0 licensed content on YouTube for instance, and Google makes it available through Flash, the Adobe DRM will not respect the legal mentions of license that are prescribed by CC 4.0, which is a license violation. The same goes for Microsoft: if someone puts CC 4.0 content on the web, and someone accesses it on a windows machine, Microsoft is not providing the legally mandatory license information in the DRM system it imposes on the media data, and that is a straight violation of the media license. Besides that objectively illegal side of DRM, there is also the fact that DRM treats bonafide users as criminals, which is really questionable.

I think SteamOS might be practical for very small TV-top builds, but I would recommend anyone with a PC to not use it, but learn to use a normal linux distro instead, and run the regular Steam client in an lxc or DispoVM, it doesn't cost any performance to run the Steam client in an lxc with SELinux on it's arse, it's portable so really comfortable to use across computers and installs, it has a huge amount of usage benefits in comparison to the windows client. The only thing lacking is the bloody 32-bit ancient firefox base, which is really annoying and a sizeable regression since linux has had 64-bit firefox since like forever, but hey, windows doesn't even have 64-bit firefox, so yeah... there is still a lot of work on the horizon.

I'm really hoping that SteamOS is a success because even if you don't want to use it, the library of games on GNU/Linux distros will expand. And that's not bad at all.


It also gives some people that final push to migrate from Windows, as the perennial excuse of "I can't switch because I play games" would no longer apply.

Yes and no. The en masse conversion of AAA games to Linux hasn't yet begun. But as Valve's free operating system picks up steam (was that joke very punny?), the floodgates will be opened, as will have Pandora's box. Now with *the* PC gaming company pretty much any PC gamer has heard about is backing this up, I think Linux has the biggest chance it's seen in a long time.

However, I'd like to know what the differences between Steam OS and the default/vanilla Debian are. That way I could tune Linux Mint, Fedora, Kubuntu or any other distro into a more gaming-optimized version. =)

There is actually even an official community version of Fedora optimized for gaming.

The problem remains the same: no open source graphics drivers, not even high performance closed source graphics drivers. We know Intel and AMD are working on open source graphics drivers that are usable, but it will take a very long time (multiple years) for them to be optimized to the degree of optimization that catalyst for windows for instance is.

A second problem is that nVidia's assembler language for their graphics cards is their proprietary PTX language, and that they're paying off developers now to convince the FSF (Richard Stallmann) to accept a compatibility layer in GCC (the GNU compiler needed for compiling the linux kernel). If they succeed (the compatibility layer as such is not closed source, but it allows for nVidia closed source malware to be compiled into the linux kernel with proprietary kernel modules that go with the proprietary nVidia linux graphics drivers), a whole new problem is created: malware and corporate spyware in linux. Besides the fact that the nVidia "solution" to their Khronos spec and linux kernel compatibility "issues" will require a compatibility layer on compiler level, which will lead to a whole new definition of pain, because with the typical nVidia crap quality of software, this will undoubtedly break a lot of distros, this will lead to a division between the "nVidia compatible" distros, which will most probably be non-standard distros that take FLOSS lightly, like SteamOS and maybe Ballminux (Ballmer-linux) if it ever comes, and the "normal" linux distros, that will simply not work with nVidia proprietary drivers unpatched (which is the case now). Basically nVidia needs to just do what Intel and AMD are doing, redesign their GPU's so that they work with the open source compiler as it is, drop CUDA for OpenCL, drop PTX for a regular assembler, and stop being such a closed source whore. They think that they can buy anything, they buy linux reviewers, they buy linux service companies, etc... all because they don't want the public to know the facts: nVidia sucks in modern HSA-orientated linux. The problem is that nVidia is never going to change, because now they can charge a premium for crappy hardware that is optimized with their proprietary crap, and they want linux to adapt to them instead of them adapting to linux, so that they can go on selling their overpriced polished turds.

When the FSF refuses to merge the malware vectoring code in GCC, nVidia is going to go to court on this, and that will take years and courts in the US are too stupid to see the difference between software and an elephant with a venereal disease if their lives depended on it, and Stallmann is a hippie, he's not going to relocate the FSF to Switzerland or France to forum shop his way out of that, he's too dumb-stubborn for that, but that's exactly what he should do: relocate the FSF to Switzerland or France, and then tell nVidia to put their trojan horse code up their arse, and if nVidia wants to attack the FSF for it before court, they face a court that they can't buy, and that does it's homework.

On the other hand, discrete GPU-cards might become a lot less relevant from 2014 on when HSA is implemented in linux, and it might never really come that far, and linux doesn't require the same degree of graphics power to get the same performance as Windows, and the new generation of games will probably use the benefits of HSA more than requiring even more powerful graphics cards.

I will play Lemming and download it and try it out tomorrow, good things are looking up for Linux if this OS proves to give the dreadful Windows 8 a run for it's money. Will developers embrace this new endeavor is the key to it being a success. 

From what I've heard (at least), SteamOS will be built onto an Ubuntu core. The big thing will be the interface, as that will be optimized for larger screens (can't be any worse than Unity....). I'm going to give it a shot, but I don't expect the very first release to be that great. They do say it's for more advanced users, and that the average gamer should wait until late 2014 when they do the full launch of it.

 Actually it's not: http://www.itworld.com/open-source/381593/valves-steamos-will-not-be-based-ubuntu

 

This may make it run faster, but will also decrease the number of actual applications it can run, if any at all.  Definitely more of a console than a pc.