SteamOS is Valve's free Linux operating system
Valve has revealed the first of its big three Steam-related living room announcements of the week: a custom Linux operating system intended for living room PCs with big screens, named SteamOS. It'll even support streaming Windows and Mac games from your gaming PC. Valve's working on new multimedia and family features for Steam too.
Valve has revealed the first of its big three Steam-related living room announcements of the week: a custom Linux operating system intended for living room PCs with big screens, named SteamOS. It'll even support streaming Windows and Mac games from your gaming PC. Valve's working on new multimedia and family features for Steam too.
"As we've been working on bringing Steam to the living room, we've come to the conclusion that the environment best suited to delivering value to customers is an operating system built around Steam itself," Valve said in this morning's announcement.
It says it's beefed up Linux's graphics-pushing power, and is also tuning audio performance and input latency. Supposedly native Linux versions of more AAA games will be announced "in the coming" weeks, but for everything else there's streaming anyway. If you don't have a powerful PC sitting by your TV, though, that's not necessarily a problem as SteamOS can stream games from your bigger, faster gaming PC over a home network.
Valve's working on more general living room features too. Along with Family Sharing, it's bringing family options to customise who exactly sees which games on shared accounts.
Steam and SteamOS are integrating support for and music and video "media services" too.
SteamOS will be a free download released "soon," and Valve is offering it to PC manufacturers too. Valve says it'll announce when "in the coming days" as it continues its big living room reveals. The next will come at 10am Pacific on Wednesday.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Valve announces Linux-based SteamOS.
Valve has revealed the first of its big three Steam-related living room announcements of the weeks: a custom Linux operating system intended for living room PCs with big screens, named SteamOS. It'll even support streaming Windows and Mac games from your gaming PC. Valve's working on new multimedia and family features for Steam too.-
Next announcement coincides very closely with AMD's next-gen GPU reveal:
1. http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHfmM6QYWNM
Two hours apart. -
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Hopefully it means that Linus Torvalds won't have to say, "NVidia, fuck you!" anymore, since Gabe Newell can apply pressure.
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They are speaking to their own gains seen between the Windows version of the Source Engine, and the Linux version. There was a big write-up awhile ago by the Source Engine guys that basically said they saw crazy numbers coming out of the Linux version of their engine once they put some stick time in it.
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The linux and windows drivers from nv and amd are almost the same now and support the same range of hardware. The open-source drivers are slower (sometimes much slower heh) and have a more limited range of supported cards, perhaps you're thinking of them.
The speedups come from a faster graphics API, better network stack, better filesystem and better memory system.
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The overhead associated with DirectX vs. OpenGL is one of the things they mention IIRC.
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Couldn't tell you why, but the evidence shows as much as double the FPS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pdEftFFG_I
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This is an interesting play, especially the small mention about media
'Music, TV, Movies
We’re working with many of the media services you know and love. Soon we will begin bringing them online, allowing you to access your favorite music and video with Steam and SteamOS.'
So, they may have thought ahead a few steps and are wanting to make sure to position their un-fully-announced Steambox to be that universal set-top box that Sony and MS are currently fighting for. As well as the ecosphere.-
Hmm. now that I wrote that, it just hit me that without a mobile component the media partnerships don't seem like they'd be worth the headache Valve would have to go through to land those distribution deals.
So, an expansion to the app to include media streaming? That could be the first service that offers paid owned content to stream across both iOS and Android (since Apple, Amazon and Google won't do it).-
Is Valve anywhere near a position to be negotiating that?
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Well, they're certainly the heavy weight in PC digital distribution. From that perspective, yes. But without an ecosystem that allows their customers to take that media with them, it would be of limited use. So, I'm thinking they're also going to make some kind of mobile play as well. At the least some kind of media stream component to a mobile app. If anyone could make a kind of play into the iTunes arena, it would probably be Steam since they already have the install base and software catalog.
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Aldo, this could solve my problem of having to buy Windows 7 for the next gaming PC build (as opposed to having to almost rearchitect Windows 8.2 to not be obnoxious). The Id Software catalogue that has had engine source GPL'd could realistically get up and running on SteamOS. I'd have to part with all the games whose developers don't have time for SteamOS ports, or don't exist anymore.
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Here's their controller patent from last year.
https://www.google.com/patents/US8241126?dq=%22valve+corporation%22+video+game+controller&hl=en&sa=X&ei=CKdAUtS3BaKb2wWWnIHADg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA
I'm not thrilled with the layout on that pad, but it's just their patent application. Swappable inputs is cool, I'd like to be able to arrange the analog controls offset like the 360 pad.
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I'm not sharing my OS!
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So linux native games stream directly to the tv...and windows steam directly to the tv. But if you want to play both, both will have to be set up to steam to the tv with somekind of toggle?
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Presumably the linux compatible games will run natively/locally on your SteamOS set-top-box, Windows only games will have to be streamed to it from your Windows desktop
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I've been looking to build a couch-gaming PC.
Is SteamOS going to be distributed as an independent OS, or will it only be available with licensed Steam "boxes"? In other words, could I go ahead and build my couch-gaming PC and load Windows on it, but also install a dual boot of SteamOS if I wanted?
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Schweet!
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This might be the beginning for not needing to upgrade your PC every year or at least make it more affordable by being modular
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i don't know of anyone who upgrades their PC every year, save for the super-super select valcan crowd, probably one half of one percent of PC gamers.
with smart purchases you can spend $1,000 on a system and get 3-4 years of good, highend graphics. -
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Next Half-Life. Only for the Steam OS.
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People need to get over Half-Life. It aint gonna happen
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It isn't really that I'm sure, I'm just so damn tired of hearing about it with no actual information. Until we hear different, let it go
http://i.imgur.com/Zzf0G6j.jpg-
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It comes up in EVERY FUCKING THREAD that has anything to do with valve, steam, or anything else even remotely connected. It's tiresome. If people brought up Lost Vikings every time anyone talked about WoW or Diablo it would get annoying too.
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both are games that no devs have talked about or apparently been working on in a very long time.
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Valve would never risk pissing off Windows and now Mac players.
I have windows 7, have 500+ games on my account, and have no issues (other than what can be expected with gaming) so that would just be a low blow to me and the many many others like me.-
With all that being said, the streaming games from PC to Box sounds awesome. Have wanted to play games like Outlast on my big screen but never want to go through the pain of moving my pc upstairs.
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Every OS has issues.
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Excite. I've been holding out on making an HTPC for a while. Now I don't have to anymore.
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Fuck the haters, sign me the fuck up. I was thinking of having a Roku and cut cable TV but if Valve makes a decently priced Steam Box I will get that instantly. Hell, better yet, make two models Valve. One that's $150 or so that does Netflix, etc, and also streams any game from your library from your main computer and one that's, like, say $600 - $1000 (ballpark estimate, a little cheaper than a medium to high-end PC since they don't have to worry about Microsoft and licensing and stuff) and comes packed with a good GPU and a decently sized hard drive for people who want to play the games natively.
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you might be on to something...
and that would be insane. im ready for a big video game announcement
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1:26 PM: Slashdotter makes an "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!" joke about SteamOS. http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4252825&cid=44925729
Six-digit UID, too. -
This is all very exciting and interesting even though I have no interest in gaming on my living room TV.
By the looks of it, it seems like SteamOS won't be on desktops...? Seems it's a strictly 'big screen mode' OS. Surely they can implement a desktop mode.
And streaming doesn't exactly solve the issue with playing games on Linux but I guess it's the only solution. I think...-
There's been no mention of that yet, only people guessing.
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Nothing but GOODNESS will come from this. I'm excited.
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i just did it in photoshop
http://imgur.com/h82qorw
you freaking liars -
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hahahahahahaha
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Yeah I tried this myself. It's fake.
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I think it's grasping a little bit, but I can see where you got the imagery from.
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I want more information on the linux pieces.
What distro is this built off of? Is this Valve's method of rolling their own? If its their rolled distro, how much are they stripping out of the kernel? While the OS is free, it's unlikely that "SteamBox" stickers would be free (Valve should protect that IP) and what would it take to get the certification/sticker?
If there is *one* company that can put linux in the living room, it would be a consumer focused company like Valve.-
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it's totally up in the air. my bet is using ubuntu lts releases with a soft real time kernel built/modified in house
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Certainly Ubuntu. It's the officially supported distro for the Linux client.
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Is it a Steam OS box or a Stream OS box?
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If you take both the original universe background and line it up next to SteamOS background, and then cross your eyes "magic eye" style to essentially create a 3d image.
Well, lets just say you should try it yourself...-
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Am I the only one seeing O+O as glasses? Valves virtual reality thing
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I want local streaming. If this box could replace my XBMC for streaming media and let me stream my Windows games, then I'd be really interested.
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