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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: nicholas on September 23, 2013, 08:00:58 PM
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Thousands of games, millions of users. Everything you love about Steam.
Available soon as a free operating system designed for the TV and the living room.
Steam is coming to a new operating system
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.
SteamOS combines the rock-solid architecture of Linux with a gaming experience built for the big screen.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.
Living room & Steam
Finally, you don’t have to give up your favorite games, your online friends, and all the Steam features you love just to play on the big screen. SteamOS, running on any living room machine, will provide access to the best games and user-generated content available.
Fast forward
In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level. Game developers are already taking advantage of these gains as they target SteamOS for their new releases.
Cooperating system
Steam is not a one-way content broadcast channel, it’s a collaborative many-to-many entertainment platform, in which each participant is a multiplier of the experience for everyone else. With SteamOS, “openness” means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they’ve been able to. Content creators can connect directly to their customers. Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want. Gamers are empowered to join in the creation of the games they love. SteamOS will continue to evolve, but will remain an environment designed to foster these kinds of innovation.
Four new Steam features focused on the living room.
Available soon in both SteamOS and the Steam client.
In-home Streaming
You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!
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.
Family Sharing
In the past, sharing Steam games with your family members was hard. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.
Family Options
The living-room is family territory. That’s great, but you don’t want to see your parents’ games in your library. Soon, families will have more control over what titles get seen by whom, and more features to allow everyone in the house to get the most out of their Steam libraries.
At the core of SteamOS is everything you already love about Steam.
All the games you love
Hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS. Watch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014. Access the full Steam catalog of over nearly 3000 games and desktop software titles via in-home streaming.
Over 50 million friends
Steam users are what makes gaming on Steam fun. Meet new people, join game groups, form clans, chat in-game and dive into Game Hubs, the center of activity for all your favorite games.
Workshop
The creative energy of Steam users takes shape in the Workshop - your one-stop shop for the best add-ons available. Here you can create, discover, and download a nearly endless supply of top-quality user-created content.
A cross-platform cloud
Seamless content delivery, storage you don’t have to think about and automatic updates to everything. Switch machines and pick up your game where you left off, and don’t worry about saving your preferences. It’s all in the Steam Cloud.
Constantly evolving
Steam itself has been a constantly evolving service since its debut in 2003. SteamOS will continue to deliver not only valuable game updates directly from content makers, but also regular additions and new features to the OS itself.
Worldwide
Steam is in 185 countries and has been translated into 25 languages. As a truly global platform, Steam, and now SteamOS, brings entertainment to an audience without borders.
Downloadable soon. Free forever!
SteamOS will be available soon as a free download for users and as a freely licensable operating system for manufacturers. Stay tuned in the coming days for more information.
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
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Will buy!
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Looks like Gabe is going full-steam ahead (bad pun intended) with his plans to destroy Windows as the choice of PC gamers and developers.
I hope this endeavour is massively successful.
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Will buy!
It's free! :lol:
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"running on any living room machine" ??
I have about 50 games on Steam and they run ONLY on windows so what do they mean?
Any living room machine running on an Intel CPU with Windows 8 as first layer?
Or, buy your games again on a new platform? :)
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What the hey is a "living room machine?"
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Moving my A1200 into the living room... Bring it on Gabe!
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"running on any living room machine" ??
I have about 50 games on Steam and they run ONLY on windows so what do they mean?
Any living room machine running on an Intel CPU with Windows 8 as first layer?
Or, buy your games again on a new platform? :)
Did you not read the article?
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What the hey is a "living room machine?"
A console? An HTPC?
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Moving my A1200 into the living room... Bring it on Gabe!
You should install SteamOS on PC-Task for a laugh! ;)
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Looks like Gabe is going full-steam ahead (bad pun intended) with his plans to destroy Windows as the choice of PC gamers and developers.
I hope this endeavour is massively successful.
Yeah he's going to steam-roll the opposition.
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"running on any living room machine" ??
I have about 50 games on Steam and they run ONLY on windows so what do they mean?
Any living room machine running on an Intel CPU with Windows 8 as first layer?
Or, buy your games again on a new platform? :)
There are nearly 500 games on Steam that run on Linux now. While that's still a small % of the total number of games Steam offers, many of those near 500 are pretty big names (TF2, L4D2, etc.).
I've not yet had to pay one thin dime to snag the Linux version of any previously purchased Windows only game now offered by Steam for Linux, but YMMV.
I still primarily use Windows for gaming, but Steam for Linux is really improving at a rapid pace. That being said, I give it about a 50% chance at sticking around on the long term solely because Windows comes on pretty much every PC built and Linux is still a niche OS as a whole (still under 2% or so market share in the desktop space).
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Did you guys read the full article? You can stream from your windows, mac, whatever machine you want, straight to the steamos box. So you won't lose anything if you already have games or content for those operating systems.
Isn't making cross-compatible software these days a bit more trivial than in the past anyway? From what I understand, it doesn't any more take a lot of engineering lift to make things run on the major os's nowadays. Am I wrong? If so, please tell me because I don't know a ton about game development, more about application development :)
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"running on any living room machine" ??
I have about 50 games on Steam and they run ONLY on windows so what do they mean?
Any living room machine running on an Intel CPU with Windows 8 as first layer?
Or, buy your games again on a new platform? :)
Man, are you out of touch or what? There's been a Steam client out for Linux for quote some time now and it runs my Steam games quite nicely. Serious Sam 3 BFE and my other games run as good on Linux as they do on my Windows machine. There's also a Steam client for OSX but I haven't played with it. No, you don't have to buy native Linux or OSX versions of the games. You buy once, then play on any platform that runs Steam.
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"We're re-skinning Linux and tying Steam to it."
NEXT.
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Man, are you out of touch or what? There's been a Steam client out for Linux for quote some time now and it runs my Steam games quite nicely. Serious Sam 3 BFE and my other games run as good on Linux as they do on my Windows machine. There's also a Steam client for OSX but I haven't played with it. No, you don't have to buy native Linux or OSX versions of the games. You buy once, then play on any platform that runs Steam.
Aahhh I didn't know about that, thanks. English is a second language, sometimes I don't get the sentences 100% right :)
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I ultimately think creating a dedicated distro as "SteamOS" (eg, will likely be a skinned Ubuntu) will bite them in the rumps.
I liked the idea they originally had - just a client that was pretty much guaranteed to work on Ubuntu (and later, assumedly - other major distros).
IMHO, the whole factional nature of Linux puts a lot of people off, esp. non tech people. I've always been a pretty big advocate for Linux, especially to people who have older hardware that want to wring some extended life out of it. Time and time again, I hear "if it's all the same base OS, why is there 200 different flavors of it?" from people that don't understand the distro concept.
Just a few weeks ago a friend got a hand me down computer from his work. Still a usable machine, but running Windows XP, which is coming to end of life here in another few months. I recommended Linux for it, as all he really wanted to do with it is browse the web and the like. He wasn't familiar with linux and spent the entire weekend installing various distros before calling me Monday morning shouting "I wasted my whole weekend trying 10 different variants of Linux and I can't tell the darned difference between any of them! Which one should I stick with???" :)
For us familiar with Linux, we all have our personal preferences - mine is Slack these days, but the sheer variety of distros can be extremely puzzling to people looking in from the fringes.
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Aahhh I didn't know about that, thanks. English is a second language, sometimes I don't get the sentences 100% right :)
No worries. English is my native language and I'm not all that great at it either!
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Cool for them, anything not Windows or Mac is a good thing...
...so where' my darn Half-Life 3, open ended, horror, action, adventure, fps?
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Did you not read the article?
Rant first, read later.
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There are still numerous windows exclusive titles that don't run on linux. By the way, requirements for the linux versions, are a bit higher in order to play the same games correctly. It's not very much, but there is a difference.
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Oh yea, smell the steam :D
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So THIS is the reason we don't have HalfLife3 (HL2 Ep. 3) after YEARS of waiting!
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Man, are you out of touch or what? There's been a Steam client out for Linux for quote some time now and it runs my Steam games quite nicely. Serious Sam 3 BFE and my other games run as good on Linux as they do on my Windows machine. There's also a Steam client for OSX but I haven't played with it. No, you don't have to buy native Linux or OSX versions of the games. You buy once, then play on any platform that runs Steam.
No he's correct. Only products that have a Linux version will run on Linux.
And I'm a bit confused(well not really). How is Steam an OS when it's on Linux? Steam's been learning their marketing from the big A.
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No he's correct. Only products that have a Linux version will run on Linux.
One of the major features in SteamOS is that you can stream a Windows/Mac Steam title over the network to your SteamOS box.
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Valve have just announced the Steam Machine.
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/
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So THIS is the reason we don't have HalfLife3 (HL2 Ep. 3) after YEARS of waiting!
That enough to make me drop everything steam and go some where else. Although I thought that was a Valve project - no? I am used to being wrong these days.
Also, this Steam idea has one fatal flaw. Being tied to linux means I will most likely never go there. I hate linux with a passion. I would rather work with Windows!
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They have my attention.
Sounds interesting.
And free is a great price.
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Also, this Steam idea has one fatal flaw. Being tied to linux means I will most likely never go there. I hate linux with a passion. I would rather work with Windows!
Since they are basically making a video game system out of a PC, I don't think you'll ever see a command prompt or even a pointer.
If you look at their latest front end, "Big Picture", you can kinda get an idea of how it will work.
This whole project is for gamers, not programmers so I have a feeling setup and operation with be more like running a Mac than a PC.
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That enough to make me drop everything steam and go some where else. Although I thought that was a Valve project - no? I am used to being wrong these days.
Also, this Steam idea has one fatal flaw. Being tied to linux means I will most likely never go there. I hate linux with a passion. I would rather work with Windows!
Steam isn't tied to Linux.
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That enough to make me drop everything steam and go some where else. Although I thought that was a Valve project - no? I am used to being wrong these days.
Also, this Steam idea has one fatal flaw. Being tied to linux means I will most likely never go there. I hate linux with a passion. I would rather work with Windows!
Linux is a great kernel and there are some brilliant distributions out there that meet most needs... My only grip about Linux is the lack of proper realtime scheduling, I recently tried to to some embedded control using a raspberry pi running raspbian (Debian for the pi), and was getting up to 10ms jitter!!! :(
Back on topic, your dislike of Linux is illogical. ;)
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That enough to make me drop everything steam and go some where else. Although I thought that was a Valve project - no? I am used to being wrong these days.
Also, this Steam idea has one fatal flaw. Being tied to linux means I will most likely never go there. I hate linux with a passion. I would rather work with Windows!
I think you've misunderstood a few things:
- Steam (the program) runs on Windows/Linux/Mac/Android/PS3/etc,
- SteamOS is a Linux derived operating system _probably_ with Steams Big Picture mode as it's user interface,
- A SteamMachine is basically a customised PC running SteamOS (like XboxOne & PS4).
We don't know enough yet to say exactly what SteamOS or these SteamMachines are actually going to be like. What their UI will be etc, but Big Picture mode does seem like the logical answer, along with whatever their final announcement will be on Friday.
I'm interested in it all, will probably install SteamOS to try it out, maybe even build or buy a SteamMachine at some point in the future.
Generally though I think it'll be good to scare the pants off of Sony and MS :) since anything Valve/Steam do in this area is going to cause a massive upset simply due to the number of loyal fanboys they have.
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@Ajcopland
So SteamOS is built similar to C=OS, just a GUI over linux?
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I am sure steam OS is a lot more than a skin for Linux.
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@Ajcopland
So SteamOS is built similar to C=OS, just a GUI over linux?
No, that would be too great a simplification.
Also we don't know exactly what any of these things are yet in truth we're just speculating at this stage.
What is known is that Valve have been working closely with GPU manufacturers to improve their drivers. You do this with high-end games development anyway but it's usually Windows focused. Driver bugs are found, cases which produce them are submitted and then a bug fix will appear in the next driver release.
The difference with the Linux work that Valve/Steam have been doing is that there has been a lot more of the low hanging fruit to gather.
There's other things to consider. For example Linux is a stack of software rather than any one distinct thing. What we think of as Linux is actually "GNU Linux" and the GNU part is what provides a lot of the functionality. "Linux" itself is just the kernel and you don't even need a window manager, X Window system or much less above that for something to be "built-on-Linux".
So whereas C=OS has taken a distro and just changed the theme, added a wallpaper and called it a day SteamOS could be absolutely anything from basic theming and boot into Big Picture mode through to removing the window managers, replacing the software stack and providing a direct rendering interface and API layer. Who knows.
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I am sure steam OS is a lot more than a skin for Linux.
It is, to some extent. The "slingbox" style of being able to play games on the SteamOS machine is very much custom, but I worry it won't work well. It still requires a host machine for the games to reside on, though games can be streamed cross platform. If it works well, it'd be great. People are missing the true value of SteamOS, and that's the cross platform streaming style gaming, but it's still limited to having to have a host machine with the native version of the game for your respective OS in your local network. A Windows Steam game won't run on SteamOS natively or "over the cloud", the host machine still needs to be local.
The thing with this is, they are driving home the point you can have a SteamOS machine in your living room, a Linux machine. If you have another Steam equipped machine on the network, be it a Windows or Mac one, you can stream the games from that machine and its' different OS onto the SteamOS machine even though they are running differing OS's.
Think having a Windows only Steam game on a Windows PC in your home, and being able to play it on the SteamOS machine. A good concept in theory, and Valve are not foolish enough to think developers will ever adopt Linux for games like they have Windows.
A great concept, but let's hope it works better than how the nVidia Shield works - which is barely workable at all.
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Speaking of Steam, just saw a popup for Surgeon Simulator and the graphic has on old 1351 mouse in it. I thought it was cool at least :)
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Back on topic, your dislike of Linux is illogical. ;)
Not from my perspective it isn't.....
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@Ajcopland
So SteamOS is built similar to C=OS, just a GUI over linux?
Steamos was made from Ubuntu. In a way I agree with you. If Steamos gets out of beta I would be willing to try it. I don't like beta at all.
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SteamOS won't be a 'custom GUI' - I expect it'll completely hide the underlying OS. Much like any other device (Xbox, PS3, Android, iOS etc) - you'll live in a nice fluffy GUI/TV-friendly driven world and not have to worry about what's really going on underneath. I really don't think they'll be using a desktop interface (certainly nothing even remotely command line orientated) on a device designed for gaming / the living room.
Have you tried any of the XBMC Linux distros? They boot directly into the Xbox Media Centre interface - *everything* is configured from within it (wifi etc) - exiting XBMC shuts down the machine. The only clue it may be Linux is the GRUB loader which suggests a Linux kernel.
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Really can not get on with any distor linux. Tried a few many times. Whilst they have come along way, I really cant be arsed trying to get things working.
Windows and Mac OS have at least got the most important parts sorted , which is the user experience. I just want to use a computer these days to achieve things.
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I'd have to say Debian Wheezy really is the best out of box system I've seen. Namely because the open source drivers are good enough (not sure about if you have the newest nvidia or ati cards, but older ones work well) and because they have almost all the codecs working out of the box. At that point you just need to install flash, and you should be good to go.
But then I'm sure there's things I don't notice that I just do automatically when setting up a new system :D.
I'm pretty sure though that SteamOS will NOT end up being on Ubuntu. Reason being is Mir. Since Ubuntu is pushing for it so much, and there will be some performance issues using XMir (the 'wrapper' for Xorg to Mir) will not be worth it for Valve. Wayland may have the same issue, but since everyone else is working toward Wayland, and/or SteamOS itself may just stick with Xorg, I just see no logical reason why they'd keep supporting Ubuntu. Ubuntu support was chosen first before Mir was even announced.
But previous posters are correct, all they'd need to do for SteamOS is have it boot up to a login screen (get Big Picture mode to have a login) then you can just log into your steam account and start playing. Even I could set up something like that based on Debian Jessie with relative ease.
slaapliedje
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Really can not get on with any distor linux. Tried a few many times. Whilst they have come along way, I really cant be arsed trying to get things working.
Windows and Mac OS have at least got the most important parts sorted , which is the user experience. I just want to use a computer these days to achieve things.
MacOS X if I want to get stuff done... Debian Wheezy if I want to play.
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Linux is a great kernel and there are some brilliant distributions out there that meet most needs... My only grip about Linux is the lack of proper realtime scheduling, I recently tried to to some embedded control using a raspberry pi running raspbian (Debian for the pi), and was getting up to 10ms jitter!!! :(
Back on topic, your dislike of Linux is illogical. ;)
A "great kernel", hmm..
If you are a fan of monolithic kernels, yes Linus did a great job of copying the core of an OS that was developed in my country by Bell Labs and Universities across the United States.
That being said, I am pretty sure my dislike of Linux is well founded.
In fact, since most of my coding goes back to OS' that have their roots in process control (you know, real time software, something Linux has always done pretty poorly), hey, I'd rather be using something like QNX.
But, those of us that have advocated for tight micro kernel based operating systems have had their opinions overshadow by the hack you guys seem so convinced is a genius.
Let me explain my opinion on this clearly, Torvalds could never have actually designed have an operating system on his own, and before you correct me, no not even a kernel.
And, if I wanted to use a UNIX knock off, I'd run BSD or OSX (which is kind of the same thing now that I think about it).
So, the next time any of you cares to pontificate about the glories of Linux, I hope I'm not around. Because as far as I'm concerned, you're all just coasting on the backs of things that were developed and financed in my country during my childhood.
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I love how people rave about what a great kernel Linux is and completely gloss over the manifold shortcomings in every other aspect of its design. Because, hey, who doesn't have their entire computing needs met by a kernel, right?
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I love how people rave about what a great kernel Linux is and completely gloss over the manifold shortcomings in every other aspect of its design. Because, hey, who doesn't have their entire computing needs met by a kernel, right?
Thank you, sir!
Personally, I'm trying to figure out what genius is responsible for stuffing all that crap in the kernel in the first place when everything except the core services should be outside with the rest of the OS.
But then, maybe they like crash prone design tactics.
I don't now.
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Linux is a decent alternative because it works, and because it allows "computing" in this glorious age of the media comsumption devices. It has a %&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!%&$#?@!load of shortcomings, but so have most operating systems on the market today.
That being said, SteamOS seems more like a gaming-inclined Linux distro bundled with a marketplace.
If it works for Apple anf Google, right? :)
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It's Linux therefore just as boring as OS X, Windows 7/8 or anything else I can download currently in Linux distros like Ubuntu etc.
When someone uses a decent OS as the start point for a 'new' OS please let me know :)
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@Iggy.
I think the major difference to the users of Linux and *BSDs simply comes down to driver support and manufacturer support. They both used to be in the same boat, but besides nVidia, I don't know any hardware manufacturers that directly release drivers for the various BSDs. I don't do much 'real time' processing myself, so haven't really played with the rt kernels myself. But you could always try adding your talents to it.. you know the whole open source thing.
I do tend to think that some Linux vs BSD vs Unix things are simply "well, they do it this way, let's do it just a bit differently" like device files. Also in my testing of various things, I've even noticed that arguments between common commands are different, like tail on a GNU/Linux system is different than on Solaris.
But really, where else would / could SteamOS go from Windows? It couldn't go to Mac OS, because they are going the same way Microsoft is trying to, having a "Only us!" 'app store'. Linux gives them the driver support, the ability to put whatever software they want into it, and the ability to distribute it everywhere. BSD gives them all that, just not the driver support.
All this talk about BSDs though makes me want to give it another shot. Been awhile since I played around with it.
slaapliedje
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Ralph did a great job of copying the core of an OS that was developed in my country by Commodore across the United States.
That being said, I am pretty sure my dislike of MorphOS is well founded.
In fact, since most of my coding goes back to OS' that have their roots in process control (you know, real time software, something MorphOS has always done pretty poorly), hey, I'd rather be using something like QNX.
Let me explain my opinion on this clearly, Schmidt could never have actually designed have an operating system on his own, and before you correct me, no not even a kernel.
And, if I wanted to use an Amiga knock off, I'd run AROS or OS4.
So, the next time any of you cares to pontificate about the glories of MorphOS, I hope I'm not around. Because as far as I'm concerned, you're all just coasting on the backs of things that were developed and financed in my country during my childhood.
Sorry Jim, I couldn't resist. ;)