SteamOS

[slaapliedje]

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 .

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

[slaapliedje]

@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