Steam to Chrome OS
support.google.com
support.google.com
Steam supports playing games remotely on another computer. So your desktop is doing the heavy lifting, but you can view the game on your TV in the livingroom. Now you can be playing the game on your Chromebook as well.
Then the next step is that Google Cloud offers you an on demand high end gaming machine, pay by the minute, which runs Steam on Windows x86 and has an instant VPN to your Chromebook.
I set this up successfully once on an AWS machine and a very low end laptop running Ubuntu, but I couldn't get the hardware accelerated video encoding to work right. 3 seconds per frame made the game hilariously unplayable, but it did function.
I find it difficult to believe they'd offer this, given that they already have Stadia.
I do see how this could be more appealing for consumers, but aside from competing with themselves, I also would be curious about the economics. Considering how expensive GPUs are, is it even possible the prices for an on-demand gaming service could ever make that much sense? With Stadia, they are making you buy the games through Stadia itself, where they would get a cut of the revenue, which probably helps subsidize the actual cost of the service a bit more.
There's also other very irritating issues. For example, a litany of AAA game companies do not allow their games to be streamed via GeForce Now, even though it would be running your own copy that you bought from your Steam or other library. I assume they would fight to earn additional money on game streaming, even though the money simply isn't there.
This is unfortunate, but perhaps it's OK. Lower end devices will be getting more and more powerful and eventually I'm sure even reasonably priced Chromebooks will be able to play games decently. Given this launch only applies to newer Intel processor based Chromebooks, that day is not today... but still, it certainly could be on the horizon.
Isn't Stadia moving to a PaaS for purposes just like this?
Thing is, porting to Stadia is so much work vs flicking a switch in Steam to publish to GeForce Now. And Stadia can't cross play or cross save with anything else by default, making it a very lonely ecosystem.
So they are going in the same direction as LiquidSky.
> As of 2018, LiquidSky was acquired by Walmart and now focusing on other projects.
I guess that is where Stadia will land as well.
You are not going to compete with high end hardware/graphics using Stadia, not sure if that was solved but for quite some time they just upscaled to the promised resolution instead of actually rendering it.
Everyone casual will be kicked to the next set of consumer hardware by Microsoft(Windows 11 incompatible) or Google (required native codec support for some android apps) either way.
That $100 or so (definitely way more) is going to go on top of the hardware upgrade treadmill, not as alternative to it.
But sorry, it's apparently $200 a year now, not $100. My bad.
Meanwhile Nvidia kept improving geforce now and it's actually really good now, running on everything from operating systems to browsers with no noticeable lag. Cheap too, like $15 a mo or so, and works with most of your Steam library. Where it doesn't, usually means that the publisher wanted to get off for some reason.
Xbox Game Pass is another great steaming option (via xcloud), Netflix like subscription service that lets you stream games.
There's also Shadow and Luna and such. Many companies are doing this well, just not Google.
Even when they really try (see last week Games Development Summit), it is mostly about high level stuff, like PMs talking to PMs, handwaving to lightweight docs and github repos.
Naturally very few game devs ever get enthusiastic from whatever comes out of Google.
GeForce Now works much better and doesn't require you to have your own GPU. Do need fast internet though.
The fact I can lie in bed with laptop plugged into bedroom TV and use a PS4 controller to play games running on my gaming PC in another room is truly awesome.
And I believe you. I wish I knew what the variables were. I really wanted to like Remote Play and even got special hardware for it (Steam Link, Shield TV, etc.) and still couldn't get it to be reliable.
https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.valvesoftware.SteamLink
As does the Android App in the ChromeOS Android Play Store.
Can't wait to have the full steam experience!
Good news is, any of us in here are going to buy whatever we want and aren't limited to Chromebooks. Its everyone else that is screwed by the virtual duopoly of Windows and !Windows.
https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/news/steam-gaming-on-chrome...
Chrome OS has firmly educated me on how to read marketing copy about things the product doesn't have. "Tell people they don't need it until you catch up to your competitors."
Ten years more from now if Chrome OS still exists, I expect it to simply be another macOS or Windows clone with more or less all of the same features and trappings.
"Camera not supported yet" .. feature!
Write the support yourself! Publish it under the GPL! Share and enjoy! ;)
Of course, it can and hopefully will be improved by improvements to desktop Linux. I haven't kept up, but ChromeOS will probably be able to adopt newer open source desktop technologies like Wayland and Pipewire/XDG portals in order to get a better Linux multimedia experience, if they care to.
It runs it in Debian-based KVM VMs, and it uses virtio-wayland[1] to pass the applications through to the host compositor, making them feel as if they are not running in a VM.
This architecture means that ChromeOS can preserve its readonly system partition, delta updates, and fast boot times while being able to run any Linux app. Very similar to Qubes, actually.
What's the coding workflow like on chromeOS?
Currently running a framework laptop with fedora just because I like the hardware better then most chromebooks and I can very cheaply throw in a fast 2TB ssd rather then spend hundreds extra to upgrade a chromebook to 512GB.
Fast, unobtrusive, and regular software updates
Better touchpad and touchscreen support than any other Linux
Perfect integration between local files and files on Google Drive
A bare-bones userspace that is not bristling with security vulnerabilities
Software including the kernel is peak-optimized with profile-guided feedback, specifically and separately for each model of Chromebook, unlike most Linux distros that ship barely-optimized builds without PGO and targeting k8-generic.
Given that most of the time, I just run Chrome and Electron apps, it makes sense.
The great thing about Chromebook is the firmware. Ron Minnich be praised.
As soon as linux can run on M1s stably, I think Flex would follow suit as well.
Disclosure: I work at Google and am speaking only for myself. I do not work on anything related to Chrome OS.
But I suppose it can be useful for arguing that Linux gaming market is expanding, so developers who like to excuse lack of Linux releases with market size will have less excuses now.
Why bother with official Linux support when you can just check that your game runs via Proton and push the burden of support onto Valve and the Proton community?
And it's probably not always the case that Windows games perform better on Linux through translation than on Windows.
Besides, Wine has to play constant catch up to all kind of NIH stuff that MS will produce. Direct storage is the new one that doesn't have any translation implementation yet. So value of native releases won't disappear.
Do you have a link? Everything I found suggest that it's the other way around, but Linux comes close.
* https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-d...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo1khMYMO5c
The above is for AMD. And I saw people with Nvidia reporting it performing better on Linux as well.
Ultimately if it becomes popular enough, Proton could execute the embrace, extend, extinguish strategy on Windows itself. We'll know it succeeded if one day Microsoft gives up NT kernel development in favor of shipping Linux/Proton, just the way they ultimately gave up on Trident and started shipping Blink/Chromium. Today Windows is a relatively small and shrinking percentage of Microsoft's revenue so maybe it's not out of the question in a decade or two.
Linux userspace API has no promise of long term compatibility, and in fact there's a lot of churn, especially nowadays as we approach the Year of the Linux Desktop and technologies come and go as they're improved.
The Windows API instead is known for its long term compatibility. Microsoft goes out of their way to ensure applications keep running a decade later, and using that as a base for gaming is a win-win, as developers can target two operating systems with one API, and gamers have more guarantees their game will still be playable on Ubuntu 2030 edition.
The last few times I played native Linux games I had to fish for old and unsupported libssl and libjpeg libraries that my distribution doesn't ship anymore. I can blame the port, but nowadays I just try the Proton version first.
So I agree with your point that long term Wine offers better support than Linux native ABIs.
I doubt Windows ABIs are better than Linux native ones on their own long term wise (i.e. without Wine).
That said, it would be cool for someone to develop Wine-like wrapping of historic Linux ABIs into modern ones so you could have the same preservation effect.
There was for example such project for older SDL over new one.
Lots of games from the early 2000s still run as-is on Windows 10/11, and many games have updated versions on Steam or gog.com as well.
However, the real question for Linux is: is there any comparable long-term stable distribution format for Linux games other than Windows binaries?
If so, how popular is it?
Only Steam provides such a runtime, but outside of Steam you're out of luck.
Example: https://www.gog.com/game/vampire_the_masquerade_redemption
GOG doesn't list recent Windows as supported. But it works in Wine.
In this sense, the long term way to run old Windows games is Wine on Linux because Wine translates old Windows ABIs into modern Linux ones.
But there is no comparable translation of old ABIs for native Linux ones.
Actually, it's the other way around. Old windows games run fine in Proton, and have weird issues in Windows.
The so-called steam runtime can be targeted by devs to prevent this.
Now install the game.
Right now Steam is only targeting higher end Chromebooks that make up a small fraction of its market share, but I’m sure they’ll improve that over time.
Just keep using DirectX and Win32, and let Steam handle shipping an Windows layer on top fo Linux while calling it "Linux gamming".
That basically limits it to models that cost >800$ making it a very niche product.
I actually have used old chromebooks with crouton to install steam and play games. You have to pick "lightweight" games like Baldurs Gate, but it still opens up a lot of possibility.
So I had hoped maybe something could be brought to old hardware, but I guess not.
I was able to turn up the graphical settings up much higher than what my regular desktop's ageing GTX 970 graphics card can get, while still maintaining a high frame rate.
Latency is low enough to have fun and contribute to the team. Wasn't a good experience over cellular, but it was very good on a wired connection.
I was very happy to have had a streaming option available at the time.
Or older games, for that matter.
... does Steam provide any sort of services that manage the runtime of games or is the majority of the game still dependent on the users rig? remote GPU workloads/rendering, managing game-play coordination, etc?
If not, then it sounds like working with google (maybe others too) to get Steam running on ChromeOS is a fantastic idea that doesn't conflict with any of their own ambitions.
It's good for google bc you'll potentially attract more users to ChromeOS and once they're on ChromeOS, I'm sure they'll have more exposure to Stadia and other google services. Moreover, as game developers and platforms start to migrate a lot of their workloads to the cloud, Steam might be able to provide a more seamless way to do so (proton?)... again, potentially using google services or even the Stadia backend to do so.
It's good for Valve bc if furthers their independence from Windows. It may also lower the barrier and provide access to individuals that don't have the money or access to expense machines and OSes, especially if the compute intense operations can be offloaded to GPU services in the cloud.
It'd be nice to have a linux arm client and steamworks support for native rpi and arm chromebooks.
Quite a lot actually. Obviously you won't be playing AAA games on a Chromebook, but I think most would run lots of older games well enough
Emphasis on was. Ask me again in 6 months.