SteamOS: What we know so far and what to expect | Hacker News Reader

SteamOS: What we know so far and what to expect

steamdb.info

91 pointsgalapago68 comments

I'm seriously curious about their sound and graphics framework more than the actual games (unless it is HL3).

I am betting (and hoping) that they are going to start using Wayland as well as a custom sound framework.

I also wonder if they are using a custom packaging format based on top of .deb .

Why do you think they wouldn't go for straight deb-s? (apart for game data - I assume that will be downloaded the same way it is in typical steam application)

Because it is not based on Ubuntu and nobody knows for sure what the base distro is - earlier they had claimed Ubuntu 12.04 but that was refuted by an Engadget team recently [1]

As promised, the OS is built on Linux (not based on Ubuntu, we're told, but entirely custom), though you'd never know it as the only interactive layer is all Steam

[1] http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands...

They will probably base of Debian testing with custom backports.

Description: Beta build of SteamOS 1.0 distribution based on Debian 7.1 Wheezy

Its Ubuntu, the Engadget guy interpreted the Dev wrong. Or I should say for most of its history its been Ubuntu based but it is still entirely possible they changed it, but I think its more likely the reporter is wrong.

Do you have any evidence to back this up? We've never seen SteamOS so we can't say what it's been for any of it's history. This sounds like pure speculation to me, and if I had to speculate I think it's more likely that the reporter is correct, and it is unlikely Ubuntu.

What makes you think that? Valve has been focusing on Ubuntu up to now, and they have an APT repo. If they don't base SteamOS on Ubuntu, they will probably base directly of Debian testing. Debian makes up most of desktop linux anyway...

> Debian makes up most of desktop linux anyway

Actually, I'm pretty sure that spot belongs to Ubuntu, which is why:

> Valve has been focusing on Ubuntu up to now

They focus on Ubuntu release because that is where their target players are. SteamOS, being it's own release, doesn't have the same restriction.

> If they don't base SteamOS on Ubuntu, they will probably base directly of Debian testing

Nice save, anyways, the argument is moot now: http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

Debian being, indeed, The most obvious choice.

what save? I thought it was probable, so I wrote it.

No they will most likely use .deb that's what they use now for everything. Games will be downloaded and installed the way they currently are in Steam, a giant pile of files with random game data stuff.

From what they've said publicly they're pushing OpenGL and SDL, I don't see why they would make up another sound framework.

This is taken from their website - I dont know what they intended, but it sure looks like a possibility.

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.

They have a guy working on SDL directly, and they've been doing a bunch of work around GL and working with driver manufacturers:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btNVfUygvio

- http://www.paranormal-entertainment.com/idr/blog/posts/2012-...

You could take the statement on the site to seem that they could be working on their own stuff, but if you watch their video it seems that they are keen on working on existing things like SDL and participating in the Khronos group than building things from scratch.

They don't just have "a guy", they have Sam Lantinga, the guy who created SDL. I don't know if he's working on it or not, but the fact that they have him at the company speaks volumes about where they're headed.

Wayland is missing the driver support right now. It's also one abstraction down from what game developers should worry about. I imagine Valve are going to focus on SDL. Sam Latinga, the original SDL dev, is employed by them now (was with Blizzard before).

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about in-home streaming. To me, this is something I've wanted for years. I've got a state-of-the-art machine I like to keep in my basement (cooling), and with this I'll (hopefully) be able to play hardware-intense games on my media center PC upstairs.

Just crossing my fingers that my 5-10Mbit powerline network is good enough.

I have this one and it's very very good. And it's just 22.99

http://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Powerline-Ethernet-Adapter-TL-...

Wow, they've come down in price! I actually wound up with 200Mbps TP-Link adapters, because the 500Mbps adapters fall off to fast with distance in my house. AV2 adapters are supposed to sustain performance better over distance, so I'm biding my time and waiting for those to mature a bit.

Not something I've ever desired. Either in the home or externally rendered. In the home there's absolutely no way my consumer hardware is going to to keep up with 1080p or 2160p streaming over a network (heck HDMI barely manages), and externally there's no way you can possibly play a game with the sort of latency (400ms+) you get on Australian internet connections.

I can see why it would be attractive if you had a basement, but why not just run a DisplayPort cable and USB?

Consumer hardware handles 1080p streaming over a network just fine, have you ever seen an Nvidia shield?

It streams PC games in 1080p to the mobile device and the control is then sent back to the PC game. It works surprisingly well.

He was talking about the future, and he's correct - what's gonna happen with 4k?

One of two things. 1) Network speeds and latency never improve, and it remains forever impossible to stream 4k video. In this scenario, we can still stream current "HD" video. 2) Network capacity improves, like it always has. 4k video is no problem.

> The bit rate of the uncompressed 4K video stream can exceed 6 Gbit/s, which can be transmitted via a 10 Gbit/s network

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=444594...

So we're already there, as long as you're set up for 10Gbit ethernet.

I'm not too concerned. To my reckoning, a 4k TV plus hardware that can render high-quality 4k games real-time is quite a ways away, and network hardware will continue to develop along the way.

You can do both quite comfortably now. There's affordable (sub $2000 USD) 4K TVs, and consumer cards can push out 4L video if you gang them together. It's not really out of the range of possibility, I've been investigating making a setup capable of it in the very near future.

You're looking at quite a lot of hardware investment, yes. I'd say around $1500 for graphics cards alone, if you want to run at high/ultra settings at 60 FPS. You could probably get away with a single 780 ti or a single 290x if you were fine with 30 frames per second or decreased quality settings.

I was going to aim for a single GPU just to avoid having to deal with having such a wide block of coolers. It's something I'll have to experiment with a bit I think, I haven't built a computer in years. Last time I did I was using AGP cards rather than three slot monsters drawing half a kilowatt.

I'm quite happy spending money if it's something quality and will last a reasonable amount of time. I consciously avoid buying cheap things that I will dispose of in a year.

why not just run a DisplayPort cable and USB?

The "client" machine is on the 2nd floor, on the other corner of the house.

I'm with you for off-site rendering, but I am optimistic for in-home. The latency is good, and even if we can only stream 720p games around the house, that's still valuable to me. My media PC is pretty formidable for what it is, but there are still plenty of games that have to be run on at low resolution with very low detail.

It can be very nice to be able to sit on the couch on your laptop and play games with the power of your PC. Me and some friends are almost done with development of a streaming solution that works pretty much like this (Based on NVIDIA Gamestream, used by the Shield) and given a good network, there is practically no delay and it is very playable.

I tried Onlive multiple time and I can play perfectly well even if I connect to a server hundred of KM away using wifi on my phone. Why can't I do the same on my own 1 gbit network at home? Yeah you won't achieve the best latency but it can't be worst than the latency to the servers of Onlive so it's more than perfect for me.

The DisplayPort idea is not bad, except that my ethernet cable are already placed and my TV can't connect to a DisplayPort.

I'm hoping this will eventually work for streaming games over 802.11n from my PC to a Mac laptop. After testing with ping for a while, I think it'd work for any game that can tolerate the occasional spike from 5ms to 15-20ms latency.

It should have the advantages of being able to play every game, in better quality, without making the laptop uncomfortably hot.

The hangup with 802.11n is it's simplex nature. That's actually why I got the powerline adapters; SMB performance was poor for anything but sequential access.

The beta for Home-streaming appears to be separate from the SteamBox beta[1]. If you're interested in that, you should keep an eye out at the homestream group on Steam[2].

[1] http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream#announcements/de...

[2] http://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream#

Thanks!

No problem! I'm excited to see how this is all going to play out.

Yess. I've been wanting this for years as well, I've done various experiments with remote control software over LAN and none have really worked pleasantly. All of them seem to flunk when given full screen games, and the others are just slow when resorting to windowed games.

Not sure on the bandwidth/latency you'd need to be able to play, but this is already these guys' bread & butter:

http://www.splashtop.com/personal

My serious hope for this is XBMC/Plex integrated and not some homegrown TV/Video playback mechanism (Or the APIs for me to do it).

XBMC has many of the problems of video/movie/TV playback and library support sorted and they can't hope to match it in the early days.

Would codec patents would prevent them from bundling XBMC wholesale into SteamOS?

If it has a repo it could be easily installed via a meta package or a GUI element. Integration of 'apt' and the Steam Store would be cool.

I may be incorrect but I believe most codec patents revolve around the hardware implementations which would be covered through the hardware acceleration components that exist in most modern CPU/GPUs.

For video they can just offload decoding of common formats to the GPU, which most likely already has a decoder license. They should also be able to send raw DTS and AC3 over Toslink, S/PDIF, or HDMI.

Hmm, I wonder if they'll manage to find some way to include Netflix support?

I know it's tricky for any Linux-based distribution to do, but if they did, I know I'd be looking seriously at a Steam Box as my next media center, replacing the PS3 that currently gently warms my TV stand.

Understanding that this is conjecture, I'm wondering if the list of games that have steam controller configurations are indicators of games that they are planning on running directly on the steam box itself. i.e. running native on linux

I'll just go down the list and try to hit each item.

Counter-Strike: All versions are already linux supported.

Half-Life 2: Most are ported, the game engine is ported to linux.

Team Fortress 2: Ported to linux.

Left 4 Dead 2: Used as the original test bed of steam for linux [1], I'm unware of if it has been ported.

Portal 2: Game Engine Ported, unaware of game's state.

Natural Selection 2: Developer has plans too, but game engine needs Direct3D layer. Claims it can be over come. [2]

Bioshock Infinite: Has no plans to be ported to linux, but has been ported to mac [3].

Civ V: Apparently supports PC/Mac/Linux/Unix according to its amazon page.

Serious Same BFE: Ported.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3: Can run in linux via wine [4] if you trust that source, seems sketchy. But the publisher isn't linux friendly. [5] or maybe it is [6]. We don't know for sure, this is a developping story.

Metro LL: Is ported.

DiRT3: Uses Games for Windows Live. There's a few non-legal hacks to get it working but nothing offical.

BoardLands 2: Unreal Supports Linux [7], but there are no developer statements

A:tDD: Ported

Skyrim: Is actually Unsupported by their Developers (they've moved on to other projects). So porting it now seems unlikely. [8]

At this point we can say Controller =/= Linux Support.

[1] http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

[2] http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/spark-engine-questions-and-answ...

[3] http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?221791-Please-port-Biosh...

[4] http://community.callofduty.com/thread/200382760#.UqstR7TyRH...

[5] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0MTA

[6] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU0MjE

[7] http://www.unrealengine.com/licensing/faq/

[8] http://steamcommunity.com/app/72850/discussions/0/8469626270...

NS2 is currently ported and works on Linux. They have an OGL, D3D9, and D3D11 renderer for the game: http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/reinforced-expansion-released/ (Search for "OpenGL")

But it's AFAIK unplayable because of abysmal performance and random crashes.

So it's just like the Windows version?

Yikes. It is unplayable on ATI cards on the latest Ubuntu. I'll try rolling a Gentoo install to see if the latest work on Mesa makes any of that shit better.

FWIW, the OGL renderer works fine on Windows, albeit more slowly than the D3D9 renderer.

the latest Counter-Strike version (Global Offensive) isn't ported to linux yet.

I'm totally ready to buy a Steam box. As soon as I possibly can, here in Austria, Europe, I will.

Hurry up, because the only thing stopping me from doing it is the Valve Inc.'s inability to navigate all the regulatory/cultural nonsense from: DELIVERING.

Steam delivers, so far. When it manifests in the hardware sense, it has got to be global. The perception of locality is a real drag.

SteamOS will be available here:

http://steampowered.com/steamosbeta

(now it's 404)

Yes, they have to make a custom distro.

Currently Ubuntu's Unity in Saucy has big drawbacks for gaming. I just tried last night to play Brutal Legend, to test my new gamepad.

Unity makes the game unable to fully be fullscreen.

The same happens with any Windows game via Wine.

I love Ubuntu for developing stuff, but they need to fix a lot of stuff to compete with Windows in gaming.

I've been running Brutal Legend fullscreen with Unity and a gamepad since it came out, no issues here.

I don't see why Ubuntu would want to go head to head with Valve. Seems like a losing proposition...

Removing Unity is completely different from removing whole Ubuntu, really.

p.s.: I hope Unity gets these sorted out, since it's really the best DE I know.

try awesome, it's awesome. :P

I'm sure this has already been described somewhere, but if I install SteamOS, do they provide a compatibility layer so that I can play games without Linux support? Or will I need to dual boot Windows?

You will probably be able to run wine.

You will need to dual-boot. Or stream from another PC running Windows.

Well, there's this:

"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!"

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

Are the steam-specific parts open or closed source? If closed is there any chance of them providing a blob for other distros?

Based on Valves inability to update DOTA2 without 3-5 days of no server accesss, every time they update... I have absolutely NO hope for SteamOS...

Clearly theres no gamers posting in this thread then.

Valve is doing a pretty good job in my experience. I don't play DOTA, but I was pretty hardcore CS gamer for a time.

The last 4 major updates to DOTA 2, have been unplayable for about 2-5 days. They did an update earlier today, my friend in Australia hasn't played all day because servers are down. I can't play in Singapore at 2-10am, servers are still down...

http://steamcommunity.com/app/570/discussions/0/648814395709...

Unfortunately, he's right. I applaud Valve's focus to Linux, but DOTA Linux has had major bugs for months now (the most severe of which is the game taking 1-2 minutes to load and timing out, whereas Windows on the same machine loads in a few seconds). They don't seem to really want to fix the errors, as all my friends are having the same problem, so it's not exactly hard to reproduce.

Dota2 is Valve's first multiplayer game where they run all the servers themselves. It's also their most popular game (by a factor of 10x) [0]. Scaling to that number of players takes a lot of work, and from what I've seen (comments from Valve devs), their devops team is only 2 people [1].

The current server instability has to do with a large patch (550MB) sent out yesterday that added a new game mode that is actually an addon[2]. This addon system looks fairly new and may be taking its toll on the servers.

[0] http://store.steampowered.com/stats/

[1] http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=83787&page=24&p=777194...

[2] http://www.ongamers.com/articles/dota-2-12th-december-patch-... (search for "custom addon")

Reply on news.ycombinator.com