4 ms·

If Steam OS becomes a viable desktop gaming OS that plays most, if not all games, I'll drop Windows in a heartbeat.

by ionised 11y ago

sschueller 11y ago
Steam is owned by Valve and Valve is a US company. Using steam will not change anything since it is the US laws allowing/requiring companies to comply with the NSA.
- ionised 11y ago
  The difference being that I want to use Windows only for games without all this other cloud integration crap that comes with it. Steam OS is a Linux-based OS designed primarily for gaming. Any and all cloud-integration will be specifically gaming-focused. Can you not see the difference between that and a general purpose OS like Windows harvesting data everything you do on your system? I won't be using Steam OS to do anything very sensitive like sending or receiving personal e-mails, editing word documents or spreadsheets, or browsing the internet for whatever reason. Unless you consider firing up a shooter or a city-building sim sensitive. The two OS's have very different purposes and use-cases.
- pjc50 11y ago
  Telemetry is clearly not a legal requirement. It's only data stored on steam servers (including chat logs) which you have to worry about.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  > Using steam will not change anything since it is the US laws allowing/requiring companies to comply with the NSA. There's a big difference between 'allowing' and 'requiring'.
rocky1138 11y ago
There are over 1,900 games on Steam that run in Linux. https://steamdb.info/linux/ https://steamdb.info/linux/
- ionised 11y ago
  Many of the games I have in my library do not run at all unfortunately. Sometimes I like to go back and play old stuff too.
  - Xylemon 11y ago
    Wine is always a viable option, especially for older games. With DirectX 11 support coming later this year, almost every Windoze only game should hopefully work.
    - merb 11y ago
      it's still slower mostly. Mostly since they don't have any specification at all.
      - anonbanker 11y ago
        Parent's post has so many qualifiers, it says nothing at all. I do not see a performance penalty at all with WINE. Most games that work play at speeds matching or better than windows. WoW is usually a big example of that, as are emulators.
        gr3yh47 11y ago
        WoW and emulators are both fairly trivial for a modern system to run well. There is definitely a significant performance hit if you are running something in WINE that nearly maxes your performance in windows
        anonbanker 11y ago
        someone's never used Higan before. I've made Stunt Race FX and Yoshi's Island peg a Core i7. Running Tekken 4 on MAME is just as intensive. Running either in wine is a fine benchmark on performance.
      - yellowapple 11y ago
dibujante 11y ago
I updated to Windows 10 and found it to be so painfully slow that I switched to Ubuntu 14.04 for gaming. I've honestly had a pretty good experience playing everything from low-fi indie titles (like Terraria) to AAA releases (like Shadow of Mordor). Try it out!
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I updated to Windows 10 and found it to be so painfully slow I initially had that problem, but it seemed to be the fact that (on top of some phoning-home options that I missed disabling originally, which seemed to play some role in the slowness -- disabling them helped) the Windows 10 update from Windows 8.1 also, for some unknown reason, rolled WLAN drivers back to the versions that were several years old (pre-Win8.1 at least) and fairly broken and couldn't automatically locate new ones; redownloading the latest (for Win8.1 -- no Win 10 specific drivers were available for the hardware in question) drivers (which is what had been installed prior to the update) resolved the slowness problems.
- ionised 11y ago
  I can't say I've had any issues with performance on Win10. Some games seem to actually run a bit better for me.
minthd 11y ago
Will games that run on Steam OS be compatible with regular linux ?
- duvet 11y ago
  Yes. If you look at the Steam search you'll see that Linux is paired with SteamOS.[1] [1] http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux
cryoshon 11y ago
Same. I would really like it to accommodate old Windows games as well, but that's too much to ask for right now.

If Steam OS becomes a viable desktop gaming OS that plays most, if not all games, I'll drop Windows in a heartbeat.

by ionised 11y ago

If Steam OS becomes a viable desktop gaming OS that plays most, if not all games, I'll drop Windows in a heartbeat.

Steam is owned by Valve and Valve is a US company. Using steam will not change anything since it is the US laws allowing/requiring companies to comply with the NSA.

ionised 11y ago
The difference being that I want to use Windows only for games without all this other cloud integration crap that comes with it. Steam OS is a Linux-based OS designed primarily for gaming. Any and all cloud-integration will be specifically gaming-focused. Can you not see the difference between that and a general purpose OS like Windows harvesting data everything you do on your system? I won't be using Steam OS to do anything very sensitive like sending or receiving personal e-mails, editing word documents or spreadsheets, or browsing the internet for whatever reason. Unless you consider firing up a shooter or a city-building sim sensitive. The two OS's have very different purposes and use-cases.
pjc50 11y ago
Telemetry is clearly not a legal requirement. It's only data stored on steam servers (including chat logs) which you have to worry about.
JadeNB 11y ago
> Using steam will not change anything since it is the US laws allowing/requiring companies to comply with the NSA. There's a big difference between 'allowing' and 'requiring'.

rocky1138 11y ago

There are over 1,900 games on Steam that run in Linux. https://steamdb.info/linux/ https://steamdb.info/linux/

ionised 11y ago
Many of the games I have in my library do not run at all unfortunately. Sometimes I like to go back and play old stuff too.
- Xylemon 11y ago
  Wine is always a viable option, especially for older games. With DirectX 11 support coming later this year, almost every Windoze only game should hopefully work.
  - merb 11y ago
    it's still slower mostly. Mostly since they don't have any specification at all.
    - anonbanker 11y ago
      Parent's post has so many qualifiers, it says nothing at all. I do not see a performance penalty at all with WINE. Most games that work play at speeds matching or better than windows. WoW is usually a big example of that, as are emulators.
      - gr3yh47 11y ago
        WoW and emulators are both fairly trivial for a modern system to run well. There is definitely a significant performance hit if you are running something in WINE that nearly maxes your performance in windows
        anonbanker 11y ago
        someone's never used Higan before. I've made Stunt Race FX and Yoshi's Island peg a Core i7. Running Tekken 4 on MAME is just as intensive. Running either in wine is a fine benchmark on performance.
    - yellowapple 11y ago

dibujante 11y ago

I updated to Windows 10 and found it to be so painfully slow that I switched to Ubuntu 14.04 for gaming. I've honestly had a pretty good experience playing everything from low-fi indie titles (like Terraria) to AAA releases (like Shadow of Mordor). Try it out!

dragonwriter 11y ago
> I updated to Windows 10 and found it to be so painfully slow I initially had that problem, but it seemed to be the fact that (on top of some phoning-home options that I missed disabling originally, which seemed to play some role in the slowness -- disabling them helped) the Windows 10 update from Windows 8.1 also, for some unknown reason, rolled WLAN drivers back to the versions that were several years old (pre-Win8.1 at least) and fairly broken and couldn't automatically locate new ones; redownloading the latest (for Win8.1 -- no Win 10 specific drivers were available for the hardware in question) drivers (which is what had been installed prior to the update) resolved the slowness problems.
ionised 11y ago
I can't say I've had any issues with performance on Win10. Some games seem to actually run a bit better for me.

minthd 11y ago

Will games that run on Steam OS be compatible with regular linux ?

duvet 11y ago
Yes. If you look at the Steam search you'll see that Linux is paired with SteamOS.[1] [1] http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux

cryoshon 11y ago

Same. I would really like it to accommodate old Windows games as well, but that's too much to ask for right now.