6 ms·

If I remember correctly, Valve from the start considered SteamOS as "backup", a way to escape Windows if MS pull some shenanigan they don't like. Since MS is m

by speeder 10y ago

If I remember correctly, Valve from the start considered SteamOS as "backup", a way to escape Windows if MS pull some shenanigan they don't like. Since MS is mostly "behaving" themselves, Valve is keeping SteamOS around, but not focusing on it. At least for now... (it wouldn't surprise me if MS became more aggressive in their W10+DX12+"Xbox everywhere"+"MS Store" push...)

zitterbewegung 10y ago
The other issue for consumers is that SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit .
- digi_owl 10y ago
  And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice?
  - edraferi 10y ago
    > And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice? Isn't that the core market?
- nacs 10y ago
  > SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit Any sources to back up this claim? 10% performance hit compared to what? Windows? A different Linux distro? I've found that for native games, Linux can actually offer better performance in many cases than the Windows version. Someone also did a test recently (full video on Youtube) with the Windows version of the new Doom running on Linux through the WINE emulation (yes I know its not technically an emulator) via Vulkan and the performance exceeded the Windows version.
  - anonymfus 10y ago
    Wine tests are a bad way to compare performance because you can not be sure that all features that the game uses are actually implemented and not stubbed.
  - gnarbarian 10y ago
    My personal anecdotal evidence is that many of the games available for Linux on steam are really terrible ports. Gang beasts for example couldn't even find the binary. Once I fixed that, I was lucky to get 5 fps with lowest settings on my 6 core i7 with a Titan x. Yes I had the latest Nvidia drivers. Chivalry medieval warfare was another unplayable performance offender. This isn't necessarily valve's fault though. It's because the devs will shit out a Linux build without even trying to run it or they just don't care. Some games work great. Some don't work at all and shouldn't even be listed with Linux support. I sincerely hope Linux takes off as a viable gaming platform. All the tools and components are there. The only thing missing at the moment is developer mindshare.
    - the_af 10y ago
      That's completely different to my own experience. In my experience, there tend to be minor issues with graphically intensive games but they mostly work fine with good performance. For example, I'm playing Alien Isolation on a Lenovo Ideapad laptop, with most settings at max, and I'm impressed by how well it runs. There are some problems and glitches unrelated to the games, in my experience (like how newer nvidia GPUs have screen tearing on Ubuntu -- unrelated to vsync, by the way -- and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it for the time being)
  - zitterbewegung 10y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-significant-performance-hit-for-steamos-gaming/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-s... Compared to windows .
    - Qwertious 10y ago
      IIRC that benchmark is garbage, because the compiler they use was so old that Debian Stale had a newer version in their repos, when that article was first published. Ah, here it is. From https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3snvpc/steamos_gaming_comes_with_significant_performance/cwz4k5x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3snvpc/steamo... "took a quick peek at the latest Geekbench executable for Linux(3.3.2,) it was compiled with GCC 4.4.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 - a 5 and a half year old compiler. Windows version was compiled with MSVC 2012 update 4 released 2 years ago." Take note: That ars article was done ~15 months ago (november 2015). In it, they used Ubuntu 10.04, which was released in April of 2010 (thus '10.04')! Steam wasn't even released on Linux, until nearly 3 years later, in 2013! That article is so BS that you should ignore it outright. It's not even fit to be toilet paper.
      - rrdharan 10y ago
        You mean Debian Stable, though perhaps that was intentional? If so, well done.
- thisdepends888 10y ago
  This blanket statement is not generally applicable. It can depend on rendering tech used, the game, and hardware. And this is going to be an issue in bleeding edge games mostly. Borderlands 2, for example, plays fine for me on a i7 930, with a GTX 570. An older rig. Dota 2 with OpenGL rendering hits or exceeds the Windows FPS when run on Linux. Switch to Vulkan though and it craters. Source engine games with OpenGL rendering often outperform Windows.
  - untoreh 10y ago
    > Source engine games with OpenGL rendering often outperform Windows. nah, not really, only dota2, because has no wrapper, at least for valve's source games.
bisby 10y ago
a ton of major issues have been recently fixed. It doesn't seem to be on the back burner at all, it's just that building/updating an entire OS is a bit different from building/updating just steam. Also, a lot of fixes are edge cases that most people don't view as fixes, because it was never an issue for them. Most of the issue revolves around GPU drivers, which in theory valve is not responsible for, but they have hired devs to work on the open source AMD drivers. Even then, most devs don't optimize for OpenGL. That's again on the dev, and not valve, unless valve is going to provide devs to every game developer out there to provide linux support. Vulkan (hopefully) would resolve that, as optimizing vulkan builds makes games run better everywhere. Of course they aren't putting ALL their eggs in this basket. ~90% of their revenue comes from windows, so they should be putting most of their effort into windows support. You can't lose your current customers while trying to make the future better. The fact that they are in fact fixing things and hiring driver devs is a great sign. And I believe they provided the rocket league dev too? Either way, progress is coming, slow and steady. linux as a primary gaming platform works just fine for me, thanks to valve.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  linux as a primary gaming platform works just fine for me, thanks to valve. Confirmed by a happy occasional CS:GO player here.
  - willemmali 10y ago
    I wish it worked on Debian, it used to but the last time I tried I lost a day and still didn't get it to run...
    - Chyzwar 10y ago
      Its works fine in Ubuntu.
    - buffsquid 10y ago
      I've been running it on Debian testing here for nearly two years now, no major problems. Since jessie it's just an apt-get away.

by speeder 10y ago

zitterbewegung 10y ago

The other issue for consumers is that SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit .

digi_owl 10y ago
And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice?
- edraferi 10y ago
  > And beyond the 1337 gamer kids, who will notice? Isn't that the core market?
nacs 10y ago
> SteamOs will give you a ~10% performance hit Any sources to back up this claim? 10% performance hit compared to what? Windows? A different Linux distro? I've found that for native games, Linux can actually offer better performance in many cases than the Windows version. Someone also did a test recently (full video on Youtube) with the Windows version of the new Doom running on Linux through the WINE emulation (yes I know its not technically an emulator) via Vulkan and the performance exceeded the Windows version.
- anonymfus 10y ago
  Wine tests are a bad way to compare performance because you can not be sure that all features that the game uses are actually implemented and not stubbed.
- gnarbarian 10y ago
  My personal anecdotal evidence is that many of the games available for Linux on steam are really terrible ports. Gang beasts for example couldn't even find the binary. Once I fixed that, I was lucky to get 5 fps with lowest settings on my 6 core i7 with a Titan x. Yes I had the latest Nvidia drivers. Chivalry medieval warfare was another unplayable performance offender. This isn't necessarily valve's fault though. It's because the devs will shit out a Linux build without even trying to run it or they just don't care. Some games work great. Some don't work at all and shouldn't even be listed with Linux support. I sincerely hope Linux takes off as a viable gaming platform. All the tools and components are there. The only thing missing at the moment is developer mindshare.
  - the_af 10y ago
    That's completely different to my own experience. In my experience, there tend to be minor issues with graphically intensive games but they mostly work fine with good performance. For example, I'm playing Alien Isolation on a Lenovo Ideapad laptop, with most settings at max, and I'm impressed by how well it runs. There are some problems and glitches unrelated to the games, in my experience (like how newer nvidia GPUs have screen tearing on Ubuntu -- unrelated to vsync, by the way -- and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it for the time being)
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-significant-performance-hit-for-steamos-gaming/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/11/ars-benchmarks-show-s... Compared to windows .
  - Qwertious 10y ago
    IIRC that benchmark is garbage, because the compiler they use was so old that Debian Stale had a newer version in their repos, when that article was first published. Ah, here it is. From https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3snvpc/steamos_gaming_comes_with_significant_performance/cwz4k5x/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3snvpc/steamo... "took a quick peek at the latest Geekbench executable for Linux(3.3.2,) it was compiled with GCC 4.4.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 - a 5 and a half year old compiler. Windows version was compiled with MSVC 2012 update 4 released 2 years ago." Take note: That ars article was done ~15 months ago (november 2015). In it, they used Ubuntu 10.04, which was released in April of 2010 (thus '10.04')! Steam wasn't even released on Linux, until nearly 3 years later, in 2013! That article is so BS that you should ignore it outright. It's not even fit to be toilet paper.
    - rrdharan 10y ago
      You mean Debian Stable, though perhaps that was intentional? If so, well done.
thisdepends888 10y ago
This blanket statement is not generally applicable. It can depend on rendering tech used, the game, and hardware. And this is going to be an issue in bleeding edge games mostly. Borderlands 2, for example, plays fine for me on a i7 930, with a GTX 570. An older rig. Dota 2 with OpenGL rendering hits or exceeds the Windows FPS when run on Linux. Switch to Vulkan though and it craters. Source engine games with OpenGL rendering often outperform Windows.
- untoreh 10y ago
  > Source engine games with OpenGL rendering often outperform Windows. nah, not really, only dota2, because has no wrapper, at least for valve's source games.

bisby 10y ago

a ton of major issues have been recently fixed. It doesn't seem to be on the back burner at all, it's just that building/updating an entire OS is a bit different from building/updating just steam. Also, a lot of fixes are edge cases that most people don't view as fixes, because it was never an issue for them. Most of the issue revolves around GPU drivers, which in theory valve is not responsible for, but they have hired devs to work on the open source AMD drivers. Even then, most devs don't optimize for OpenGL. That's again on the dev, and not valve, unless valve is going to provide devs to every game developer out there to provide linux support. Vulkan (hopefully) would resolve that, as optimizing vulkan builds makes games run better everywhere. Of course they aren't putting ALL their eggs in this basket. ~90% of their revenue comes from windows, so they should be putting most of their effort into windows support. You can't lose your current customers while trying to make the future better. The fact that they are in fact fixing things and hiring driver devs is a great sign. And I believe they provided the rocket league dev too? Either way, progress is coming, slow and steady. linux as a primary gaming platform works just fine for me, thanks to valve.

reitanqild 10y ago
linux as a primary gaming platform works just fine for me, thanks to valve. Confirmed by a happy occasional CS:GO player here.
- willemmali 10y ago
  I wish it worked on Debian, it used to but the last time I tried I lost a day and still didn't get it to run...
  - Chyzwar 10y ago
    Its works fine in Ubuntu.
  - buffsquid 10y ago
    I've been running it on Debian testing here for nearly two years now, no major problems. Since jessie it's just an apt-get away.