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ChimeraOS: Instantly turn any PC into a gaming console
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bovem 3y agoSeems like a good project but this is a deal breaker for me > Nvidia and Intel GPUs are not supported Any specific reason why that is? Or if it’s in roadmap?
- causi 3y agoTitle should be changed to "Instantly Turn 12% of PCs into a gaming console" because that's what fraction of the GPU market AMD has.
- DoombaBot 3y agoProbably supports just AMD because the focus of this is for mini pcs from companies like Beelink etc that use either mobile AMD cards or on board graphics from an AMD chip. Mini pcs are currently dominated by AMD hardware.
- bovem 3y agoThanks, that makes sense. Intel is also getting out of NUC market. But there are still lots of NUCs out there that could be used as a light gaming server.
- pkulak 3y agoIt probably uses SteamOS, which has no need to include Intel drivers, and probably absolutely no desire to include proprietary Nvidia binary blobs.
- Nullabillity 3y agoIntel's dGPUs have a ~0% market share, Nvidia's driver situation is a shitshow.
- Dalewyn 3y agoIntel GPUs dominate the market by far. Every Intel CPU since 2010 has a GPU, with only very specific exceptions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- linsomniac 3y agoI believe the "d" part of "dGPU" is tripping you up here -- the "d" is "discrete", meaning unbundled from the CPU. IOW, Intel GPUs that are not bundled with the CPU have roughly a 0% market share.
- Dalewyn 3y agoSource states "Intel GPUs are not supported", parent comment noted Intel discrete GPUs have no marketshare. Parent comment is thus irrelevant at best, misguided at worst. Not supporting Intel GPUs is throwing away the dominant leader in the GPU market.
- Nullabillity 3y agoWe're talking about a dedicated gaming system here, iGPUs are pretty much irrelevant in that context. Things would be different in the context of a browser or word processor. Besides, counting "1 Intel CPU sale = 1 Intel GPU" is misguided since that would count everyone using an Intel CPU with a dGPU as an Intel GPU customer, even if the iGPU sits idle 100% of the time. Looking at a more representative demographic, the Steam users[0], Intel has a 9% market share, vs AMD's 15% and Nvidia's 85%. I don't know whether this also overcounts hybrid-GPU users (Optimus/DSG) into the iGPU bucket as well. [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey
- de6u99er 3y agoI guess it has to do with their lack of open source drivers, and I bet you can install NVidia or Intel drivers by yourself.
- RussianCow 3y agoThe Intel GPU drivers have been open source for years.
- suprjami 3y agoI've been running ChimeraOS on a NUC and it works fine
- anaisbetts 3y agoIt is a copy of SteamOS which uses its own Wayland compositor (Gamescope) that is not compatible with anything other than AMD (since it was originally intended to only be used with Steam Deck, there was no reason to make it work anywhere else)
- gkhartman 3y agoI would have thought that installation of Nvidia driver packages for Arch would do the trick. I'll admit that I'm unfamiliar with the interaction between GPU drivers and Wayland, so I'm guessing it would just result in an unstable combination?
- ElectricalUnion 3y agoNot just unstable, until I think 2 years ago literally not useable as the nvidia proprietary drivers didn't implement useable GBM by default, so even if it didn't hard crash it would never show anything besides a blank screen. https://github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/b48cb6b0ec1320ad25fd2c0a1b5118dbe2536060 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/b48cb6b0ec1320ad25fd2c...
- daveidol 3y agoNo screenshots?
- james2doyle 3y agoSeems like it is just a build of SteamOS? There is a youtube linker from their Twitter (https://twitter.com/ChimeraOS_Linux https://twitter.com/ChimeraOS_Linux): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAFyXYh22M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAFyXYh22M Edit: Found this post on their Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChimeraOS_Linux/status/1514419912080596992/photo/1 https://twitter.com/ChimeraOS_Linux/status/15144199120805969...
- goober24 3y agoMore like, "Is Not Supported" OS
- pull_my_finger 3y agoA similar project is Ludo [1] which is part of the libretro family. More for emulation but really a clean UI (it actually has screenshots) [1]: https://ludo.libretro.com/#about https://ludo.libretro.com/#about
- ajot 3y agoOh, I installed Ludo (the program, not the LibreELEC based LudoOS) on my Debian laptop a couple days ago. I don't have the time, knowledge or patience to fiddle and try to optimize Retroarch. For Android, I use Lemuroid, which has a similar premise of simplicity. Back on topic, there's also Lakka as a LibreELEC with full Retroarch. I think there are other similar projects around, like EmulationStation.
- Pxtl 3y agoUgh. I really tried to like Lakka but it was such a mess. I'll never install a non-raspbian OS on a rasppi again. I like the naked Retroarch UI so much better than emulation station so I thought that part was much better than retropie, but the amount of fiddling I had to do with the OS on a system that really didn't want me to do that ruined it for me.
- gochi 3y agoYet more evidence that XMB is the greatest console UI ever created, and I'm glad more projects are using it in some way.
- vlark 3y ago"Instantly turn our developers' PCs into gaming consoles" is more like it. Cool logo, though.
- rangledangle 3y agoI just have my PC in my living room boot Straight to Steam Big Picture Mode. It's great.
- Pxtl 3y agoOn windows or what?
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- bnchrch 3y agoOne of the better examples of the extremely talented developer who does not understand customers/new users. Show us a screenshot or a video before putting an install button in front of us.
- crickey 3y agoWhy people who are into retrogames dont need to be advertised to
- tastyfreeze 3y agoIts not about the games. Its about how much effort it takes to play the games using ChimeraOS. Kinda nice to have an idea what you are in for before you spend some time installing and testing a new OS build.
- blkhp19 3y agoWas about to leave a comment saying the exact same thing. I don't understand how someone makes it this far in a project, and just completely drops the ball when showing the work off to the world. You don't even need to naturally be good at marketing - just literally copy what any somewhat-known brand / project does.
- yellowapple 3y ago> You don't even need to naturally be good at marketing - just literally copy what any somewhat-known brand / project does. If I had a nickel for every "somewhat-known brand / project" that (like in this case) fails to include any sort of screenshot or demo on the homepage, I'd be rich enough to buy a social network, run it into the ground, and rename it to some letter of the alphabet. Point being: good, informative homepages are by far the exception rather than the norm.
- all2 3y agoThis is one of those cases where the website would benefit from a video or screenshots above the fold. I want to know what it looks like, how the UI flows from thing to thing, etc.
- sammorrowdrums 3y agoChimeraOS was previously called GamerOS and when SteamOS stagnated it was basically an attempt at a new Linux big picture SteamOS with evergreen distro but with versioned upgrades (it was SteamOS but better at the time). It also uses Arch kernel but with a sort of immutable update approach that I’m certain was the inspiration for the current SteamOS. Very cool project, could do with screenshots and things, and the rename made it more cryptic but it is genuinely excellent and earlier in the project it was a clear lifeline for abandoned (by valve not releasing new versions) SteamOS devices.
- suprjami 3y agoI've run ChimeraOS for a while now. It's such an impressive experience. You really just install it and it works. I'm using a NUC8 and PS4 controller. The amount of effort Valve have put into the Steam Deck really shows, I guess game developers are encouraged to make the Deck compatibility good, and ChimeraOS takes advantage of that.
- als0 3y agoWhat’s different about it versus ordinary Steam Big Picture?
- suprjami 3y agoChimeraOS has an immutable root filesystem which does A/B updates, so it's much closer to having the Steam Deck OS on a PC than a regular distro running Steam with Big Picture. It's also got a web interface (called just Chimera) which lets you install stuff from Flatpak, or add ROMs which it integrates with RetroArch and nice pictures so they appear in the Steam interface as a regular game.
- vladxyz 3y agoPreviously known as GamerOS, it's basically arch-based clone of SteamOS 2, which came around between Steam Machines becoming irrelevant, and the Steam Deck showing up. https://youtube.com/watch?v=WkIGUuVLrn8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=WkIGUuVLrn8
- pvorb 3y agoThis statement > Instantly turn any PC into a gaming console doesn’t quite fit the limitations stated on the download page > * AMD Radeon RX 400 series or newer GPU required > * Nvidia and Intel GPUs are not supported > * hybrid graphics are not supported > * virtual machines are not supported
- sitzkrieg 3y agoi feel like this is very intentionally buried
- Modified3019 3y agoI imagine that not supported doesn’t mean “won’t work”, but rather means “we won’t burn time helping you if it doesn’t work”. Which is reasonable tbh, nvidia and it’s drivers are such a big stupid pain.
- zamadatix 3y agoNvidia makes sense (still a bit wonky, even with the new open kernel driver) but Intel?
- Modified3019 3y agoDefinitely a reasonable question. Personally I would answer that by asking, “who uses intel for gaming”? Currently, very few, even less than AMD (lmao). Meaning the devs likely just don’t have one and can’t make any promises. I bet if someone bought them one they’d appreciate it ;) I haven’t been following the arc cards very closely, but my loose impression was the drivers were heavily in flux until recently, and I’ve seen complications pop up in regards to mixtures of bios/uefi options, such as resizable bar being crucial for performance and some virtualization options causing incompatibility or performance issues. Basically the dust is still settling. As such it’s hard to say “yeah this should work”. I do think they should list the reasons why certain things are “not supported*, what “not supported” actually means, and not bury these surprises. Otherwise it guarantees confusion and (my wild but good faith) speculation.
- print_goto_ten 3y ago"Any PC" without Nvidia GPUS that is.
- joshstrange 3y agoThis project would benefit greatly from some screenshots or videos on any of the pages linked in the header. Also maybe it makes more sense on mobile but the hardware screen is painful to read on desktop. It's not at all clear to me what this brings to the table over the default Steam Deck software (I know that's only 1 of many devices it supports). I'm pretty freaking happy with the default OS plus EmuDeck on my Steam Deck. I know there are launchers for Epic/Blizzard/GoG which I'll probably setup eventually but so far I haven't needed or cared about anything from those sources. I assume this is really for Steam Deck clones or desktop computers. Here is a video of the UI I found (not endorsing anything, just the first video I found that showed the UI): https://youtu.be/E2NIGPpz_vY?t=19 https://youtu.be/E2NIGPpz_vY?t=19 - It looks very similar to the Steam Deck UI which I find very nice to use.
- Zambyte 3y ago> It looks very similar to the Steam Deck UI It is the Steam Deck UI. See the repo description on: https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos
- tvb12 3y agoThere might be some differences outside of Steam's UI. In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2NIGPpz_vY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2NIGPpz_vY) it looks like the desktop mode switches to Gnome, whereas I'm pretty sure the Steam Deck uses Plasma. Maybe that's configurable.
- nomel 3y ago> over the default Steam Deck software Alternatively, I would claim auto login/boot to Steam's Big Screen is an alternative, with much better hardware support.
- tvb12 3y agoI had to watch several videos on youtube to answer this question for myself. The advantages to using ChimeraOS over big picture mode seem to be tied to Valve's gamescope compositor, which gives you access to a nice UI for limiting framerates, applying mangohud, and choosing upscaling settings. ChimeraOS also has compatibility with Steam Deck plugins. I know nothing about the plugins. You can definitely do all the other things outside of gamescope's UI, but... it actually is a pretty nice compact UI.
- rouxz 3y agoCool, the biggest issue for me when I was trying to do the same thing (turn my beefy PC to a "gaming console") was the ability to turn it on with gamepad. I've spent a lot of time researching it and have not found a reliable solution.
- GlumWoodpecker 3y agoAs a workaround, with a USB remote controller[0] you can put a PC to sleep and wake it up by pressing the power button. That's what I did with my setup of a mac for game streaming[1]. In my experience, the sleep/wake functionality works on Windows and Linux as well, so it should work on this. [0]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005766837072.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005766837072.html [1]: https://datalars.com/2023/07/29/using-a-mac-mini-as-a-bedroom-pc-for-kodijellyfin-moonlight-and-youtube/ https://datalars.com/2023/07/29/using-a-mac-mini-as-a-bedroo...
- asynchronous 3y agoTo save some investigation, this project might once have been better than the SteamOS natively, but as of now it is no longer the case. It doesn’t do anything particularly well and has a nightmare of a time with Bluetooth support.
- rvnx 3y agoAdd a Parsec server by default and it'll be perfect so it can be deployed to Google Cloud or other servers :D
- ThatPlayer 3y agoParsec doesn't support Linux host. The alternative should be Sunshine (host for client Moonlight), but doesn't seem like they wanted to add it: https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/pull/587 https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/pull/587
- addandsubtract 3y agoCan anyone recommend a good budget mini PC (on par with maybe the Steam Deck) for some casual gaming?
- ThatPlayer 3y agoHard to beat the Steam Deck if it's available in your country I think. Valve is selling at a cost, or at least with very little margin, since they make up the difference with sales on Steam like other console manufacturers. No other PC manufacturer can really do the same.
- iFire 3y agoMIT License: https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/blob/master/LICENSE
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jerojero 3y agoAlthough Valve promised to release the steamOS image publicly they still haven't done so officially. I believe companies like Asus or Lenovo would greatly benefit from putting steamOS on their consoles instead of spending their own developer resources in trying to make windows work. It just doesn't. I have an Aya neo 2, I put chimeraOS on it and although there's a couple details missing, it generally works very well, it makes the thing usable as opposed to having windows on it.
- fbdab103 3y agoWhat is the value add vs Ubuntu + Steam manually installed?
- theodric 3y ago"Includes out-of-the-box support for Epic Games Store and GOG" Vanilla Ubuntu isn't going to offer you that level of integration. https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/wiki/OS-Comparison https://github.com/ChimeraOS/chimeraos/wiki/OS-Comparison
- goldtownjac 3y agoI've been running Chimera for a few months now on a all-AMD PC hooked up to my living room TV, and I've been pleased. I had previously set up Windows to launch big picture mode on startup but there was always a delay where I would see the Windows desktop which shattered the whole illusion. Plus, Windows. Chimera really boots directly into big picture and has worked flawlessly for the use case of playing Steam games. Beyond that, it falls a little flat. I thought that gamepad input for mouse control would be supported in desktop mode but as far as I can tell it's not, at least not out of the box. There is a nifty phone client you can use to download games from the Epic Store, retro games, etc. to be added to the non-Steam games section in BPM, but I wish you could do it from the desktop. A more or less fully-featured, gamepad-controlled OS would be the holy grail.
- somecommit 3y agoFor the old folks like me that started on linux installing Mandravia CDROMs from magazines back in 2000, this looks retrospectively so odd, unreal and fantastic
- chafporte 3y ago[dead]
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]
- RunningDroid 3y agoThe name conflicts with https://chimera-linux.org/ https://chimera-linux.org/