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What are the SteamOS Hardware Requirements? ... Hard Drive: 500GB or larger disk Default Installation ... The image provided her

What are the SteamOS Hardware Requirements? ... Hard Drive: 500GB or larger disk Default Installation ... The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk. It is odd that they are publishing these specs and making the default image so large when <500GB SSDs are the ideal drives for gaming computers.

wtallis 13y ago
SSDs are great, until your game library outgrows them. At the moment, it may be hard to fill half a terabyte with Linux games, but it's pretty easy on Windows. I've got 350GB of Steam games installed on my Windows machine, and I'm not a big spender on games. I've just bought Humble Bundles and one or two things during each of Steam's major sales.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  I invested in 64GB of RAM. I have a little script to create a 32GB ramdisk on startup. Whenever I want to play a game, I copy its folder to the ramdisk, rename the original, then symlink it from the original location to the ramdisk. SSDs are great, but ramdisk gaming loads in like five seconds flat. I suppose games will outgrow ~48GB in several years, but my hardware will grow old by then anyway.
  - shurcooL 13y ago
    That... is pretty sick. Well done.
    - lsiebert 13y ago
      Hmm... I should try that. My laptop has 16 gb, but I don't play that many games? How big are most game installs anyway?
  - bane 13y ago
    That seems like an awful lot of work to play a game. Off an SSD games usually start in about that time anyway.
  - wtallis 13y ago
    The best solution and what will probably be adopted by high-end SteamBoxes eventually, is to ship a large cheap hard drive and a SSD large enough to cache 2-3 games.
    - ewzimm 13y ago
      So why would you prefer a SSD to RAM?
      - icebraining 13y ago
        Because the cache doesn't disappear when you turn the machine off, forcing you to read the games from spinning rust every time.
      - wtallis 13y ago
        64GB of RAM isn't possible on consumer hardware, and costs almost as much as a 1TB SSD. A high-quality cache drive on the order of 120-256GB is way cheaper and gets rid of most disk bottlenecks, and is automatically managed rather than requiring the user to write scripts to create a RAM disk for each game.
        sillysaurus2 13y ago
        I bought my 64GB of RAM + mobo off the shelf at Microcenter. So it's probably consumer hardware. Cache SSD drives are mostly bogus, because insanely they cache by alphabetical file order instead of most recently used file. E.g. The folder "Aardvark" will be cached, but "Zebra" probably won't be, even if you use the Zebra program more often. I know, it's insane, and I almost couldn't believe they implemented caching like that. Almost. This was some time ago, so maybe the state of things has improved since then.
        wtallis 13y ago
        Your 64GB system uses Intel's LGA2011 server platform. It's not consumer-class hardware even if they label some of the parts for "enthusiasts". 40 PCIe lanes makes no sense for any consumer purpose - it's an odd number even for multi-GPU use, and quad-channel memory isn't economical and probably won't be even after the transition to DDR4. I've never heard of a SSD caching system that operates on filenames. Apple's Fusion Drive system is the most filesystem-aware caching system I know of, and it ignores filenames and works based on frequency of access. Intel's Smart Response system is a block-level cache implemented as part of their software RAID system. Flashcache and bcache for Linux are block-level caches that can be layered over or under software RAID. Hybrid drives that put 4-8GB of NAND on a hard drive are completely filesystem-agnostic, as are the hardware RAID controllers that support SSD caching.
  - hdevalence 13y ago
    Why not just use bcache?
  - cbhl 13y ago
    How long does it take you to copy its folder to the ramdisk? Is this longer than it would take for e.g. the Linux kernel to figure out it should cache that folder in memory by itself?
    - staunch 13y ago
      The advantage is that it's definitely all in memory the first time you read it. For games this is very nice.
  - w-ll 13y ago
    What's a good 16gb stick or do you use 8 8gb sticks?
- emmelaich 13y ago
  Use SteamMover to move the lesser used games off your ssd and put a junction point in their place. http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover
- johnbellone 13y ago
  I haven't installed SteamOS yet. But if you're comfortable use btrfs (or zfs) and grow the root pool when you need more drives. Its pretty simple.
- kzrdude 13y ago
  Steam allows you to install and uninstall games whenever you'd like, so it all comes down to some management of which games are installed. Say, if you need 100 GB for a new game you can just uninstall a few games you won't play.
- brownbat 13y ago
  I have a couple small SSDs in a RAID 0 for gaming. I don't keep every game I own installed, which means I have to reinstall games more often. But I can keep a few on at a time, and a lot of games these days (FTL, Castle Crashers, Magicka) don't take up much space at all. I keep a platter for media, and another removable one for backups. Getting used to the ceiling was a bit of a pain at first, but I would not go back.
shurcooL 13y ago
Are people okay with this? Despite having high internet speeds, I feel quite uncomfortable with how big the game downloads are these days. It's probably because I play games casually and try not to spend too much time, and after playing them on OnLive, it's really hard to go back to the non-streaming model. It's like... I just wanna try a game for 15 mins, then close it and move on. I'm not gonna download 8+ GB just for that.
- cbhl 13y ago
  I feel like the "casual 15 mins gaming" is predominantly going to be iPad and cell phones in the future, whereas I see SteamOS fitting the "I'm going to spend two hours in my man cave" scenario. If it's a box in your living room, presumably you could trigger an installation remotely from your computer or cell phone, and when it's done downloading an hour later you can just walk over to it and start using it.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    With a little manifest file describing the priority of each file, Steam could easily allow you to play while it's still downloading.
  - shurcooL 13y ago
    It's the barrier of entry of having to download and use up all that hard-drive space. It's like having to install an .exe vs. visiting a website. Even if you trigger the .exe installation remotely, it's just not as convenient and agile as visiting a site at will.
skwirl 13y ago
"Default Installation You will need to create a SteamOS System Restore USB stick to perform this install. The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk." I don't understand this at all. I wonder if there is actually a hard check.

wtallis 13y ago

SSDs are great, until your game library outgrows them. At the moment, it may be hard to fill half a terabyte with Linux games, but it's pretty easy on Windows. I've got 350GB of Steam games installed on my Windows machine, and I'm not a big spender on games. I've just bought Humble Bundles and one or two things during each of Steam's major sales.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
I invested in 64GB of RAM. I have a little script to create a 32GB ramdisk on startup. Whenever I want to play a game, I copy its folder to the ramdisk, rename the original, then symlink it from the original location to the ramdisk. SSDs are great, but ramdisk gaming loads in like five seconds flat. I suppose games will outgrow ~48GB in several years, but my hardware will grow old by then anyway.
- shurcooL 13y ago
  That... is pretty sick. Well done.
  - lsiebert 13y ago
    Hmm... I should try that. My laptop has 16 gb, but I don't play that many games? How big are most game installs anyway?
- bane 13y ago
  That seems like an awful lot of work to play a game. Off an SSD games usually start in about that time anyway.
- wtallis 13y ago
  The best solution and what will probably be adopted by high-end SteamBoxes eventually, is to ship a large cheap hard drive and a SSD large enough to cache 2-3 games.
  - ewzimm 13y ago
    So why would you prefer a SSD to RAM?
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Because the cache doesn't disappear when you turn the machine off, forcing you to read the games from spinning rust every time.
    - wtallis 13y ago
      64GB of RAM isn't possible on consumer hardware, and costs almost as much as a 1TB SSD. A high-quality cache drive on the order of 120-256GB is way cheaper and gets rid of most disk bottlenecks, and is automatically managed rather than requiring the user to write scripts to create a RAM disk for each game.
      - sillysaurus2 13y ago
        I bought my 64GB of RAM + mobo off the shelf at Microcenter. So it's probably consumer hardware. Cache SSD drives are mostly bogus, because insanely they cache by alphabetical file order instead of most recently used file. E.g. The folder "Aardvark" will be cached, but "Zebra" probably won't be, even if you use the Zebra program more often. I know, it's insane, and I almost couldn't believe they implemented caching like that. Almost. This was some time ago, so maybe the state of things has improved since then.
        wtallis 13y ago
        Your 64GB system uses Intel's LGA2011 server platform. It's not consumer-class hardware even if they label some of the parts for "enthusiasts". 40 PCIe lanes makes no sense for any consumer purpose - it's an odd number even for multi-GPU use, and quad-channel memory isn't economical and probably won't be even after the transition to DDR4. I've never heard of a SSD caching system that operates on filenames. Apple's Fusion Drive system is the most filesystem-aware caching system I know of, and it ignores filenames and works based on frequency of access. Intel's Smart Response system is a block-level cache implemented as part of their software RAID system. Flashcache and bcache for Linux are block-level caches that can be layered over or under software RAID. Hybrid drives that put 4-8GB of NAND on a hard drive are completely filesystem-agnostic, as are the hardware RAID controllers that support SSD caching.
- hdevalence 13y ago
  Why not just use bcache?
- cbhl 13y ago
  How long does it take you to copy its folder to the ramdisk? Is this longer than it would take for e.g. the Linux kernel to figure out it should cache that folder in memory by itself?
  - staunch 13y ago
    The advantage is that it's definitely all in memory the first time you read it. For games this is very nice.
- w-ll 13y ago
  What's a good 16gb stick or do you use 8 8gb sticks?
emmelaich 13y ago
Use SteamMover to move the lesser used games off your ssd and put a junction point in their place. http://www.traynier.com/software/steammover
johnbellone 13y ago
I haven't installed SteamOS yet. But if you're comfortable use btrfs (or zfs) and grow the root pool when you need more drives. Its pretty simple.
kzrdude 13y ago
Steam allows you to install and uninstall games whenever you'd like, so it all comes down to some management of which games are installed. Say, if you need 100 GB for a new game you can just uninstall a few games you won't play.
brownbat 13y ago
I have a couple small SSDs in a RAID 0 for gaming. I don't keep every game I own installed, which means I have to reinstall games more often. But I can keep a few on at a time, and a lot of games these days (FTL, Castle Crashers, Magicka) don't take up much space at all. I keep a platter for media, and another removable one for backups. Getting used to the ceiling was a bit of a pain at first, but I would not go back.

shurcooL 13y ago

Are people okay with this? Despite having high internet speeds, I feel quite uncomfortable with how big the game downloads are these days. It's probably because I play games casually and try not to spend too much time, and after playing them on OnLive, it's really hard to go back to the non-streaming model. It's like... I just wanna try a game for 15 mins, then close it and move on. I'm not gonna download 8+ GB just for that.

cbhl 13y ago
I feel like the "casual 15 mins gaming" is predominantly going to be iPad and cell phones in the future, whereas I see SteamOS fitting the "I'm going to spend two hours in my man cave" scenario. If it's a box in your living room, presumably you could trigger an installation remotely from your computer or cell phone, and when it's done downloading an hour later you can just walk over to it and start using it.
- icebraining 13y ago
  With a little manifest file describing the priority of each file, Steam could easily allow you to play while it's still downloading.
- shurcooL 13y ago
  It's the barrier of entry of having to download and use up all that hard-drive space. It's like having to install an .exe vs. visiting a website. Even if you trigger the .exe installation remotely, it's just not as convenient and agile as visiting a site at will.

skwirl 13y ago

"Default Installation You will need to create a SteamOS System Restore USB stick to perform this install. The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk." I don't understand this at all. I wonder if there is actually a hard check.