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I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

iliana.fyi

121–130 of 258 posts

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why people are trying to convince you; Linux is free so there really isn’t any benefit to us Linux users or to the Linux developers if you switch… Valve should be the only one that is worried about your opinion here. I think they develop SteamOS as a backup plan, though, in case Microsoft ever starts to take their own App Store seriously.

That is surely part of the consideration, but certainly not all. Some engineers at Valve (especially the head honcho Gabe Newell) are legit Linux people (Debian IIRC). They believe in it, and I love them for it

And it left them well-positioned for the steam deck, I wonder if they were thinking about that when they started steamOS, or if it is just an example of the natural advantage that openness gives you.

Anyway, agree—I wasn’t trying to belittle Valve’s motivations, just wanted to include a thought about why they seem to be happy serving both platforms.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> built on Arch, a bad call IMHO. I'd be curious to hear why. Arch deserves it's reputation for poor stability, but for Valve's application with OSTree and immutable root should work fine. For users who don't want to tinker, they can receive a quality first-party experience with smooth upgrades. Users that do want to tinker are largely funneled into using Flatpak or AppImage, which are much more stable than AUR packa…

Can we please stop with the FUD around Arch and poor stability? It's an old meme which will never die, but it has no basis in reality. I've been using Arch on my personal and work laptops for probably 7 years now and the only time it had been a problem has been due to layer 8 issues and doing something stupid. I certainly wouldn't be using it for work if it was unstable.

It's not FUD. If you stay very light then it is very stable, but the more stuff you add, the worse it gets (gnome extensions anybody?)

I love Arch, but it is a demanding mistress. If you get behind on updates, you're asking for pain. Also it can be very disruptive to suddenly get a new major version of Gnome that breaks extensions you used, or applications, etc.

What we instead should say is not that Arch is "unstable" because I agree it's not, but rather that Arch requires a lot more care and feeding and if you don't do that, it can lead to instability

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#123
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they could just not trust the clients, instead of throwing the problem over the wall. A lot of these games with fancy anti cheat protection the cheat tools basically just tell the server "spawn me a vehicle right here" and the server just does it. Garbage.

Wow, it’s awesome you’ve solved the entirety of multiplayer gaming. Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a complex topic but it’s great you’ve elucidated me.

> Here I was thinking anti-cheating measures was a complex topic

It isn't. If you play with people you don't know, some of them will cheat. If you don't want that, stop playing with strangers.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#124
post #90
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there are very few tasks in competitive multiplayer games that humans perform better than machines[1], I don't think your statement holds true unless you exclude a huge amount of game genres or you take all the fun out of them. (E.g. no FPSs or ..FPSs with no aiming?) [1] Unless we're talking about captcha solving competitions, for now, maybe. :)

You're right in that, if your server rejects inputs that are too fast, too precise, too robotic to be human, bots will emulate the top-playing humans ever more closely. But the question I want to ask is: Is that a problem? If all the bots and cheaters are playing indistinguishable from high-level real humans, where's the harm? Or, to quote Westworld: If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?

> If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?

There is a difference in skill level distribution. If everyone playing at a highly skilled player level, then it's simply not fun and doesn't provide an opportunity to get better.

Anyways, playing with cheaters isn't fun and if you want to play without them then you need anti-cheat and/or game to not be free.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat Saber does work on Linux if you can deal with VR on Linux’s quirks.

Doing so requires a SteamVR headset, though. I’m using a Quest 2 which only works well with Windows. Up to date compelling SteamVR options are starting to appear however so I might see if I can move over to one of those in the next year or two.

I haven't tried the quest link thing in years, and last I did it dropped FPS a lot vs. using SteamVR. Has that improved?

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#126
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Works if the developer enables it. For example: Halo Infinite works fine, but Destiny and Call of Duty don't.

* depending on the anti-cheat or DRM This is true for at least EAC/EasyAntiCheat. This covers a lot, sure, but not everything!

Battleye has integrations with Proton as well, but as with EAC, it's opt in by the developer, and not every dev enables it.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#127
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pity that it solidifies Windows as the top PC gaming OS, that all studios should care about. Let Valve do the needful for running them under GNU/Linux, if at all.

Valve inventing a portable game runtime that just works on all Linux distros without game studios needing an entire department to handle the dependency hell of Linux NIHisn would solve that issue.

Valve funds SDL development, I think

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#128
post #42
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI Valve is primarily deploying KDE, which does support VRR. They can't really control what dumb decisions the GNOME folks make. For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input?

Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I’m SoL. I’ve even looked into launching games into their own little Gamescope instance, but if you don’t run Gamescope as your main window manager, you lose most of its benefits. > For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input? Yes. The problem lies in the fact that only the Xone driver properly supports the Xbox wireless ada…

May I ask what "SoL" stands for? (Not a native English speaker.)

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#129

Interesting read! The A/B upgrade sounds a bit overkill, you can always just pop up a live distro or install a recovery system (on an old version) in a partition in case something goes wrong. I recently moved to Arch after a few years of NixOS (preceded by years of Arch) and I think the fears of the author are misplaced. Arch is definitely a very serious and mature distro and I'd trust them more than Valve. The quali…

No way steam deck users should be expected to boot a live distro to fix a botched upgrade. It needs to be seamless and behind the curtain.

Re: I forked SteamOS for my living room PC

#130
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except I prefer the cleanliness of Gnome over how scattershot and buggy KDE feels, so I’m SoL. I’ve even looked into launching games into their own little Gamescope instance, but if you don’t run Gamescope as your main window manager, you lose most of its benefits. > For Mirror's Edge, were you using Steam Input? Yes. The problem lies in the fact that only the Xone driver properly supports the Xbox wireless ada…

May I ask what "SoL" stands for? (Not a native English speaker.)

Shit out of Luck
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