Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SteamOS

store.steampowered.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 532 posts

Re: SteamOS

#221

Post by ZeroGravitas »

mikevm wrote: post #201
theschwa wrote: post #13

"In SteamOS, we have achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level." I'm really interested to see the trickle down effect that this will have on other Linux flavors. Having a push for standardization from a big name company like Valve should provide a better Linux experience for everyone.

What performance increases in graphics processing are they talking about? I'm with you thought, I do hope all of their work will be landed in mainline kernel so everyone could enjoy the benefits, and we could play games (through Steam or other methods) on most Linux distros, without much hassle.

Phoronix has several articles about the work that Valve has done with Linux GPU drivers (open source and proprietary)

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=17823

That one is about how valve themselves got value out of debugging on open source GPU drivers.

Re: SteamOS

#222

Post by kayoone »

rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

it all depends on how many people will use SteamOS. Costs of porting games to other platforms will also go down with the next generation as xbox one and ps4 are basically standard PCs.

Re: SteamOS

#223

Post by jlgreco »

sbarre wrote: post #57
Robadob wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large part of it may be covered by this functionality; "You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!"

Exactly. Gigabit ethernet in the home (or really fast wireless) should make this pretty feasible even with twitch-based action games (we can hope!)

With twitch-based games you'll have to convince twitch-based game players of that. These are people that look up latency specs on wireless keyboards because they think that makes a difference.

Re: SteamOS

#224

Post by errnoh »

concernedctzn wrote: post #182
ketralnis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would they announce the software separately from its #1 use case?

well, the next icon on this page http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/ sure looks like a box enclosing the circle that turned out to be the OS. It's not really a separate announcement as this is all part of one unified event.

Third one is more interesting since they already announced streaming from Steam to SteamOS.

Re: SteamOS

#225

Post by skriticos2 »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #48
rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

Valve has three announcements this week: http://kotaku.com/looks-like-well-hear-about-valves-new-hard... One of the announcements is widely believe to be the long-rumored Steam Box hardware...

From the iconography on the main page I'd guess the second announcement will be Steam hardware and the third one will be Half Life 3 (second circle indicates software product again?). Pure speculation on my side here.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

Re: SteamOS

#226

Post by baldfat »

rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

"porting their AAA releases to this platform"

Play Station 4 is running a modified a Free BSD 9.0 on x86 architecture. So the work to go from a BSD base to Linux I imagine is MUCH easier than what it has been in the past in my opinion.

Re: SteamOS

#227

Post by Karunamon »

MrMember wrote: post #62
jaredmcateer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The announcement page claims all 3000 titles are available via streaming, similar to the OnLive service but only for your internal network, I'm guessing. Effectively working around the porting issue.

It seems to work like the nVidia Shield's streaming. Another computer on your home network handles the heavy lifting and streams the video output to your SteamOS box.

This is genius. All you need now is a micro box running windows with appropriate video card that you can stick in the corner next to your router and never have to look at again. Assuming the streaming and UX works half as well as they're playing at, they've just managed to commoditize hardware compatibility.

I don't think the importance of this can be understated.

Re: SteamOS

#228

Post by fps »

snotrockets wrote: post #177
RyanZAG wrote: post #83

This is basically a similar approach Android took for phones. It leverages off Linux while replacing user facing pieces to give the user a simplified and consistent environment that they expect. However as with Android, that isn't enough to get it to take off. Android had huge traction problems to start with until they managed to get the big device makers to train users and market the devices. SteamOS is going to hav…

I suspect that like Android, they're going to leverage Linux-the-kernel, but have a user space that is alien to the one common in current Linux servers and desktops. I can understand: I'd say good riddance to some parts of the userspace myself cough X windows system cough , but having a few different userspaces is like having the UNIX wars all over again. PS "The UNIX wars" has a modern space opera ring to it, like s…

That seems really unlikely. Steam for Linux runs on Ubuntu as it's platform of choice, and installs via apt-get. They're already running all their games under X and the standard Ubuntu userspace tools, with BigPicture, it would be very surprising for them to fork the platform at this point.

Android made sense because standard linux/X windows applications didn't work on a multi-touch mobile device for a whole host of reasons. PC games work fine on Linux and X.

Re: SteamOS

#229

Post by johnward »

BuckRogers wrote: post #194

The way for Valve (if you're reading this) to make SteamOS/Linux the top gaming platform overnight? Make HL3 Linux-only. Don't do a Windows/Mac port for 2 years. Watch all of us gamers scramble to dual boot at minimum, if not see the writing on the wall and do a wholesale swapout on our Windows gaming boxes.

As evil as this sounds, exclusivity works for the other consoles.

Re: SteamOS

#230

Post by bryanlarsen »

trycatch wrote: post #193
makmanalp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that convincing AAA publishers to port merely requires them to think it'd be profitable. 20 years ago, if someone asked to raise a quarter of a billion into a video game, they'd be laughed out of the building. Now it happens often. Over the years, increasingly big-budget games got funded and created. So, all they need to do is to replicate a similar process. First you move all the indie games…

Total production costs of the famous Atari's E.T. (1982) were $125M according to Wikipedia. It's more than $300M in 2013 dollars.

Which works out to $25 million to get the E.T. license, $100 million to make millions of cartridges to bury in the desert, and $200,000 on actual development.
Post reply on HN