GabeN send me a devkit! I make Rogue Stargun VR (roguestargun.com) which should be able to run on standalone
I emailed him directly, and holy shit GabeN actually forwarded the e-mail and I'm now on a waitlist
Steam Machine
861–870 of 1001 posts
Re: Steam Machine
#862SteamOS has way more appeal to gamers in 2025 than it could have had in, say, 2004. On the surface the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside, but gaming is extremely fragmented these days. In 2004 everyone, save for the casual players, at least tried DOOM3 and Half-Life 2. In 2025 Fortnight has an all-time peak of 12M players, but at the same time there are many…
> the lack of popular multiplayer titles that require a kernel-level anti-cheat is a heavy downside It's a downside if all you want to do is play those games. But it's an upside if you're hoping they someday ditch all that nonsense. This puts more pressure on those publishers.
More likely is that some linux distro like SteamOS gets a large enough install base that it actually makes sense as a target and these big platforms make their anti-cheat work on at least that distro. As unfortunate as it is not having a very strong anti-cheat or a system like Valve's VAC ban to detect and lock cheaters out leads to really shitty online experiences in public lobbies for PVP games.
Re: Steam Machine
#863My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a han…
> maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default It's already happening. Lenovo released a SteamOS variant of the The Lenovo Legion Go S.
I for one eagerly awaits Lenovo to release SteamOS versions of their ThinkPads
Re: Steam Machine
#864> Who are we to tell you how to use your computer? i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025 it is somewhat depressing that it's…
An ongoing 'background noise' concern I've had for a while is how PC gaming seems to be centralizing around steam. There's reasons why that happened, but it'd be real nice if 'infrastructure' was able to decouple from their store. It feels like practically requiring steam for PC gaming on windows and certainly on linux isn't a mile away from requiring MS windows, is it much freedom to pick which Seattle based company…
FWIW 95% of the games i play on my Linux are from other stores than Steam: GOG, Zoom Platform (not related to the Zoom telething) and itch.io, all of which are DRM-free stores. The Steam games i buy are mainly from small indie devs that do not have nor plan to have releases outside of Steam.
To play games i use UMU Launcher which is basically Proton minus Steam (or Wine plus DXVK, etc, depending on how you look it at). I use the "raw" UMU Launcher with its own command-line utility, though it can be used as part of Lutris for a GUI-based experience.
Re: Steam Machine
#865Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been using Pop_OS, buggy as hell but steam games work great! Everything is kinda a dumpster fire, but they nailed steam games.
The 24.04 beta is really stable and the new cosmic DE is great! I've got it on my desktop and laptop, no problems. System76.com/pop/pop-beta
I actually really like my current customized KDE desktop. I have it all setup with transparency everywhere and a fully animated shader desktop wallpaper. Basically the opposite of everything Gnome stands for. :D
Re: Steam Machine
#866Earlier quoted context omitted.
> maybe other vendors will come out with similar products that come with SteamOS by default It's already happening. Lenovo released a SteamOS variant of the The Lenovo Legion Go S.
I for one eagerly awaits Lenovo to release SteamOS versions of their ThinkPads
I mean most thinkpads run linux jist fine. So they already are SteamOS machines.
Re: Steam Machine
#867My theory for a bit now has been that Valve is playing the long game in trying to make SteamOS a mainstay gaming platform as an alternative to Windows, and that the hardware products are essentially a way of breaking into that market. Even a few years ago, the idea of a custom Linux distro based on Arch Linux with both a built-in full desktop mode and a lower-powered gaming mode that you could switch between on a han…
Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing…
Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge.
Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.
Re: Steam Machine
#868Re: Steam Machine
#869Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gabe is a former MSFTy, left in 1996 to found Valve, he saw games as more popular than Windows. It wouldn’t surprise me if he got into games in order to compete against his former employer which would suggest to me that this plan has been in motion since before 1996, almost 30 years. At least from my point of view, if I wanted to take on Microsoft, doing what he did for the past 30 years is how I would go about doing…
Gabe gave a talk at my college like 12 or 13 years ago. He explicitly called out the unbelievable number of downloads for Doom as a sign that games were going to be huge. Fun non-sequitur: the other speaker at that talk went on to become the finance minister of Greece.
Yanis Varoufakis?
Re: Steam Machine
#870[deleted]