SteamOS

[KDub]

SteamOS is essentially a nifty gateway to get gamers over to Linux. It is free, can be customized and knowing Valve it is probably super easy to set up.

So if you are a big PC gamer and you're interested in moving to a living room setting it is super easy to get a small and powerful rig and just put SteamOS on it.

If you are a PC gamer and want to try Linux you can dual boot SteamOS and experiment with it in a gaming friendly environment.

Then of course there will be Valve hardware.

Is it mind blowing? Nope, but it is pretty neat.

[SpaceBooger]

Do you think this steam os may be a way to make an app for a smart tv, ps3, etc to stream games from your pc?
I am interested in this because my main PC is nowhere near my TV (Basement opposite side of the house) and I would rather a Steam OS app, or even a Steam Box, instead of a PS4 XB1.

[noiseredux]

SteamOS is essentially a nifty gateway to get gamers over to Linux. It is free, can be customized and knowing Valve it is probably super easy to set up.

So if you are a big PC gamer and you're interested in moving to a living room setting it is super easy to get a small and powerful rig and just put SteamOS on it.

If you are a PC gamer and want to try Linux you can dual boot SteamOS and experiment with it in a gaming friendly environment.

Then of course there will be Valve hardware.

Is it mind blowing? Nope, but it is pretty neat.

I agree with all this. I'm (cautiously) optimistic.

[Xeogred]

Pretty interesting. I've definitely made the jump this year to dual monitoring with my 40" TV and pretty much always play and watch stuff exclusively on that now, so I am kind of curious about this.

[ZeroAX]

Do you think this steam os may be a way to make an app for a smart tv, ps3, etc to stream games from your pc?
I am interested in this because my main PC is nowhere near my TV (Basement opposite side of the house) and I would rather a Steam OS app, or even a Steam Box, instead of a PS4 XB1.

Nothing has been announced yet, but it's the next logical step if you ask me. Just like how TV manufacturers started having netflix preinstalled in their TVs, I can see them doing something similar with this.

......this could be the end of non-Nintendo consoles as we know them.

[jinx]

Seems like they're going to take an "Android style" approach to this, but be more open about it. They probably want third-party hardware manufactures to take up the free licensing to produce "steam boxes". This is a great idea, because Steam will see the money either way. Even though they're giving away SteamOS for free, people will still be buying Steam games on a new system.

Really excited about this, but I still don't have my hopes up. A lot developers refuse to port their games over to Linux, and streaming isn't enough for me. They claim it's "impossible", but look how far Valve has gotten with Portal, Half-Life, etc in the past few months. Maybe this will push developers to port more games to Linux, but it's not likely.

[ZeroAX]

Really excited about this, but I still don't have my hopes up. A lot developers refuse to port their games over to Linux, and streaming isn't enough for me. They claim it's "impossible", but look how far Valve has gotten with Portal, Half-Life, etc in the past few months. Maybe this will push developers to port more games to Linux, but it's not likely.

A lot of developers used to refuse to port their games to Apple OSs. Then the iphone came, it was such a runaway hit and a huge breakthrough in how the application market worked, that everyone sooner or later started brining their stuff over.

Likewise I think this will have a slow uptake at first, until it starts rolling and then nothing can stop it.

The only one I can see surviving in the console market is Nintendo, because it has such a strong niche, with its unique controllers and really strong IPs.

[lisalover1]

Do you think this steam os may be a way to make an app for a smart tv, ps3, etc to stream games from your pc?
I am interested in this because my main PC is nowhere near my TV (Basement opposite side of the house) and I would rather a Steam OS app, or even a Steam Box, instead of a PS4 XB1.

Streaming, maybe, but native? No way. Most Smart TVs don't use x86/x64 processors, which 99.9% of computer games (Across any OS) are made for. As opposed to swapping around a few libraries and recompiling the game to release it on another OS, games would have to be completely reprogrammed to work on Smart TVs. Streaming could work, since it would be processor-independent, but I'm a bit hesitant until I see it for myself.

[isiolia]

They claim it's "impossible", but look how far Valve has gotten with Portal, Half-Life, etc in the past few months. Maybe this will push developers to port more games to Linux, but it's not likely.

I haven't seen that. What they're probably looking at it is what kind of profit there is in doing a port. Desktop Linux is a tiny, tiny fraction of the market (~1.5% of it, compared to Windows at ~92%). While, granted, a lot of the cost is in art assets that would be created anyway, the potential market there is still very small.

Though, as I've mentioned, it might become an easier proposition soon, since the PS4 is using a BSD variant. So, doing Linux and OS X versions might be as simple a conversion as porting over an XBox DirectX version to Windows.

The bigger angle SteamOS has is not that it promotes Linux, but more that it makes Windows less important. It takes your games from wherever and puts them in front of you - maybe that starts with most of them actually running on the Windows box in the other room, but they can be switched to native Linux code and the end user experience doesn't change. Few years down the line and maybe most are running native.

I think long term, you'll have something where you're able to do network streaming to any Steam client. SteamOS for a purpose-oriented, TV-connected device, but maybe an actual Steambox is/will be a network appliance to power it, a la an nVidia GRID box.

[Hatta]

It's easier to port games to Linux than it's ever been. Once developers know that Linux compatibility will get them customers through Steam, it's mostly a matter of choosing libraries and game engines that exist on both platforms (SDL, Unity, OGRE, Allegro, OpenGL, OpenAL, etc.) and recompiling. Even if you've already written your game with DirectX, you can compile against Winelib to create a native Linux binary. The extra costs will be in testing multiple platforms, not as much in coding.