Will Steam the platform make Steam the OS viable?

SteamOS is Linux-based operating system, so if Valve does it right, Linux gaming would probably gain a massive boost.

SteamOS is Linux-based operating system, so if Valve does it right, Linux gaming would probably gain a massive boost.

Not to be curt, but .... yeah, so. How does that affect me as a gamer? Or a developer? For Linux enthuasists, that's +1 for them. Outside of that.... what?

Yes, what SteamOS brings is brand name and support to the Linux environment. Even SteamOS remains a minority of the user base, as long as they maintain client access for other flavours and Valve shows support for Linux, then that helps encourage other developers to consider releasing for Linux based operating systems.

More developers working on it, the more tools and support that comes with it, and that allows the market share to grow. For now it isn't a huge deal, but Apple and Microsoft are moving towards systems which are more and more closed. If nothing else strong support behind a highly open market system will help keep things from turning too bad in the world of Windows.

Personally I'm rather disappointed that they didn't simply tag on with another existing Linux flavour and back a project with the option of a strong Steam integration, as 'yet another flavour' is exactly the opposite of what Linux needs to become mainstream.

At the moment the big players are scared of supporting steambox, they don't think they will get a return on investment.

Which is a bitch for me as I was lined up for a job porting games to steam.

If one game gets sales figures that make the big boys pay attention, then steam will suddenly become much more viable, and then you might get some of the pass on effects for other linux users.

Chicken and egg I'm afraid. Until someone ports a game that makes lots of people want steam, there won't be any reason to port a game to steam.

Yes, Linux sitting at 1.2% of users on the Steam Hardware Survey isn't looking all that hot. Especially since I'm not seeing numbers on total users polled.

And it is a sad chicken and egg deal. Personally I greatly prefer Unix like environments over Microsoft's offerings, but the lack of third party software support on Linux flavours keeps me from diving in too seriously on it so my main rig still runs windows. Lack of hardware options and support for custom builds keeps me from diving in with OSX, but then again some of the UI quirks here do bug me to no end anyway.

I tought the steam-os was completely 100% free linux distribution based on ubuntu running on everyday pc hardware. As long as a game has linux support it will run in steam-os. And seeing that linux/crossplatform gaming is on the rise it doesn't even need the steam platform to be a viable os.

If you are talking about the steambox then its another matter. Seeing as that is just a normal pc with a preinstalled linux. Steam platform has almost nothing to do with it since it will run just fine even without steamos. Since both the steam platform and the steam-os can run without the other just fine the only real difference between other linux distros and steam-os is that steam-os has all the drivers and dependencys the steam platform and its products need pre installed.

The real question is wether it is viable to sell a pc with a preinstalled free linux in it. And even that simplifies to "Is a linux os a viable replacement for windows in everyday use?"

My answer would be yes. Sure the way linux handles software distribution is radically different from windows and can be hard to get into but nowdays there are very few things you can't do with a linux that you can do with windows or mac.

Anyway this is mostly guessing as there are no previous attempts of this scale to use as comparison to make any solid prediction.

From what I gather they don't aim for becoming a desktop OS, but rather competing with consoles by making it much easier to port PC games to it and enable streaming from Windows (both media and Steam games). I think the idea is that your powerful desktop with Windows can run the games and simply stream the image over the network to your Steambox in your living-room so you can play your Windows games on the TV while keeping your PC somewhere else.

The default login on Steam OS seems to be something like Metro on WinRT with the desktop login not really meant for actual use.

Linux still has a very tiny market share.

The OS is iffy - as even minor updates can still "break" stuff.

Why does Google give you free email when their core business is selling ads? Simple, it keeps you more connected to a space they control, where they can put more ads in front of your eyeballs. They actually have a formula that they use to project how much money they make from you from every minute you spend on the web, regardless of where you're browsing. This is why all of Google's businesses are things that get you to log on.

SteamOS is exactly that for Valve. Valve's core business isn't making games, its selling you content and taking a cut of that sale. They could care less who produced the content or on which platform you're accessing it. They've done really great on the traditional PC platforms, but their defacto standing is under renewed attack on their largest platform, Microsoft Windows--which is competing now with their own integrated storefront--and under attack on your television screen as well--where the Windows Store will soon extend to Xbox One, and all the other competitors have their own storefronts too--including myriad android devices, some of which from heavy hitters like Amazon, Google, and soon-to-be Apple in all likelihood. Without their own contender in the livingroom, they would have no choice to to cede that space to their competitors -- Few competitors offer boxes with enough power to run the content that valve sells and none of them are interested in lettings third-party stores live on their devices, those with powerful enough hardware--Microsoft and Sony--are even less interested. With the PC gaming market being mature, its not going to grow by leaps and bounds -- console gaming, however, is larger today and growing more quickly than PC gaming. Its a move thats necessary for them to grow or even maintain market share, and also to maintain relevance. If they ceded the living room to Microsoft, Sony, and others, the entire steam platform would become increasingly marginalized as PC gaming looses ground to the consoles.

Linux itself is irrelevent -- its a convenient basis for their platform that they can tune to their needs and which is mature. Developing an entirely in-house platform would cost too much money and time. The platform must also be turnkey and tuned for the livingroom. Normal people don't want a computer in the living room, they want an appliance. That's what SteamOS is -- combined with appropriate hardware and the steam controller.

This is what SteamOS and steam boxes provide valve.

For the consumer, SteamOS and SteamBoxes offer that appliance to play their favorite PC content in full fidelity and with their usual PC-gaming friends. They offer a sort of "premium" console that's more powerful in some respects than even current-gen consoles, and one which can theoretically be upgraded with a more-powerful GPU in a couple years. I've valve can succeed in making SteamOS and SteamBoxes console-simple, then their other advantages will be worthwhile to a significant number of people, I predict, though you're probably right that they won't achieve the ubiquity of the XBox One or PS4 (far from it), though they may do better than the Wii U.

I think some are missing the point of SteamOS, or at least the benefits and reasoning behind it. Steam isn't trying to merely create a console to clutter the market. it isn't a OS for a console, or just a console. It is Debian, and uses Debian repositories. It is in response to MS and Apple with their closed gardens and closed app stores. It is a move for self preservation, before Valve gets locked out, unable to sell directly to their customers. The Steam Machine is just any box DIY or commercially produced, that runs the SteamOS. Just about every player in the PC side of the gaming industry see it as a positive development. It allows marketing options, has potential access to a huge existing user-base, and by the very nature of Linux, FOSS, and the Open Source movement, fosters an environment that developers are starting to need going forward given the tendencies of Apple and MS.

For gamers the potential benefits are huge, even if they never use it. Competing hardware and software companies are re-evaluating their positions and strategies already, and we are seeing improvements to drivers and a possible shift away from proprietary products and practices, due to a real concern over missing out, or losing favor with a large number of Valve customers.

Finally, no matter how much of a MS user or homer a gamer may be, there is no denying the value of a much more secure operating system, that is so much faster and more efficient that DirectX is already under fire for it's bloat and performance issues. Even if you never use it, your products will be improve to keep up with it, and your buddies who do use it will delight in rubbing your nose in their rig's specs and benchmarks.

I tought the steam-os was completely 100% free linux distribution based on ubuntu running on everyday pc hardware.

No, it's Debian-based but not Ubuntu-based, and it's definitely not Free. The chose to roll their own distro so they could license and include proprietary codecs and closed-source customized nVidia drivers that are tuned for the Steam Box hardware. They're doing that for the same reasons that made Apple successful: control of the vertical infrastructure gives a smoother, better experience for the consumer at reduced cost, yielding superior return on investment.

Don't be confused: they made Steam OS because it's a cool idea. They're pursuing it because it's a (potentially) profitable idea.

I use Ubuntu everyday, hence I can confirm that even Debian is a solid and mature platform for Steamos. They could have gone also with FreeBSD alike Sony, but I'm happy they didn't and I will be able to play AAA games on my work machine. My next purchase will be Project Cars.

It is in response to MS and Apple with their closed gardens and closed app stores. It is a move for self preservation, before Valve gets locked out, unable to sell directly to their customers.

Yep, so scared of the MS Store walled Garden stopping their own walled garden being profitable for them - ironically the MS Store has at least one Steam game in it and it links to the Steam store page to buy/download it.

Just about every player in the PC side of the gaming industry see it as a positive development.

Maybe in the Indie space, in the AAA space it is a case of 'oh joy, another platform to support...' - I cursed the day when Valve did this because suddenly I'd have to care about the wreak which is OpenGL once again. Many others feel the same; maybe the PR departments are in full 'this is great' mode but many people on the engineering front just don't want the hassle.

has potential access to a huge existing user-base, and by the very nature of Linux, FOSS, and the Open Source movement, fosters an environment that developers are starting to need going forward given the tendencies of Apple and MS.

Unfortunately many in that user base won't touch it because the games are closed source and won't be opened up. It also assumes those who aren't in that group are all running the same/compatible OS which knocks a few more percentage points off. I'm not convinced this market is as big as you think and of the percent who will use it many will be Windows gamers who convert over; the net gain is going to be smaller than many probably hope.

As for 'the tendencies of Apple and MS', brushing aside the paranoia aspect of this, Apple don't care about gaming on OSX and never have (their OpenGL implementation for example is trash and a few versions behind) and MS are no more closed today than they were a few years back, if anything recent events have shown them to be more open (see releasing source code for .Net libs and C# compiler backend for example). While the 'modern interface' might have been a misstep in its current form the whole 'omg they are going to lock down windows!' has failed to materialise and, if anything they are going back in the other direction.

Finally, no matter how much of a MS user or homer a gamer may be, there is no denying the value of a much more secure operating system, that is so much faster and more efficient that DirectX is already under fire for it's bloat and performance issues. Even if you never use it, your products will be improve to keep up with it, and your buddies who do use it will delight in rubbing your nose in their rig's specs and benchmarks.

Firstly, 'more secure' is debatable; Windows has been increasingly secure over the last few years, it tends to be 3rd party apps (Adobe flash..) which open things up. Secondly : Heartbleed. Need I say more?

As for DX; the whole of PC gaming has been moaned about for YEARS about not being efficient vs consoles. This is nothing new. What is new is the public becoming aware of it.
The only hard benchmarks from Valve however show how their X year old D3D9 based engine fairs against OpenGL. The problem is we've known for years that D3D9 isn't efficient and everyone has since spent their time moving to D3D11 which is much better.

The problem is right at this moment, given the ARBs stance on matters, the performance level you have (with up to date NV OpenGL drivers because they are the only ones who support all the cool toys for low over head) are it. They seem hell bent on 'instancing' and 'no need to multi-thread construction' and a very 'let the driver do things' attitude - enter D3D12 which will open things up, allow the same cool tricks AND allow threaded construction of command lists. If this proves to be a real thing then the OpenGL advantage vanishes in around 18 months from now and non-D3D12/Mantle games are going to require more resources to run.

General OS efficiency is a massively debatable thing; Win8 is fast, responsive and works fine. I doubt Linux is going to give most people any advantage over that or Win7 so it's much of a much-ness.

In the long term the only people who are going to be using this are people who want to get away from MS for 'whatever reason' and those who are convinced by their sales rep/MS hating friends that it's a good idea. Everything else is subjective and, in the graphics performance case, not going to be true in around 18 months anyway.

(Personally I'm just keeping a vague eye on it and deciding if I really need to care; currently the answer is no, not really...)

Yep, so scared of the MS Store walled Garden stopping their own walled garden being profitable for them - ironically the MS Store has at least one Steam game in it and it links to the Steam store page to buy/download it.

I don't think they're scared of a "walled garden" as much as the pre-installed competition, Having your own platform is a huge advantage and Valve is doing what they can to get that advantage for themselves rather than leaving it to Apple, Microsoft and Canonical (Who all have competing, pre-installed appstores on their respective platforms).

If a user has even a single SteamOS machine it will make sense for them to buy their games on steam, regardless of what OS their primary system uses or what other appstores they have.

So basically, SteamOS doesn't add anything for me as a user or even a developer. This is just Valve grabbing some real estate for itself just in case it gets pushed out by Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Amazon. Steam the platform as of now doesn't benefit from SteamOS at all really. And Linux people are hoping that SteamOS will make Linux more popular among the general populace.

In short, as a normal user, this isn't anything to be keeping an eye on at all.

In short, as a normal user, this isn't anything to be keeping an eye on at all.

Unless you want to stream your PC games and media to your TV, and use the Steam controller. It seems like a perfectly legitimate alternative to PS4 or XBox to me. Perhaps in a couple of years we can play Crysis 4 from the couch on a cheap SteamPad through LAN streaming.

The Steam streaming forums have a lot of people loving it, their whole Steam library playable on their TV with the Steam-controller over WiFi.

Yes, Linux sitting at 1.2% of users on the Steam Hardware Survey isn't looking all that hot. Especially since I'm not seeing numbers on total users polled.

Those are prerelease numbers!

No SteamBox nor lots of AAA games for now. This will change in autumn and I can't be happier to finally, finally say goodbye to proprietary OS. For me they are all obsolete.

I hope SteamOS gets some momentum. I'm all for getting a few games in my Debian install (The Witcher 3, TES 6: Whatever is Next, Planetside 2, etc).

The very subtle change I've seen is that now people are actually asking for Linux versions of their favorite games, and there isn't so many people telling them to fuck off and that Linux doesn't isn't for games. I think this little thing is actually pretty big.

Thats the seed of change, not just developers doing Linux games, but the change in the user mentality. Suddenly when asking for a Linux version or expecting it at release sounds plain reasonable to most people, when no one even blinks when somebody posts in a forum "Hey I'm having issues with the mouse input, I'm using Fedora 20, any ideas?" right there is when things will change a bit.

In short, as a normal user, this isn't anything to be keeping an eye on at all.

Unless you want to stream your PC games and media to your TV, and use the Steam controller. It seems like a perfectly legitimate alternative to PS4 or XBox to me. Perhaps in a couple of years we can play Crysis 4 from the couch on a cheap SteamPad through LAN streaming.

The Steam streaming forums have a lot of people loving it, their whole Steam library playable on their TV with the Steam-controller over WiFi.

Except you can do that without SteamOS, thats a separate feature, Steam Big Picture.