Valve announces SteamOS

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....dammit AMD, I just bought an Nvidia because your output has been lacking for too long. Your timing, it sucks!

It has been known for a good 2-3 months now that AMD would be announcing their new generation of cards at the end of September =O
 
stolen from the AMD-Event thread, which will be 2 hour after todays Steam announcment

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this can´t be a coincidence.

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This is getting serious. Something about Valve's driver initiatives and OpenGL? Gaming-oriented APU similar to what's being used in the PS4? I WANNA KNOW!
 
You have nothing to worry about. Nvidia has the best driver support on Linux. Nvidia's been supplying great drivers on linux even before gaming on Linux became a thing.
"I'm also happy to very publicly point out that NVIDIA has been one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers. And that is really sad because NVIDIA tries to sell chips--a lot of chips--into the android market. And NVIDIA has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with. So, NVIDIA, fuck you." - Linus Torvalds, June 2012

Their binary drivers work well enough, but I could never call them 'great'. Bugs are a fact of life with NVIDIA's drivers because they don't work together with the rest of the Linux community. They've been getting better, and I'm optimistic things will continue to improve, but I wouldn't paint too rosy a picture even of the recent past.
 
I just had a thought: If particular models of Steam Box become popular, how likely is it a developer would try to set up an "official" optimization settting for a game for that particular box? Kind of like putting out an "official" ini for what they see to be the optimal performance on that particular box so more casual players who own that particular model won't have to worry about settings.
 
So, thinking about the third announcement and based on the assumption that the circle symbol means software, it could mean one of the following:

1- Source2
2- Games
3- Partnerships with game publishers or media providers
4- Some sort of Steam app platform that extends the OS's functionality
5- The "Littlefoot" project for mobile

Beyond that, I have no idea. I've been wondering though, could Valve give away Source 2 for free to developers on the condition that their game also targets SteamOS or is Steam exclusive? I imagine that giving away a game engine would royally piss off Epic and Unity though, so it seems Unlikely.
 
They can't announce the Steambox without talking about what is going to work on it. That would be a silly announcement.

To me, they've already addressed that.

Hundreds of great games are already running natively on SteamOS. Watch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014. Access the full Steam catalog of nearly 3000 games and desktop software titles via in-home streaming.

I don't see them contradicting that with an announcement 48-96 hours later. 'Hundreds of games already running natively' = all linux compatible titles (180 of which are on Steam), the rest can be streamed (the other 1900) and they're working to get more support from publishers going forward. Their figures are probably inflated by DLC or something.
 
"I'm also happy to very publicly point out that NVIDIA has been one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers. And that is really sad because NVIDIA tries to sell chips--a lot of chips--into the android market. And NVIDIA has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with. So, NVIDIA, fuck you." - Linus Torvalds, June 2012

Their binary drivers work well enough, but I could never call them 'great'. Bugs are a fact of life with NVIDIA's drivers because they don't work together with the rest of the Linux community. They've been getting better, and I'm optimistic things will continue to improve, but I wouldn't paint too rosy a picture even of the recent past.

Sure. But let's say you are going to recommend a pc with a good gpu on Linux. Will you recommend AMD? Nope. Will you recommend Intel? Maybe. But their GPUs just aren't good enough.

One of the reason why AMD and Nvidia can't completely open source their drivers is because they are bound by law. Blame the US patent office if you want to blame anyone. Also there are many hardcore Linux advocates who want to opensource everything, but that's not going to happen. How many games will you see on SteamOS that will be opensource?

Edit: If you want to get any serious graphical work done on Linux right now, Nvidia is the only option. It's sad but it's the truth.
 
And again something stolen from the AMD-Event Thread

http://www.lowyat.net/2013/09/25/13...uct-to-be-revealed-at-tomorrows-gpu-14-event/

Among subjects that he discussed at the briefing is about one of the new products that the company will unveil at tomorrow’s event. However, it is not about the new AMD Hawaii GPU itself. While we are not able to call the new product by its name just yet but Raja has stated that it will bring product development for consoles and PC closer together.

Additionally, it will also enable developers to unlock PC’s performance and exploit the full power of AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture that is used for selected Radeon HD 7000 and 8000 series GPUs. Last but not least, Raja also said that the product is “co-developed by game developer, for game developer”.

oh f**** this must the steam related #hype
 
"I'm also happy to very publicly point out that NVIDIA has been one of the worst trouble spots we've had with hardware manufacturers. And that is really sad because NVIDIA tries to sell chips--a lot of chips--into the android market. And NVIDIA has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with. So, NVIDIA, fuck you." - Linus Torvalds, June 2012

Their binary drivers work well enough, but I could never call them 'great'. Bugs are a fact of life with NVIDIA's drivers because they don't work together with the rest of the Linux community. They've been getting better, and I'm optimistic things will continue to improve, but I wouldn't paint too rosy a picture even of the recent past.

Gabe said in his speech at linux con that they have worked closely with nvidia to improve their drivers.
 
Sure. But let's say you are going to recommend a pc with a good gpu on Linux. Will you recommend AMD? Nope. Will you recommend Intel? Maybe. But their GPUs just aren't good enough.
It's true. I use NVIDIA cards on a whole bunch of Linux machines. Once you get the right tweaks in place, they do their job and perform well.

Gabe said in his speech at linux con that they have worked closely with nvidia to improve their drivers.
It's been noticeable. There's still a ways to go, though.
 
Most excited for games built from the ground up to run on SteamOS. Streaming from a SteamOS Machine from a Windows machine sounds cool, but I'd rather not buy another box just for that. A 20foot HDMI cord could easily do the same job, but I understand some people have their computers a ways from their couch.
 
What if Steam/AMD/Nvidia come up with freely licensable, upgradable Steambox PC model that other manufacturers can use to make their own steam boxes? Going head to head with Microsoft and Sony on the console market? And every existing PC is compatible, since all you have to do is install SteamOS.
 
What if Steam/AMD/Nvidia come up with freely licensable, upgradable Steambox PC model that other manufacturers can use to make their own steam boxes? Going head to head with Microsoft and Sony on the console market? And every existing PC is compatible, since all you have to do is install SteamOS.

That is the plan, Gabe himself said so. I'm starting to wonder if we'll see both an AMD and Nvidia-flavored Steambox.
 
What if Steam/AMD/Nvidia come up with freely licensable, upgradable Steambox PC model that other manufacturers can use to make their own steam boxes? Going head to head with Microsoft and Sony on the console market? And every existing PC is compatible, since all you have to do is install SteamOS.

That's the plan:


What defines the SteamBox "standard" is going to be (chiefly?) software-based; the matter of the internal hardware will be left up to manufacturers.
 
I hope that Valve implements some base-level performance stadards though. I need to know that the Steambox I'll end up buying will be able to play all games at acceptable (read: console-like) settings and performance.
 
There's already some progress. NVIDIA just announced today that they're going to start releasing documentation and answering questions to help the open-source driver guys (nouveau).
Hope this means that multi GPU stuff gets better support, like you have in most high end notebooks (i.e. Nvidia's Optimus and Apple's GMUX). Their binary blob drivers have always been pretty decent, but that GPU switching stuff is a complete nightmare to get going on Linux. I triple boot OSX, Windows 8 and Ubuntu on a Macbook Pro, and after bashing my head against the wall for 3-4 days I just couldn't get the Nvidia drivers going on Ubuntu. And this is coming from a guy who ran Gentoo as his main OS for a while and remembers editing X Windows conf files being the only way to set graphics settings and get things like multiple monitors going on it.


Nvidia continuing to release binary blob drivers and helping out the Nouveau guys by answering questions is probably as best as it is going to get for a while. In an ideal world they'd release their own drivers under an Open/Free licence and have that available for the open driver dev community. But that's never, ever going to happen, there is too much in there they feel is a trade secret and potentially patent encumbered. And things like the exact implementation of e.g. their shader compiler is too much of competitive differentiator for them to potentially level the driver playing field by releasing the official drivers as free or open source software.
 
Still believe the last announcement will be onlive related. O + 0 play all your games on anything you want.

I don't think Gaben was that interested in internet streaming, only local streaming. I think it's probably Source 2, as their first software announcement (SteamOS) was also a 'O'.
 
any guesses what this could be? maybe mini gpus for the steambox?

There's only one thing that could make a Linux user happy with AMD.... better graphics driver support.

AMD is announcing their new Rx 200 Series tomorrow, and I bet they will be releasing some new drivers along with it. Probably some Linux ones with improved openGL performance.
 
There's only one thing that could make a Linux user happy with AMD.... better graphics driver support.

AMD is announcing their new Rx 200 Series tomorrow, and I bet they will be releasing some new drivers along with it. Probably some Linux ones with improved openGL performance.


I'd guess Valve are going to announce promises from AMD and Nvidia to better support Linux , which makes sense as otherwise SteamOS would be DOA.

The more I think about Steambox the less interested I am , can't imagine playing BF4 with my clan sitting on the couch with a wireless kb/m and headset. SteamOS is the bigger announcement for existing PC gamers.
 
Tomorrow can not come quicker!

The next announcement drops in 9 hours and 15 minutes from now. I'm excited to see what they have next too..

I'd guess Valve are going to announce promises from AMD and Nvidia to better support Linux , which makes sense as otherwise SteamOS would be DOA.

This is going to be at the AMD unveiling, so I don't imagine that we will be hearing from Nvidia tomorrow. Nvidia has been criticized in the past about their support on Linux, but their driver performance has never really been that bad. It's AMD who gets the most slack for their driver performance on Linux, and if they want to see their APU's in future Steambox hardware, they have to step up their game.

It's always been a rule of thumb to never buy an AMD GPU if you are a Linux user. Though their Linux drivers have been making some improvements, from what I hear.
 
This changes everything.
If Linux finally starts gaining some steam (pun intended) because of gaming, also considering the ugly mess that's Win8, Microsoft better become very worried.
Well, who am I kidding?
Microsoft to be buying out Valve in 2014 confirmed.
 
This changes everything.
If Linux finally starts gaining some steam (pun intended) because of gaming, also considering the ugly mess that's Win8, Microsoft better become very worried.
Well, who am I kidding?
Microsoft to be buying out Valve in 2014 confirmed.

I thought if you were a private company you can't be bought out unless you want to sell?
 
While I think gaming is the best way to make Linux adoption and use more commonplace I'm certainly very skeptical about the whole thing being that widespread and successful.

Still seems interesting though.


I don't get the moving pc gamers to the living room aspect personally. You still need keyboard and mouse for most of the games worth playing on pc
 
This changes everything.
If Linux finally starts gaining some steam (pun intended) because of gaming, also considering the ugly mess that's Win8, Microsoft better become very worried.
Well, who am I kidding?
Microsoft to be buying out Valve in 2014 confirmed.

If Valve was publically traded maybe. Then again Gabe has already turned down tons of other attempted buyouts in the past.
 
What I find curious is the symbol of the next announcement.
It's [O ] (with space)
not [O] (without space)

Any guesses?

There's an O in between two things.
Those things on the outside are like two pieces of bread.
Bread comes in loaves. The O in the middle is my face of surprise.
Half-Loaf 3 confirmed! Thank you based gaben.
 
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