Tell me more about this please.
SteamOS out now (beta)
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
Tell me more about this please.
Windows has never been strictly consumer before. Why do you expect that to change?
Win8 pro + enterprise with proper activation license joined to a domain can have group policy pushed allowing domain-signed winrt apps to sideload via powershell script. I believe it costs approx $100 per device per year for the sideloading license (in addition to the windows license) and is only available to volume license purchasers.
Hey guys, I'm interested into getting into Steam gaming whenever that one $399 Steam Machine comes out. I'm wondering a few things about SteamOS/Steam Big Picture Mode.
1. Is there party chat?
2. Are messages, achievements, etc. in an easy to access place that you can quickly get to?
3. Will there be a local media player and apps like Netflix, Hulu, etc? I'm imagining they probably aren't there right now on Big Picture Mode, but I mean more when SteamOS actually launches.
4. Are gaming related features and functionality comparable to PS4? PS3? Basically, does it have the features a person would come to expect in a new console.
I think that's all I am curious about at this second. Thanks.
1. Is there party chat?
2. Are messages, achievements, etc. in an easy to access place that you can quickly get to?
3. Will there be a local media player and apps like Netflix, Hulu, etc? I'm imagining they probably aren't there right now on Big Picture Mode, but I mean more when SteamOS actually launches.
4. Are gaming related features and functionality comparable to PS4? PS3? Basically, does it have the features a person would come to expect in a new console.
I think that's all I am curious about at this second. Thanks.
Jaded Alyx
Member
Yes. To all.
You know you can just download Steam right now and try it yourself in Big Picture Mode?
Yeah, but my computer is really crappy. I have Steam installed for when I buy Humble Bundles but my computer's so slow that I never feel like using it.
Thanks for the answers you and animlboogy.
Umm I think it has an AMD A8-3500M APU and 6GB DDR3 RAM.
Mass Effect
Member
1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Not sure on this one, but even if native support doesn't come eventually, I'm sure there will be some unofficial mod that will remedy that.
4. Yes. Really your first two questions already answered this, but IMO Steam has far more features that are more well developed than what either Playstation offers yet.
Jaded Alyx
Member
lol go ahead man.
Jan 6th, you may hear more news.
1. Party chat works for voice and text in the steam client, but I have never tried it in big picture, I'd assume it would.
2. Messages and achievements are all really easy to access both in the "dashboard" and mid game by hitting the guide button. You can also check the activity feed for news on friends, use the workshop to find mods, manage downloads, use the web etc both in and out of games
3. Movies and Music are not in current builds but are heavily suggested to be on the way. Spotify music streaming is practically confirmed as the code is visible but not implemented. Gabe specifically was asked about Netflix and he said "yeah ofcourse. you can use the web, you can do whatever you want" Whether its a web based player or an actual integrated feature like spotify is yet to be seen, but Gabe has mentioned they are in talks with "many others" about a year ago
4. Absolutely. I'd suggest you give it a try using the steam client and see for yourself, the interfaces are different but equally as useful. The in-steam overlay (or guide) is my favourite feature, almost everything is accessible there.
Great thing about steam is that it is being updated daily with all sorts of features and fixes, so when you eventually get it, it may be very different but most likely better.
Wait till Jan 6th and see how the announcements go, E3 may also be interesting, but play around with the steam client and big picture if you can and see what you think
Snot Rocket
Banned
1. Yea, but its wonky and not very easy to use. I never us it and use Ventrilo or Mumble instead.
2. Yes, however messages are only online IMs. No offline messaging system.
3. Not there at all right now, completely unknown if they ever will be. Your access to stuff like Netflix or Hulu will most likely be done through a web browner on SteamOS. Do not expect Apps like you get on PS4 or XB1.
4. Mostly, yes.
5. Set your expectations low to medium. SteamOS is very 1.0 right now and the entire platform will honestly take some time to settle in and really get to what you probably want it to be. It will probably never (regardless of what someone trys to convince you otherwise) be a real, real turn key gaming solution like a console is. It will be Steam, big picture mode running on a Linux(GNOME) distro with the ability to drop to a desktop. You can achieve this today with Windows, and have been able to for years.
Basically SteamOS is Steam on Linux instead of Windows. It will have the same pitfalls as Steam on Windows. Mostly though Steam is good and PC gaming is better than console gaming. But SteamOS isn't going to provide you with some kind of cohesive experience that would ever replace a console. Its Valve doing what they do today in Windows, on Linux.
They want this because the future of Windows may be a walled garden, where MS curates applications through its own store for royalties. In that scenario Valve makes much less money. Their adventure into Linux is a business decision and they are hoping its successful. Dont forget that.
Best of luck.
Edit: Okay, I have Big Picture Mode up and running. Firstly, a really nooby question probably...how in the world do you quit a game? lol, I have BIT.TRIP Runner up and I've hit the guide button and held the guide button on my 360 controller and I don't see the option to quit back to the main UI. Also, is there a way to view all of your achievements? I don't see an option on the UI. It seems like you need to go into each game's info page (and for some reason details for the achievements are displayed in a web page?). Finally, where's the party section? Just for curiosity. I don't need it right now, but I can't find where you create/join a party chat.
Excited to get into more of it! Store and library interfaces are great. My big issue right now is that I will right now mostly be navigating the UI and playing 2D games, and the 360 controller has the worst dpad on earth. I think I tried plugging my PS4 controller in there but only UI navigation worked.
Hmm interesting. Guess I never really gave it much of a shot. I'll try it!
Really? That's pretty awesome and I definitely didn't know it had far more features! Thanks!
Excited to get into more of it! Store and library interfaces are great. My big issue right now is that I will right now mostly be navigating the UI and playing 2D games, and the 360 controller has the worst dpad on earth. I think I tried plugging my PS4 controller in there but only UI navigation worked.
Go forth and use Steam.
Buy a couple low end games if you want to try the experience out. The Steam thread is a good spot to get started, lots of low end users there.maybe try your hand at modbot and hook up Big Picture to your TV through HDMI if your PC has it?
Edit: I played Skyrim on super low settings and Street Fighter IV with backgrounds off on a similar setup with 2GB RAM a couple years back. Most new low budget games should work, and of course anything 2D. Try and catch a modbot giveaway for some Humble Bundle stuff and see what you think of the whole Big Picture thing.
Hmm interesting. Guess I never really gave it much of a shot. I'll try it!
Really? That's pretty awesome and I definitely didn't know it had far more features! Thanks!
Not sure about steamOS but I have had a completely different experience with chat, its an absolute no brainer. We've had 5-10 people (people jumping in and out as well actually) using voice messaging while playing drunken Planetside 2 and Trouble in terrorist town, very good fun, stable and good quality. And offline chat has worked for months, its text only and you can't leave an audio message currently.
You can view social networking hubs for every game, see a feed of that content from your friends, get news updates on your games from good sources like RPS, hell for supported games you can install mods and other user content by hitting "subscribe" on the Workshop page and it will automatically update that content until you unsubscribe.
All that and you can toggle ads off and set it to default to your library instead of the storefront.
Saying its ahead is an understatement.
Nice!
Same ways as without BPM.
Alt +F4, choose exit game from the game's menu/title screen, alt+tab and close the game's window, etc.
As far as I know BPM doesn't offer some sort of built in way to quit games that is universal for every game.
crimsonheadGCN
Banned
Regarding #2, offline messaging has been part of Steam for a few months.
Ah okay, yeah, I literally know NOTHING about gaming on Steam. Is there a way to do it with the controller?
It would be cool if they had a universal way to quit games. Would make it easier for us console folk.
Jaded Alyx
Member
You just exit via the game's menu.
You should be fine. I use an A6-3500M with 4GB RAM (fast low-latency RAM though - makes quite a difference for APUs) and I can play pretty much everything. Not at the highest settings and/ or at 60FPS of course, but most games still look and/ or perform quite a bit better than on PS360.
I guess you've never played PC games before? The only way to do it is by going to the games main menu and choosing Quit. That's kind of how it's always been. ALT+F4 is more for rage quitting or quickly quitting for whatever reason.
So whatever game you're in, just back all the way out to the main menu and select QUIT or Quit Game or whatever option it is. Sometimes developers put it in menus that you can access in the middle of the game.
I've played them but not much at all in years, and basically not at all in Steam, so I didn't know if there was maybe a more universal console-like way to quit them now.
You can shut down Windows itself through Big Picture, so perhaps there will be a way to force quit at some point? I honestly never thought of it, since I'm used to exiting through the game menus themselves.
May I ask what game you're playing? Just curious.
I was playing BIT.TRIP Runner at the time. Amazing game.
onken
Member
Was going to try but that ridiculous 500GB dedicated harddisk requirement makes it impossible. Installed the Steam client on my Arch install though, works pretty well. Performance seems the same as Windows (except I have to have vsync off because of an unrelated complication with my hardware). Big picture mode works well. Biggest issue of course is the the games. I can play Amnesia, Hotline Miami, Super Meat Boy + source games and that's about it.
Bottom line, if they can get more game support this will be great.
Bottom line, if they can get more game support this will be great.
I'm hoping some enterprising person will eventually come up with a way of installing it on a USB hard drive that doesn't require me to disconnect all my internal drives.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
MutonCommander
Banned
They seem kinda useless without a point of reference.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
Hopefully someone will appear with the Win versions of those benchmarks.
Looks minimally (1-10%) slower than standard Linux performance using the latest binary NV drivers.
The question is of course just how much telemetry / debug logging is enabled by default on SteamOS and how that affects performance.
I just tried Unigine Heaven here on my 660ti. I get 37.2 FPS average with the OpenGL renderer on Windows, compared to their result of 38.4 with a 760. The cards should be pretty close hardware-wise (and so is the rest of the testing system).
Of course, I get 46 FPS using the DX11 renderer, but that only really tells us how good the respective Unigine backends for OpenGL and DX11 are.
Andrea23
Member
Super_safe_mode: before you begin, disconnect all HDD except the one assigned to SteamOS.
At this point, if something goes wrong... who cares about? : )
perryfarrell
Member
Can u play Dota with a controller?
I think it's a bit odd that Valve is focussin on this living room OS, while the #1 played game on Steam (by far) is one that absolutely requires a mouse and keyboard.
I think it's a bit odd that Valve is focussin on this living room OS, while the #1 played game on Steam (by far) is one that absolutely requires a mouse and keyboard.
You can also run Linux games
From what I have seen/heard the transitions should be smoother.
SteamOS is free while a windows license costs 100-200$.
You can also run Linux games
From what I have seen/heard the transitions should be smoother.
SteamOS is free while a windows license costs 100-200$.
Well, my reason for asking is that I'm already running BPM in Windows, so I wasn't sure if it was worth it to install SteamOS.
Well, my reason for asking is that I'm already running BPM in Windows, so I wasn't sure if it was worth it to install SteamOS.
Looks like for now it's just for people who like to mess around with linux and not a release version for home use.
You need a keyboard hooked up for BPM?
Try starting xwindows.
init 5
or
startx
Maybe you're booting into a different run level somehow.
SteamOS actually does have a universal quit, but it recommends not using it except in emergencies (game frozen/crashed, etc).
Did you check the MD5 of your download? I was getting this when I had a corrupt zip file. I re-downloaded it and it worked fine.
Nah, she's booting into the grub environment. She can enter grub commands to manually boot from the USB drive from there, but it's a huge pain. There were some people discussing doing it on the Steam Universe discussion boards.
That may be it. Is there a safe torrent for the automated installation? My net is pretty crap so the official download may have ended early.
(not a girl by the way, lol)
Thanks!
Clever Pun
Member
It sounds like it's a possibility, but you need to install the drivers yourself, and there's no guarantee the performance will be any good.
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