So I've been experimenting a bit with Linux lately. This was born of a few things, a desire to get more involved with the Unix systems at work, plus wanting to pull the Windows 8 Pro license from my laptop and put it onto my desktop instead, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to test out Linux on a physical machine as well as just in VMs using Virtualbox.
I thought I'd try out the SteamOS on my laptop first of all, since it's based on Debian which is a distro I'm vaguely familiar with from past experimentation with Linux and my laptop is (whilst a good few years old now) a gaming laptop. Installation from a USB pen went fairly smoothly, no major issues or missing drivers for things like Network cards.
Booting up the OS brings you into Steam Big Picture mode which is, as you'd expect, identical to the same mode on the Windows version of Steam. From here you can list only games compatible with Linux/SteamOS to install, or Stream games from another machine running Steam, such as a gaming desktop, with these games automatically picked up, again, as you'd expect from the Windows version.
Attempting to switch to desktop mode though can best be described as 'clunky'. It's here that things start to come apart if you're planning on using a SteamOS machine as a more general purpose machine. The option to do so isn't enabled by default, so you have to change the settings within Steam to do so. Despite being based on Debian, even when adding the Debian repositories, there's several Debian applications that wont (at least easily) install. One example was Pidgin, an IM program, which SteamOS just would not install via the console. This one is also a more personal preference, but SteamOS uses gnome and I just much prefer KDE, but unlike with other Linux distros where you get the choice, SteamOS sticks you with Gnome and nothing else.. Back to the point though, whilst the SteamOS could work on a console, or a PC that you're never planning on using in Desktop mode, for me it wasn't going to be entirely suitable for my more multi-purpose requirements.
Of course the big limitation here is that, if you don't have another Windows Gaming PC to stream games from, your selection of games is going to be very limited for the time being. Perhaps going forward, as SteamOS gains some traction, more and more games will start being released with Linux compatibility, but I wouldn't count on this for at least a good 2-3 years. For that reason I could see the appeal of a Steam Link, but not a full blown Steam Console just yet.
At this point I decided to switch over to vanilla Debian. Again, a smooth installation process, but be careful to use the image with the non-free drivers included. Without this there may be some proprietary drivers (such as those used by Network adapters) missing from the installer which will require manual installation afterwards, and downloading through an alternative machine.
Once Debian was installed though, it was a fairly simple process to go through the normal apt-get update processes. Installing my graphics drivers was a little more troublesome via the command line, but in the end I downloaded and installed the package provided by AMD directly. Not the best recommended method, but it worked. Still having some issues with Crossfire, but that's more down to Linux inexperience on my part. Of course another advantage of Debian was having the choice of using KDE rather than being restricted to Gnome and nothing else. One thing you also need to do, if you're running a 64-bit version of Linux anyway, is that you need to enable 32-bit libraries on your system, but this can be done with a single command via the console.
Once all this is done, installing Steam itself is an easy process. The easiest method is a simple apt-get install steam via the console, or you can download a .deb package from the Steam website. Either way, you then get a Steam interface more or less exactly as you'd get from using it on Windows. Again you have the option of Big Picture mode, or alternatively using the classic Steam interface which can filter to show only Linux/SteamOS compatible games.
At this point I started downloading and playing some games to test them out, which gave me no issues. Installing was just the same as the process in Windows, the only real difference is the lack of desktop shortcuts (though I'm sure you can create these should you want to), but launching games via the launcher or the Steam interface is simple enough. The only real difference I could find with running Steam on Debian compared to Windows is that you couldn't close the application to the tray, it permanently resides in the Task bar, and if you close it there then it closes the entire application.
From here I decided to expand my testing a little bit, and looked to gog.com to do this, as they've added Linux compatibility to some of their titles. Officially they only support Ubuntu and Mint, but these are both based on Debian and there are plenty of reports from people running games on vanilla Debian from the gog.com Linux packages. I checked my library and I did have a few Linux compatible games in there already, so I decided to try out Normality and Grim Fandango Remastered. The two of these download a little differently, with Normality giving me a .deb package whilst Grim Fandango downloads a .tar.gz archive. Since it finished downloading first, I tried out Normality first of all.
Simply attempting to run the .deb file through a click gave me an authentication error in apper, which is something of a known issue when installing packages as a non-root user. The workaround for this was to install via the command line using PolicyKit, which prompts you for your root password. Apper is supposed to do this, but it seems it doesn't do it always. Unfortunately however, despite a report of a successful installation, the game itself was nowhere to be found in the Application Launcher, even though other programs installed via a .deb file have been located there after successful installation. I decided to chalk this one up to a miss for the time being and move on to Grim Fandango.
First step was to extract the archive as you'd expect, which then presents you with several folders of data, along with a start.sh file that can be used to actually launch the game. Simply launching the file directly was enough to launch the game immediately, of course this does mean you aren't getting a nice icon to launch from, but you could quite feasibly create a shortcut to the start.sh file and give it whatever icon you want in whatever position you want.
So mixed results from gog.com. As I said, their official support is for Ubuntu and Mint, so they don't guarantee compatibility with vanilla Debian at all nor do they offer any support on their forums in doing so.
Whilst this mix of Steam Linux compatible games and Gog.com linux games is a good start, I decided to go a little further in trying things out. For this reason I installed Wine, which is essentially a Windows 'emulator' for Linux. I recall years ago this used to be a paid application, but it seems to be free, though paid support does seem available. The website itself seems fairly old, but on checking the application it lists right up to Windows 8 for your Windows version, so the app itself does seem to still be getting worked on and updated, or at least was until recently.
Launching the app isn't entirely intuitive, but once you get to grips with the console commands to launch the GUI you can get to work installing your Windows applications.
First step here was to get some gog.com Windows installers. I decided to start out with Evil Genius, Fallout (The first one), Anachronox and Seasons 1-3 of Sam and Max. Installation on all of them went smoothly, with Wine simply launching the windows installer and running as you'd expect it to under Windows. Once complete, you get a .desktop file in your /home/<user>/desktop folder that can be used to launch the game via Wine.
Evil Genius first, game launched fine, cinematics and menu work and I'm able to get in-game and start playing without issue. The only problem I found was some very minor graphical glitches on my Genius character model, the other models however all seemed to be fine.
Fallout next, flawless. Game launches, cinematics are fine and the game launches with no immediately obvious graphical glitches or issues.
Anachronox next, another flawless result. Game launches fine with no glitches.
With Sam and Max the results were a little more varied. Season 1 launches, but once the game itself starts up there's quite a few graphics glitches with missing textures, and once control is handed over to the player the game seems to just crash out altogether and leave your desktop stuck on a lower resolution. Season 2 launches and works mostly fine, though there was an odd white line down the left-most side of the screen. Hardly game breaking, but enough to be distracting. Season 3 unfortunately just launches to a black screen with a pointer icon that you have to forcibly exit. So mixed results here, but it's possible that different systems with different hardware will have different results of course.
The final step in my experimentation. I have the Linux version of Steam, but what about the Windows version? So I grabbed the Windows installer from the website and installed it via Wine, which went as smoothly as the other installations had. On launching it however a big issue was that, whilst the application launches, no text is displayed. A quick Google showed this to be a common issue which could be resolved by going into the Wine configuration options and overriding the dwrite library. Once this was done Steam launched with the text intact. On getting into steam, the Store is completely blank, though the games page could be accessed and I was able to install my games without issue. Another quick google showed the store issue could be resolved through the installation of lib32nss-mdns, though this didn't work for me, though it could work for others. Still, it's a minor issue and the store can always be accessed via the web page instead.
For game testing I decided to try something relatively undemanding, Sword of the Stars collection, and something a bit more demanding, Saints Row IV. A bigger test would be something like GTA V, but it's a much larger download and I'm not on my faster home connection at the moment.
Installation of Sword of the Stars went fine, and I got both an icon in my /home/<user>/desktop folder and the game available via the Kickoff Application Launcher. Launching the game it seemed to be working perfectly fine at first, though attempting to change the resolution had no effect. Attempting to actually start up a game unfortunately resulted in a crash.
Saints Row IV unfortunately just booted to a black screen after going through the pre-requisutes of installing DirectX, the game wouldn't even launch.
This though reminded me, I hadn't installed DirectX until this point. Could this be the reason for some of the earlier failures? I went back to try Sam and Max Season 1 again, and this time no texture glitches and no crash. The only issue was a thin coloured line down the side, much like in Season 2. Season 3 also now seems to work perfectly fine, doesn't even have the coloured bar down the side like Seasons 1 and 2. Sword of the Stars unfortunately only seemed to get worse. Whilst the resolution issue was sorted, attempting to launch a game now causes a complete system lock up rather than a crash, requiring a power button reset.
Overall a mixed result on experimentation. Of course I didn't try out the Wine side of things, or even the gog.com linux games on SteamOS, but given that it seemed to have some compatbility issues with other Debian applications in its Desktop mode I'm not entirely hopeful for it in that regard.
So is gaming possible on Linux? The answer is....kind of, it's getting there. Linux games in Steam so far seem to have no issues running via either Debian or SteamOS, and gog.com is an option depending on the distribution you're using. And of course, people more experienced/knowledgeable in Linux may have better luck getting some of my failures working. However, for SteamOS itself, personally I can't recommend it. Now to be fair, it is still in Beta (I think) so some issues and clunkiness are to be expected, but the library of Steam games compatible with Linux is far too limited at the moment, so I simply couldn't recommend a full blown Steam console to someone unless they also had a full blown Windows gaming rig to stream other games from. In that case you're far better off with a much cheaper Steam link though, leaving you money to spend on more games instead. If you're wanting to get gaming on a Linux setup, a vanilla Debian install seems a much better way to go from my experiences so far. If you're wanting a more multi-purpose machine SteamOS seems pretty unsuitable, with the Desktop mode there as either an afterthought, or because it was simply easier for Valve to leave in than take out completely. Ontop of that your customisation options are severely limited, especially if you aren't a fan of Gnome. Now I know SteamOS isn't intended as a multi-use OS, that gaming is it's only intended purpose, but then why bother with a half-hearted effort like it has? Ubuntu or Mint are other user friendly distros that should be compatible with Steam, plus nets you Linux support with gog.com giving you a potentially wider library of games to access. Throw Wine into the mix and you even have (at least some) windows games as well.
For further testing I might try to run a DirectX installer through Wine, and have a try of some cd-installed games that don't use Steam. And of course there's Origin to try out as well.
Is SteamOS (and by extension, Linux in general) the future of PC gaming? I highly doubt it. With Windows seeingly moving to a free for consumers model then it starts removing some of that Linux is free argument, and the compatibility just isn't there yet. Even if new games start coming out with Linux compatibility (but don't expect this on the majority of AAA titles for at least 2-3 years), there's a massive back catalogue of other games on Windows that aren't, and quite probably wont ever be, Linux compatible. It's an option certainly, and becoming a more and more viable one at that, but just as it is now I expect it to continue being the option of the small minority, even with Valve throwing their support behind it.
I thought I'd try out the SteamOS on my laptop first of all, since it's based on Debian which is a distro I'm vaguely familiar with from past experimentation with Linux and my laptop is (whilst a good few years old now) a gaming laptop. Installation from a USB pen went fairly smoothly, no major issues or missing drivers for things like Network cards.
Booting up the OS brings you into Steam Big Picture mode which is, as you'd expect, identical to the same mode on the Windows version of Steam. From here you can list only games compatible with Linux/SteamOS to install, or Stream games from another machine running Steam, such as a gaming desktop, with these games automatically picked up, again, as you'd expect from the Windows version.
Attempting to switch to desktop mode though can best be described as 'clunky'. It's here that things start to come apart if you're planning on using a SteamOS machine as a more general purpose machine. The option to do so isn't enabled by default, so you have to change the settings within Steam to do so. Despite being based on Debian, even when adding the Debian repositories, there's several Debian applications that wont (at least easily) install. One example was Pidgin, an IM program, which SteamOS just would not install via the console. This one is also a more personal preference, but SteamOS uses gnome and I just much prefer KDE, but unlike with other Linux distros where you get the choice, SteamOS sticks you with Gnome and nothing else.. Back to the point though, whilst the SteamOS could work on a console, or a PC that you're never planning on using in Desktop mode, for me it wasn't going to be entirely suitable for my more multi-purpose requirements.
Of course the big limitation here is that, if you don't have another Windows Gaming PC to stream games from, your selection of games is going to be very limited for the time being. Perhaps going forward, as SteamOS gains some traction, more and more games will start being released with Linux compatibility, but I wouldn't count on this for at least a good 2-3 years. For that reason I could see the appeal of a Steam Link, but not a full blown Steam Console just yet.
At this point I decided to switch over to vanilla Debian. Again, a smooth installation process, but be careful to use the image with the non-free drivers included. Without this there may be some proprietary drivers (such as those used by Network adapters) missing from the installer which will require manual installation afterwards, and downloading through an alternative machine.
Once Debian was installed though, it was a fairly simple process to go through the normal apt-get update processes. Installing my graphics drivers was a little more troublesome via the command line, but in the end I downloaded and installed the package provided by AMD directly. Not the best recommended method, but it worked. Still having some issues with Crossfire, but that's more down to Linux inexperience on my part. Of course another advantage of Debian was having the choice of using KDE rather than being restricted to Gnome and nothing else. One thing you also need to do, if you're running a 64-bit version of Linux anyway, is that you need to enable 32-bit libraries on your system, but this can be done with a single command via the console.
Once all this is done, installing Steam itself is an easy process. The easiest method is a simple apt-get install steam via the console, or you can download a .deb package from the Steam website. Either way, you then get a Steam interface more or less exactly as you'd get from using it on Windows. Again you have the option of Big Picture mode, or alternatively using the classic Steam interface which can filter to show only Linux/SteamOS compatible games.
At this point I started downloading and playing some games to test them out, which gave me no issues. Installing was just the same as the process in Windows, the only real difference is the lack of desktop shortcuts (though I'm sure you can create these should you want to), but launching games via the launcher or the Steam interface is simple enough. The only real difference I could find with running Steam on Debian compared to Windows is that you couldn't close the application to the tray, it permanently resides in the Task bar, and if you close it there then it closes the entire application.
From here I decided to expand my testing a little bit, and looked to gog.com to do this, as they've added Linux compatibility to some of their titles. Officially they only support Ubuntu and Mint, but these are both based on Debian and there are plenty of reports from people running games on vanilla Debian from the gog.com Linux packages. I checked my library and I did have a few Linux compatible games in there already, so I decided to try out Normality and Grim Fandango Remastered. The two of these download a little differently, with Normality giving me a .deb package whilst Grim Fandango downloads a .tar.gz archive. Since it finished downloading first, I tried out Normality first of all.
Simply attempting to run the .deb file through a click gave me an authentication error in apper, which is something of a known issue when installing packages as a non-root user. The workaround for this was to install via the command line using PolicyKit, which prompts you for your root password. Apper is supposed to do this, but it seems it doesn't do it always. Unfortunately however, despite a report of a successful installation, the game itself was nowhere to be found in the Application Launcher, even though other programs installed via a .deb file have been located there after successful installation. I decided to chalk this one up to a miss for the time being and move on to Grim Fandango.
First step was to extract the archive as you'd expect, which then presents you with several folders of data, along with a start.sh file that can be used to actually launch the game. Simply launching the file directly was enough to launch the game immediately, of course this does mean you aren't getting a nice icon to launch from, but you could quite feasibly create a shortcut to the start.sh file and give it whatever icon you want in whatever position you want.
So mixed results from gog.com. As I said, their official support is for Ubuntu and Mint, so they don't guarantee compatibility with vanilla Debian at all nor do they offer any support on their forums in doing so.
Whilst this mix of Steam Linux compatible games and Gog.com linux games is a good start, I decided to go a little further in trying things out. For this reason I installed Wine, which is essentially a Windows 'emulator' for Linux. I recall years ago this used to be a paid application, but it seems to be free, though paid support does seem available. The website itself seems fairly old, but on checking the application it lists right up to Windows 8 for your Windows version, so the app itself does seem to still be getting worked on and updated, or at least was until recently.
Launching the app isn't entirely intuitive, but once you get to grips with the console commands to launch the GUI you can get to work installing your Windows applications.
First step here was to get some gog.com Windows installers. I decided to start out with Evil Genius, Fallout (The first one), Anachronox and Seasons 1-3 of Sam and Max. Installation on all of them went smoothly, with Wine simply launching the windows installer and running as you'd expect it to under Windows. Once complete, you get a .desktop file in your /home/<user>/desktop folder that can be used to launch the game via Wine.
Evil Genius first, game launched fine, cinematics and menu work and I'm able to get in-game and start playing without issue. The only problem I found was some very minor graphical glitches on my Genius character model, the other models however all seemed to be fine.
Fallout next, flawless. Game launches, cinematics are fine and the game launches with no immediately obvious graphical glitches or issues.
Anachronox next, another flawless result. Game launches fine with no glitches.
With Sam and Max the results were a little more varied. Season 1 launches, but once the game itself starts up there's quite a few graphics glitches with missing textures, and once control is handed over to the player the game seems to just crash out altogether and leave your desktop stuck on a lower resolution. Season 2 launches and works mostly fine, though there was an odd white line down the left-most side of the screen. Hardly game breaking, but enough to be distracting. Season 3 unfortunately just launches to a black screen with a pointer icon that you have to forcibly exit. So mixed results here, but it's possible that different systems with different hardware will have different results of course.
The final step in my experimentation. I have the Linux version of Steam, but what about the Windows version? So I grabbed the Windows installer from the website and installed it via Wine, which went as smoothly as the other installations had. On launching it however a big issue was that, whilst the application launches, no text is displayed. A quick Google showed this to be a common issue which could be resolved by going into the Wine configuration options and overriding the dwrite library. Once this was done Steam launched with the text intact. On getting into steam, the Store is completely blank, though the games page could be accessed and I was able to install my games without issue. Another quick google showed the store issue could be resolved through the installation of lib32nss-mdns, though this didn't work for me, though it could work for others. Still, it's a minor issue and the store can always be accessed via the web page instead.
For game testing I decided to try something relatively undemanding, Sword of the Stars collection, and something a bit more demanding, Saints Row IV. A bigger test would be something like GTA V, but it's a much larger download and I'm not on my faster home connection at the moment.
Installation of Sword of the Stars went fine, and I got both an icon in my /home/<user>/desktop folder and the game available via the Kickoff Application Launcher. Launching the game it seemed to be working perfectly fine at first, though attempting to change the resolution had no effect. Attempting to actually start up a game unfortunately resulted in a crash.
Saints Row IV unfortunately just booted to a black screen after going through the pre-requisutes of installing DirectX, the game wouldn't even launch.
This though reminded me, I hadn't installed DirectX until this point. Could this be the reason for some of the earlier failures? I went back to try Sam and Max Season 1 again, and this time no texture glitches and no crash. The only issue was a thin coloured line down the side, much like in Season 2. Season 3 also now seems to work perfectly fine, doesn't even have the coloured bar down the side like Seasons 1 and 2. Sword of the Stars unfortunately only seemed to get worse. Whilst the resolution issue was sorted, attempting to launch a game now causes a complete system lock up rather than a crash, requiring a power button reset.
Overall a mixed result on experimentation. Of course I didn't try out the Wine side of things, or even the gog.com linux games on SteamOS, but given that it seemed to have some compatbility issues with other Debian applications in its Desktop mode I'm not entirely hopeful for it in that regard.
So is gaming possible on Linux? The answer is....kind of, it's getting there. Linux games in Steam so far seem to have no issues running via either Debian or SteamOS, and gog.com is an option depending on the distribution you're using. And of course, people more experienced/knowledgeable in Linux may have better luck getting some of my failures working. However, for SteamOS itself, personally I can't recommend it. Now to be fair, it is still in Beta (I think) so some issues and clunkiness are to be expected, but the library of Steam games compatible with Linux is far too limited at the moment, so I simply couldn't recommend a full blown Steam console to someone unless they also had a full blown Windows gaming rig to stream other games from. In that case you're far better off with a much cheaper Steam link though, leaving you money to spend on more games instead. If you're wanting to get gaming on a Linux setup, a vanilla Debian install seems a much better way to go from my experiences so far. If you're wanting a more multi-purpose machine SteamOS seems pretty unsuitable, with the Desktop mode there as either an afterthought, or because it was simply easier for Valve to leave in than take out completely. Ontop of that your customisation options are severely limited, especially if you aren't a fan of Gnome. Now I know SteamOS isn't intended as a multi-use OS, that gaming is it's only intended purpose, but then why bother with a half-hearted effort like it has? Ubuntu or Mint are other user friendly distros that should be compatible with Steam, plus nets you Linux support with gog.com giving you a potentially wider library of games to access. Throw Wine into the mix and you even have (at least some) windows games as well.
For further testing I might try to run a DirectX installer through Wine, and have a try of some cd-installed games that don't use Steam. And of course there's Origin to try out as well.
Is SteamOS (and by extension, Linux in general) the future of PC gaming? I highly doubt it. With Windows seeingly moving to a free for consumers model then it starts removing some of that Linux is free argument, and the compatibility just isn't there yet. Even if new games start coming out with Linux compatibility (but don't expect this on the majority of AAA titles for at least 2-3 years), there's a massive back catalogue of other games on Windows that aren't, and quite probably wont ever be, Linux compatible. It's an option certainly, and becoming a more and more viable one at that, but just as it is now I expect it to continue being the option of the small minority, even with Valve throwing their support behind it.
