SteamOS out now (beta)

Danj said:
What would happen if you installed this on an HDD on one PC and then moved that HDD to another PC?
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Problems. Generally when you install an OS, it's looking at your hardware config to install the correct drivers. Changing that config all at once can give the OS a bit of "system shock", as it were...
 
Lupin the Third said:
Problems. Generally when you install an OS, it's looking at your hardware config to install the correct drivers. Changing that config all at once can give the OS a bit of "system shock", as it were...
Click to expand...

Linux is way more forgiving in these situations. Especially if the hardware is similiar in both machines.
 
Lupin the Third said:
Problems. Generally when you install an OS, it's looking at your hardware config to install the correct drivers. Changing that config all at once can give the OS a bit of "system shock", as it were...
Click to expand...

sekrit said:
Linux is way more forgiving in these situations. Especially if the hardware is similiar in both machines.
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Well essentially what I want to do is install it on a USB hard drive at work, where I can easily disconnect a machine's internal HDD, and then bring it home to use on my PC at home (which as it is a SFF PC is a pain in the arse to disconnect internal HDDs on). However the PCs at work will have Intel integrated graphics while my PC at home has an nVidia card.
 
Durante said:
With all due respect for Valve, that comparison is very misleading. They seem to be comparing DirectX 9 on Windows to (what I presume to be) modern OpenGL in Linux. DirectX 9 was released in 2002.
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It's DirectX 9.0c (Windows) versus DirectX 9.0c -to- DirectX 9.0b-esque OpenGL2.1 (Linux).

At the time of these benchmarks their translation layer didn't support more than DX9.0b, though I believe this was quickly fixed a little later (but we don't have new benchmarks from Valve, although one could do his own!)

I agree it's a mostly worthless comparison of outdated APIs, but to be fair to Valve part of the reason of their excitement was that they started with a port that ran at 6fps and after working on it with the support of all 3 GPU vendors performance became as good as it should have been.
 
Danj said:
Well essentially what I want to do is install it on a USB hard drive at work, where I can easily disconnect a machine's internal HDD, and then bring it home to use on my PC at home (which as it is a SFF PC is a pain in the arse to disconnect internal HDDs on). However the PCs at work will have Intel integrated graphics while my PC at home has an nVidia card.
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It could work. You should probably do the install until you get to the debian desktop and complete the steam install in your home machine. Not sure about the usb hdd part though and how the steamos install reacts to it.

Can't you just disable the main hd from bios?
 
angular graphics said:
It's DirectX 9.0c (Windows) versus DirectX 9.0c -to- DirectX 9.0b-esque OpenGL2.1 (Linux).

At the time of these benchmarks their translation layer didn't support more than DX9.0b, though I believe this was quickly fixed a little later (but we don't have new benchmarks from Valve, although one could do his own!)

I agree it's a mostly worthless comparison of outdated APIs, but to be fair to Valve part of the reason of their excitement was that they started with a port that ran at 6fps and after working on it with the support of all 3 GPU vendors performance became as good as it should have been.
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Are we sure that they only used OpenGL2.1 level features for that performance comparison? There's a difference between what is required to run a title and which feature level it can use in order to improve performance.

In either case, an OpenGL4.4 vs DirectX11 comparison would be more significant.
 
If I could be bothered I'd do a Windows vs Steam benchmark.
Or more importantly, if Steam OS can be installed using a DVD and without UEFI support.

Can it?
 
I've took a screenshot. It doesnt matter if I try 0-1 or 2, I get the same error.

iVjnBLt.png
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sofiabudapest said:
part-time Ubuntu user here and can confirm that the AMD drivers are not optimal at the moment (although the last time I checked is two month ago)

//edit...also my GPU is crap, too
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I was under the impression that their opengl drivers improved dramatically since then.
 
After some initial issues getting it installed on my system because of a messed up flash drive I now have it up and running. Honestly, without the steam controller it's a bit hard to get a good feel for using SteamOS as a console instead of a PC. There are too many games (at least in my library) that require some amount of mousing around to get going.
 
Phoronix has benchmarks up for SteamOS on various cards as well as SteamOS vs. generic GNU/Linux. Performance is exactly the same as Ubuntu's October release (SteamOS is actually <1% slower, but that's negligible). Shocking, I know.

We've already seen benchmarks of Ubuntu 13.10 vs. Windows 8, so there won't be any surprises in the upcoming SteamOS vs. Windows 8 comparison, either.
 
rafbanaan said:
Nope, doesnt do anything.

Edit: mistypt. I get into blk0, but when I want to go to EFI\BOOT\BOOTX640 I get the same error again.
Click to expand...

Basically do this:
BLK0:
cd efi/boot
bootx640

My recommendation for what you're actually typing is:
BLKO: <enter>
cd e <tab> (it should complete to EFI) <enter>
cd b <tab> (it should complete to BOOT if it let you into EFI) <enter>
<tab> (which should give you bootx640) <enter>

The tab completion makes sure it's seeing what it should see. Normally you could tab complete multiple folders at once, but not with an EFI shell. If one of those tab completions doesn't find what you're supposed to, try another device.
 
hikarutilmitt said:
Basically do this:
BLK0:
cd efi/boot
bootx640

My recommendation for what you're actually typing is:
BLKO: <enter>
cd e <tab>
cd b <tab>
<tab> (which should give you bootx640) <enter>

The tab completion makes sure it's seeing what it should see. Normally you could tab complete multiple folders at once, but not with an EFI shell. If one of those tab completions doesn't find what you're supposed to, try another device.
Click to expand...

Nothing :(

Screen%20Shot%202013-12-17%20at%2001.14.42.png
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Looks like the main issue is the folder flat out doesn't exist. If you go to BLK0 or BLK1 then type ls (that's lower case LS) and hit enter, do you see the proper folder structure for the SteamOS installer package?

It's also of note that when using VirtualBox I had FS0 instead of BLK0 as the mount point, since I made an ISO from the install folder rather than passthrough for a USB drive.

EDIT: I also notice that I forgot to put <enter> after a couple of the tab completions, but the fact it wouldn't tab complete and still didn't find just the efi folder still points to the issue.
 
I had this on my spare rig using an ISO I came across that allowed me to put this on my AMD / non UEFI rig but I botched the driver install. Gonna give it another shot. I played with Ubuntu months ago and Steam with the same setup and the games ran fine. I was and still am using a 7850.

Edit: Oops I lied TF2 ran like crap but CS:S was fine.
 
HariKari said:
So no real appreciable difference yet, which is almost impressive in itself. I still would like to see an apples to apples comparison using an actual game that is available on both Windows and Linux. Engine vacuum benchmarks don't tell us a whole lot.
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The main point of SteamOS seems to be optimized latency as far as I understand. Benchmarks don't measure latency. Linux also has superior filesystems for improved access times, storage utilization and data integrity (if Valve uses one of those), but benchmarks don't measure the effect of those, either.
 
wsippel said:
Sure, but probably not out-of-the-box. It should support btrfs though, as that's part of the mainline kernel.
Click to expand...

I've used ZFS in the past on enterprise storage systems and it's something that I trust as it's focus is on data integrity.

I'll look into it.
 
Installed in Virtual Box last night. Gnome 3 runs in fallback mode and Big Picture is kind of a slideshow. I don't know if this is what I should expect from running in a VM or if I should get smoother performance.
 
sofiabudapest said:
Here is a test Metro LL between SOS and Win https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfThaG975uQ

Corey is doing a great job with all his videos.
Click to expand...

I'd love him to run the benchmark for the game as well, it may not be full on actual gameplay (the Metro LL bench is pretty good though) but it would be nice to see the exact same runs being used to determine the actual average FPS with what we could assume is the same/simialr settings.
 
hikarutilmitt said:
Looks like the main issue is the folder flat out doesn't exist. If you go to BLK0 or BLK1 then type ls (that's lower case LS) and hit enter, do you see the proper folder structure for the SteamOS installer package?

It's also of note that when using VirtualBox I had FS0 instead of BLK0 as the mount point, since I made an ISO from the install folder rather than passthrough for a USB drive.

EDIT: I also notice that I forgot to put <enter> after a couple of the tab completions, but the fact it wouldn't tab complete and still didn't find just the efi folder still points to the issue.
Click to expand...

"Cannot open current directory - not found"


I've mounted the iso @ my virtual CD/DVD rom.
 
HammerOfThor said:
Oh crap this doesn't work with AMD GPUs yet? Has anyone tried?
Click to expand...
alf717 said:
I had this on my spare rig using an ISO I came across that allowed me to put this on my AMD / non UEFI rig but I botched the driver install. Gonna give it another shot. I played with Ubuntu months ago and Steam with the same setup and the games ran fine. I was and still am using a 7850.

Edit: Oops I lied TF2 ran like crap but CS:S was fine.
Click to expand...

HariKari said:
AMD drivers are reportedly present and supported. They just suck, which is probably why Valve isn't advertising them as supported just yet.
Click to expand...

The opinion/advice seems to be just hold off, but if you want to play around be sure to note the forced reformat of (what I think is not all but) first detected drive; disconnect all other drives.
 
neoemonk said:
Installed in Virtual Box last night. Gnome 3 runs in fallback mode and Big Picture is kind of a slideshow. I don't know if this is what I should expect from running in a VM or if I should get smoother performance.
Click to expand...

It's the VM. Gnome3/shell is rather particular when running in a VM without the proper resources.
 
cyberheater said:
I've used ZFS in the past on enterprise storage systems and it's something that I trust as it's focus is on data integrity.

I'll look into it.
Click to expand...
Both ZFS and btrfs were initially by Oracle/ Sun Microsystems. btrfs isn't as robust yet because it's more recent. It shares some similarities with ReiserFS3 and Reiser4, with several ZFS features added on top (copy-on-write, data deduplication, atomics, checksums). It's still experimental though.
 
wsippel said:
The main point of SteamOS seems to be optimized latency as far as I understand. Benchmarks don't measure latency. Linux also has superior filesystems for improved access times, storage utilization and data integrity (if Valve uses one of those), but benchmarks don't measure the effect of those, either.
Click to expand...

No. The main point of SteamOS is for Valve to control its own destiny, instead of being tied to a competitor's platform.

By the way, the latency tests show that SteamOS is significantly worse than Windows 8.1. And there are plenty of benchmarks that measure storage benefits as well, but you're not going to see any particular benefit on a gaming system from using, e.g., ZFS over NTFS.
 
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