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Requires an NVIDIA GPU as of now. The streaming features announced earlier this year are not yet in this release. Based on Debian 7.1

I'm hearing a lot of reports that it's almost impossible to dual-boot this thing unless you buy a hard drive specially for it and then physically unplug all the others.

My enthusiasm for this concept is diminished, significantly.

Well it is beta...

I'm not sure what the point of dual booting is anyway, its not like the steam client for Windows isn't free.

I've only got one system at the moment that is UEFI so I haven't tried it out. Several people have modified it to support iso/BIOS booting and installs, and some have managed to get it to run inside a VM, but I've not checked them out yet.

I'm mainly interested in the In Home Streaming feature which hasn't been released yet.

atg wrote:Well it is beta...

I'm not sure what the point of dual booting is anyway, its not like the steam client for Windows isn't free.

I'm no software developer, but it seems to me that there's so little effort involved in including a partition manager with the installer (they could literally do it off the shelf with someone else's open source code) that this could only be someone's deliberate design choice.

And the main reason I was even interested in this thing is that I'd quite like to be able to build my next gaming rig without shelling out an extra hundred quid or so for a copy of Windows.

Is this the one that basically requires you have a windows gaming rig anyway to "stream" whatever can't be emulated?

Zaune wrote:And the main reason I was even interested in this thing is that I'd quite like to be able to build my next gaming rig without shelling out an extra hundred quid or so for a copy of Windows.

That's awesome for you, but I'm fairly certain Valve's point is that SteamOS is supposed to make the box work 'like a console' anyway. The idea being that it's for people who don't know what a partition or double-booting even is, who want to just flip it on and it plays games and the hell with that other stuff.

In other words, people who think they can build a PC experience around it as an alternative to paying for Windows are likely asking something of SteamOS it isn't intended to do (and arguably "People who can afford hardware, but not an OS" are such a tiny minority that Valve can safely give absolutely no shits about them).

I wouldn't be surprised if you can run the steamOS installer then resize the partition so that you can install windows onto the hard drive. My expectation is that an installer with more customization will appear soon, either from Valve or from someone else. I also wouldn't be surprised if someone forked the steamOS into a different distro, but still pulled packages from Valve, similar to mint and ubuntu.

Possibly. I doubt Valve cares all that much as long as the 'buying stuff from Steam' component remains intact.

It's actually a brilliant business move: Deliver a free, community-managed delivery vehicle to the public that incidentally functions as a total monopoly for your business. SteamOS isn't going to have any Origin or GoG or Games for Windows content on it, after all, and it doesn't cost Valve anything (in the grand scheme of things) to maintain.

I wonder how much of the steamOS project is just inertia from initial reactions to the prospect of competition with a Win8 store. Presumably wheels were set in motion back when that was first announced and the emergence of steamOS now is not so much a business priority given that Win8 has had about zero uptake. Would we ever have seen a steamOS if there had been no plans for a win8 store? Will valve expend much effort on it (or more than the minimum effort) now that it is no longer essential to lock in steam store?

I would argue yes, they will follow it through, because it gives them a low-risk, inexpensive way to compete directly with Microsoft and Sony for control of the living room, and that's not a small prize for the investment they'd have to make.

Lagmonster wrote: SteamOS isn't going to have any Origin or GoG or Games for Windows content on it, after all, and it doesn't cost Valve anything (in the grand scheme of things) to maintain.

Only because those games won't work on Linux. If they can run on Linux, then anything Valve does to try and stop them running will just be patched out in a fork leaving only the bad PR from Valve trying to stop them.

The only thing Valve's competitors won't have access to is the in-home streaming. Valve is forced to use that because they don't have access to the source code for most of the games on Steam. But, if you have access to the games code, would it be better value to use the streaming (giving Valve a cut) or working with the WINE people to get the game running through WINE ?

I don't really know that matters. Think about the product as an offering to people who aren't comfortable with a PC, as I said.

Valve wants a place as a 'family device' in the living room; I don't think the target market for SteamMachines will be people who give a second thought to what WINE even is, so long as they can 'play the games' without any hassles. People who buy the marketing of it as a console-that-plays-PC-games will be expected to just mentally lump it in as 'Steam games' the way we do with the Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft marketplaces on consoles now without worrying about all that other stuff, which is presumably to Valve's benefit.

Lagmonster wrote:In other words, people who think they can build a PC experience around it as an alternative to paying for Windows are likely asking something of SteamOS it isn't intended to do (and arguably "People who can afford hardware, but not an OS" are such a tiny minority that Valve can safely give absolutely no shits about them).

I've still not used it myself - but from what I've seen of people who have is that its based on Debian and that the traditional Linux desktop is readily available. So this would in theory allow someone to replace Windows providing they are knowledgeable on Linux or willing to learn.

Lagmonster wrote:I don't really know that matters. Think about the product as an offering to people who aren't comfortable with a PC, as I said.

Valve wants a place as a 'family device' in the living room; I don't think the target market for SteamMachines will be people who give a second thought to what WINE even is, so long as they can 'play the games' without any hassles. People who buy the marketing of it as a console-that-plays-PC-games will be expected to just mentally lump it in as 'Steam games' the way we do with the Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft marketplaces on consoles now without worrying about all that other stuff, which is presumably to Valve's benefit.

Except as I understand it, you still need a PC as the box just acts as a remote terminal. It just relays the inputs and outputs from a PC to the living room for games that don't run natively on steamOS. I wonder if it will do the same for Mac games.

InsaneTD wrote:Except as I understand it, you still need a PC as the box just acts as a remote terminal. It just relays the inputs and outputs from a PC to the living room for games that don't run natively on steamOS. I wonder if it will do the same for Mac games.

I'd heard that Valve was hoping this would encourage developers to make their games run on Linux, mind you. Their whole "open-source is the future of PC gaming" line. Any truth to that?

Lagmonster wrote:Their whole "open-source is the future of PC gaming" line. Any truth to that?

Not really, but Valve doesn't have much of a choice.