Another day, another journalist claiming that Valve is killing SteamOS (amongst other things mentioned) and it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm going to be pretty blunt in this one, because it needs to be.
I give you this sensationalist piece from Softpedia titled "Valve Is Killing Its Projects by Abandoning Them, Including SteamOS".
While it's true SteamOS hasn't turned into the almighty force some hoped, here at GOL, I always said it would never be a big success overnight and it would take a long time. That hasn't changed and SteamOS is still very much alive. In June of this year, Valve did a major update to SteamOS that dropped AMDGPU-PRO in favour of Mesa, it had a big Kernel version bump and more. Only a few days later another SteamOS beta was released with more updates. The development is ongoing and you can hardly call something that was updated majorly only a month ago, as something that's being abandoned.
They quite literally have no idea what they're talking about. I don't think Valve has ever said anywhere they were pouring money into OpenGL and Vulkan development. Valve did actually help to kickstart Vulkan, Valve has also hired developers to work on Linux graphics drivers. The public Mesa mailing list is extremely active, with patches from all sides flowing in every day, with the Valve developers doing quite a bit of work. Anyone following it knows this, they would too if they looked. They should know too, since they report on Mesa. Only recently one of the Valve developers finished up the OpenGL multithreading code in Mesa, which can give big performance gains in certain games.
The bit about developers not being heard of any more is also strange. It takes a long time for a brand new API to gain traction, but it is gaining with Vulkan games being released. Croteam have thrown their weight behind it, so has Feral Interactive. Not a massive amount sure, but again, it takes time. Games already in development won't throw out their entire renderer for Vulkan, but new games have a good chance of using it.
No one really knows if Half-Life will continue or not. Apart from that, the other examples are all still sold and worked on. SteamOS, as mentioned, is regularly updated. The Steam Controller is constantly updated with new awesome features, there's even been hints of a second revision. The Steam Link is still selling well with plenty of people rather happy with it. It's not quite likely any of them will follow the path of Half-Life, there's nothing whatsoever hinting at it, they're pulling speculation out of their backsides here with no sources to show for anything they're saying. It's bottom of the barrel reporting.
No, it hasn't. Vulkan 1.0.55 was released only yesterday and last I checked there's more Vulkan games than there is DirectX 12 games on PC. What part of that has slowed down considerably? It hasn't, not at all. I'm also unsure as to what they mean by "integrated VM solutions", I'm going to assume they're really trying to sound smart, but missing the mark. They likely mean wrappers, but so many things come under that banner and wrappers aren't necessarily a bad thing.
I'll be honest here, I really don't like Softpedia and I think their reporting is quite often terrible. They reported on the iCloud hack that happened some time ago, by using one of the stolen images of a celebrity in their article—just awful.
I often end up feeling like we're one of the few sites that won't scaremonger for traffic, because it's stupid. It's an article where clearly research just hasn't been done, but hey it makes a good headline to click right?
I won't blindly stick up for Valve or any company, as every company serves their own agenda. However, Valve are very clearly and often quite publicly still supporting Linux, SteamOS, Steam Controller and so on. I will gladly report on it when there's signs they are dumping something, but there's no such signs yet. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I give you this sensationalist piece from Softpedia titled "Valve Is Killing Its Projects by Abandoning Them, Including SteamOS".
While it's true SteamOS hasn't turned into the almighty force some hoped, here at GOL, I always said it would never be a big success overnight and it would take a long time. That hasn't changed and SteamOS is still very much alive. In June of this year, Valve did a major update to SteamOS that dropped AMDGPU-PRO in favour of Mesa, it had a big Kernel version bump and more. Only a few days later another SteamOS beta was released with more updates. The development is ongoing and you can hardly call something that was updated majorly only a month ago, as something that's being abandoned.
QuoteValve also promised to put a lot of money in the development of OpenGL and Vulkan, so that Linux could feature the same type of performance with games running on Direct3D, on Windows. That is also a really quiet front, and after some initial success, developers are not heard anymore.
They quite literally have no idea what they're talking about. I don't think Valve has ever said anywhere they were pouring money into OpenGL and Vulkan development. Valve did actually help to kickstart Vulkan, Valve has also hired developers to work on Linux graphics drivers. The public Mesa mailing list is extremely active, with patches from all sides flowing in every day, with the Valve developers doing quite a bit of work. Anyone following it knows this, they would too if they looked. They should know too, since they report on Mesa. Only recently one of the Valve developers finished up the OpenGL multithreading code in Mesa, which can give big performance gains in certain games.
The bit about developers not being heard of any more is also strange. It takes a long time for a brand new API to gain traction, but it is gaining with Vulkan games being released. Croteam have thrown their weight behind it, so has Feral Interactive. Not a massive amount sure, but again, it takes time. Games already in development won't throw out their entire renderer for Vulkan, but new games have a good chance of using it.
QuoteValve is becoming famous for two things. One is the easiness of which they make money from their Steam Platform, and the other is their started and failed projects. The most famous of them is the Half-Life series, which ended abruptly and it feels abandoned. It’s quite likely that SteamOS, Steam Controller, and Steam Link are following the same path.
No one really knows if Half-Life will continue or not. Apart from that, the other examples are all still sold and worked on. SteamOS, as mentioned, is regularly updated. The Steam Controller is constantly updated with new awesome features, there's even been hints of a second revision. The Steam Link is still selling well with plenty of people rather happy with it. It's not quite likely any of them will follow the path of Half-Life, there's nothing whatsoever hinting at it, they're pulling speculation out of their backsides here with no sources to show for anything they're saying. It's bottom of the barrel reporting.
QuoteThe development of Vulkan, an open source alternative to Direct3D, has slowed down considerably. Games are still being developed for Windows systems and ported to Linux with the help of integrated VM solutions, which greatly decrease performance.
No, it hasn't. Vulkan 1.0.55 was released only yesterday and last I checked there's more Vulkan games than there is DirectX 12 games on PC. What part of that has slowed down considerably? It hasn't, not at all. I'm also unsure as to what they mean by "integrated VM solutions", I'm going to assume they're really trying to sound smart, but missing the mark. They likely mean wrappers, but so many things come under that banner and wrappers aren't necessarily a bad thing.
I'll be honest here, I really don't like Softpedia and I think their reporting is quite often terrible. They reported on the iCloud hack that happened some time ago, by using one of the stolen images of a celebrity in their article—just awful.
I often end up feeling like we're one of the few sites that won't scaremonger for traffic, because it's stupid. It's an article where clearly research just hasn't been done, but hey it makes a good headline to click right?
I won't blindly stick up for Valve or any company, as every company serves their own agenda. However, Valve are very clearly and often quite publicly still supporting Linux, SteamOS, Steam Controller and so on. I will gladly report on it when there's signs they are dumping something, but there's no such signs yet. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
No vulkan is not dead Ballistic overkill recently updated others are following on. Feral working on vulkan makes sense as they will need to continue to develop tools to help them port games and get the best performance they can. Steam OS sure they could drop it I do not see it happening anytime soon, MS has gone hard on the Windows app store something Valve do not have access too. Such measures make senior members of valve more favourable to putting resources into Linux.
Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 19 July 2017 at 3:06 pm UTC
Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 19 July 2017 at 3:06 pm UTC
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Mohandevir Jul 19, 2017
Quoting: HoriAlso the Link... I don't even think I need to explain this, but the Link was a big succes. There are so many people who want to stream their games to their TV and don't want a loud / big secondary PC to do that, or to draw a long video cable. The Link does all of this wirelessly, and it is just a very small and nice-looking box - not to mention dead quiet.
This...
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/6/15930676/samsung-smart-tv-4k-steam-link-streaming-games
Steam Link is evolving.
Quoting: HoriFor SteamOS on the other hand... well there's Windows + Steam in BPM, or regular desktop Linux + Steam in BPM. Or hell, even Mac + Steam in BPM if you're into that kind of stuff.... all of those can do pretty much the same stuff that SteamOS does (at least in the user's eyes). Then there's also the traditional consoles but there will be many differences.
Personally, I use that:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=388020830
It comes at the cost of automated updates and driver meddling but I find it a lot easier to hack and more versatile than SteamOS. Just my personal preference.
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Quoting: liamdaweI give you this sensationalist piece from Softpedia
Of course, from Softpedia, you could not expect more. We should not call them journalist as it is insulting the profession.
Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiTActually part of the problem is already us: Honestly, who did buy a steam machine, a steam controler or uses SteamOS here in the forum? It will only be very few people. And we're already the ones who are into Linux. So what is the user base they so actually aim for?
Maybe few of us got a Steam machine but when one already have a Linux box, buying one is a bit superflous. On the other hand, when in need of a new machine, one garanteed to have good Linux support may be a nice option. Being already on Linux, i was a bit skeptic about SteamOS first. Now i think we absolutely need it. Binary distribution is one of the main problem on Linux. I'm on Arch too, i've seen the large amount of AAA games not working well out of the box on Arch. Having a standard runtime to build against is just nécessary. We need to be able to say developers: just test on SteamOS and it be fine. We can not tell them: just test on every possible distribution and for rolling release, test every days too.
If it was simple to run a hardware accelerated SteamOS VM in any distribution, then we would have solved a massive issue.
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ProfessorKaos64 Jul 19, 2017
Wait, SteamOS is dead? I might as well stop supporting it with tools and software /s
This article is hilarious. I am eager for them to get to Debian Stretch as a base so I can push updates to some popular items and build software like RPCS3.
This article is hilarious. I am eager for them to get to Debian Stretch as a base so I can push updates to some popular items and build software like RPCS3.
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Mohandevir Jul 19, 2017
Quoting: ProfessorKaos64Wait, SteamOS is dead? I might as well stop supporting it with tools and software /s
This article is hilarious. I am eager for them to get to Debian Stretch as a base so I can push updates to some popular items and build software like RPCS3.
Keep doing your awesome work. IMO, SteamOS is a really interesting project and you are the main reason why I keep coming back to give it a new shot once in a while.
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Quoting: ArdjeQuoting: Asugot my first survey on my linux! hooray! Gaben always finds me when I'm on my mac lol...There is a bug report on github of someone getting it on linux and making steam crash.
I was very inclined to reply it was a hoax ;-).
Actually I had the same thing. I was getting it but steam was crashing. Running with steam-native solved the problem.
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Quoting: Mohandevirhttps://www.theverge.com/2017/7/6/15930676/samsung-smart-tv-4k-steam-link-streaming-gamesValve has always been very vocal about that they want to let others integrate steam link into their hardware. It was not about the link, it was about the ability to have a relatively open streaming platform.
Steam Link is evolving.
Quoting: MohandevirPersonally, I use that:I have both a steam machine with original steamos, and several debian systems.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=388020830
It comes at the cost of automated updates and driver meddling but I find it a lot easier to hack and more versatile than SteamOS. Just my personal preference.
Steamos as a platform is targeted at end user on the couch, as there is no such thing as a desktop.
Well, there is, if you start editing the .xsessionrc. Other than that, steamos is pure to run steam big picture.
Kinda like chromeos is only to run chrome, except that steamos is open and chromeos is pretty much locked down.
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QuoteThe development of Vulkan, an open source alternative to Direct3D, has slowed down considerably.
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Smoking too much weed has been attributed as a major factor leading to the writing of such articles, combined with the habit of viewing life through the base of a broken off Coca Cola bottle. The only known cure for this behaviour is to play 15 minutes of Half Life 2 on a Steam Machine, while standing on your head and drinking Pepsi. All is not lost.
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To me whether typical Linux users start using SteamOS is mostly beside the point. Well, the points--there are two main reasons for SteamOS as far as I can see, and they're both quite solid.
--First, SteamOS is a vehicle for things like Steam Machines. This is stalled at the moment and I hope at some point it gets started up again, except better. We've all gone over the challenges and shortcomings that would need to be met and defeated for a successful relaunch. Keeping SteamOS current is one component of keeping that dream alive.
--Second, and more importantly for the moment, SteamOS is a sort of reference gaming implementation. Everyone can basically agree that Valve are the go-to people on gaming, so if you want your distro to run games properly, do the relevant stuff the way SteamOS does it. This drastically reduces the "fragmentation" problem of Linux for gaming purposes, both in reality and in perception: Developers feel they can develop for SteamOS, and distromakers know what the developers are targeting and so they can make sure games that run on SteamOS will run on their distro, if it's the kind of distro that cares about games. Probably distros intended for embedded won't worry about that, but it doesn't matter. And I don't think this is a huge constraint on distributions, because the desktop-oriented ones are more interested in things that happen "higher up", closer to look-and-feel, so keeping compatibility on some background down-in-the-graphics stuff shouldn't be a big issue.
Given that, I don't think it matters that much if a ton of people actually run SteamOS as their distro. It's the way it influences distro design, and reassures developers, that is important.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 19 July 2017 at 10:42 pm UTC
--First, SteamOS is a vehicle for things like Steam Machines. This is stalled at the moment and I hope at some point it gets started up again, except better. We've all gone over the challenges and shortcomings that would need to be met and defeated for a successful relaunch. Keeping SteamOS current is one component of keeping that dream alive.
--Second, and more importantly for the moment, SteamOS is a sort of reference gaming implementation. Everyone can basically agree that Valve are the go-to people on gaming, so if you want your distro to run games properly, do the relevant stuff the way SteamOS does it. This drastically reduces the "fragmentation" problem of Linux for gaming purposes, both in reality and in perception: Developers feel they can develop for SteamOS, and distromakers know what the developers are targeting and so they can make sure games that run on SteamOS will run on their distro, if it's the kind of distro that cares about games. Probably distros intended for embedded won't worry about that, but it doesn't matter. And I don't think this is a huge constraint on distributions, because the desktop-oriented ones are more interested in things that happen "higher up", closer to look-and-feel, so keeping compatibility on some background down-in-the-graphics stuff shouldn't be a big issue.
Given that, I don't think it matters that much if a ton of people actually run SteamOS as their distro. It's the way it influences distro design, and reassures developers, that is important.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 19 July 2017 at 10:42 pm UTC
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