I'm building a better box for gaming and I'm going to install SteamOS on it, give it a try. So, that'll be my "Steam Machine." My hope is that SteamOS will easily update Nvidia drivers (current methods I classify as not-so-easy) and will allow the installation of current household media apps: Chrome for Netflix, Radio Tray, Libre Office, etc. If it can't do both these things, (especially the first) than there is little to recommend SteamOS over an Ubuntu install with a Steam client, as far as I can see.

Whichever OS I end up using, the excitement I felt when Valve announced SteamOS was the spark I needed to leave behind my console and begin gaming on my PC . . . my Linux PC.

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For $60? I'll let the developers fix their own game and continue to wait for what I'm sure will be an amazing experience someday soon.

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The launch of this game on Linux is a much needed break in what seems to have become an endless stream of broken Kickstarter promises, never-ending "soon-to-be-released" assurances, and deathly silent developers. It reduces my cynicism about Linux gaming. It makes me less jaded.

It's almost ridiculous how much I needed a game like this to be released, but I needed it.

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The Unvanquished site seems frustratingly devoid of information that's useful to this potential player. Their descriptions of an "alien team" and a "human team" make it sound like a multiplayer game, but that's never specifically stated. Their "About" page (https://www.unvanquished.net/?page_id=336 [External Link] mentions it's a "strategy shooter," and the home page linked above mentions it has "RTS elements," but, again, what form these elements take, or how they function within the game is never specifically stated and left entirely up to the reader's imagination.

From its description, Unvanquished seems not too different from Natural Selection 2, which is available for Linux from Steam, except that the former is FOSS and the latter costs money. Free or not, I simply can't tell enough about Unvanquished to know whether I'm even interested in it, let alone whether it's worth the effort of downloading and installing.

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I'll say the same thing about this controller that I say about so many "to-be-released-on-Linux" games --- when it comes out, I'm going to buy it.

I'm a living room "couch" player. I can use a keyboard/mouse, but it's just more comfortable --- far more comfortable, in fact --- for me to use a controller. The WASD keys work flawlessly when mapped with Antimicro to the left stick, but mapping the mouse to the right stick doesn't work as well. It's just not as nimble or precise controlling mouse movement by mapping it to an analogue stick.

Until the Steam controller comes out, I'm using a FragFx Shark 360 by Splitfish, a sort of mongrel controller consisting of the left half of an Xbox controller and a special mouse for the right side. It's more comfortable than a keyboard, and it effectively addresses the nimbleness and precision issues, but I think the Steam controller will be more comfortable still.

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