Patreon Logo Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal Logo PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by sarmad
Insurgency FPS adds official Steam Controller support, better gamepad support overall
21 Dec 2015 at 9:55 pm UTC

I was playing it over the weekend using a Steam Controller. I am new to Steam Controller and I am coming from consoles. I managed to make 15 kills though (and 15 deaths), so a 1:1 k/d ratio, which is great for someone new to Steam Controller. As a player coming from consoles, I would say Steam Controller is definitely superior to traditional controllers when it comes to FPS games.
Valve should stop marketting their Steam Machines to PC gamers and start marketting them to console gamers instead.

Saints Row IV now available on SteamOS and Linux
21 Dec 2015 at 9:35 pm UTC Likes: 1

Obviously the bottleneck is not the GPU.

The Itch store now has an open source and multiplatform store application
15 Dec 2015 at 11:26 pm UTC

Interesting. I thought Itch was going bankrupt or something.

The Zotac Steam Machine ZBOX NEN SN970 impressed OC3D in their review
9 Dec 2015 at 9:40 pm UTC

Quoting: HalKadoA few people discussed netflix support. I really hope this shows up in steamos, I'd love to see a steam machine that could completely remove the need for an appletv or console. As it stands it just plays games, which I'm happy they focused on, but isn't enough to justify a purchase just yet imo. Personally I think I will buy either a steam machine when it gets netflix, or an appletv if it gets a steam streaming client :D
You can install Kodi on SteamOS and then use a Netflix add-on. I haven't tried this myself though, but in theory it should be possible.

Linux is holding exactly where we thought it would in the Steam Hardware Survey
3 Dec 2015 at 1:01 am UTC Likes: 1

It's expected that people say "despite Steam Machines...". There are currently around a million Linux gamers. In comparison PS4 and XB1 probably sold a million units in their first couple of weeks. If Steam Machines were to sell as good as PS4 and XB1 then linux share should have doubled by now and that's what people expect.

The Zotac Steam Machine ZBOX NEN SN970 impressed OC3D in their review
29 Nov 2015 at 4:35 am UTC

The Zotac Steam Machine is definitely a hit. It's sold out on Amazon at 900$. The only question is: how many of those buying the NEN are buying it to install Windows on it and how many are buying it as an actual Steam Machine?
The problem is, we'll probably have no way to tell, and I don't think the Steam survey will show up in SteamOS to give us any indication.

CyberPower Syber Steam Machine Has Been Reviewed
23 Nov 2015 at 8:56 pm UTC

Honestly, I don't even know if Valve is still serious about SteamOS. It seems as if they are just doing an experiment. If you go to Steam's Hardware page you'll see most of the games advertised there don't support SteamOS. So, if Valve is not bothering to advertise SteamOS properly on Steam, who will? Also, Valve is not even bothering to respond to all the bad media about SteamOS's performance. It feels as if it was just a temporary project: make it, release it, then forget about it and get back to regular business. When Sony or Microsoft release a new console, they go to game studios and make sure new releases target their platform. Valve didn't even bother to do that. We don't need old AAA games ported to SteamOS, we need to make sure new AAA games will target SteamOS; that's what matters to most people, old AAA games matters to only very few gamers.

A Four Way Comparison For Alien: Isolation Shows Off The Performance Difference
20 Nov 2015 at 5:39 pm UTC

Quoting: PublicNuisanceWhile it's lower on the Linux side it is still respectable framerates on the Nvidia side. Hopefully AMD can get some more money to spend on their driver teams.

Unlike many I understand why they are behind on the driver side of things. AMD had a profit in 2014 of $51 million while Nvidia had a profit of $147 million in just the fourth quarter of last year. When you make more than 7 or 8 times the money of the competition it is easier to outspend them in R&D. I'm not taking sides, just pointing out a fact.

I prefer AMD's more open type of innovations such as tressFX so I will continue to choose them when they can deliver a competitive product. I wouldn't take a Fury X over a GTX 980 Ti, i'm not blind, but I would take a 390X over a GTX 980 and a 390 over a GTX 970.
Those profit figures are interesting, given that AMD now has a monopoly over console GPUs and consoles are doing pretty well. How come nVidia makes so much more profit?

A Four Way Comparison For Alien: Isolation Shows Off The Performance Difference
18 Nov 2015 at 7:39 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: nattydread
Quoting: TheBoss
Quoting: nattydreadis it a native build or a port?
It was ported by Feral Interactive, and it is native. A port doesn't make something not native.
well what I mean perhaps is: does it use a wrapper to DirectX or does it directly use OpenGL? There must be some reason it doesn't perform as well on SteamOS.
Whether it's a wrapper or directly on OpenGL doesn't mean much. Porting it to OpenGL is something, and optimizing it for OpenGL is something else. Companies won't spend time optimizing the game unless there is a reason for that, and when it comes to this game there isn't much benefit for end users, since the game is already running above 60fps on current Steam Machines. Benchmarks have shown that when the game is optimized for Linux they run at similar performance to Windows. An example is L4D2.

ZOTAC Have A Trailer To Show Off Their NEN Steam Machine
3 Nov 2015 at 10:35 pm UTC

Quoting: MaxPower
Quoting: sarmadWait a second. GTX 960 or GTX 960m? The difference between the two is day and night. Can anyone confirm it really is the desktop GPU inside that tiny box?
Could be a gtx 970m

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3rcpd2/zotac_nen_steam_machine/cwmz5pw [External Link]
Either way it will be awesome. I think this is going to be my next console.