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Latest Comments by Mountain Man
Alienware Interview Video About Their Steam Machine, SteamOS & The Future
11 Nov 2015 at 2:15 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: lvlarkNice to see, although the first ~18 minutes was basically about the hardware and the controller and wasn't very insightful. It did give a nice peek into Alienware's philosophy regarding Steam Machines though.
The latter part, where he talked a bit about what's coming software-wise was nice. Sounds like things will keep moving forward!
"Slow and steady wins the race" seems to be Valve's philosophy. It's easy to forget that Steam had a slow start amidst plenty of competition, and it took several years for it to become the dominant platform it is today.

Alienware Interview Video About Their Steam Machine, SteamOS & The Future
11 Nov 2015 at 2:09 pm UTC

Quoting: XelancerSure, a freshly installed Windows (usually means pirated too) running an older game may have a small performance advantage over the same game that's then be retroactively "ported" to run Linux, the trouble is your average Windows computer you buy from the shop is HARDLY freshly installed. Besides the "rows" - literally - of tray applications (half of which are installed by the manufacturer) and other TSR services - including your anti-virus software etc, never mind the overall hit your Windows computer takes after you install the office suite (or heaven forbid - Visual studio) and most others drags your gaming performance to hell. All my mates reinstall Windows 3 times per year and their games play like junk on HW pricier than I have...
That's a great point. Linux can as lean and mean as you want in order to maximize performance. I saw a noticeable performance boost recently when I ditched KDE for Xfce.

Steam Machines, Steam Link & Steam Controller Officially Released & SteamOS Sale
10 Nov 2015 at 9:29 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: Storminator16And I'm pretty underwhelmed by the Steam controller as well. It's really not a big deal, just like this launch. The writing is on the wall.
What? The Steam Controller is awesome! One of the most innovative products to come to the PC in years.

Steam Machines, Steam Link & Steam Controller Officially Released & SteamOS Sale
10 Nov 2015 at 9:27 pm UTC

Quoting: lucinosMy view is that valve is not interested in a "premature" success. SteamOS is already a success in its primary purpose, that is being a simple recognizable target OS for developers and giving the "console" experience of installing games with only one button and no need for additional software (also easy to operate from the couch but that is the big picture thing). At this point it does not need to be more than that.

So with SteamOS just being debian with big picture console experience the main focus of valve for the next years should and probably is, steam controller and vulkan.

Debian is upgrading about every two years. Jessie came out this year, next big release will be in 2017 probably. SteamOS seems will continue at a semi-rolling pace, little continuous upgrades and big releases every two years. So I expect valve will have the main focus in 2016 for steam controller and vulkan and at 2017 for the next big release of steamos and will start to really push steamos at the end of 2017. Until then they just want it to be low profile (neither a success or a noted failure) and keep the flow of good games towards linux.
That actually makes a lot of sense. But of course it's all conjecture, and nobobody outside of Valve really knows what's going on.

Steam Machines, Steam Link & Steam Controller Officially Released & SteamOS Sale
10 Nov 2015 at 9:22 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: GuestDoes the SteamOS even ask for users to fill the survey? Is it impemented at all in the Big Picture mode? If not, the suvey won't be too useful from now on.
I know from personal experience that Steam for Linux throws up the survey request far less frequently than it does on Windows. I went nearly two-years without a single survey request in Linux, but I would get one every couple of months in Windows, which was ironic considering that at the time, I booted into Windows only occasionally and used Linux almost every single day. I've heard from a number of other people who have had the exact same experience.

Steam Machines, Steam Link & Steam Controller Officially Released & SteamOS Sale
10 Nov 2015 at 9:13 pm UTC

Quoting: Segata SanshiroWell, there go my extremely unrealistic hopes of a Fallout 4 release :(
I was at least hoping for a surprise Witcher 3 or Mad Max announcement since those are two games that were originally slated for Linux.

I'm not really disappointed about Fallout 4, to be honest, because Bethesda games are traditionally hellaciously buggy, and Fallout 4 appears to be no exception. It also sounds like it has been dumbed down from Fallout 3, which was already dumbed down from the orginal Fallout games.

Magicka 2 Officially Released For SteamOS & Linux
10 Nov 2015 at 7:21 pm UTC

Quoting: KeyrockI'll likely scoop up Victor Vran. :)
Excellent choice, good sir.

Magicka 2 Officially Released For SteamOS & Linux
10 Nov 2015 at 5:16 pm UTC

Quoting: ajgpI hope you are as well, but currently the Steam landing page is curiosly absent of any big fanfare. Im hoping that is because of the time difference and when the USA comes online steam will be loud and proud about SteamOS's release today. I will be severely dissappointed if today passes as if it is any other day for valve.
Huh... I didn't even know SteamOS was officially releasing today.

Three Years Ago Valve Put Steam Into Beta For Linux, A Look At It All
8 Nov 2015 at 5:32 pm UTC

We still have developers making snide remarks about the platform only having "17 users" and silly things like that...
I'm still convinced it's because the Steam hardware survey undercounts Linux users. The survey says less than 2% are using Linux, yet many developers are reporting Linux sales at least twice that, some even as high as 10%. This is really a question of marketing, and it's my hope that with the official release of SteamOS, Valve will put some muscle behind promoting SteamOS/Linux to consumers and especially developers.

But that aside, I think it says quite a lot about the state of Linux gaming in the fact that I nuked my Windows partition some months back, and I don't miss it. 149 games in my Steam library; 104 of them Linux compatible.

Left 4 Dead 2 Adds Native Steam Controller & Surround Sound Support On SteamOS
7 Nov 2015 at 3:36 pm UTC

Quoting: MGOidAnd lets hope that Valve will implement a better gamepad control scheme for their games, because using separate buttons to reload and open doors in a modern game is ridiculous.
I fail to see how that's ridiculous.