Other than setting the password you don't need this "terminal trickery".

Opting in SteamOS beta can be done through the system updater.
Accessing the regular steam desktop client can be done by disabling the auto-login.

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Quoting: mahagrI don't know what are their reasons to keep the drivers closed source, but some likely reasons are legal issues, code quality or hardware secrets.

I've read somewhere (sorry, forgot the source) that among whatever reasons they may have to keep the code secret, are also partnership agreements with various external companies using their hardware/drivers, due to bits of code not owned by them (nVidia).

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Quoting: Dunc

Quoting: Mountain ManI just wonder if this game is going to have the right "feel" being on the Unreal Engine. It might look like a Half-Life game, but will it feel like one?

There's a section about it in this Half-Life documentary [External Link] (highly recommended, by the way). They seem to have spent quite a lot of effort in making sure it does.

By chance just now I finished watching this documentary and wanted to comment on that aspect. Indeed, for Half Life fans (and not only) this is a must see and I do feel that PB is in good hands regarding HL feel.
Though who knows for how long we'll have to wait (I can only think about how long Black Mesa took/takes).
Not complaining though, respect for this volunteer work out of passion.

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Quoting: mahagr

Quoting: dubigrasuAt the same time I don't remember the drivers stuck on performance mode while in desktop mode, sure the modes were alternating depending on desktop activity, but stuck on max power, no.

For me my GTX 1080 Ti is always in the p0 state (max clocks) until I switch to the console. There's a known issue for this in nVidia bug tracker as well as a public thread in nVidia forums. I am running my computer with two 4K G-Sync monitors, which seems to make the issue worse. Windows shares the same power management code, but the difference between Windows and Linux is that in Windows they have information if more draw calls are coming to the pipeline or not, which allows the graphics card to go to a lower power state earlier.

I agree that keeping the clocks high is great when you're gaming (but only if your game needs 100% of your GPU), but it's not great if your card runs hot 24/7 and never stops the fans because of the power saving doesn't work for a few users.

Do not get me wrong: I am and have been nVidia user for a long time (just threw away a broken GT 8800 card among with some other old hardware) and I will likely be using nVidia graphics cards in the future, too.

PS. Regarding to my first comment on nVidia Linux driver quality.. That came from an nVidia employee who I know. I have also worked in a few companies where the main reason not to release source code was a bad code quality (not because of bad workers but because of there was no time to polish the code).

Found the topic and it was an interesting read. I'm interested also on this since I'm bound to get myself a new Nvidia card (currently using AMD).
Looking at the initial report it doesn't sound that bad to me though, 28 seconds to ramp down, I can live with that as long the max power mode isn't triggered by any light desktop activity.
But to be exact, you're saying that in your case the card always stays in max power mode and never ever ramps down, even on idle?
I can imagine that indeed running two 4K monitors does put a strain on the card, is that with vsync enabled/disabled ?
In any case, if I'll be confronted with that (constant max power on) I'll probably look into vsync/frame limiting or setting the card to use the power-save mode in desktop mode, and use performance mode only for gaming through the means of a script/gamemode/etc.
OTOH, I'm not likely to run more than 1080p any time soon so I guess I'll be "safe". I have also a two monitor setup and with my previous Nvidia card I didn't ran into this problem.

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Quoting: mahagrI'm frustrated on their drivers as they force the card to run on maximum power for 45 seconds every time there's an opengl draw call. Basically it means that if you install Ubuntu and use default Gnome (which uses opengl X composite extension), your graphics card never goes into powersave state and consumes ~4x more power than it should.

I guess they do that because of nobody has bothered to implement proper power saving feature and because of not running the card in maximum power makes the cards to look bad in benchmarks.

For gaming purposes I prefer this behavior though. Previously it used to jump down in powersave mode much too early and that used to happen even while gaming (during light loads), leading to brief stutter from time to time.
At the same time I don't remember the drivers stuck on performance mode while in desktop mode, sure the modes were alternating depending on desktop activity, but stuck on max power, no.

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Quoting: Mountain ManNot really into horror games -- not because they scare me; they just don't interest me -- but still, I'm not going to turn down free!

Then, like Liam said, I'd really recommend to play in (or try) SafeMode, it indeed takes away the stress and leaves space for exploration and the actual story.
There's this review that goes a bit into details here [External Link]

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Quoting: torstenchr@liamdawe do you know if it is possible to use a newer version of the GLCore? Forcing it to be 4.2 seems a little low, but maybe that is just me ;)

-force-glcoreXY Similar to -force-glcore, but requests a specific OpenGL context version. Accepted values for XY: 32, 33, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 or 45.

Try these.

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I remember these arguments fixing Rust's launch hang for Nvidia, back in the summer.
So whatever was borked then, still is apparently.

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Limbo on wheels :)

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Regardless of the current situation, is still a bit sad news though. I remember these games way, way back supporting Linux when few others did.
Edit: and oh, it worked (at least at one point) very well on Linux, I have this comparison from few years ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccpP-TAJyus [External Link]

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