And welcome to your indoctrination, son. If you don't come out understanding why you do hate Unity, we put you back in the Indoctrination Room and deny you protein until the brainwashing takes properly X-)

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Don't get me wrong, I'm not as hardcore as Stallman about open source. I'm a moderate on that count. I think there is a balance to be struck between open source and code controlled by a private company.

But I weigh in on the side that the line from open source to private company driven is after the OS and desktop, with for-profit islands all sailing on an open source sea, the line is not between the OS and desktop, with a private company trying to take over your desktop.

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Quoting: MohandevirYou totally have te right to hate Unity but this is an opinion that I don't personally share.

I never understood why Unity got so much hate aside from being the "UI that wasn't needed"... I admit that I had to adjust but overall I got used to it and after a couple of weeks, I began to love it. For my part, it's the simplest UI you can get. Everything is a click away or 2 at max. No need to search in submenus or complicated control panels, the bugs have all been taken care of and the performances are good... I don't get it.

I respectfully ask what is so terrible in Unity? I'm seriously curious to know because, for my part, it meets all my needs and I got tired of searching through all those "Windows UI look alike".

Hey, but that's just me, I might be satisfying myself with mediocrity. ;)

This said, for SteamOS, here is what I think:
The basic development as been done to offer a target and something tangible to game devellopers (Steam Machines). What is required for Phase 2 is to wait for Vulkan to get a foothold in the industry (game engines) and wait for AMD to join the fray with solid driver support. With Vulkan, ports will be much easier to bring to Linux, and with Zen AMD-APU (if they perform as great as they pretend), the price for the entry level Steam Machines will drop substancially.

But that is just my gut feeling and is highly speculative. Still it would make some sense when we consider that Valve is always playing in the long term (Valve time).

First off, apologies for me preceding post with the fan-boy comment/dogshit/etc. After I have a few beers (which I like to do occasionally), I start talking like I would to my mates at a bar - it's a bad read without my charming personality to go along with it, though. I don't mean anything by it :P That's probably why everyone wrote *super super* polite sounding letters to each other back in the 1800's, comedy don't always come across. Except for the transcript of Monty Python In Search of the Holy Grail. For some reason, that reads as funny as the movie.

> I never understood why Unity got so much hate aside from being the "UI that wasn't needed"...
> I respectfully ask what is so terrible in Unity?

Some bits are OK, and I'll admit, it's streamlined/simplified and highly reliable for what functionality is there.

But for me personally, here's why I think it's shit:

1) The Start Menu is an overly complicated piece of junk that makes it actually grating to use as an application Start Menu. It has all these extra features that are almost exclusively Shit I'd Never Use(tm). Additional, you have to actually click through some of that crap just to get to the installed apps list - and it's all munged together in one little section.

KDE's "K"ickstart Menu is just orders of magnitude better in all regards, the myriad of ->user driven<- right-click options and features, the highly useful way you can edit and add you own entries, place stuff in the Favorites, the categorized sub-menus, the ability to make it work in different modes so you can choose the one that works best for you. More things I'm forgetting (there is a lot to it) AND it leaves out all the silly Find Music etc dumbness Canonical erroneously pretends you want in their efforts to sneak in shitty little monetizing schemes.

2) Relates to 1. Unity's Start Menu is a classic classic example of why you don't want a private company doing your desktop environment - although one point in it's favor, Unity isn't as bad of a trainwreck as Windows 10. Win 10 takes it to the next level of why you don't want a private company doing your desktop. It's an adware circus tent as delivered.

3) Compared to KDE, it's just too limited in functionality and features. KDE is a true example of the power of open source community driven collaborative desktop design at it's best.

4) Relates to 3. KDE and GNOME and XCFE and the other community driven DE's give you that Linux unique feeling of being free from the Man. It's just you, the desktop and the community, no private company trying to wheedle their way into the middle of that - and those companies' inevitable bids they are going to try and sneak in to monetize off your daily activities. That might sound silly, but you spend a lot of time on your desktop, it's actually a great feeling being free of that baloney on your desktop.

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Quoting: tony1abLiam, I support everyone of your words.
I ditched Steamos one year ago for the exact same reasons, and after suffering the same error.

I cannot work on a system who doesn`t offer good support for desktop operations, limit the experience only to games and crash from time to time. I have to use my pc.

The only reason is: games goes a little better here. And what? That's not enought to use a pc. I still can play good on ubuntu.

What doesn't work on the desktop. Tell me.

Ubuntu is great overall, I love it too. BUT...

Unity sucks donkey balls. There's no polite way to say it. It's the worst Start Menu I've ever seen in a Linux distro, what were they thinking? I get you as a fan boy can just accept mediocre/poor decisions and feel it's ok, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the fact any rational person understands it's dogshit and they need another distro.

A'ight, if you have a thin skin, I'm just kidding ;) Ubuntu's fine and has done a lot for Linux adoption too. I personally don't like vanilla Ubuntu anymore (because the UI is dogshit) but others are more forgiving of Canonical's missteps here. Fair enough! I'm not saying I hate Canonical, just that they're unqualified obviously to ever muck around with UI's.

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Quoting: dubigrasu

Quoting: HalifaxAnd don't forget about dipsticks like me that want both. A Steam Machine + SteamOS combo, and be an enthusiast hacker/promoter that has no intention of running my SM + SteamOS "as intended".

Is that the first Alienware Steam Machine? I'd love to get one, there are more performant SM out-here, but that one is (or will be) a piece of history.

Yes, the original "Day 1" i3 Alienware Steam Machine. I had to drive across town to get it from a Gamestop that had it in stock so early. I had my reservations at first, thinking the hardware might be bad or I screwed it up by adding 4 GB RAM. It crashed a lot.

But that was the installed early version of SteamOS itself being buggy crashing the machine. After two re-installs of SteamOS straight from downloaded ISO to USB boot drive via the 'cp' command, the hardware has stood the test of time, it is reliable and good.

I mostly like the fusion of laptop with desktop, as far as the hardware goes. Which is mainly there for the couch/living room/console competitor aspect. But I like it for other reasons. Mainly during the work week, I like using it instead of my main PC - I like the super quiet operation and solid support for sleep/resume so I can keep the same desktop session going.

EDIT:
And as much as I'm intrigued by considering it a part of history, let's not call it a piece of history just yet (I'd never sell it anyway: the hypothetical collector's money isn't important to me, since I'd be the collector wanting to pay the most for it, I'm keeping it :-P ). At this point, it's a very attractive and currently relevant piece of hardware, gen 1 or no, it can run 90%+ of my Steam library of 130+ Linux games AND run an entirely respectable Debian desktop experience just fine. We're quibbling over details here, mostly related to console wars mentality. Which is fine. But in my non-majority world view, Valve has done a fine job in the here and now, and deserves some acclaim for it.

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Quoting: dubigrasuExactly this. Actual Steam Machines are Valve's supporting target, the rest of us (custom Steam Machines owners) are, well, enthusiasts and SteamOS promoters giving a helping hand while satisfying our own curiosity.
The installation procedure is indeed customized and outside the norm.
About the Raspberry Pi thing, it was just a joke, have no idea about Steam for ARM.

And don't forget about dipsticks like me that want both. A Steam Machine + SteamOS combo, and be an enthusiast hacker/promoter that has no intention of running my SM + SteamOS "as intended".

To SteamOS's credit, as I mentioned several pages back, after this last 2.8x round of patches... SteamOS performs pretty damn well when you hack it to just be a full Debian 8 KDE desktop experience.

Since I run Debian 8 KDE on my main PC, I know what I'm talking about here - I have the control test. SteamOS hacked into this role works better than I thought it would. There are quirks and missteps, but all fixable if you look into it. Valve has kept SteamOS very close and compatible with one of the best Linux distros of all time.

For the other 1 maybe 2 people on Planet Earth that are looking for what I am out of my Steam Machine, that's gotta count for something, right? I feel like it was money well spent :)

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Quoting: wolfyrionpfft... just install a rolling release distro...
I really love rolling release distros thats why I am using Manjaro.
It was either Arch,Antergos or Manjaro. :P

I cant imagine myself working with a non rolling release distro. Once you experienced it you will never go back to ubuntu like distros...

Plasma 5 + Manjaro = Amazing Experience ! :wub:

That's the cool thing about Linux, there are many great distros, to match many prefs :)
For me personally, Debian 8 Jessie w/ KDE has become my favorite for a while now. Bleeding edge packages for all the desktop stuff turns out to be very low on my priorities. As long as I get a recent nVidia driver, I'm good (which SteamOS has).

What turns out to be way higher on my priorities is a solid stable distro like Debian that's all around fantastic, and doesn't have the major downside of... Not being Debian ;)

No matter what cool Linux project I come across on the Web, I know for sure they'll have a Debian installer option, other flavors maybe second - or compile yourself. Which I've done, but it can be a pain sometimes.

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Lot's-o-hate for SteamOS here, and for valid reasons - the console/living room experience is largely underwhelming compared to real consoles. But as a modded desktop distro that has the best drivers for my i3 Alienware SM, it's the best choice. Plus SteamOS has great support for the sleep/resume feature of the Alienware hardware (as good as any laptop's).

Since I'm not interested in a BPM living room anymore, I just run it as a full-time desktop distro. People say this is stupid, I disagree :-)

Only a few days ago I found this works wonderfully on SteamOS:

$ sudo apt-get install kde-full

Everything still works fine, including sleep/resume - I'm impressed. It also seems to be a faster running KDE experience than the full Debian 8 distro. Probably because less is installed by default, I've just added the packages I want and it all works fine.

I get the whole console thing though, and SteamOS being a disappointment on that count. All true. Luckily, I personally have found far greater value in my SteamOS+Alienware purchase as a lightweight, small, attractive, quiet day-to-day Linux distro that supports sleep/resume to keep my same desktop session running indefinitely.

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And another point in SteamOS's favor as a desktop distro: Perfect vsync out-of-box on the desktop.

I've generally found desktop vsync an issue in many more sexy desktop distros, unless you find/config tweaks, and even then results may be inconsistent.

Considering all the web browser page scrolling and video watching I do on my desktop - having desktop vsync always working correctly is very nice.

EDIT:

Plus the recent 2.8x patch added a very recent nVidia driver + VLC Media Player. Those were by far the two biggest things I was wanting out of an update, myself.

VLC Media Player was the only desktop app I was unable to get working on my own after an 'apt install' from the main Debian repos before the 2.8 patch. (Not that everything else from the main Debian repos would work, just saying of the handful of desktop apps *I've* reached into Debian Jessie to install on SteamOS, that was the only one failing for me :-)

So, I've hugely appreciated the latest 2.8x patch myself. Living without the VLC Media Player sucked. I can live with SteamOS and Steam Machines not taking over the world for now, it is what it is. Valve is still supporting their OS and my Alienware SM, so I'm happy with them. Still a fan!

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Quoting: Redface

Quoting: liamdaweSteamOS is practically the same as SBP.

Thats not exactly true, please see the SteamOS FAQ from Valve: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/648814395741989999/ [External Link]
Especially:

Q: What is SteamOS? SteamOS is a fork (derivative) of Debian [www.debian.org] GNU/Linux.

and

Q: What software runs on SteamOS?
SteamOS is designed to run Steam and Steam games. It also provides a desktop mode which can run regular Linux applications

So SteamOS is a Linux distribution like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora etc, and Steam (including the BPM it starts on bootup) is not considered a part of the OS.
Steam on SteamOS is the same Steam installed on other Linux Distributions, and has its selfupdater, it is not updated with SteamOS, but on its own schedule independently.
This might be considered nitpicking but I find it important to distiguish between those two in a discussion about the update of one of them, and a question about features of the other:-)

And Liam could you maybe not call it "released" when they update the beta? I find that confusing, Valve themselves only call it release when they come with non beta updates.

Quoting: PicoboomCan y'all tell me if Big Picture in SteamOS has the shortcomings of BPM in the client?

I've used the desktop client to workaround BPM's limited display of my wishlist and inability to access settings from the overlay, But the recent discovery that I can't group chat in BPM has me starting to look into longer term alternatives.

Is SteamOS better than BPM in these regards?

There is one difference between Steams BPM under SteamOS copmapred to otehr distributions, but thats due to the way it is started and not because its a different version.
You can not easily switch to the windowed mode of Steam, you have to start a desktop first, then in a command window:
sudo killall -9 steam
sudo steam
steam
This will start steam regularly, either in windowed mode or in bigpicturemode, but with an option to go to windowed mode then.
Not ideal but I do not have to switch to windowed mode that often so I kept the standard configuration to start in BPM on my steam machine. And if you do use thew windowed mode often that counts against switching to SteamOS until they provide a better way.

On my little i3 Alienware Steam Machine, SteamOS is by far the preferred Linux distro.

1) Other distros I've tried to install (Ubuntu 15.x + 16.x, Debian 8 Jessie, OpenSUSE Leap 42.1) fail due to not having the correct drivers for the custom laptop components.
2) SteamOS has all those drivers out-of-box, and enables a very fast and reliable sleep/resume on the Alien Head power button (ironically, only in desktop mode - no sleep/resume in BPM).

And since I hardly use BPM at all, personally, I end up using SteamOS in desktop mode for most of my day-to-day computing and light/Indie gaming these days. It's a perfectly fine desktop distro with some hacking, as long as you are OK with Gnome 3.

sudo killall -9 steam
sudo steam
steam

That's how I do it, minus the killall. You don't need it if you configure for booting straight to desktop:

Boot to Desktop steam user:
  Settings -> Users
  Select ‘SteamOS Desktop’
  Unlock (button up top)
  Auto Login = On
  (Reboot)

But it's still best of both worlds to start Steam as the steam user like you listed, just so resetting SteamOS to the "true" steam user X session BPM will have all your games still there.

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