Even gamers nexus’ Steve today said that they’re about to start doing Linux games performance testing soon. It’s happening, y’all, the year of the Linux desktop is upon us. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Edit: just wanted to clarify that Steve from GN didn’t precisely say they’re starting to test soon, he said they will start WHEN the steam OS releases and is adopted. Sorry about that.
I don’t understand this tbh. It’s here already. SteamOS will likely be just like the deck - immutable arch running the existing steam package.
You can totally do this today and it works great. Don’t want to mess with arch and that confusing command line? Use something easier like mint and install the flatpak - then you don’t even have to futz with nvidia drivers. Or use bazzite?
What does steamOS offer that we don’t already have? (Serious question)
A few things:
- It gives manufacturers a blueprint for their devices. You will see a lot of handhelds running SteamOS from different manufacturers. You will also see a lot of small “gaming boxes” with SteamOS to plug in your TV. That’s great!
- Game Developers will have one distribution to test their games on. One of the bigger problems linux had before SteamOS was the big clusterfuck of different distros. Great for users, but a big headache if you’re developing for it. Now you can say “it runs on SteamOS”, test on SteamOS and you don’t have to deal with bug reports from people running RedStarOS
- It’s Valve. It’s a company. They are the biggest store selling games and they are building their moat to protect themselves against Microsoft, Apple, Epic & Co. That not exactly great for users, but also explains why Valve is doing this linux push. To prevent Microsoft from abusing their Windows monopoly to crush them
I don’t agree with number 2. Ubuntu had always been the ““default”” when Linux was the target. They must be scrambling at Canonical right now.
Or rather, there’s someone who isn’t going away anytime soon and someone who you can go to if their shit screws up, someone with an actual address and support number, and it’s not just a Github issue tracker page that hasn’t been seen by the owner in months.
Some people want that peace of mind. Some people aren’t built to scour the internet for hours to maybe find solutions to their problems.
They do, yes. /srs
You’re thinking of Mac users. /j
I’m confused, do you think Canonical, RedHat or SUSE are going away in the near future? Or that they don’t have support?
Or that they don’t have support?
Not specifically the whole Linux/Proton/Game stack. That’s Valve’s bread and butter, not Canonical or Redhat.
Go ahead, call Redhat and tell them you can’t get Skyrim to run, see how far that gets you.
Are you trying to imply having an “official SteamOS” means you will be able to call Valve to have them troubleshoot your game? Because you can’t do that with the current official SteamOS on the Steam Deck. I don’t think you thought this through.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithSteamDeck. There is a live agent option too for customized help.
I wouldn’t buy a $500 device where the manufacturer guarantees certain games to work but then doesn’t help me get them working if I need them.
Welp, good thing I didn’t have dinner because I have to eat my words now.
