cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/23210770
Full Document: https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/steamworks_docs/english/steam_brandGuidelines.pdf
Credit to @mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml for the original post.
Good for gaming, good for linux, good for a lot of the other open source projects involved. It's so close to being critical mass :)
Still waiting for official steamOS 3.x generic installer.
I bet the reason we don't have it yet starts with N and ends with Vidia
I’ve been feeling for a while now that Nvidia’s more recent approaches to open source drivers has been encouraged by their background talks with Valve, getting pressured by such a wildly successful new device.
I'm willing to bet it's mostly AI, which is what caused Nvidia stock to skyrocket. Linux is the dominant platform for AI work. They definitely don't want flaky drivers on Linux going ahead.
I’ve been feeling for a while now that Nvidia’s more recent approaches to open source drivers has been encouraged by their background talks with Valve,
A GPL-compliant kernel module is a legal requirement when shipping a product combining a Linux OS with Nvidia drivers. NVidia actually used a modified Nouveau kernel module for Tegra hardware because of that but weirdly insisted that their proprietary kernel module needs to be used for x86 Nividia drivers. You could not legally ship a car where the computing architecture is an x86 CPU + an NVidia GPU with the older proprietary kernel module.
I really don't understand why people even want that when great alternatives like Bazzite exist.
I don't even run SteamOS on my Deck anymore, so I can't imagine running it on another PC.
The image on the tweet with a few more pixels
I’m out of the loop and I don’t own a deck but didn’t Valve have a Linux OS years ago?
They silently switched from Debian to Arch under the hood for the Deck and never released it to the public for download.
They didn't maintain it, let it die, and made a new one.
tbf back then they picked possibly the worst base for a gaming distro, a problem that has been remedied with the new SteamOS
That is not why it failed.
It failed because the market of Linux native games was minimal and at that time compatibility tools like proton didn’t exist and wine was nowhere near sophisticated enough and required too much fiddling to get to work, especially for the layman which steamos very much was and is targeted towards.
A thing can fail for multiple reasons at the same time
Being based on Debian is not one of them, and any others are honestly made irrelevant by the gave that a gaming centric OS couldn’t run 99% of the games out there
tbf back then they picked possibly the worst base for a gaming distro, a problem that has been remedied with the new SteamOS
The actual runtime the games run on is still based on Debian, though.
that's fine and all but the problem with the debian based SteamOS were the horribly outdated GPU drivers. The runtime was fine but the OS lacked support for bleeding edge hardware (which is somewhat important for a gaming OS)
that’s fine and all but the problem with the debian based SteamOS were the horribly outdated GPU drivers.
SteamOS doesn't use plain upstream GPU drivers. Back when SteamOS 3 was announced, Valve employees said in interviews that switching to an Arch base would allow them to more frequently update the OS, yes, but now with SteamOS 3 being out since quite some time it became clear that this is simply not the case. Big Arch package syncs are a rare occurrence, kernel and Mesa are maintained in their own downstream branches.
As someone else mentioned, that one was based on a different distribution of Linux, and had a lot of differences in function/setup to the current version of SteamOS on the steam deck. The steam deck's version is steam deck exclusive right now, and people have to use other options like Bazzite and HoloOS if they want a Steam Deck-like experience on another device.
This implies that Valve is finally ready to let other vendors use SteamOS, which is great news.
SteamOS 2 came out almost 10 years ago (!) with the release of Steam Machines in 2015. That one was public but it seems Valve has pulled the links to download it. SteamOS 3 is what is on the Steamdeck which isn't publicly available yet.
While SteamOS is open-source and everyone can build one for themselves, it is only officially supported on Steam Deck. They promised to release a generic version of it targeting more devices in the past, and this post hints that that day is closer.
They promised to release a generic version of it targeting more devices in the past, and this post hints that that day is closer.
This post says that Valve is talking about hardware by Valve partners with SteamOS developed in collaboration with these partners. It says nothing about it being generic.
So, Steam Machines could be back?
There's definitely plans to bring SteamOS to more handhelds, we've seen partial support for the ROG Ally being added over some recent patch notes for example. This may just be for other handhelds for right now.
On the other hand, we just recently started getting links on the new Steam Controller. That could just be a Steam Deck accessory, but maybe Valve is planning on trying Steam Machines again.
Yooo Steam Machines 2?????
And also it makes sense releasing it to other manufacturers, due to Linux kernel being GPL(Not including the userspace Steam Client/Game Mode).
This isn't big news IMO. SteamOS has been planned for a "hardware agnostic" release with a proper installer for a while now. Makes sense they'd add some graphics to market devices with.
That being said, it would be nice if it's truly a precursor to some new handhelds supporting SteamOS as first party options; more Devs and more users on Linux is a great thing. But I wouldn't take this as a sign of anything certain yet
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