Valve's SteamOS Not a Replacement for Windows 8

[exfileme]

Engadget digs into SteamOS as part of its Steam Machine preview.

Valve's SteamOS Not a Replacement for Windows 8 : Read more

 

[xaephod]

Makes no sense to not have basic command line access which gives access to an alternative desktop, wine, Windows apps, and everything else linux does.

 

[Guest]

Well, that's a bit of a letdown, but no big deal. I was considering using SteamOS as my main OS once it comes out, but I guess I'll have to go with Arch or Manjaro after all.

 

[Stimpack]

I'm not entirely surprised, but it certainly is a disappointment. I figured I would dual boot to test it out, and perhaps make an HTCP later on down the road. I doubt it would have replaced Windows one way or another, and obviously that's not their goal.

 

[Priox]

The beauty of open source is that even though Valve might not officially support traditional PC applications on SteamOS, that doesn't mean they won't be available. If users want media functionality, productivity apps, or what have you, I'm sure someone will step up to the plate to make that happen. For example, I would bet money on XBMC coming to SteamOS.

 

[AnUnusedUsername]

As expected, and mostly as hoped for. The real question about SteamOS is how much better performance is than with Windows. Windows has an awful lot of needless overhead, SteamOS theoretically won't. But games are not optimized for Linux, so it's hard to say if there will be any performance gains over Windows at all.

That's the big problem with SteamOS, really. If it doesn't run DirectX (or incorporate something like Wine), it can't play most of the games on the market anyway.

 

[jimmysmitty]

As expected, and mostly as hoped for. The real question about SteamOS is how much better performance is than with Windows. Windows has an awful lot of needless overhead, SteamOS theoretically won't. But games are not optimized for Linux, so it's hard to say if there will be any performance gains over Windows at all.

That's the big problem with SteamOS, really. If it doesn't run DirectX (or incorporate something like Wine), it can't play most of the games on the market anyway.

It wont have DirectX as DirectX is MS and they wont allow it on any other OS, if they did Linux would have had it years ago.

But that overhead you speak of, its pointless as the hardware these days is well over what games utilize. A clean Windows 8/8.1 uses maybe 800MB of RAM at startup and most systems have a minimum of 4GB, most gaming systems have 8GB and some 16GB.

Most games still use a 32bit exe which can only access up to 2GB unless they use PAE which gives up to 3GB. Very few use more than that.

That's all thanks to the current consoles as they are still very old technology. Even with the new consoles I don't think a system like mine, 2500K 16GB of RAM HD7970, will have much to worry about since it is still far ahead of the new consoles in computer power.

If you optimize it enough, DX and OGL games will run very similarly. Of course it also depends as OGL is sometimes behind in what features are available for it so you have to try to put them on equal footing which is hard since DX may support one feature and have it run that OGL does not and vice versa.

 

[Pinhedd]

As expected, and mostly as hoped for. The real question about SteamOS is how much better performance is than with Windows. Windows has an awful lot of needless overhead, SteamOS theoretically won't. But games are not optimized for Linux, so it's hard to say if there will be any performance gains over Windows at all.

That's the big problem with SteamOS, really. If it doesn't run DirectX (or incorporate something like Wine), it can't play most of the games on the market anyway.

Windows really doesn't have a lot of overhead. There's a lot of stuff loaded in memory which isn't strictly necessary for a gaming console, but this manifests itself mostly in the form of a fixed memory footprint rather than as a relative impact on some other performance metric.

Windows 8 has a memory footprint of around 300MiB, about a quarter less than Windows 7 which weighs in at around 400MiB.

Even if all the stuff unrelated to gaming were to be stripped away, the total memory footprint would be reduced to around 200MiB; this is negligible on systems that are sporting 8GiB-16GiB on average if not more. Stuff that is sitting in memory as part of a service or some other operating system component is doing just that, sitting there until it's needed.

That said, there's very little difference between an OpenGL game running on Windows and an OpenGL game running on Linux. Benchmarks have shown that there's almost no difference between them and that's to be expected. A properly coded application won't care what platform it's running on as long as the libraries that it needs are present and the APIs/ABIs remain the same. As long as the libraries and OS are reasonably efficient (and they are) the microprocessor will spend the bulk of its time inside of the OS neutral application code, as it should.

So how will SteamOS perform compared to Windows? Exactly the same

 

[Innocent_Bystander-1312890]

No surprise there. It's always been touted as a Steam Big Picture Mode front end and nothing more.

Anyone interested in a replacement will likely look to Ubuntu 12.04LTS or Mint and just run Steam for Linux. It should play the entire Linux / Steam OS library and provide a replacement for Windows 8 (such as it is).

IB

 

[randomizer]

Makes no sense to not have basic command line access which gives access to an alternative desktop, wine, Windows apps, and everything else linux does.

It's Linux. Of course you can do that. You can do whatever you want with it.

Well, that's a bit of a letdown, but no big deal.

Surely you didn't actually expect that Valve was planning on replacing an incumbent OS of 2 decades with the first release of what is really nothing more than another Linux distribution.

 

[smeezekitty]

I am sure there is a workaround to access the console where you can then install lots of other functionality.

 

[oxiide]

Anyone interested in a replacement will likely look to Ubuntu 12.04LTS or Mint and just run Steam for Linux. It should play the entire Linux / Steam OS library and provide a replacement for Windows 8 (such as it is).

We've always been able to do that, if we wanted to give up half our standing game libraries and jump through hoops. The same goes for user-modification of SteamOS—sure, it may prove possible, but without official support its just going to be the same Linux experience we already have.

The hope was that it might be different this time if Valve could get the other industry heavy-hitters in the same room and convince them that its no longer in their collective best interest to stake their businesses on how much effort Microsoft puts into their OS and graphics API.

Surely you didn't actually expect that Valve was planning on replacing an incumbent OS of 2 decades with the first release of what is really nothing more than another Linux distribution.

With the first release? Of course not. But the Windows business model of today is structured around why we need it, not why we want it. I think Microsoft is complacent and vulnerable, and if someone with some industry clout threw money at it and tried for a few iterations, its entirely possible that we could've ended up with a practical (if imperfect) alternative to Windows.

Now, even after all their statements about how terrible Windows is, I guess Valve's only interested in a basic functionality game library UI for tech-apathetic console gamers. Which wouldn't have been such big news if they'd just told us what it would and wouldn't do to begin with.

 

[Avus]

Then Valve better made this OS "moddable"...

 

[Innocent_Bystander-1312890]

" I think Microsoft is complacent and vulnerable, and if someone with some industry clout threw money at it and tried for a few iterations, its entirely possible that we could've ended up with a practical (if imperfect) alternative to Windows. "

For the life of me I can't figure out why Google won't release an X86 desktop version of Android. Sure it's imperfect, but man, at least that would give Microsoft a run for their money.

 

[fonzy]

Damn I hoping someone will integrate XBMC so it can be a HTPC as well as a gaming machine.

 

[celpas]

Google.Please I BEG YOU TO RELEASE ANDROID ON DESKTOP.Would get it in a heartbeat and would uninstall this Windows shit which I am compelled to use for gaming

 

[Pinhedd]

Anyone interested in a replacement will likely look to Ubuntu 12.04LTS or Mint and just run Steam for Linux. It should play the entire Linux / Steam OS library and provide a replacement for Windows 8 (such as it is).

We've always been able to do that, if we wanted to give up half our standing game libraries and jump through hoops. The same goes for user-modification of SteamOS—sure, it may prove possible, but without official support its just going to be the same Linux experience we already have.

The hope was that it might be different this time if Valve could get the other industry heavy-hitters in the same room and convince them that its no longer in their collective best interest to stake their businesses on how much effort Microsoft puts into their OS and graphics API.

Surely you didn't actually expect that Valve was planning on replacing an incumbent OS of 2 decades with the first release of what is really nothing more than another Linux distribution.

With the first release? Of course not. But the Windows business model of today is structured around why we need it, not why we want it. I think Microsoft is complacent and vulnerable, and if someone with some industry clout threw money at it and tried for a few iterations, its entirely possible that we could've ended up with a practical (if imperfect) alternative to Windows.

Now, even after all their statements about how terrible Windows is, I guess Valve's only interested in a basic functionality game library UI for tech-apathetic console gamers. Which wouldn't have been such big news if they'd just told us what it would and wouldn't do to begin with.

The Windows model is based around add-value and has been for a while. Windows 7 is a great OS and Microsoft developed themselves into a corner. It's hard to monetize a product that's defined by periodic upgrades when there's no incentive to upgrade.

Companies have been throwing money at every attempt to dethrone Microsoft in the consumer OS and productivity software market segments for decades with no luck. The Office suite, Visual Studio, and Windows are well entrenched incumbents and will remain that way for the foreseeable future. Competitors have managed to keep Microsoft at bay in the workstation and server segment (although the incredibly lucrative Windows Server has made huge gains in the past couple of years) and largely shut Microsoft out of the mobile segment (again, Windows Phone is making slow but steady gains). Microsoft knows how to defend their market position and serves their developer base very well so don't get fooled into thinking that a handful of small publishers with no incentive to bite the hand that feeds will start throwing money at a problem that doesn't exist.

 

[krelob]

I can't understand why Linux is not more popular. I can't understand why people with $500 dollar graphics cards wouldn't want to use the better operating system. It really is not any more user unfriendly. It certainly has fewer glitches. I mean the latest Windows 8.1 update still has problems with mouse movement!!!!

 

[Pinhedd]

I can't understand why Linux is not more popular. I can't understand why people with $500 dollar graphics cards wouldn't want to use the better operating system. It really is not any more user unfriendly. It certainly has fewer glitches. I mean the latest Windows 8.1 update still has problems with mouse movement!!!!

I do hope that you're being sarcastic

 

[krelob]

Pinhedd, what do you mean? I have several high end computers running Linux and Windows, and Linux is fundamentally better... Direct X is the only thing propping up gaming on Windows.

 

[kinggraves]

No one expected Steam OS to allow them to do CAD and word processing. It doesn't need to "replace" Windows in every market it's in. The question to begin with is whether or not Steam OS can replace Windows in the segments it has relevance in. If it can't, then what relevance does it have at all? If I already have Windows installed, then what's the point in installing a dual boot when Windows allows far more options with DX? If they don't allow out of the box functionality for at least media and streaming services they aren't even up to par with current console OS'. I still don't see a purpose in this product at all. A product with no purpose is DoA.

 

[killerclick]

OK, so I was right, Valve fanboys were wrong... you can leave your apologies under this message and I'll forgive you.

 

[smeezekitty]

Linux's deficiency is lack of software support compared to windows.
The kernel itself is actually superior in may ways to the NT kernel

Another issue is X11 sucks

 

[kartu]

I loled at "it's not based on Ubuntu... so it's not a spin-off". Right....

Looks like Dead On Arrival, really. BUSINESS driven thing, that offers next to nothing to the customers.
Major drive behind this move was getting away from Windows.
Which, I think, is impossible, unless you make OpenGL attractive to the game developers. A point, which Valve didn't address at all.

@krelob
Because most games are Win only and WINE doesn't really cut it (a hassle to setup, some games do not run at all, those which run are often buggy AND you get a HUGE performance hit too).

 

[Bloob]

@kartu

It's really not about OpenGL vs D3D, the differences there are so minor functionality-wise, that no one cares. But DX is more than D3D, and with good documentation. The biggest hurdle still is the lack of motivation for developers to target other platforms than Windows. That might change with cross-platform games being/becoming the majority, and if Valve is able to offer good, well documented, open source solutions to replace the rest of DirectX.