Monday, September 23rd 2013
Valve Announces Steam OS
People looking forward to the big "Steambox" announcement were met by an anticlimax. Valve announced its own operating system for PC gamers, which turns any PC into a "Steambox." Simply named Steam OS, the operating system is a highly modified Debian Linux stripped to bare, with all its non-essentials tossed out, and proprietary multimedia CODECs added, along with fonts, runtime environments, and in-built drivers for popular GPU, sound card, and gaming-peripheral brands. In essence, there's everything in the operating system for PC gamers, and then some.
Steam diversified from distributing PC games to non-gaming PC software, and Valve plans to take that further by doing groundwork for its very own living room content-delivery platform to compete with the likes of Xbox One. Since Steam OS can be deployed onto x86-based PCs as tiny as an Intel NUC, it stands more than a half chance. Its baby-steps are taken with In-home Streaming, a feature that lets you stream content off a PC or Mac in your house. You can share games in your account with others in your family, and close friends, using the recently-announced Family Sharing feature. You get content-blocking features and restricted-accounts. You also get media-player software that lets you organize and play back music and videos in most open- and proprietary formats. You should be able to install popular web-browsers like Google Chrome. Steam OS is competitively priced against Windows 8.1 and OS X 10.9, at $0. Did we tell you that some of its icons look like companion cubes? Just kidding.
Steam diversified from distributing PC games to non-gaming PC software, and Valve plans to take that further by doing groundwork for its very own living room content-delivery platform to compete with the likes of Xbox One. Since Steam OS can be deployed onto x86-based PCs as tiny as an Intel NUC, it stands more than a half chance. Its baby-steps are taken with In-home Streaming, a feature that lets you stream content off a PC or Mac in your house. You can share games in your account with others in your family, and close friends, using the recently-announced Family Sharing feature. You get content-blocking features and restricted-accounts. You also get media-player software that lets you organize and play back music and videos in most open- and proprietary formats. You should be able to install popular web-browsers like Google Chrome. Steam OS is competitively priced against Windows 8.1 and OS X 10.9, at $0. Did we tell you that some of its icons look like companion cubes? Just kidding.
88 Comments on Valve Announces Steam OS
store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
"Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want."
The Kernel is Linux which is GPL'd so anything they do to it is also GPL'd, but I doubt Valve is touching the Kernel. It is almost certainly not going to be a Linux distro from the ground up, they will most likely be using some existing distro as a basis due to time constraints. Maybe at some point they will have rolled their own like Android but I doubt it.
If you're talking about Windows in general, no again. Sales would likely drop, but it won't dissapear.
This is just a statement. It's like shaving your butt cheeks in WalMart because Best Buy wouldnt let you do it there.
Only HTPC's will see this SteamOS, anyone with high end enthusiast hardware worth 2K or more isnt going to install SteamOS and limit themselves to what they can do with said hardware. People should accept this for what it is. A free platform for indie developers with low budgets. This isnt some kind of Windows killer because Gabe has beef with Windows 8.
However, now that windows 8 managed somehow to be even a bigger pain in the ass to use than even linux, and gaming (which in itself is a huge reason people spend $$ on pcs) is moving to linux, that allows for a viable competing OS for a gaming rig. And people who want the best bang for the buck would much rather use the money that they saved on a windows license for additional gear.
So no - it wont change the world, but it will definitely give linux the boost in popularity and quality that it needs to compete with Windows Pho er.. Windows 8.
Also, dual boot.It's not going to be released on steam anyway.
Again, dual boot.
But I'll be damned if I'm installing a new OS just to fucking do it.
Dual boot is nice and all, but people prefer a unified experience. Linux is great and all, except, you know, no support for apps that are worth a damn in the first place. Great server, great base, but let's face it, Linux never has and probably never will replace Windows/Mac OS.
Should it happen, though, I will eat my words. Probably with green chili and cheese. Like a breakfast burrito.