Valve Has its Own Operating System Now in SteamOS

@sometimesavowel: That's highly unlikely... I'm reasonably sure the next two announcements will be either some kind of controller or the fabled "steam box". With the original announcement about the announcements being announced this week (your brain hurt yet?) saying they are all going to be related to steam in the living room I cant imagine them announcing a game right now. But hey I could be wrong but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

#announcementmadness!

As someone with only a mac who wishes he could play more computer games, the idea of a free operating system I can bootcamp into where there likely will be far more games available than on OS X excites me.

1. steam OS

2. steam box

3. stream box?

If they can make a lean OS and rally the developer support behind it to slowly wean the industry off of direct X, this could potentially be awesome.

"Half Life 3, exclusively on SteamOS"

Man, I just built a PC in the living room for a) gaming and b) streaming football. When the season's over, and this releases, may be worth checking out. If the streaming thing works, I could even take old parts I have lying around and make a couple of streaming game boxes.

Valve are a cool company experimenting with all kinds of exciting things so I look forward to this no matter how it turns out :D

It's the 2DS of operating systems

What's not to get? A computer hooked up to your TV which is usually in your living room. Imagine a PC OS that just boots straight into Big Picture, except it has two more options in the main menu. One for 'stream from desktop' and one for 'video services'.

my only worry about this is does this make the pc a competitor to consoles in the big 2s eyes?

will ms and sony still leave us pc people out of their bidding wars or will console exclusive now include this new threat from valve?

OnLive was very different, it was mostly the research into a speedy encoding proceedure so large 720p video streams of games on servers could be sent to your home, it's was mostly that. This Steam OS would be basically a game centric distro of Linux I presume, which runs all current Steam games (PC, MAC) and just streams content over your network just like any other media sharing/streaming box you already own like a Roku but the content isn't coming from anywhere other than your own house.

It's an OS you will use on a Game Streaming box... it's a very simple concept. Take what you already have on your PC now (Windows, Mac, Linux) and replace it with the Steam OS... that's basically it, ideally it's set up specifically to work well when streaming games to various displays in your home. May not seem like much if you already got things set up... but if it plays all the current and future Steam game properly (which I imagine is priority number 1 for Valve too) then it's great cause it's a Free OS for gaming, no need to buy a copy of windows just for a box you use to game on your TV, or even your regular monitor/desktop pc even if it's cool enough.

Another Linux derivate with Steam as frontend, amazing.

If you replace your current windows OS with steam OS you only get access to what? 7% of the total steam library? You need this thing running on a computer as well as a computer capable of running games and a windows copy and then you get to deal with network latency on top of it all. I'd rather just pop an hdmi cable into my TV from my PC, thanks.

I don't see who it appeals to. Most PC gamers don't need something like this. Console gamers are in their own bubble. Who's it for?

Huh, it will be interesting to watch how this thing works out. Because it could go either way.

I'm pretty sure Brad and Vinny play PC games on their couch in the living room. SteamOS is for them for sure.

Why does it seem like every company in the world wants us to sit in front of a television on a sofa instead of in front of a desk on a chair?

It's nice that the OS that is tied to Gabe's software service will be free, but gaming computers to run it are def not free.

...Because what I wanted was a company to further monopolise the pc gaming industry and try to make up for it with cheap gimmicks. Valve are such hypocrites.

...and just like that I have a perfectly good reason to throw together another HTPC. of course I will still use my powerful desktop PC for the games that require it. guess we'll have to see how it works as a dual boot as well, for the purpose of running games.

so... this OS is gonna have a prominent Half-Life 3 "theme" available right?? And perhaps this "theme" will be about 20 something hours long maybe...?

Except it won't run the VAST majority of their games unless they have a windows PC running the actual game someplace else. For someone who already has a gaming PC running windows hooked up to their PC this announcement is meaningless.

Potentially cool and important in the coming years, but it's not actually cool or important yet.

@rafaelfc: Well, yeah. Essentially there are four categories of computer hardware for computer entertainment consumers. Giant server clusters, somewhat powerful local computing units, small power mobile devices and really tiny embedded devices. Gaming consoles and PC:s are most likely the second category and now and in the future there aren't much reasons to use different hardware in them. Heck, maybe Nvidia Shield, WiiU and PSvita actually show the future where low power mobile devices are used to stream video feed from more powerful, but still quite local computing unit which today happens to be PC or gaming console.

Shut up and take my Free.

Looks like I'll have to stick with windows a bit longer to stream my games. I use OSX for work and only have a Windows installed on my gaming PC. Maybe in a few years all games will be Linux compatible. It is nice to see an OS built from the ground up just for games. There is a lot of improvements they can make to the input/output pipeline.

@rafaelfc: Well, yeah. Essentially there are four categories of computer hardware for computer entertainment consumers. Giant server clusters, somewhat powerful local computing units, small power mobile devices and really tiny embedded devices. Gaming consoles and PC:s are most likely the second category and now and in the future there aren't much reasons to use different hardware in them. Heck, maybe Nvidia Shield, WiiU and PSvita actually show the future where low power mobile devices are used to stream video feed from more powerful, but still quite local computing unit which today happens to be PC or gaming console.

Half-life 3. Coming exclusively to SteamOS.

This makes a lot of sense, considering that gog.com just gave up on Linux because they couldn't guarentee that their games would run on every perumatation of Linux. Having one LinuxOS that Valve is focused on makes this all a lot easier for them to support.

@tjuk said:

That would be the dumbest decision in the history of video games. Ballsy, but so incredibly dumb

How is Vinny's Linux distro coming along? I'm more interested in that.

I'd run VinCo Vinnux on EVERYTHING. Someone get a kickstarter going.

Well... looks like I need to order myself another SSD. There id no reality in which I do not install Steam OS.

I'd be down for this. Perhaps a dual-boot system or maybe, if there is even basic driver support, this could even be my main OS. I mean all i do on my desktop is play games and loot at the internet.

What makes my excited about this most is having a smaller, faster OS might allow more memory and processing power to be used directly by the game instead of running a full on windows in the background.

So. I would imagine that having Half-life 3 as an exclusive to this SteamOS would be the way for them to get people to use it.

Eh, I hope that the streaming stuff works well. This sounds totally useless otherwise, having an OS that's dedicated to TF2 and bad indie games doesn't exactly sound great.

It probably would've helped if they made all 3 of their announcements as one big announcement. There's little to no context as to what/who this OS is for, as made apparent by some of the confusion in the comments here. Why drag it out over the course of the week?

What's extra funny is that the games that matter that run well on linux right now are games you cannot play with a controller (DOTA2, TF2, CS, L4D2, CK2, EU IV).

It's fairly obvious. It's for people who already own a gaming PC running windows and who are too dumb to figure out a way to connect it to their TV.

So, what is the end-game here? I don't really get it.

Step 1: New OS that by itself will only play a very small fraction of games. You can install it (presumably) on most current PCs, but then you can only play that small fraction of the games you own. Valve goes for a hardware solution too, so:

Step 2: Valve releases a "box" that can run this OS. PC Gamers will go crazy with excitement despite having spent the last 15-20 years insisting that building a PC from the ground up is the only way to go, and that "we can always do this cheaper than the retailers". Still, to play the 95% or more of your non-linux Steam games, you need a regular PC running Windows.

Step 3: You put this box in the living room, where you can play Linux games, or with the help of a $600-$1200 accessory (your gaming PC) you can stream all your Windows Steam games from your study/office/bedroom.

So it's a two-computer solution to getting PC games onto a big screen? Wha huh?

Now, if the Valve "box" is like, a $50-100 dongle that just lets me stream from any Steam platform on my network, that would be cool. But with this whole Steam OS thing, it doesn't seem like they're headed that way, and I'm not sure it's a solution most people will be willing to pay for.

To be fair, he is the center of his own observable universe.

or whose tv is too far from their pc

If this is something I can put on a Raspberry Pi, then stream all my games to my TV, then this is pretty damned useful for me. There are plenty of games on PC I rather use a controller to play, and right now I don't have any way of displaying them on my TV. So I'm liking what I am hearing!

*yawn*

i'll just stick to my HTPC with windows connected to my pc :P

freaking HUGE. I really hope this will become Microsoft's day of reckoning in regards to ignoring the PC gamer base. If all you do is game, there's no reason to own Windows anymore. Awesome.

what this guy said.

Ohhhhh man, this is super exciting. With two more announcements, I'm pretty sure one of them will be the "Steam Box," and the other would be something related to services or a unique controller device.

Ok so... if it's just a free, game-focused OS that (presumably) cuts out all the Windows bullshit, then why didn't they just say so? All the 'living room box' crap makes it sound like you still have to buy a bunch of peripheral stuff that renders the OS itself irrelevant. And considering their website refuses to say this runs on computers (instead referring to hypothetical 'boxes' and 'machines', because what the fuck does that even mean) I'm not 100% convinced you're right.

Regardless of what this fucking thing even does, this is the most obtuse marketing I've seen in a while.

Obviously the third announcement is announcing a partnership with VinCo's VinOS.

Free, game focused OS (probably based off Ubuntu, practically everything is) with practically no native games for it. But it will let you stream games running on your non-free OS running OTHER gaming PC.

A lot of people have been asking, "What's the point," and "Who is this for?" I personally don't have my biggest TV by my gaming setup. If I wanted to play games on that TV, I can build a system that runs SteamOS for less than it would cost to buy the HDMI baluns and run the cable to hook things together. I'm interested in seeing how this all plays out.