SoylentNews

CoolHand writes:

After the initial announcement by Valve of a new console machine with its own controller and based on its own rebranded Linux, many were very excited. However, after moving in "Steam Time" for awhile, that excitement died down. That all changed this week at GDC as Valve made official announcements of many "triple a" games coming to SteamOS, with a large sale on Steam for them to boot.

There were also many vendors takes on Steam Machines announced (although many seem overpriced), as well as a new VR headset system, the official announcement of the controller, and a small fifty dollar device called the "Link" to let you stream your games (or even applications) to a tv from a computer. With all these announcements, excitement seems to be building again for the chances of SteamOS and the future of Linux gaming (which has always been a sticking point for consumer desktop adoption).

Can this finally be the dawn of a new age in the Linux world thanks to Valve?

takyon writes:

Valve has finally announced a release date for Steam Machines, Steam Link, and the Steam Controller: November 10th. Some "early bird" customers will get the hardware on October 16th.

First and foremost, let's start with the Steam Controller. The final version of Valve's controller is pretty much identical to what we saw at GDC 2015, featuring what has become the controller's signature touchpads, along with an analog stick, motion controls, haptics (vibration), and what Valve is calling dual-stage triggers, all communicating with host systems over Bluetooth. Though ultimately lacking the touchscreens of Valve's original design, the final controller retains the touchpads and the same goals Valve had held to since the start: making more traditional mouse-driven PC games playable on the couch with a controller. [...] When not part of a Steam Machine bundle, Valve will be selling the Steam Controller stand-alone for $49.

Meanwhile as far as performance and costs go, the initial wave of Machines run the gauntlet from low-powered, console-like computers to high-end machines that are meant to take a stab at 4K rendering. The cheapest machines start at $449, such as the Alienware in its low-end, Core-i3 powered configuration, and also the iBuyPower SBX. Meanwhile at the middle of the pack are machines like the Zotac SN970 at $999, and finally at the high-end the sky's the limit. [...] As one might expect, all of the Steam Machines are shipping with one Steam Controller, with additional controllers available from Valve for $49. Meanwhile the very first Steam Machines from Alienware and Syber are already available for pre-order from GameStop and Syber respectively, while the rest are slated to be available in November.

Finally, we have the Steam Link, Valve's in-home streaming receiver for Steam. Intended to be used with Steam's existing, built-in streaming technology, the Link is designed to allow playing Steam games in other locations away from the host PC/Machines, be it things like spare bedrooms or locating the host in said spare bedroom and putting the Link in the living room. The Link features a 2x2 802.11ac for wireless connectivity, or a 100Mbit Ethernet port for wired fallback, along with a trio of USB 2.0 ports and of course the necessary HDMI port. Valve will be selling the Link on its own for $49, while a package with the controller will be $99, and somewhat surprisingly for a consumer device these days, Valve's even throwing in HDMI and Ethernet cables. As with the Steam Machines, the Link is available for pre-order through Valve or at GameStop, with a limited number of the devices shipping on October 16th.

Phoenix666 writes:

If you've been putting off pre-ordering Valve's upcoming Steam Link or Steam Controller hardware since the devices first went on pre-sale earlier this month, we have some bad news. Valve has announced that it has sold out of units for the initial "get it early" offer (with its expected delivery on October 16). Any orders placed from now on will instead be delivered weeks later on November 10.

You may have also missed your chance to get early delivery of the first commercial "Steam Machines" pre-loaded with SteamOS. Any orders for the Alienware Steam Machines placed through GameStop since last Thursday will now be shipped November 10 rather than October 16. Syber now lists a ship date "on or after 10/15/2015" for its first wave of Steam Machines.

Anyone in Soylent-Land got their hands on a pre-release console?

Apparition writes:

Valve quietly removed the Steam Machine section from Steam.

Previously on Steam, if you hovered over the Hardware category there was a Steam Machines link in the drop-down, which is now gone while the links to the Steam Controller, Steam Link and Vive remain. In fact, the entire Hardware page on Steam is now gone and anyone using the link is redirected to a basic search page. Looking back on it and doing a bit of quick research, it seems the change came this month.

I'm not surprised they did this, since currently no one is announcing new machines and the whole Steam Machine idea from Valve never really gained any steam. While it didn't really do the big splash many were hoping, it has done quite a lot of good for Linux gaming overall. As a result of the initial push from Valve, many developers and game engines have moved into doing regular Linux support. This is important, because many of the barriers involved in getting games on Linux have been removed.

We know for a fact that porting companies like Aspyr Media and Feral Interactive started doing Linux versions thanks to SteamOS and Steam Machines, with them both still continuing the effort. It's also likely what pushed GOG to support Linux on their store too, since they didn't want to miss out on the possibility of more Linux gamers to buy games.

Realistically and looking back on it all, the time just wasn't right. There were long delays, not enough "big" games to make people truly interested in the platform (especially when the likes of The Witcher 3 was confirmed and then never happened—still hurts) and various other reasons.

The question remains: What will become of SteamOS?

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Depending on how it is measured, the market share for gaming on GNU/Linux is less than 1%. Jason Evangelho writes at Forbes about what is holding back gaming on GNU/Linux. He outlines three problem areas. First, there is inconsistency across the distros in how hardware — especially the graphics card — is dealt with. Second, major titles continue to ban the accounts of those who join from GNU/Linux hosts. Lastly, he figures that the gamers need to pull behind a single distro and get support for just that one distro because vendors are using the existence of multiple distros as an excuse to support none of them.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Exclusive: Valve is making a Switch-like portable gaming PC

Video game and hardware studio Valve has been secretly building a Switch-like portable PC designed to run a large number of games on the Steam PC platform via Linux—and it could launch, supply chain willing, by year's end.

Multiple sources familiar with the matter have confirmed that the hardware has been in development for some time, and this week, Valve itself pointed to the device by slipping new hardware-related code into the latest version of Steam, the company's popular PC gaming storefront and ecosystem.

[...] In recent years, the "Switch-like PC" category has exploded. In early 2020, Alienware revealed its first Switch-like gaming PC, but the "concept" device has not yet turned into a commercial product. If you want to buy a similar device today, you're largely looking at products from Chinese OEMs like GPD, One-Netbook, and Aya, who have slapped ultramobile PC processors and parts into a Switch-like chassis.

Rumors point to an AMD "Van Gogh" APU (Zen 2 quad-core with RDNA 2 graphics and support for LPDDR5 RAM), 7/8-inch screen, at a $400 price point for a Q4 2021 release.

Also at Wccftech.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck will be based on Arch Linux:

As Ars Technica confirmed in May, two months ahead of its official reveal, Valve is about to re-enter the hardware space with its first portable PC, the Steam Deck. This custom x86 PC resembles an XL version of the Nintendo Switch and will begin shipping to buyers by the end of 2021, starting at $399.

[...] Shipping on Linux cuts manufacturing costs for Steam, insulates the company from competition with the Microsoft Store on Windows, and avoids exposing Steam Deck players to the world's premiere malware ecosystem—which also runs on Windows.

[...] "The main reason [to switch to Arch] is the rolling updates [that support] more rapid development for SteamOS 3.0," Valve designer Lawrence Yang told PC Gamer. Yang says that Arch is a better choice given the massive number of updates, changes, and customizations Valve needs to make in order to provide the best gaming experience on the Steam Deck.

Valve promises that the Steam Deck will run "the entire Steam library" at 30+ fps, so that means a lot of customizations indeed.

Previously:
AMD + Valve Working on New Linux CPU Performance Scaling Design
Steam Deck is Valve's Switch-Like Portable PC: Starting at $399 this December

Original Submission

takyon writes:

For Linux Enthusiasts Especially, The Steam Deck Is An Incredible & Fun Device

The most fun and promising Linux-powered gaming device for the masses though is launching today: Valve's Steam Deck. I've been fortunate to be testing out this Arch Linux derived handheld game console the past month and it has been working out very well -- both as a portable Steam gaming device but making it even more compelling from the Linux enthusiast angle is its "developer mode" that effectively turns it into a general Linux handheld and also being free to load your own Linux distribution of choice.

[...] [The] much anticipated Valve handheld gaming computer that features a 7-inch 1280 x 800 display, gaming-optimized controls, 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, 64GB to 512GB of storage depending on model, and is powered by a custom AMD APU. The AMD APU is made up of four Zen 2 cores (8 threads) and an AMD RDNA2 GPU with 8 compute units.

[...] On the software side, the Steam Deck is using SteamOS 3.0 that in turn is based on Arch Linux. SteamOS 3.0 is a complete overhaul compared to Valve's prior SteamOS work that is based on Debian GNU/Linux. SteamOS 3.0 with Arch Linux is much more fast-moving and has been seeing near-daily updates in preparation for launch.

Steam Deck.

See also:
Valve releases Steam Deck handheld PC to select few
Steam Deck review: it's not ready
The Steam Deck is already the emulation system of my dreams
Steam Deck: The comprehensive Ars Technica review
Steam Deck Review: Valve's Handheld Has Big PC Energy
Gabe Newell talks Steam Deck, crypto risks and why the PC industry "won't tolerate" closed platforms
Developers praise the Steam Deck: 'It just works, for real'
Valve Steam Deck Hardware Review & Analysis: Thermals, Noise, Power, & Gaming Benchmarks (Gamers Nexus, 35m30s video)
Steam Deck Tear-Down: Build Quality, Disassembly, & VRM Analysis (Gamers Nexus, 34m24s video)
Steam Deck 1-Month Review: SteamOS Difficulties, Software, & User Experience (Gamers Nexus, 34m28s video)

upstart writes:

Linux gaming surges in popularity – is this the Steam Deck effect?:

Linux gaming has witnessed an impressive uptick in popularity among Steam gamers, going by the latest hardware survey from Valve's gaming platform.

The hardware survey for April 2022 shows that the amount of gamers using Linux has increased to 1.14%, which is still a modest percentage, but it's up quite strongly on the previous month when Linux sat at exactly 1.0%.

While an increase of 0.14% means very little for Windows, it's actually a big leap for Linux, and in fact represents the second-highest level of adoption the alternative platform has witnessed in recent times, going by Valve's figures.

What was the best month ever for Linux, you may well wonder? That'd be November 2021 when Steam's hardware survey reported an adoption level of 1.16%, as Gaming on Linux, which reported on this, pointed out. Interestingly, that adoption percentage had climbed to that peak quite speedily since July 2021, when the Steam Deck was first announced, but since hitting that high, the percentage has drifted slowly downward to 1% in March 2022.

So what's quite remarkable here is that we've seen a large spike, relatively speaking, with a jump from 1% to 1.14% – the biggest leap in recent times in the space of just a month.

I am not a gamer, so why are Linux users not using it as a gaming platform? Is it lack of graphics card support, poor range of available games or are Linux users simply more orientated towards business, programming and other non-gaming aspects of computing? JR.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/08/getting-aaa-games-working-in-linux-sometimes-requires-concealing-your-gpu/

Linux gaming's march toward being a real, actual thing has taken serious strides lately, due in large part to Valve's Proton-powered Steam Play efforts. Being Linux, there are still some quirks to figure out. One of them involves games trying to make use of Intel's upscaling tools.

Intel's ARC series GPUs are interesting, in many senses of the word. They offer the best implementation of Intel's image reconstruction system, XeSS, similar to Nvidia's DLSS and AMD's FSR. XeSS, like its counterparts, utilizes machine learning to fill in the pixel gaps on anti-aliased objects and scenes. The results are sometimes clear, sometimes a bit fuzzy if you pay close attention. In our review of Intel's A770 and A750 GPUs in late 2022, we noted that cross-compatibility between all three systems could be in the works.

That kind of easy-swap function is not the case when a game is running on a customized version of the WINE Windows-on-Linux, translating Direct3D graphics calls to Vulkan and prodding to see whether it, too, can make use of Intel's graphics boost. As noted by Phoronix, Intel developers contributing to the open source Mesa graphics project added the ability to hide an Intel GPU from the Vulkan Linux driver.

[...] Relying on upscaling to bolster performance, especially at lower resolutions, may be unwise. But nearly every major game release brings with it news of which vendor's upscaling system is included or preferred. It's still impressive how many games simply run at all on an OS for which they were never built, but it might never stop being a tricky challenge.

Related:
Apple Has a Proton-Like Game Porting Toolkit for Getting Windows Games on Mac - 20230612

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Several sites, including OS Technix, are reporting that Arch will be collaborating with Valve. A heavily modified in-house Arch distro is used by Valve for SteamOS.

In an exciting development for the Linux community, Arch Linux has announced a new partnership with Valve, the company behind the Steam gaming platform and Steam Deck. This collaboration will see Valve financially support two major projects for Arch Linux: an improved build service infrastructure and a secure signing enclave.

[...] By providing freelance backing, Valve's support allows Arch Linux to work on these critical projects without being hindered by limitations in volunteer time. This will significantly accelerate progress and enable the Arch Linux team to tackle ambitious endeavours that would have otherwise taken much longer.

The collaboration will lead to the development of a robust build service infrastructure. This infrastructure will involve servers for building software, potentially similar to continuous integration systems. The system will likely manage compiling and distributing software, simplifying the process and reducing the need for custom setups for different devices.

The introduction of a secure signing enclave marks a significant advancement in security for Arch Linux. This enclave will leverage code signing to provide a higher level of assurance that packages downloaded from the official repositories haven't been tampered with. Users will be able to cryptographically verify the origin and integrity of software packages, making it much harder for malicious actors to distribute compromised software.

There is speculation that Valve might publicly release SteamOS in the future or that native support for games on GNU/Linux will improve greatly.

Previously:
(2021) Valve's Upcoming Steam Deck Will be Based on Arch Linux--Not Debian
(2015) Steam Now Has 1500 Linux-Compatible Game Titles
(2015) Valve's SteamOS Dreams Beginning to Look Like Reality

Original Submission