Sighting article about Steamos: performance measurements, games name and so on

Despite the fact that the article was written with a rather shock pace, it took a good two weeks to write it, then there was a move to another apartment, there were no Internet, then running around with correction and, as a result, Ura-Ura, this work went into the release.
Although I did not try to write too much so that my head did not hurt after reading, but it turned out how much it turned out.
I posted the original article with optimizing the viewing of pictures here, so I advise everyone who will watch pictures to follow the link. Navigation is simple -> Arrows back and go :).

I tried to make the article conveniently and pleasant to read to everyone, as well as tried to make it more flexible for future amendments, if any. Original article + utilities for sobbing it in a readable format can be found here: github.COM/Tarvitz/Docs as they say, Feel Free to Contribute.

That’s all, pleasant reading.

Preliminary look at Steamos

This article is written in order to clarify some foggy moments around Steam Machines, Steamos, answer matured questions, give information to reflection, and also make clarity about performance, speed of work and other trifles.

For whom this article?

The article is designed for the average gamer of the PC platform, although the righteous console players are not prohibited by its reading. The article is not a leadership, it only sets out the facts of working with specific specimens of software and hardware.

Iron

List of iron on which testing will be carried out (positions marked italics, will be tested after writing an article and data on them will be given a little later):

Steamos/Ubuntu/Windows 7 (all X64):

• Radeon R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (8GB RAM)
• NVIDIA GTX 770 4BG RAM DDR5 (16GB RAM)
• NVIDIA GTX 650 Ti
• Radeon HD6850
• Intel HD4600

Intel i5-3230M, 6GB RAM DDR3, video cards:

What is Steam Machine?

Steam Machine is any device on which you can launch Steam and games available for the target software and hardware platform. Now Steam Machine is mainly a personal computer (hereinafter referred to as a PC) under the control of any of the following operating systems (which are located later in alphabetical order):

GNU/Linux (hereinafter simply Linux) (Steamos, Ubuntu, Mint, Gentoo, Debian, Arch Linux and T.D.)

Macos x (exactly starting with versions 10.x.x)

• * Windows XP, now Microsoft is not updated, a full refusal of support April 2014
• * Windows Vista, now Microsoft is not updated, a complete refusal of support April 2017
• Windows 7, updates will stop going out on January 13, 2015
• * Windows 8

When using Linux as a program layer of Valve, it can quite successfully use almost any iron on which, in fact, Linux works to turn it into iron into Steam Machine, And it may well be:

Therefore, it cannot be argued that Steam Machine is only a PC or that it is a 100 % console. My Steam Machine is an assembly of iron PC with the Steamos iron installed for this, so I will lead my reasoning in the context of PC. However, this does not mean that installing Steamos and Steam on a tablet or iron from Microsoft/Sony, on the contrary, I think that this will be realized by someone in the very near future.

What is Steamos?

Steamos is an operating system built on the basis of Linux, in particular it is Linux – Debian (Wheezy).

Despite the fact that the Linux operating system itself (or GNU/Linux) appeared a long time ago, in the distant 1991, (more precisely in 1991, a core appeared, called by its creator Linus Torvalds, a person who showed the middle finger of Nvidia as the worst of the Linux company), for a long time it remained exclusively a working system for a number of reasons,such as the lack of professional software, the lack of gaming applications and a high entry threshold. So why did Valve opt for linux?

Valve, pc iron + linux = ?

As a programmer-developer, I can say that the development of software is expensive, very expensive and to make a system from scratch in 2012 is a difficult, long, and most importantly, not bringing any profit. Despite the fact that the entire software under Linux, including the core itself (except for games), is mainly open, In other words, you can download the source code of this program and modify it, The cost of developing a similar system would now amount to several billion dollars, and this is not a typo, this is a reality.

In principle, some may object, saying that you can take Linux as a basis, but much more suitable for a closed model of the BSD software (as Apple did when developing Mac OS X or as Sony did, taking FreeBSD 9.X for software layers in the Play Station 4) and in the future, without sharing the source code with anyone, use someone else’s pool of developments to profit.

Yes, Valve could go in a similar way, but the position of both the company and the Newel Gabe himself, is that both iron and software should be open in order to improve quality, attract third-party specialists, and indeed build something unimaginably cool. Perhaps this will cause someone surprising, but the fact is that now Open Source sets a high quality standard in the information technology market (IT) and many companies passionately want the applicants to have a profile on Github.Com, Bitbucket.Org and a large pool of really working projects. In such conditions, writing an openly bad code means figuratively expressing, to be thrown out of rotten tomatoes, because the openness of the code just sets high requirements for its quality. This option of explanation is the simplest, although in general, of course, there are much more factors.

Valve, of course, is interested in the development of the PC, and not in the constraints of any restrictions (for example, specific iron specifications of the platform), for this reason, ideologically for Linux software is perfect. And with the technical side of Linux everything is much more rainbow, a list of platforms for which you can successfully collect and make the core work is quite extensive. Currently, a large number of glands are running Linux, starting with routers and ending with supercomputers.

General information

General information about Steamos:

Steamos is a purebred linux, as was written above. The effect of Valve on the insides of the system is not particularly large, so experienced users will also be convenient to use Steamos, as well as any other distribution based on Debian. True, at the moment the amount of software in the repository is relatively small.

Valve itself recommends using hardware components in your PC not lower:

* Intel or AMD 64-bit processors – It is fair, since the X86 (32BIT) Valve systems did not lay out.
In other words, Steamos requires a compatible processor compatible.

* 4GB RAM (RAM) or more, this requirement is not critical;Enough> 1gb, but,
Of course, you should not expect that all games will work quickly, since herself
The system also consumes part of this memory

* 500GB hard drive (SDD/HDD), Any affordable, in my opinion.
Steamos itself occupies 2GB in standard configuration, more space is necessary
To install a large number of games.

* Graphic maps from Nvidia, Intel And AMD,
The article was written when using NVIDIA and AMD cards just when the official support of AMD was absent.

* UEFI, It is only important for beginners, the distribution itself
It will not start after the start of the BIOS, but the ways to install Steamos bypass UEFI.

* USB Port for installation, This means that you
you need a USB flash disk, from which installation will be installed.
For beginners, this will be the best option, for more skillful users of restrictions in the installation of Steamos from the optical disk.

Installation

Steamos installation requires USB Flash Driver where you need to download the contents. Valve itself recommends installing a clean hard drive in a standard automatic installation mode, but warns that all data can be lost. I tried to install Steamos on the SSD hard drive separately, and, in principle, I even managed to do it twice:

Oddly enough, but the installation, in my opinion, is currently intended only for an experienced user. The first thing I encountered is the impossibility of installing a flash drive and the impossibility of an expert installation without additional actions. Beginners can install this OS without any problems only from the CD of the image and only on a clean screw.
Other cases will simply leave them disappointed.

Automatic installation
With this type of installation, questions are asked to the user only a few times. Of the advantages, one can note the fact that the user is almost not confronted with the choice of what he does not know yet. Of the minuses – the entire installation will be by default in English, as the installer will not offer to choose the language used.
On the SSD, Steamos drive in automatic installation mode is placed in about 10-15 minutes.

Expert installation

Installation in the expert mode differs from the automatic right to choose some
options, for example such as:

* Disk marking (I started it only when I put Steamos on a virtual machine,
When installing on real iron, they never allowed me to mark something myself)

Actions after installation

Despite the fact that everything was set up and tuned in both automatic and in the case of an expert installation, almost half of the system simply did not work. I coped with this problem quite quickly, but, nevertheless, for beginners in the Linux world, this can be some problem. By the way, oddly enough, but the experience of installing Steamos in a virtual machine from the image of a disk was more successful. Thus, I had to spend about half an hour to make Steamos earn.
In general, I think that people familiar with Debian systems will not spend much time to make the system work as it should.

Also, regardless of how the installation passes, AMD card users may not be able to immediately start the system in graphic mode. Perhaps, but not guaranteed.
I put a distribution without official support, but, again, Maybe, that Valve has already corrected the installer and no one will have difficulties. Personally, I dealt with this problem by installing a driver from AMD version 13.12, but I had to pat him, t.To. “From the box” he did not get up.

It is worth noting that at that time (04.01.2014) Valve did not recommend using Intel and AMD video cards, their support was added a little later (08.01.2014). But even if you decide to establish a more old version of the distribution from a flash drive/optical disk, these restrictions will not interfere with you, you just need to prepare for the tuning of the system with your own hands.

Steamos installation conclusions

Currently (04.01.2014) Steamos installation on a real computer configation is recommended only by experienced Linux users, so if you are a beginner, just wait until Valve improves the installer for ordinary users and will undemand information about it (which will undoubtedly be done). Now, even despite the fact that the operation of the system is improving, Valve still does not recommend using Steamos Even experienced users Linux. What should be subject to many to the idea that work to improve quality is still being carried out, so do not rush.

I, in turn, is an experienced Linux users I advise you to install via VirtualBox or through another virtual machine so as not to drop the working environment.

This is what the installation looked like:

Steamos performance (Performance)

Property testing regulations

Unfortunately, At the moment there are no funds that could
measure performance in different games for Linux systems, including
and Steamos, so games with built -in productivity measurement tools
will be evaluated by specific numbers, and everything else is in the order of measurements “by eye”.
Testing each game took from 20 minutes to 1 hour.

General information on performance

The load speed on the SSD drive was ~ ** 20 seconds ** before the input screen
to the system, which is actually not particularly fast, since even on a pure HDD hard drive
Ubuntu launches in less time. But, oddly enough, after replacing the card with NVIDIA 770 GTX
The load speed decreased to 8 seconds.

Steamos (under the control of Gnome-Shell) consumes a little memory on launch,
~ 510MB RAM (RAM) at the entrance to the system, and with chromium, 10-12 tabs, YouTube stream, with all additions and with the steam client is 2GB RAM.
For comparison, in Ubuntu (under the control of Unity) with an empty desktop is occupied by approximately 840MB RAM.

The load on the processor, the network and the hard drive take place without any visible changes: both Steamos and Ubuntu in a calm state consume no more than 5% of the processor time on each core/stream.

In general, the speed of Steamos is similar to the speed of any other freshly installed
Linux or Windows distribution. When maintaining order in the system and use
Steamos standard surroundings in a year will work as quickly as at the moment
the last setting or installation of software in the system.
If you are puzzled by your own assembly, you can win a small amount
RAM, which at the moment, I think, is not worth the time spent.

Game performance

A-AA-AAA Titles

All games were launched initially at the highest settings,
Since the specifications of the presented iron are comparable to Hi-End Steam Machine from Valve
and authorized for the production of Steam Machines companies.

Detailed measurements of the performance of games that have fallen into the A-AA-AAA category, namely:

Metro Last Light is a sequel to a post -apocalyptic shooter, where actions unfold on the territory of the Moscow metro.

Brutal Legend

When launching on AMD R9 280X, the game showed, in my opinion, the middle bar of both optimization and performance. Unfortunately, there is nothing to measure FPS for Brutal Legend in Steamos, but the game is cheerful and does not allow himself Frizes at responsible moments.

Also applies to NVIDIA 770 GTX, launches on all three systems have shown
clean and even work. Alas, to determine or measure the falls of the FPS value below 60 on Steamos/Ubuntu so far.

Dota 2

In Dota 2, I lost most of my time;As in Left 4 Dead 2 there are small frizes at the start, then there are no such problems. At maximum settings, Dota 2 feels ~ 90 fps on average, without sags below 60-75 FPS during the match.

R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (AMD)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 (NVIDIA)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

Left 4 Dead 2

The launch on AMD Mindepositcasino R9 280X showed itself from the very positive side, since the game went very cheerfully and the performance did not sag below 80 FPS, on average at the maximum settings LEFT 4 DeAD gave out ~ 110+, in narrow rooms the counter -frames per second reached 300 fps.
The only rough moment may be the beginning of each card, when small frizes are most likely associated with the loading of the world’s objects, after the start they disappear completely. Steamos/Ubuntu performance was slightly lower than in Windows 7.

The launch of 770GTX was more successful and smooth in terms of FPS on all three systems.

R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (AMD)

Steamos Benchmark:

Unfortunately, Steamos data for R9 280X could not be captured due to the fact that the built-in SCRENSHOT manager did not work from Steam. In tests with Nvidia, it was replaced by Gnome-Screenshot. Information on tests Left 4 Dead 2 Steamos will be presented a little later.

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 (NVIDIA)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

Half-Life 2 + Ep1

The main flagship, according to which fans are yearning, is quite cheerful for 200+ fps. On average in the premises, the personnel indicator per second holds at 299 fps level. Then you have to install FPS_Max parameter in a value of 600 in order to see the upper boundary. It is 300-400 FPS on average, with jumps up to 600.

R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (AMD)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 (NVIDIA)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

Team Fortress 2

At maximum settings, the game showed itself as well as the whole Source Park of Games from Valve, holding out at ~ 200fps.

R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (AMD)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 (NVIDIA)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

Portal

The portal works in each system well and quite briskly, I did not draw a detailed comparison for the reason that it is not visible, as in the case of Half-Life 2,.

Psychonauts

Unfortunately, there are no ability to measure FPS in this game under Steamos. Feeling performance within adequate quick work. Those who have not yet passed famous psychonauts may well do it under Steamos.

Metro Last Light

Like Psychonauts, at the time of the main tests, the built -in productivity measurements were not found, nevertheless, in my opinion, this is the best port on Steamos/Linux due to the smoothness of the work. Graphics and overall performance of the complaints do not cause.

NVIDIA tests with a counter -built -in counter showed a stable 60 FPS, but, unfortunately, it was not possible to remove VSYNC for Metro Light Light.

Painkiller: Hell and Damnation

R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (AMD)

Painkiller refuses to work on the maximum graph, falling after starting.

770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 (NVIDIA)

The same thing for this card, Painkiller just refused to start on Steamos.

Serious Sam 3

R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 (AMD)

When starting, it paints, respectively, no tests were carried out on the AMD R9 280X, all traces lead to drivers. As soon as the drivers are updated or used from Valve, this section will be replenished with screenshots.

770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 (NVIDIA)

Steamos Benchmark:

Ubuntu Benchmark:

Windows 7 Benchmark:

Results

Based on all test launches of games, I came to a whole series of conclusions.
So, now Valve officially supports iron only from NVIDIA, test games that I launched at 770 GTX 4GB RAM DDR5 showed approximately the same result in different games from both VALVE and from third -party companies (unfortunately it was so far only Serious SAM 3). Games on R9 280X 3GB RAM DDR5 We worked somewhat worse in different franchises from Valve, although they did not sag in performance so deeply that they had to reduce the settings, and overall pleased the eye with a picture and speed of work without looking at the FPS meter indicator.

In general, both NVIDIA and AMD are honestly worked out both in Steamos/Ubuntu and in Windows 7.
Nevertheless, a victory in performance on R9 280X I would give the system under the control of Windows 7. In the case of NVIDIA, not everything is so obvious and Steamos quite successfully competes with the PC game flagship. In my opinion, it’s too early to do Steam Machine in order to get the best productivity “out of the box” after installing Steamos or any other Linux at the same time, it is too early to discount the race for the FPS between Windows and the Linux world.
In the latter case, both AMD and Nvidia work hard on improving their drivers, and this is really evident by the results.

Unfortunately, all this information applies to Hi-end video cards and iron. If you are the owner of Low or Mid-End iron, then the situation is still foggy, it seems to me to break into the new world of Linux for you.

Indie Taytla

Met the performance in indie is a slightly strange activity, so I cost the tests of the performance of the titles available. Performance was checked only on Steamos and on NVIDIA 770 GTX, I launched most of these titles on Ubuntu and they worked quite successfully. The duration of testing was raised from “quick click” to passing 1-2 levels.

*Dungeons of Dredmor – OK, in general, I spent a lot of time in this game precisely under the control of Linux systems. Unfortunately, I was disappointed by a bug with opening the doors, perhaps he was already corrected.

*Garry’s Mod-refused to start due to the missing file, which is actually present. In authoritative opinion, this error does not happen to everyone, but on all platforms, they say a way to fix it exists.

*Darwinia – ok (by the way, the starting sound theme of the indicator belongs to the starting OST’U Darwinia, if anyone did not know)

Additional information

Software in Steamos

As written above, Steamos in its basic delivery is quite modest and there is almost nothing for an ordinary user. Nevertheless, part of the ordinary user software can be safely installed from the repositories of the Debian Wheezy distribution.

You can use the following guide to expand Steamos with additional user software, after following the link

It took me just a few hours to continue writing the article not in Ubuntu or Gentoo, as it was originally, but from Steamos, synchronizing the article itself through Git on Github.

It took more time to install highly specialized software, it took no more than half an hour to all standard applications.

For these half an hour I made the following applications that I needed:

More and did not require. Perhaps Steamos will not include a large layer of various software, such as Ubuntu/Mint and other distributions, but at the moment you can make a fairly convenient game distribution, though experience and knowledge with Linux systems will be useful to you.

Software stability

At the moment, the stability of software in Steamos is at an average level. This means that there are both strange and annoying nuances in working with software and surrounding Steamos, but I will not list all the glitches that I have encountered.

Nevertheless, Valve is working on these errors and shortcomings and corrects them. At the time of the Steam client for Linux errors there was a huge number (you can see the GITHUB Steam tracker for Linux), however, now the Steam client works stably and without any serious complaints. I think that with the working environment Valve will work at the proper level. In my opinion, stability and quality are already currently suitable for a mid -level user (without experience with Linux).

Iron in Steamos

From all iron in Steamos, surface testing of a built -in sound card and gamepads was carried out. Some more specialized equipment like a printer, scanner, graphic tablet Wacom, etc.p. Not tested.

In order to turn on the sound, I had to increase the volume in the system mixer;The sound card earned out of the box. In general, support for sound equipment in the Linux family is quite decent, but only if you are not going to use any specific studio equipment to play games and watch movies.

Xbox360-compatible gamepads work perfectly, the only thing you need to do is to calibrate them in the Steam Big Picture settings. Other methods of setting up the gamepad has not yet been provided for.
Steamos gamepad setting up only in Big Picture mode, but organized quite simple and pleasant.

Unfortunately, not all games were made for the Xbox360-compatible controllers, for example Psychonauts You can play at the gamepad, but the trigger will not work. To make them earn, you will have to strain hard and use the special Xboxdrv driver, which only experienced Linux users can quickly master. This is bad for an ordinary user, but at the same time there are high -quality methods of configuration of gamepads, which slightly smoothes the previous drawback.

Razer Onza Tournament Edition It has a non -standard arrangement of control elements: triggers and bamers are turned upside down, therefore, by connecting such a gamepad, it will be necessary to reconfigure it. In addition, this gamepad gives me artifacts, since its sensitivity cannot be installed in Big Picture in the settings on the standard driver. Games are also strongly upset where you can’t install a dead zone for various axes on the gamepad.

Thrustmaster Dual 3 in 1 does not have Xbox360 compatible scheme for the correct operation of the gamepad. Some games support the Xbox360 scheme adjustable in Big Picture mode in Steam, and some games do not know how and the layout of the keys is quite strong. Saves if the game has a configurator. For example, in Psychonauts Thrustmaster, the iron wins due to the fact that Psychonauts itself cannot capture trigger to configure the gamepad, and the PS3-compatible gamepad has buttons instead of triggers, which wins the Xbox360 in this case in this case.
In general, I can say that the standard Xbox360-compatible gamepad eliminates the need to set additional settings.

I spent all the tests of games with gamepads on Thrustmaster Dual 3 in 1, To see how games relate to him. In all games, he worked quite adequately, although in some, the buttons were extremely uncomfortable. If Valve will still improve the XPad module, adding a configurator to it, then such problems will disappear immediately. If not, when choosing a gamepad, it is better to take the Xbox360-compatible controllers before Steam Controller comes out.

Steamos support by various companies

They usually say that games are the main product promotion product. It’s hard to argue with this. Since Steamos is still a software platform mainly for PC Iron, it is the games that will stand at the foot of success or at the origins of the failure of the Valve initiative.

Valve herself even before she opened the cards on Steam Machines, she promised to portle all her products on Linux family. In part, this promise was restrained, although at the moment, there are not enough several games from the Valve collection under Linux:

*Counter Strike: Global Offensive-(Oddly enough, in the presentation of the Steam Machines from Valve, the video of CS: Go, so we are waiting), also after writing the article, the news was flashed that the Intel optimizes CS: Go under its iron

Most likely, Valve will transfer the remaining Valve Titles in 2014 as soon as he figures out Steam Machines.

Among the large companies that have expressed a desire to try Linux as a game platform, as well as as a platform for which these companies will produce their products (in addition to Windows and Mac), the following companies are lit up:

*Valve Software -the owner of the Steam digital distribution program platform, a large number of hits and franchise Half-Life, the third part of which someday, will come out.

*Blizzard -While the truth was promised to launch some of their title on Linux by the summer of 2013-summer has passed, the Title is not launched. We will believe that they did not change their minds.

*Double Fine – Studio Tim Sheffer, who shot at Kikstarter with adventure Broken Age, very quickly adapted to new rails and ported almost all of its products on Linux independently and quickly. Their following games will most likely also have Steamos/Linux support from the box.

*Creative Assembly – The eminent studio, the developer of the Total War series also expressed a desire to port the Total War: Rome II on Steamos, as they really liked Steam Controller (this decision was also made in Sega).

*The Farm 51 – The company, known mainly by the Painkiller series, has already managed to adapt 2 of its projects under Linux/Steamos. This is Painkiller Hell and Damnation and Deadfall.

*Paradox Interactive – Their studio Paradox Development Studio has already ported a number of its products such as Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis IV.

*Tripwire Interactive – Studio responsible for the first and second parts of Red Orchestra and Killing Floor;Currently, only Killing Floor and Red Orchestra 1 are running under Steamos/Linux.

*Facepunch Studios – Studio Gary Newman, who gave the world Garry’s Mod. All their few projects are available for Steamos, which is Garry’s Mod and recently released at Alfa Rust.

*Sports Interactive – Their Football Manager 2014 “out of the box” came out with Steamos/Linux support. The only remaining major developer of football managers at the moment.

*Frictional Games – The studio that gave us the series Penumbra And Amnesia. Even before Valve turned towards Linux, the studio managed to make the builds of her games for Linux, so they know what is not mainstream.

*Introversion – Famous software Uplink, Darwinia, DefCon Already “out of the box” support Steamos/Linux in their alpha projects, for example Prison Architect.

*Puppy Games – (Revenge of the Titans, Droid Assault, Ultratron et al) Developers of 2D action games with a very recognizable style.

The list can be continued by some companies that work both independent developers and under the wing of large and medium publishers, for example 4A Games, who moved Metro Last Light on Mac and Steamos/Linux in 2013. But, in my opinion, it is too early to talk about them, since it is not yet clear whether they will be engaged in this topic in the future.

The list above is a very modest AAA project list. As for the indie games and developers, then everything is much freer and extensive. Some projects are issued immediately with Steamos/Linux support, some receive support a little later.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the opinion about Steamos of large publishers, such as::

*Activision – So far, I have not given any information about how strong their intentions are to make products for Steamos/Linux.

*Bethesda SoftWorks – No information about how the company relates to Steam Machines and Steamos.

*EA -Despite the fact that one of the main development studios Dice expressed interest in Linux, herself EA more than sluggish refers to this topic. So EA It will come to Linux the platform only if Steam Machines really shoot, and not a second earlier – this outcome seems to me the most likely.

*Gearbox – company Randy Pichtford Until it moves towards Steamos, although Mr. Pitchford himself believes that it would be nice to start some kind of killer project on Steamos and make it exclusive, since such a policy works quite well. Valve herself does not think so, what about games from Gearbox, then there are no announcements or in the Steam database yet.

*Konami -Konami has just begun the process of porting their games on the PC, to expect that they will burst into Steamos in the forefront would be quite optimistic. The company itself did not give any comments on this matter.

*Take Two and all their subsidiaries of the company, 2K Games, Rockstar, also did not say anything concrete about this. The only game that has lit up in Steamos/Linux is XCOM: Enemy Unknown, But she has not yet reached the target platform.

*Sega – Looks at Steamos with interest, on the current day there are already several projects that are released by SEGA and transferred to Steamos/Linux, including the transfer of Total War: Rome II.

*Ubisoft – None of their franchises, small or large, received green light to transfer to the target platform. The French themselves do not say anything about Steam Machines/Steamos.

Although Valve herself, with the announcement, promised a lot of titles, including AAA in 2014 with Steamos support, at the moment the situation with them is just as described above. Despite the fact that Steam Machine has more games at the start than PS4 and Xbox One, at the moment it is rather a very large number of indie and a small number of large titles.

Contrary to the above facts, which may seem quite pessimistic, at the moment, playing Steamos is currently enough, there are enough time -free killers like Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Starbound, Rust and so on, and single projects (mainly indie). It remains small-to enlist the support of a couple of large publishers, if one has not yet happened (we all know how much Valve can play partisans).

Additional information and resources

*Steamos, Win8, Ubuntu Benchmark-comparison of Hi-End video cards NVIDIA running Steamos, Windows 8 and Ubuntu 13.04.

*Steamdb – a list of games that already have Steamos/Linux support or will receive this support in the future.

*Co-up me-self-promotion: D, in fact there are plans for the future for the development of the resource. In particular, soon in a convenient form you can see the categories of the game, which are available for all three platforms, including Steamos/Linux.

Bottom line, conclusion

Based on the above, I want to draw a number of conclusions that I consider it necessary to divide into several groups:

Performance

Already at the stage of Stamos, the Windows 7 and Windows 8 PC flags are well kept against the flagships (see information above), however, in a number of tests, it is still inferior to them in speed. This aspect applies only to gaming topics. In a number of other tests, even standard versions of distributions are strong and rigid competition of Microsoft products. The results of the performance tests are such that the first place goes to Windows 7, but in the future the situation may change.

User-Friedly

Despite the fact that many people consider Linux the axis not for “housewives”, I do not agree with this aspect, since the enthusiastic users will ultimately accumulate experience and knowledge, and housewives and Windows/Linux/Mac are treated equally successful – with the help of a person who tunes them up. Only the category of people remains who are really too lazy to deal with something new and difficult. I tried to play the role of such a person when assessing user friendly characteristics. In general, Steamos in a freshly established state is quite simple, and the configuration of different sound settings/network and other components is conveniently made, although the usual start is absent here. Ergonomics questions are also observed. As a result, it is difficult to compare Windows 7, Windows 8 and Steamos (mostly it is GNOME-SHELL as WM/De, for those who are aware of what it is), so let users choose the winner in this category.

Complete

Without long reasoning in the nomination “Game Assembly” the platform wins the Windows, but in the nomination “Sophota equipment”, it is somewhat more difficult to give an objective assessment. There are a lot of subtleties and situations when the positive aspects become negative and vice versa, in the work of both Windows and Linux. In general, for an amateur, to put everything in a row, the choice will be for Windows, and for the average user who does not need to perform thousands of different actions and who has already stopped studying at a technical university, the victory will remain for Linux.

Possibilities

Not the most important feature of Linux, but the one that I really love – with a full upgrade of iron there is no need to reinstall the operating system again. When moving from Core 2 Quad 6600 to i7 4770k, I had to reinstall Windows 7 for the already familiar reason for the impossibility of loading it, and all Linux, as if nothing had happened, continued to work without any serious changes.
Therefore, when updating the Steam Machine, it will not be needed and the future owners will not be to suffer about this.

The features themselves, which linux in the field of software and technology can boast of several large articles. I will try to list precisely those that I myself used:

* Network broadcast of the audio flow – in fact it is Realtime Sound Streaming to another computer, I personally used this opportunity when I watched films from the laptop and listened to them from the speakers connected to another computer. Not the coolest feature, in my opinion, but I liked it.

* Many desktops – or working spaces, who is convenient for whom. Everyone who at least once used Linux’s workstations or participated in the debate about features, probably heard about this. The point is that the workspace is divided into several areas and thanks to this you can use a certain number of applications in each area. The possibility is very convenient, it is very missing in Windows 7.

*Convenient environment for technically savvy people. Sometimes in Windows without special fiber or Google not to figure out why the game or application does not start if the program itself does not provide for any convenient logs. Everything is an order of magnitude better here. Of course, the feature is not for an ordinary user, but I also often lack it in Windows environment.

*Console. For those who prescribe -dev -console for Dota2, TF2, HL2, L4D/L4D2 and other Valve products, for those who remember the configures for Quake 3 and who did not scare to write something intelligible in the game console, for those Linux consoles can be considered as a very steep feature that creates miracles. I also lack it somewhat surrounded by any Windows.

*The flexibility of the user environment is a feature that again I lack in Windows. Although there are a large number of customizers for Windows, in general they look like: “Oh, I found an extra memory, son”. I saw for all my computer experience and changed the set of WM, de and in general I liked it. Not a critical feature, but still present.

*The flexibility of the systemic environment – for the most part, I used the transfer of the system from one section to another, as well as the expansion of the base system by throwing system folders into other logical sections. And all this works and worked (though in the current configuration, the distributions using Systemd have lost this opportunity, but this does not apply to Ubuntu/Debian/Steamos/Gentoo at the moment).

*Small internal features – the most successful hack that I remember was the savings of the place when working with
Diablo 2 Lord of Destruption and many mods. The bottom line was that each mod had its own environment DLL files and bags with textures and other good. Using symbolic links, I managed to save a lot of space and get several versions of Diablo 2.

The list of these features can continue any Linux environment user, and I can confidently say that this is why Linux users love and use this particular OS.
Unfortunately, all this is true only for enthusiastic people, so if you are a housewife or a person who needs everything right here and now – the foregoing for you may never find meaning.

Despite the fact that only experienced people can use these features for a long time and for a long time for a long time and for a long time, so the threshold of entering the ranks of confident Linux users is very high.

Conclusion

In an attempt to be as objective as possible (and, I hope, I succeeded), I tested a number of large, highly loaded projects on two pillars of gaming iron: AMD And NVIDIA. Of course, it is too early to put an end to this, since it is necessary to test the Mid-End iron in order to make full opinion about stability, development prospects and other factors, but now you can summarize and share your personal opinion.

If they ask me what I prefer: the console or Steam Machine – I will answer that I prefer Steam Machine, despite the fact that the situation around it is now much more foggy than around the Sony and Microsoft consoles. In addition, the PC is more attractive to me, and Steam Machine is a PC, albeit a little and cut, but it will not be increased.

If they ask me whether it is worth buying Steam Machine or collecting yourself and putting Steamos yourself, I will answer – buy Steam Machine, namely, then the iron that was on CES 2014, for $ 500. If not, it is better to collect it yourself, but most likely it will turn out even more expensive.

If they ask me whether it is worth installing myself Steamos, I will answer: try to try. Even if you are a completely newcomer, it will add a little experience to you, although I warned above that at this stage it is better for beginners to wait for a stable release. Even if you don’t like Steamos/Linux – you don’t lose anything, Steamos is free and free.

If they ask me about whether I will change Ubuntu on Steamos, I will answer – yes, but a little later. In fact, Ubuntu was installed as a game Linux, now she was replaced by Steamos, and I like it more in my standard configuration. The only “pain” that I experienced is still a small size of the repository, but according to the assurances of the developers, it will be increased and I can use all the software I need.

If they tell me that Linux is not able to shoot and in general all these Unix/Linux are the periphery, then I will answer:

And add: Deal with it, Valve’s success depends on many factors, I want to believe that Valve is able to repeat Google experience and will be able to compete with Sony and Microsoft on an equal footing.

Steamos, Steam Machine, Steam Controller And Valve Now they are doing exactly what I have long dreamed of – an open game platform, and I really want them to succeed, because, as Gabe himself said:

The Internet is Super Smart. IF YOU Do SOMETHING THAT IS COOL, That’s Actually Worth PEOPLE’S TIME,
They’ll Adopt it. IF YOU Do SOMETHOTH THIS NOT COOL and SUCKS, YOU CAN SPENDA AS MANYA Marketing Dollars as You Want, [They] Just Won ‘.

The Internet is very smart. If you are doing something that is really cool, and it is worth it to spend time on this, then they will accept it.
If you are doing something not cool or completely split, you can spend as much money on marketing as you like,
But it won’t work.

I want to thank the following people who took part in the publication of this article:
* Siberiancat – correction, spelling
* Homemade – correction, spelling, punctuation.