I think I’ve sunk 200 hours into tetris this year alone, I have it on like 4 systems including my SP handheld clone
Edit: my phrasing here was unclear, there effect connected has not been ported to portmaster or the ports collection, I use Tetris RR, a custom patched og GB tetris to have all the same amenities (hold, hard drop) as modern tetris.
If you like tetris and want tetris RR, find a GB tetris ROM and patch it yourself
A link to the Romhack (for the mods, this is a link to the patch, not the rom, i know VL has pirate content but this aint it, it does however have a link to their archive, where the rom does exist) vimm.net/romhacking/hacks/5813
In all honesty, Rainbow Six: Siege is as ungrindy as any game could be, and it is as endlessly replayable as there are combinations of all the active players. The whole game is about finding ways to use the deep sandbox to outsmart your opponent, utilizing yours and your teammates abilities in unique combinations and it’s wonderful
For the average technology user yes. Software needs to come packaged in a way people recognise and can use without much setting up needed. I know there are many distros out there that do this. The average person using a computer however does not.
not going to be a steam OS user, but its less what you can’t, and more that any changes that valve patches in via their efforts on AMD drivers, users would get it first and without any fuss.
One example is HDR support. various distros and DEs kinda sat on HDR for the longest time, with mixed results on implementation. Valve just walks in and implements it.
Approachability. Valve is a recognizable name and the Steam Deck is notoriously usable in the sea of Linux uncertainty.
Before you say “Linux is totally usable, just look at <examples>” the first question people are prompted with is “What distribution do you want to install?” and there is no singular place that says “this is what you want for this specific use case.”
Valve is not the first name in Linux gaming, but they are a known and trusted name. It’s not just about brand recognition but about trusting a name to guide you through something brand new and extremely daunting. For the vast majority of PC gamers, SteamOS offers a guided introduction to something that previously was stereotyped as complex and difficult to learn.
Is it the best distro? Probably not, but then again it’s extremely easy to migrate from SteamOS to something else when someone discovers they want something else. Until they understand enough about Linux to find that they want something else, SteamOS is currently one of the best ways to get them there
Approachability. Valve is a recognizable name and the Steam Deck is notoriously usable in the sea of Linux uncertainty.
It’s very usable for a handheld gaming platform. It really isn’t any better for a desktop platform. The thing that makes it so usable is that you boot it and it boots into Steam Big Picture, and you don’t see the desktop. Most users never will. Is that how people are going to want their desktop to work though? Probably not. They probably don’t want to only use Steam. They probably want to use other applications too.
I don’t think it’s about having extra functionality to no one else has.
SteamOS is more restrictive than other distros out of the box. A user with no experience whatsoever would have a harder time messing things up because rootfs is RO and gets wiped on every update. Kinda forces the average user into using flatpak/Discover to mimic Windows and Apple app stores. In other words, it’s all about the psychology, not the distro itself.
Not to mention there is an actual company with an incentive to maintain the distro, with a massive focus on gaming. They have a ton of testing resources that a lot of distro maintainers do not have in that regard.
Having said all that, installing a distro other SteamOS on my Steam Deck was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’ve been using Linux for 32 years, I do not like SteamOS because they are trying to make it dumb for general consumption. Similar reasons why I despise Windows, besides the whole being owned by Microsoft thing.
Right, but it’s a different distro than the one being referred to here. I know because I made the same mistake.
That one is based on Debian and has existed since 2013. The version on Steam Deck is Arch-based immutable and has not been publicly released yet (EDIT: For anything besides Steam Deck).
Yes, as I said in my initial comment, there is no general purpose release.
It’s not true that you can “literally only use it on Steam Deck” either, lots of people have already demonstrated it working fine on a wide variety of devices. It’s just not intended for that purpose.
The new version on the Steam Deck isn’t available - the old version of course is, but you might as well use Bazzite.
I dont think Valve would bother trying to convert people to Linux - regardless of where people’s OSes are, they are the gaming store. Plus, Valve really doesn’t think developers should develop Linux native ports, so I dont think they’re really push people to use Linux - just use whatever you want and play shit with Proton if needed.
If they wanted to “make a splash” they could have released it 3 years ago. I don’t know what they’re waiting for. With the launch of Steam Machines it was made available to everyone on day 1.
It’s not as simple as just releasing something. They need to develop it first, and making it a good experience with arbitrary hardware is actually pretty hard.
Really? Which distro has a button I can press to open a menu to change the power budget on my Ryzen 5 5600? Which distro has everything configured for me to be able to use my VKB joysticks without needing to mess with the registry in the proton prefixes of Windows games?
Lol, I’d be surprised if they could do either of those things, let alone both. I know Bazzite can’t; I have it on my laptop and that shit can’t even update itself properly.
Power levels are changed via the quick access menu and input options are configured via Steam input, which doesn’t even have anything to do with the distro in question, it’s part of the Steam client.
edit: figured out how to open the quick access menu on my laptop and I can’t change my power levels. So yeah, as I suspected Bazzite can’t do either of those things. I doubt any other distro can either.
Let’s say it’s not true, Valve can choose to release a distro that is mostly-complete and add additional features later or they can update it in secret for some strange reason while sitting on it…?
It’s not simply “some strange reason”. There will be a lot of press coverage when they release a desktop version so naturally they want it to be as good an experience as possible. They may not ever get another chance for that kind of coverage after all, and they wouldn’t want SteamOS’s reputation to be damaged (again) because it wasn’t good enough for most people to use (again).
OP clearly overestimates how many people would use SteamOS or any other Linux distro for that matter. Most users are casual gamers these days, they are not changing OS just because there is a forced Windows update.
I don’t know, I think you’re clearly underestimating how many people would install Valve’s OS. The number of people with a Steam Deck that don’t know that what it’s running is a Linux distro is pretty high. The other piece to this is that it’s not just a forced Windows update for a huge chunk of users, it’s a forced device upgrade. Valve offering a free upgrade that negates the need to buy new hardware would absolutely capture people’s attention.
Yes and no, people can still use win10, it just won’t receive patches anymore. And in this particular case, my best guess is, that most people would rather use and outdated OS for a long time, rather than changing the OS altogether. Not every game is on steam, also not every non game programm is easily available for Linux. Humans are lazy.
I think that was them drawing a line on eol windows. They cut both 7 and 8.1 at the same time. Could just be the policy now.
Part of me wants them to take the opportunity to push people to switch to Linux, the other part of me thinks that will be perceived no differently from msft’s badgering about win11.
That would be quite the power move, but unfortunately Steam doesn’t hold that much power alone, I think. There are still enough games that are not on Steam. As of today , Microsoft is the biggest games publisher (with Bethesda, Blizzard, Obsidian, ID, Mojang etc. belonging to them) and there are also giants like LoL or Fortnite.
It’s hard to say. I agree, it seems like the MAU data for each of League and Fortnite is roughly the same as MAU for all of Steam (which is nuts). Of course there’s no way to know how much overlap is there. Still, both of these titles would be a hard stop for people deciding whether to switch to Linux.
As for msft themselves though, ironically I don’t know what titles they have that keep players on windows. Battle.net works on Linux, Minecraft Java ed works on Linux (not sure about bedrock ed compatibility or player count, but afaik most of those players are on non-PC platforms), all their zenimax titles are sold through steam and work great on Linux. CoD might be their biggest hold.
I disagree on number of games, but I agree on player count. The number of PC games that are not on steam (or don’t work on linux) is tiny these days. But the number of PC gamers who don’t need steam, or need something that doesn’t run on linux is probably still quite high. Still, even if valve was able to push a few % of PC gamers to Linux, that would be huge. We’re currently at 2% on Linux in steam surveys. I could see a power move by valve around win10 eol bringing that closer to 10%.
Yeah that’s true, I think the biggest hurdle are games that use anticheat that don’t work on Linux, which are afaik usually multiplayer games. So they might be able to pull gamers, that only play Singleplayer games.
No one is trying to play games on those vista machines, though. Valve pulled steam support for win 7 and 8.1 over a year ago because they were EOL. If they also pull support from win 10 once it’s EOL, then people will need to make a change to keep playing their games. If msft refuse to support existing hardware with win11, then many people will be forced to choose between buying a new laptop/PC, or trying Linux.
honestly check out archipelago, it’s a framework that allows you to play a lot of different randomized games with your friends. you can play synchronously or asynchronously, and if you’re handy with code, you can even add any game you want to it
appendix"what’s a randomizer?" a randomizer is a method of scrambling the items in a video game, while keeping it solvable, to be able to re-experience the same game with a fresh sense of progression. an easy game to think about this with is something like metroid or zelda. you need powerups to unlock certain parts of the game, but what if you could find those powerups anywhere you found a missile expansion or a chest? that’s what a randomizer is “how does that work with multiple people?” now imagine that, between you and your friend’s randomized games, the items for both games could end up in either game. if we use the metroid/zelda idea from earlier, metroid might have zelda’s boomerang, while zelda might have metroid’s morph ball. the logic to ensure the games are solvable is still there, but you might be stuck waiting until your friend finds your key item. this is called “being in burger king” or 'being bk’d"
other vocabcheck: any spot you can collect an item in a randomizer (think all collectibles and powerups in metroid, for example) burger king: when you have run out of checks of your own and are waiting for someone else to send you a critical item you need to make any meaningful progress again. named after the first multiworld randomizer, where someone was stuck for so long, they were able to go to burger king for six hours and return only to still be in the same situation
I’m not sure yet. I’m honestly impressed i could emulate it, i wasn’t expecting it to run perfectly. Now that it does though i might just do a survival world and see what i build impulsively. i might go to a super flat too and try to build a city. That was one of my favorite things to do growing up (The ‘city’ was like 3 houses and an assortment of Pixelart)
SteamOS would be a particular poor choice as a desktop operating system compared to basically any other Linux distribution. It uses an immutable file system and reverts all system changes upon every update. That’s nice if you don’t want to fuck up your handeheld gaming device with some dumb changes, but it’s generally not what you will want on a device you use for all kinds of things. Of course, with some effort you can work around this, but then, why don’t use a system that doesn’t just use such a paradigm in the first place and won’t roll back your workaround to make it usable with the next update?
I’d personally prefer to have an OS dedicating to playing, one I can’t broke by installing too many stuff or, on the hand, I could reinstall quickly without having to reinstall all the other stuff (printer, cloud syncing, etc…)
So having a multi-boot for gaming and regular (although rare) computer use. There’s a good chance I’ll still sadly have a Windows boot option for some multiplayer online games (anticheat 😐)
Fedora bluefin is a much bigger project and a much larger paradigm shift in how Linux distros can be understood than what you make out to be. Tweaking system files might be a good choice for users who need to go beyond what comes with the standard, but it’s not something a wide majority of users will or should need.
When you can easily spin up virtual operating systems with distrobox, you never need to. You might, for some hardware support reasons, need to layer in some additional packages, but I’m curious how true even that is.
As someone who uses my desktop for gaming (and maybe web browsing) exclusively, and as someone mildly but not very familiar with OSes, I read this as “SteamOS is bad because of reason I personally don’t like that many people don’t understand, so do more research about Linux”
The barrier to Linux as an OS is not how good it is but how understandable it is. After Pewdiepie’s video went up I’m confident the search phrase “Linux OS download” skyrocketed in popularity because people don’t know let alone understand what a distribution is.
SteamOS is a great intro to Linux for the majority of PC gamers because it’s not only basically ready to use as soon as you boot it up, but also because it is being maintained by a team of people intent on making it the optimal PC gaming platform.
Once Windows users are introduced to a basic Linux experience why not let them take their time learning more about the variables in distros?
Maybe SteamOS is not the perfect distribution because <list your gripes here> but is there a perfect distribution?
Maybe you don’t understand it, but that doesn’t mean you don’t rely on it. If I said an OS was unusable by 99% of people because it didn’t support multithreading, it doesn’t matter if 99% of people know what multithreading is, that’s clearly a true statement. Similarly, if you’ve ever expected your PC to have the same files on it tomorrow that you put on it today, then you might find it annoying when that’s not the case.
I read this as “SteamOS is bad because of reason I personally don’t like that many people don’t understand, so do more research about Linux”
It’s easy to dismiss this as something that won’t ever matter to you, but this is something that can cause problems in all sorts of ways even for gamers. The first thing that came to mind is not being able to install custom drivers to support weird hardware, like a racing wheel or something.
I’m not vouching for SteamOS as a permanent OS. I’m just defending the strengths of a corporation-maintained distribution of Linux as an introduction to Linux, of which I think SteamOS has many. After being introduced, I think more people will get curious about other things they can do with Linux. It’s really just that starting hump that people need to get over
Btw I appreciate the brief explanation. I was actually having trouble with that sort of thing myself on Bazzite the other day and I was curious why SteamOS differed from Fedora on some specific things.
Yeah anything I put in /home has always stayed there, and things like customizations to KDE and whatnot always persist. I’m sure it changes a bunch of system files being an immutable OS, but I really don’t think it’d be anything a layperson coming fresh from Windows would ever really notice.
bin.pol.social
Najstarsze