Valve Set To Debut SteamOS Linux Today

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Valve Set To Debut SteamOS Linux Today

If all goes according to plan, Valve will be making publicly available their Linux-based SteamOS platform in a matter of hours...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU0MjY

[johnc]

I'm not very familiar with chroot stuff. But would there be a way to install SteamOS in a chroot in, say, Ubuntu, kind of like you can with ChromeOS and Crouton? (As opposed to setting up a second partition and rebooting, etc.)

[BSDude]

I'm not very familiar with chroot stuff. But would there be a way to install SteamOS in a chroot in, say, Ubuntu, kind of like you can with ChromeOS and Crouton? (As opposed to setting up a second partition and rebooting, etc.)

use a jail but seriously you can use "lxc" - linux containers, I think.

[ssokolow]

I'm not very familiar with chroot stuff. But would there be a way to install SteamOS in a chroot in, say, Ubuntu, kind of like you can with ChromeOS and Crouton? (As opposed to setting up a second partition and rebooting, etc.)

As long as the host kernel satisfies the requirements of the chrooted distro and the two distros aren't using incompatible userland bits (eg. the outer one using systemd to manage access to the cgroups system while the inner one wants to use cgmanager or vice-versa), you can run any distro in a chroot on another.

The real question is how much work it'll be to set up. (With Gentoo and APT-based distros being the simplest to install in a chroot since the officially-documented way to install Gentoo on outside a chroot involves booting off a LiveCD, unpacking a tarball, and chrooting to your hard drive while APT-based distros can use the debootstrap tool)

If the only officially-supported way to set up a distro is by booting off an install image and running an installer, it can get quite hairy sometimes. (Especially if the installer does a lot of configuration that won't be autodetected to new values if you install into something like VirtualBox and then transplant the installed files into a chroot.)

[justmy2cents]

I'm not very familiar with chroot stuff. But would there be a way to install SteamOS in a chroot in, say, Ubuntu, kind of like you can with ChromeOS and Crouton? (As opposed to setting up a second partition and rebooting, etc.)

why not simply set up steam on your distro? steamos is for ppl who have dedicated gaming machines and want to have 2 things
- everything just works
- work and games are separated
i personally will either build rig to exact valve specs and put steamos on it or i'll buy steambox and run steamos there. absolutely no point in using steamos otherwise

[d2kx]

No need for chroot etc.:

http://steamdb.info/static/img/blog/34/settings_interface.png

[Figueiredo]

What I want to know is when should we expect source code to be available.

To me, if the Steam OS improvements to the stack are pushed upstream, pretty much any distro with reasonably updated packages and the steam client installed on top should perform very closely to the SteamOS, beyond providing that extra desktop functionality steam os lacks, right?

[stiiixy]

why not simply set up steam on your distro? steamos is for ppl who have dedicated gaming machines and want to have 2 things
- everything just works
- work and games are separated
i personally will either build rig to exact valve specs and put steamos on it or i'll buy steambox and run steamos there. absolutely no point in using steamos otherwise

That's your opinion, and I happen to not agree with what appears to me to be a black and white outlook. I would normally do the same for people wanting to get in on Steam-ness, but for myself, family and friends, I would allow a little more leniency and customise a machine more to their gaming and media digestve desire's. SteamOS may be targeted towards big-arse games, but there will be a plethora of low-end games (indie-much!) that will more than satisfy the needs of the casual gamer who likes to browse the big-app stores. And re-using hardware is a good thing for the planet. Steam is first in linux (Android notwithstanding) with the app stores now and it'll hopefully pull in heaps more waves of people interested in freeing themselves from the regular consoles lock-in which makes their games redundant forcefully.

Hopefully SteamOS will make some waves. I'm not hedging it to be the massive game changer everyone's making it out to be just yet, but it'll be a damn fine platform that will steadily grow, ESPECIALLY because of its openness, fairness and future-proofing. In the meantime, I'll happily reboot in to it on the lappy for the full experience when not doing work.

[justmy2cents]

That's your opinion, and I happen to not agree with what appears to me to be a black and white outlook. I would normally do the same for people wanting to get in on Steam-ness, but for myself, family and friends, I would allow a little more leniency and customise a machine more to their gaming and media digestve desire's. SteamOS may be targeted towards big-arse games, but there will be a plethora of low-end games (indie-much!) that will more than satisfy the needs of the casual gamer who likes to browse the big-app stores. And re-using hardware is a good thing for the planet. Steam is first in linux (Android notwithstanding) with the app stores now and it'll hopefully pull in heaps more waves of people interested in freeing themselves from the regular consoles lock-in which makes their games redundant forcefully.

Hopefully SteamOS will make some waves. I'm not hedging it to be the massive game changer everyone's making it out to be just yet, but it'll be a damn fine platform that will steadily grow, ESPECIALLY because of its openness, fairness and future-proofing. In the meantime, I'll happily reboot in to it on the lappy for the full experience when not doing work.

well, you're wrong in one thing. it is not my opinion, it's just how it is. it was always told that Steam+distro will be equal in any aspect as far as games go to what SteamOS only does for gaming as long as distro is following valve guidelines set by steamos. only difference i see is that if you run it in SteamOS you're bound to use BPM and you're not distracted by anything. as soon as you run it in any container mode you can kiss goodbye any kind of optimization that SteamOS brings against steam+distro, in fact your steam footprint probably became even larger.

the only thing that you get if you run on SteamOS is the fact that it will probably be long term "just works" solution. and the only thing you get with steambox compared to self made rig is defacto certified hardware. but, that doesn't mean it will work better. your gaming rig could as well perform 10x better than steambox if you put it together carefully with linux in mind and steam+distro could also work better if that distro added some personal touches that make games run better. well, steambox+steamos will probably have one more thing... you plug it in and play which can't be said for usual PC. so far not one notebook i had (with any OS) it never even come close to console way of just plugging it in and playing.

SteamOS is probably made as it is for 2 reasons:
- as small footprint as possible which makes much simpler guidelines for other distros to follow
- to satisfy ppl like me. for me it is console or nothing where i don't even want any option to be otherwise

as far as last paragraph, i couldn't agree more. it is the reason why i'm jumping ship from PS to steam. being linux enthusiast and avid gamer nothing could make me happier than linux based open console.

p.s. if my 1st answer sounded dismissive, it was not. english is not my native language so i sometimes word it harshly without realizing

[ext73]

what can I say

http://repo.steampowered.com/hometest/dists/stable/steam/binary-amd64/Packages