The SteamBox Countdown Is Complete

[Skrapion]

I'd be surprised if X or Wayland were first-class citizens on SteamOS. A Steam appliance doesn't need a full desktop. DirectFB would make much more sense.

[boxie]

To be honest - I am excited about this - the HTPC might be making a switch from win7

[Krysto]

Anyone else disappointed that Mir wasn't ready in time for this, and that now it has to come with X.org? If they ever more to Mir or Wayland down the line, they will have to drop support for X.org games, or the devs will have to rewrite them, right?

[log0]

Anyone else disappointed that Mir wasn't ready in time for this, and that now it has to come with X.org? If they ever more to Mir or Wayland down the line, they will have to drop support for X.org games, or the devs will have to rewrite them, right?

Not if the games are linking dynamically against some wrapper lib, like SDL for example.

[blackout23]

Anyone else disappointed that Mir wasn't ready in time for this, and that now it has to come with X.org? If they ever more to Mir or Wayland down the line, they will have to drop support for X.org games, or the devs will have to rewrite them, right?

No you don't write games for X. You write games for SDL which doesn't care about your display server. Like this:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTQyMjQ

Fullscreen applications bypass the display server anyway and write into the GPUs framebuffer.

[ACiD]

I pretty much agree with your post, but this, I need to point out, is a contradiction. A PC enthusiast that doesn't bother reading before testing anything (this means, you should actually check support for your hardware, and have a basic understanding of its situation) is either not really an enthusiast, or severely stupid.

Eeeek! Wrong!

On windows you don't have such a problem since no manufacturer is dumb enough to release hardware without OS support.

[Adarion]

Probably 2 more things to discover.
Well, sounds like a good idea from Valve. Esp. game streaming sounds clever so you can run Linux on the box and could stream a W32 game if it is not yet ported to Linux. I'll be watching that progress. I was always sceptic about Steam (I like some of their games a lot (L4D-Series, HL-Series)) because of the DRM and online connections. (Not that a community is bad, it's just the DRM and possible privacy violation aspect for me.) But as is seems Valve might actually bring Linux forward in terms of gaming and help with some major bricks for the new house.

[aidendaniel]

"...that already has thousands of compatible games".
Steam only had around 200 Linux compatible games last I checked?

[benmoran]

If streaming from the Windows version of Steam in Wine works out, it might be a solution to those people who want Wine support in Steam. Assuming they're going to let you have both clients open, as it sounds like you would need for the streaming to work anyhow.

If it works out, I can see myself putting a box in the closet for streaming my old Windows library to my main Linux machine.

[blackout23]

If streaming from the Windows version of Steam in Wine works out, it might be a solution to those people who want Wine support in Steam. Assuming they're going to let you have both clients open, as it sounds like you would need for the streaming to work anyhow.

If it works out, I can see myself putting a box in the closet for streaming my old Windows library to my main Linux machine.

I was thinking about that, too. I don't think the streaming capability will be limited to Steam OS. I'm quite sure that Windows PC -> Linux PC will also be possible. I'm just worried about the bandwidth requirements. Not everyone has Gigabit Ethernet LAN at home. Some are using WLAN or ethernet over powergrid which has limited bandwidth and stability.