What's Your Hopes From Valve's SteamOS?

[AJSB]

This is what i think SteamOS will be...

For me, SteamOS will be something like this:

1) Steam will be Gaming centered....but don't be afraid...read on...

2) Installation process in already existing machines will use the Big Picture concept...
The user also will be very limited in the number of options and info needed to be provided that its needed to install it...this is a very good thing in special for Win Users / Linux Newbies (notice i don't call them Noobs... people sometimes confuse both thinking are the same, they aren't...a Newbie is someone new to a thing but that wants to learn about it....a Noob is someone new to a thing and that refuses/discards/makes_a_mockery_about learning about it)

3) Boot will go straight to Big Picture mode...
In this mode it WON'T use X, Mir, Wayland , WHATEVER...its all about gaming maybe with some special new app from Valve/3rd party for Music, Movies (i'm thinking Amazon (possibly), iTunes(don't think so) , NetFlix or similar here)...

4) ...but in that Big Picture mode will be there an option to shutdown BPM and go to regular X (for now) plus Gnome/XFCE/whatever to work ALMOST as a standard Linux machine...in this mode it probably will use FLOSS graphic drivers...it will HOWEVER, have limited "command line" (i use this expression because Window$ users ) capacity if any at all to prevent newbies / noobs from screw up installation ...or maybe it will...
This is the mode for you install/use things like LibreOffice and the like


5) As for Web browsing, email, etc. i dunno if it will be in part of regular Linux session or if it will be integrated in Big Picture...possibly the later and as it will possibly be also DVD playback


6) Talking about video drivers...i wonder if is possible AMD/NVIDIA blobs in big Picture mode and then switch to FLOSS for Linux Regular Mode...
As for distribution of blobs...they could be installed from a 2nd (ISO) disk (image) or directly from the Net avoiding any GPL problems...
Or... maybe by launch time FLOSS drivers are in a adequate state of performance ? i doubt....but they sure had improve lately and because console will only ship next year or so it seems, it might be possible...
AMD seemed to be hiring new blood in their official Linux driver team or so i think i understood about sometime ago news...


As for SteamBox machines...
Yes, it will use an APU from AMD or APU-like from Intel (Intel kinda have now also APUs).
I pretty much doubt it will have a regular GPU...

In any case, there should be some *clearly recommended minimum* hardware guide lines to any one interested to build (their own) SteamBox hardware...

[Figueiredo]

It seemes AMD has some new interesting linux anouncement on the Hawaii event later today. Coincidentally, the same day of the second Valve Steambox anoucement.

[AJSB]

It seemes AMD has some new interesting linux anouncement on the Hawaii event later today. Coincidentally, the same day of the second Valve Steambox anoucement.

I edited my previous post with some info about it....but after all i was based in a Tweet from 7 days ago and i remove it because i started to think was related to Monday announcement...but yeah, itwas based in a Tweet from someone from AMD

[Figueiredo]

The plot thickens

[BreezeDM]

The plot thickens

I got as far as

A supposed Valve Software employee has jumped on popular site 4chan

then closed the browser window.

[forgiver]

I got as far as then closed the browser window.

You missed out. It was a good read.

[mitcoes]

200 USD can be

Today I have just read about 1 online TB FREE FOR LIFE from spotbros

So perhaps with a small 64 Gb SDD plus 4Gb of RAM and the 100 USD Intel Atom box ...

You can have a pretty good 200 USD gaming console

But AMD with their SoCs also can do that price and AMD is the same hardware than consoles

Of course this 200 USD box would be a cheap minimum specs that would be so good that ...

perhaps would end at some desktops as PCs

[yogi_berra]

You missed out. It was a good read.

Almost as good a read as this and just as reliable as this. You ought to know better by now.

[Britoid]

From http://repo.steampowered.com/hometes...amd64/Packages it looks like it's using Ubuntu 12.04, X.org and nVidia/AMDs blobs.

I look forward to having a broken console every time I update my GPU drivers!

[ArneBab]

My hope is that this will get more game developers working on GNU/Linux ports, so they experience firsthand the positive sides of free software.