SteamOS Beta 126 Better Handles XBMC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: SteamOS Beta 126 Better Handles XBMC

Valve has pushed another update out to SteamOS, with this time around there being benefits to fans of the XBMC multimedia software...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc1MzY

[stiiixy]

I just remembered I have a HTPC, Skymaster Rii, OpenElec and this came along. I fancy a run on my new 4K telly with some (underperforming I must say, but I dont care, it works!) Civ5!

I really need to sit down and work out how SteamOS is going to fit in to the whole of my network scene.

[leech]

I just remembered I have a HTPC, Skymaster Rii, OpenElec and this came along. I fancy a run on my new 4K telly with some (underperforming I must say, but I dont care, it works!) Civ5!

I really need to sit down and work out how SteamOS is going to fit in to the whole of my network scene.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to end up building a new box for my living room. My current HTPC isn't really used, because for some reason nVidia saw fit to screw up the ION Chipset, and it's a nightmare to get the sound to work through HDMI out at all with newer drivers. So either I'm stuck with an older distribution, which does indeed output sound, but the channels need to be remapped so they are correct, or I get no sound at all, and would probably need to end up using one of the other sound connectors (which defeats half the purpose of hdmi in the first place).

[kaprikawn]

...mysql-5.5 - upstream security fixes CVE-2014-2494, CVE-2014-4207...

Huh? Shouldn't they be on mariadb? Or is it just time lag because of Debian being conservative?

[somini]

Huh? Shouldn't they be on mariadb? Or is it just time lag because of Debian being conservative?

Probably they only tested their software in mysql. If it ain't broken don't fix it.

[johnc]

It's kind of weird to see them spending resources on keeping things like apache2 and mysql up to date in their repos.

Is this really the best way to make a gaming OS?

[kpedersen]

It's kind of weird to see them spending resources on keeping things like apache2 and mysql up to date in their repos.

Is this really the best way to make a gaming OS?

I kinda like the idea that SteamOS is currently a pretty standard Linux environment. The world doesn't really need another "unique" platform, requiring bespoke code and oodles of vendor lockin. Apache and MySQL just happen to be quite typical on the Linux platform and I wouldnt be suprised if it was a weak dependency from some other software in the base install.

Depending on how close to upstream they are intending to stay, Apache and MySQL probably do not need too many vendor specific patches to keep up to date. Much better to do smaller incremental changes than one much larger port if they do decide to one day need it.

But no, I cannot think of a game that has really used either of these technologies past perhaps the development stage.

[computerquip]

It's probably cheap to keep such packages up to date since they're copy and pasted from upstream. There's no reason to estrange the environment just because it doesn't fit the exact purpose it's meant for.

However, I can actually picture using SteamOS as a server, since the server software for TF2, L4D, etc. works on Linux.

[Nobu]

I think I remember a dependency on MySQL, or maybe Postgresql, the last time I tried setting up XBMC. I could be thinking of something else though, that was a while back.

[doom_Oo7]

You can use an MySQL backend for XBMC so yep, it's not pointless.