SteamOS Beta 126 Better Handles XBMC

[leech]

I'm having a hard time understanding why one would use a web server or database server on a gaming OS.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be installable -- or even easily installable -- but isn't this something that should be maintained in some kind of universe repo rather than maintained by Valve themselves? Kind of like how Linux 4 Tegra, etc. work?

Valve doesn't maintain such things, they probably just sync the majority of software from Debian themselves. I wouldn't be wise do do otherwise. Though it could be that they just sync over the sources and have an automated way to change the naming scheme of the .deb file as they're created on Valve's build server(s).

[stiiixy]

I'm having a hard time understanding why one would use a web server or database server on a gaming OS.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be installable -- or even easily installable -- but isn't this something that should be maintained in some kind of universe repo rather than maintained by Valve themselves? Kind of like how Linux 4 Tegra, etc. work?

At least where XMBC/Kodi lies, it's more about the meta-data integration. All your movie and TV show info along with your game stuff's is just simplicity. Having the webserver means it, and various other media-centre services are accessible anywhere, obviously. Also, a lot of the remote stuff, like soft-remotes, relies on a webserver. So if Steam start supplying this stuff in their OS too, they might be trying to do the same thing as Kodi.

[johnc]

I'm having a hard time understanding why one would use a web server or database server on a gaming OS.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be installable -- or even easily installable -- but isn't this something that should be maintained in some kind of universe repo rather than maintained by Valve themselves? Kind of like how Linux 4 Tegra, etc. work?

[doom_Oo7]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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?