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SteamOS / Linux Machine thread: System buy or DIY

G

Gruso

Member
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​
This is a thread for SteamOS / Linux users. If you're interested in discussing:


  • What place SteamOS has in the market,
  • Where all the hype is,
  • Why Windows is just better and you don't need this,
Please take those discussions to existing threads such as this one or this one. The thread you're in right now is for discussing the nuts and bolts of using Linux based Steam Machines, without the clutter of OS debate and market analysis. If you're just interested in the controller, head over here.

I'll kick things off with a repost / edit of my experiments this week in both SteamOS and Xubuntu.


  • My primary rig is a Windows machine. I also have a Gigabyte Brix, running Windows until now, as a HTPC & streaming box. After receiving my Steam controller, I decided to take the plunge and see what the SteamOS environment was like on the Brix. With a quad Celeron and the lowliest of Intel graphics, the scope would be for streaming only.
The installation process is smooth and easy. Boot the machine from USB, pick Auto Install (if you want to wipe and re-use the whole disk), and watch the install happen. Eventually you're at some pretty setup screens to set your region, Steam account, etc. It does a nice job of controller prompts during this process, giving you a feel for basic navigation and text entry by the time it boots into BPM. Anyone who has used Steam streaming knows the rest; it picked up my main rig on the network and I was good to go.

If you're using a Steam controller under any OS, Steam will suggest that you switch to the beta client for the best functionality. Unfortunately beta really means beta, and it can bring little hiccups here and there. Just this week Valve broke all games that supported the controller natively - ha. But they rolled out a fix that same day. So you're choosing between hiccups, or not seeing the near-daily rollout of features, fixures and tweaks that the beta delivers. It's a reminder that we're in enthusiast, early adopter territory. But these things aside, I have to say that the console feel of SteamOS is a nice success - it just needs a little more time in the oven.


  • As mentioned, my Brix testbed also needs to be my HTPC. Media accounts for probably 90% of the machine's use. My one mistake was going into this with grand visions of using BPM as my HTPC interface, replacing my finely tuned Windows setup.
SteamOS doesn't have any media features to speak of right now, so the natural course of action is to install things like Kodi, and add them as shortcuts in Steam. This is where SteamOS starts to get difficult for people who like to tinker. You can drop back to desktop easily, but you do so as a different user. This is making good use of multiple users in Linux; in Steam you are the user 'steam' with limited permissions (good security), and at the desktop you are user 'desktop' with the ability to get effective admin rights and make system changes.

The difficulty here is that anything you install as 'desktop' is not available to you when you go back to Steam. So you can't drop back, install Kodi, then jump into Steam and add the shortcut. You need to install Kodi as 'steam', and that's not straightforward. Third party script packages like SteamOS-Tools can help you along here, giving you access to the full Debian software repos and installing things that are then accessible in Steam. I don't mind a bit of command line action, but I was finding the whole thing much more cumbersome than just using a regular version of Linux.

The above isn't a failing - it's by design. SteamOS is very stripped back and lightweight, with good reason: Speed, stability, boot times. But if you're a tinkerer who is drawn to the idea of dropping back to the desktop, know that it's a rockier road than your Ubuntu install. I also had trouble getting audio output over HDMI in desktop mode, although it was fine in Steam.


  • So I changed direction, and grabbed a fresh Xubuntu ISO.
And with Xubuntu installed, I had instant access to everything I needed for a HTPC setup. I installed Steam with sudo apt-get install steam, then added steam -silent to my startup apps, so when I boot into the desktop, Steam also starts up minimised. This means the Steam controller is functioning, allowing me to launch media stuff from my gigantic, single-click desktop icons. And by hitting the Steam button on the controller I can jump straight into Steam for some gaming.

HCpt2Tl.png
Click to expand...

Interestingly, there was a noticeable improvement in the (notoriously chuggy) BPM interface under Xubuntu. It's never going to fly high on my entry level Brix, but Xubuntu outperformed both SteamOS and Windows in UI responsiveness. A reminder, especially in the wake of recent media reports of poor SteamOS performance, that driver optimisation is a journey, not a destination.

I am truly loving my Xubuntu Steam Machine. It's not the Steam Machine for the masses, but it's the Steam HTPC that I hoped to have.

My takeaways from this experience:


  • SteamOS as a game console OS, given a little maturity, will nail what it set out to do.
  • SteamOS as a HTPC base is not recommended right now. Roll your own with Ubuntu.
  • In order to fill both roles, Steam needs a suite of media apps in the store, and a dedicated category for them in the library.

Just a tip if you go the Ubuntu route: If your Ubuntu version is older than 15.10, you will need an extra step to get the Steam controller working.
 
E

Enter the Dragon Punch

Banned
Agreed on performance. When I tried SteamOS on my PC, it was day and night between how fucking awful and choppy BPM can be.

I really hope theme support comes as soon as possible, though. Valve's UI design is ugly as sin.
 
R

ricki42

Member
I run Ubuntu MATE on my gaming PC (ran Xubuntu until 15.04 and decided I wanted to try something new), Fedora on my laptops, I don't have a Windows machine at all.
I've been thinking about building a dedicated Steam Machine, but my PC is in the living room less than 2m from the TV, so I don't really have any excuses to justify the expense.

About the Steam Controller support, I had to do that extra step also when installing 15.10, the default rules that they added only let you use it as a mouse, but not as gamepad. Unless they have updated that since, I installed 15.10 about a month ago.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Finally, a thread for the 3 of us.

About that media usage: I noticed you had just youtube and netflix on there. A added youtube, netflix and twitch to my steamos using chrome kiosk mode. With this method, any web interface can be setup as a shortcut in steamos.

And to be real.... I don't even know how it works. I just used this script:

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/ProfessorKaos64/SteamOS-Tools
cd SteamOS-Tools
./desktop-software.sh install webapp
Click to expand...

Here are two posts about it from steam forums:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/0/617336568069840473/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=446784735

Being chrome-powered, these links actually work better than most dedicated youtube/netflix apps.

.
.
.

Oh and if anyone wants to use windows without messing up their new steam machine, it looks like you can (now?) run it from an external hdd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZJpzPvqtk

Haven't tried this yet.
 
G

Gruso

Member
Yep, those media links on my desktop are Chrome links! I previously did it the same way under Windows, launching the pages in -kiosk mode so they behaved as fullscreen apps. Just need a controller button mapped to alt-f4 to close them.

As you said, under SteamOS this is best done with SteamOS-Tools, especially as it also takes care of the shortcut in BPM. But to do it in 'normal' Linux, you can just open the page in Chrome, then go Menu -> More Tools -> Add to Desktop. And voila, Netflix "app" on your desktop. To launch it in kiosk mode, right-click, Properties, find the launch command and add -kiosk to the end.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
You know about adding repos for the steamos session with compositor, right? I think I tried this once with a mint install and broke it somehow. While the some games run a bit shitty on ogl, I do like the way the compositor handles the triple buffering and overscan. That was one of the major differences I have noticed between steam for ubuntu and steamos.
 
H

Hylian7

Member
I had an old PC I was using for various purposes in the past (stuff like a small Minecraft server between my friends and I). Back when SteamOS was available in beta, I installed SteamOS on it. I use it to in-home stream games to the living room TV. Works well, especially since I can get it over a wired connection with my powerline adapters. I also have a Steam controller, so that's really opened up what I can play in the living room now.

I've played mostly Fallout 4 from the living room lately. In the past I've used it to play mainly one-screen/split screen multiplayer stuff such as Nidhogg or Rocket League, both games I introduced my girlfriend (who does not play video games other than Mario Kart) and she loved both games.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Hylian7 said:
I had an old PC I was using for various purposes in the past (stuff like a small Minecraft server between my friends and I). Back when SteamOS was available in beta, I installed SteamOS on it. I use it to in-home stream games to the living room TV. Works well, especially since I can get it over a wired connection with my powerline adapters. I also have a Steam controller, so that's really opened up what I can play in the living room now.

I've played mostly Fallout 4 from the living room lately. In the past I've used it to play mainly one-screen/split screen multiplayer stuff such as Nidhogg or Rocket League, both games I introduced my girlfriend (who does not play video games other than Mario Kart) and she loved both games.
Click to expand...

Steamos has a ways to go but it's already a good solution for the way you are using it.

I'm going to do exactly that, soon. I have some various low end parts on the way from ebay and I intend to see how small and cheap of a machine can handle the os smoothly, stream with good performance, and indie games/netflix locally. I have a few combinations to try including with/without ssd and a few different oem gpus from both red and green. I guess there's a thread to post the results in, now.
 
M

Massa

Member
Does it even support multiple Steam users on one machine? I've always been interested in checking out SteamOS but honestly everything I read about just makes me think they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to Linux. That two-account setup is a joke.
 
G

Gruso

Member
Massa said:
Does it even support multiple Steam users on one machine?
Click to expand...
Support for multiple Steam accounts is the same as in Windows (ie. not simultaneously). This is a Steam issue, not a SteamOS issue. Valve should probably be making moves in this area, given what they're competing with in the living room.

Massa said:
That two-account setup is a joke.
Click to expand...

(In case clarity is needed for other readers, we are now talking about system accounts, not Steam logins)

A Steam Machine is a console first and a Linux computer second, and a console OS needs to be fairly bomb proof. I think the multi-user approach was the right one for the job. I wanted mine to be a Linux computer first of course, which is why I went for an Ubuntu base.
 
S

Sir Abacus

Member
Anyone experimented with KVM and PCI passthrough? I tried fooling around with it about a year ago when SteamOS was shiny and new but couldn't get it working on one of my old machines. But the allure of having 100% compatibility of Windows games at near 100% native was still a tantalizing thing and I think about it still occasionally.

If I'm missing the point of the thread I apologize in advance.
 
H

Hylian7

Member
Massa said:
Does it even support multiple Steam users on one machine? I've always been interested in checking out SteamOS but honestly everything I read about just makes me think they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to Linux. That two-account setup is a joke.
Click to expand...

Not really sure what you're talking about, you can add multiple Steam accounts to it easily. Granted if you have Steam Guard on (which everyone should at this point), you have to enter the code to get into your account, but it's very simple and works.
 
M

Massa

Member
Gruso said:
Support for multiple Steam accounts is the same as in Windows (ie. not simultaneously). This is a Steam issue, not a SteamOS issue. Valve should probably be making moves in this area, given what they're competing with in the living room.



(In case clarity is needed for other readers, we are now talking about system accounts, not Steam logins)

A Steam Machine is a console first and a Linux computer second, and a console OS needs to be fairly bomb proof. I think the multi-user approach was the right one for the job. I wanted mine to be a Linux computer first of course, which is why I went for an Ubuntu base.
Click to expand...

That's my point, the way they implemented it doesn't make much sense at all. It doesn't make it a better "console" but it makes it a much worse computer. It's a baffling decision. You have an extremely basic use-case for this thing and even that wasn't satisfied by SteamOS.

Hylian7 said:
Not really sure what you're talking about, you can add multiple Steam accounts to it easily. Granted if you have Steam Guard on (which everyone should at this point), you have to enter the code to get into your account, but it's very simple and works.
Click to expand...

Linux, Windows and OS X are multi-user OS's where multiple people can have their Steam accounts and games installed independently of each other. SteamOS is not. Why? Just because, it doesn't make it better, faster, more secure or anything of the sort.
 
G

Gruso

Member
Right, I wasn't quite sure what you were driving at, but I understand the limitations you're talking about now. Lack of multiple library paths, and lack of alternate system logins mean that your save data or game configs can be overwritten by the next Steam account. That can be a problem under any OS depending on where game devs store this stuff ( game install folder / system user folder / steam user folder / cloud ) but other OSes give you the ability to segregate everything.

I think Valve will address it at some point, whether it's by enabling additional system logins, or just pulling some trickery to separate data by Steam account. And they could do it without breaking the desktop-steam account system (which I maintain is a sensible system :p).
 
O

orava

Member
Does xubuntu/xfce still have that horrible compositor as default? I never got the screen tearing fixed entirely.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Massa said:
That's my point, the way they implemented it doesn't make much sense at all. It doesn't make it a better "console" but it makes it a much worse computer. It's a baffling decision. You have an extremely basic use-case for this thing and even that wasn't satisfied by SteamOS.

Linux, Windows and OS X are multi-user OS's where multiple people can have their Steam accounts and games installed independently of each other. SteamOS is not. Why? Just because, it doesn't make it better, faster, more secure or anything of the sort.
Click to expand...

I see what you're saying. This is one of my complaints, too. But I want it to stay under the same user account, otherwise every game needs to be doewnloaded and installed for every user. the only hiccup now is that many pc games assume the pc is not shared, and don't offer separate settings and saves for different steam accounts logging in. Some games can handle it an then it all works.
 
G

g23

European pre-madonna
Crayon said:
Finally, a thread for the 3 of us.

About that media usage: I noticed you had just youtube and netflix on there. A added youtube, netflix and twitch to my steamos using chrome kiosk mode. With this method, any web interface can be setup as a shortcut in steamos.

And to be real.... I don't even know how it works. I just used this script:



Here are two posts about it from steam forums:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/0/617336568069840473/

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=446784735

Being chrome-powered, these links actually work better than most dedicated youtube/netflix apps.

.
.
.

Oh and if anyone wants to use windows without messing up their new steam machine, it looks like you can (now?) run it from an external hdd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZJpzPvqtk

Haven't tried this yet.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the Vid! Been looking for a way to install windows on my steam machine.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Hi guys.

I've tried the using steam bpm with *buntu, and I've used steamos. And I definitely prefer steamos for a shared/family tv setup at this point, but I was looking for something that could be better and for thel last few days I've been using the steamos compositor and modeswitch inhibitor packages.

Steamos compositor

And the modeswitch inhibitor

I used gdebi in the new ubuntu-gnome 15.10 (like this alot) to install these debs with no incident. Steamos sessions can be sellected from your login.

To return to login, you will need to use a termial and restart x manually. for example in buntu/gmone:

ctr+alt+f1

(login)
(password)
$ sudo service gdm restart
(password)

That will get back to the login screen quickly. Note in this example, gdm is the manager that comes with gnome. Alot of distros use lightdm, tho.

I like this because

I like the effect of the compositor, which lets me turn off vsync in my games and I like setting the overscan globally for a tv. And I'm not gonna lie, I really enjoy the smoother application switching I think it helps with the console charade.

It's easeier to manage non-steam games and other things with a system I'm familiar with.

and it's nice to see the system can run on top of other distros for more options.

It's a pretty usuable setup depending on the situation. Tbh, tho I realised what I really wanted was to just login to the desktop on steamos as the steam user. I still have not got to trying that.

It seems that loging in as the steam user is only a matter of assigning a password and then editing the lightdm.conf. This may achieve what I ultimatly was looking for in fewer steps, but other's may like the results of the steamos-session experiment.

*I should also mention that I found that steam client and steam controller both required little fixes on this latest ubuntu

here's the steam client fix in terminal commands:

cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak

and steam controller fix:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/steam-controller-on-ubuntu-a-tweak-you-need-to-do.6081/page=3
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
There was an update about Vulkan today:

from: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/khronos-gives-an-official-update-on-vulkan.6396

Vulkan Working Group Update - December 18th 2015

We have some good news and some bad news. The year-end target release date for Vulkan will not be met. However, we are in the home stretch and the release of Vulkan 1.0 is imminent!
Click to expand...

I'd be really interested in a vulkan update for ark. That's the one game that is just kinda unplayable on my system. Otherwise, I'm more interested in the promised easy off-windows ports than the performance advantage. Vulkan may be the reason we're getting street fighter 5 on linux/sos, for instance.
 
J

JMTHEFOX

Member
Crayon said:
There was an update about Vulkan today:

from: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/khronos-gives-an-official-update-on-vulkan.6396



I'd be really interested in a vulkan update for ark. That's the one game that is just kinda unplayable on my system. Otherwise, I'm more interested in the promised easy off-windows ports than the performance advantage. Vulkan may be the reason we're getting street fighter 5 on linux/sos, for instance.
Click to expand...

Oh man, I hope Unreal 4 and Unity 5 get Vulkan support ASAP!
 
R

ricki42

Member
Crayon said:
*I should also mention that I found that steam client and steam controller both required little fixes on this latest ubuntu

here's the steam client fix in terminal commands:

cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/i386/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
cd $HOME/.steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/amd64/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
mv libstdc++.so.6 libstdc++.so.6.bak
Click to expand...

Which version of Ubuntu are you using? I didn't have to do this when I installed Steam, running Ubuntu-MATE 15.10.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
ricki42 said:
Which version of Ubuntu are you using? I didn't have to do this when I installed Steam, running Ubuntu-MATE 15.10.
Click to expand...

Ubuntu Gnome 15.10. Now that you mention it, I installed steam just fine on mint machine just last week. Hmm....
 
G

Gruso

Member
A good, honest roundup of SteamOS progress. I've just posted the intro here - the rest is at the link:

BoilingSteam.com said:
It’s been more than 5 months now that I wrote about my experience with SteamOS Brewmaster (2.0), and since then there were many changes and slight improvements that deserve a new post. If you want a TDLR from my previous article, here’s a quick bullet point summary:


  • Overall: I found SteamOS to be pretty great as an experience. Games launch fast, drivers are already included and get auto-updates. It’s seamless in many ways. Vsync issues from the desktop Linux Client are pretty much gone, too.
  • Issue: The catalog used to show Windows Games.
  • Issue: The Xbox360 controller had a blinking light (not the proper behaviour).
  • Issue: Some games were broken and did not work with SteamOS at all.
  • Issue: There were some crashes when going in the Specials menu.
  • Nice to have: auto-setup for games configuration.
  • Nice to have: More AAA games. Nothing specific to SteamOS, of course.
  • Nice to have: Local video player.
Since then, the Steam Machines launched (with bad press), SteamOS was released as a stable distribution, and patches have been delivered fairly rapidly – even the interface was improved, even though that’s basically very much on the client side. The current stable version at the time of writing is 2.49. So, is it all good yet ?

Well… not yet.

It’s still getting better, but there are still many things to fix and improve. Don’t mistake the following for a hate post about SteamOS – it’s not. I am very much enjoying SteamOS every single day, I just wish Valve and Collabora and whoever else is involved manage to fix and improve the existing base and iterate further.

I’ll start with the aspects that have improved so far:
Click to expand...

http://boilingsteam.com/steamos-how-it-changed-since-last-august/
 
Mr Nash

Mr Nash

square pies = communism
I have Ubuntu on one of my systems as something for fiddling around with Linux. It's interesting, and I'm really glad that so many of my Steam games work on it. Now I just need to figure out how to get my printer to work on it. =S
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Gruso said:
A good, honest roundup of SteamOS progress. I've just posted the intro here - the rest is at the link:



http://boilingsteam.com/steamos-how-it-changed-since-last-august/
Click to expand...

Good overview. The store filter not working right is weird because they had that fixed for a bit a few weeks ago. Other than that, I've had no problems that weren't due to the (beta) client itself. There are 2 or 3 games (out of my 120) that don't start but I have not investigated those so I'm not sure the os is the cause. Mount & Blade Definitely stopped working for a week due to an update that broke it for linux on old amd cpus.

Overall it's been really nice and required no desktop adventures.
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Steamos 2.60 adds bluetooth controller and heaset support: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/458606248623547162/

Today we shipped a beta version of the Steam client which enables connecting to Bluetooth devices directly from the Steam UI on SteamOS. (Settings/System/Bluetooth). This is still very preliminary support. Legacy Bluetooth pairing (with PIN codes, etc) is not supported but Bluetooth LE/Smart should work.

The Bluetooth universe (both controllers and devices) is vast and full of unusual implementations. We have tested a few Bluetooth headsets and game controllers with good success, but there is a lot more hardware out there than we can realistically test. If you have a Bluetooth device you want to use with SteamOS, please post your results in this thread.

Our main goal is enabling Bluetooth headsets and controllers, but if you have other interesting scenarios let us know.

Please ensure you are opted into the Steam Beta and have SteamOS version 2.60 or greater.
Click to expand...

Steamos ICE App from coder ProfessorKaos64 on steam forums: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/458606248622210137/

This is the first release of the hard work Sharkwouter and I put in to make ice compatible with SteamOS. If any changes are useful to upstream, we will work with the maintainer to integrate them. Please do read the readme file for instructions. _Keep in mind_ that there are improvements to be made yet, but suggestions are welcome.
Click to expand...

Many more little fixes for 2.6 but I'm really interested in seeing how a ds4 works with that thar bluetooth.
 
B

Boombox On

Member
I would like to know how SteamOS handles updates?
I remember hearing that the Drivers/OS/Client updates are downloaded automatically and only installed on boot. Is that correct?
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Boombox On said:
I would like to know how SteamOS handles updates?
I remember hearing that the Drivers/OS/Client updates are downloaded automatically and only installed on boot. Is that correct?
Click to expand...

Yes that's how it works. The installs on boot take between 3-15 seconds usually. There's a check for updates button in the options, as well. Overall it;s very non-intrusive and works nicely.
 
G

Gruso

Member
So I've got my new laptop up and running. It's Metabox (Clevo) N150RF. 15" IPS, i7-6700HQ, GTX 965m Ti. I was intent on making it a Linux machine, on Arch no less, and I knew it would be a bastard on this fairly fresh hardware. But jeez. What a bastard.

HGESKQE.png
Click to expand...

The first thing I learned was that I couldn't boot into graphical mode without setting the 'nomodeset' kernel option. Beyond that it was a solid week of installs, breaking the installs, and re-installs. Usually it was Bumblebee (Optimus GPU switching) that brought me down, often unrecoverable. So I'd install again (remembering nomodeset each time, whatever the distro), rinse and repeat.

In the end I was thiiis close to a working Arch install, Bumblebee and all. But Steam games wouldn't launch on the Nvidia card. I think this was related to 32bit libraries. A guy on reddit in a very similar position found his solution in pulling the 4.4 kernel. But I wussed out at this point and went to Ubuntu Gnome.

All is stable and beautiful now. I didn't like Gnome 3 last time I tried it, but I'm loving it now. I'm still not game to install Bumblebee. Part of me is screaming 'sort this shit out Nvidia' but in fairness, their driver support has come a long way. Official, dynamic GPU switching would be the icing on the cake.

Iy5e0yz.png
Click to expand...
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
Wow Gruso, that is a really nice machine. I could use a nice laptop like that. :eek:

I just started using ubuntu gnome a few weeks ago. It's my favorite desktop now, easily.

Anyhow I'm bumping to post the steamos-tools page from github. This is mostly the work of a user/Developer named ProfessorKaos64. He's active frequently on steam forums and reddit and very helpful. For the last year I have been benefiting from his work and I only just now found this page.

SteamOS Tools is a 3rd-party repository with the mission to enhance various aspects of SteamOS from the "stock" experience. SteamOS-Tools contains different various utilities to enhance SteamOS, hosted Debian packages for many programs, and more. The purpose of each folder is listed below in the "Contents" section. The wiki page is full of info. Please start there when looking for information.
Click to expand...

Basically he's working on making customizations to steamos. Included for instance, is a script which allows the steamos user to enter the steamos desktop session as the steam user with a shortcut in their library. Also, he's got a version of ice going that will automatically make links in bpm for individual roms when dropped into their folder.

From the planned features notes:

Figure out a method to use obs-studio in SteamOS BPM.

Create a workable script helper for EmulationStation to allow custom emulators to be used within SteamOS (vs. using Retroarch).
This would be a bit like Ice, but not destroy/inflate your Steam categories (one thing I do not care for, and a pain to cleanly remove).
The aim would be to launch a front-end from one shortcut vs. having 100/1000 tiles to scroll through in BPM.
Setup configuration files for common controllers, making it as seamless as possible and remove guesswork for user.
Click to expand...

Just wanted to help with some exposure for this project in case anyone wants to donate to him, help with code, or just use the steamos-tools to enhance your use.
 
G

Gruso

Member
ProfessorKaos64 is doing amazing work. Now that my laptop is up and running, my Brix is freed up so I can set it up as a SteamOS test bad again and play around.
 
G

Gruso

Member
Nvidia 364.12 driver is a pretty big udpate, including Vulkan 1.0, Wayland, & DRM KMS. Sadly for laptop users, no meaningful progress on Optimus.

http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/100577/en-us

- Added support for the following GPUs:
-- GeForce 920MX
-- GeForce 930MX
- Fixed a regression that caused GPU exceptions and incorrect rendering when using pbuffers with EGLDevice.
- Fixed a bug that caused nvidia-settings to crash when pairing glasses with the 3D Vision Pro transmitter on some systems.
- Fixed a bug that caused installer manifest entries for some 32-bit compatibility libraries to be duplicated in the installer package.
- Fixed a regression that caused the HSync and VSync mode timing polarity flags to be inverted.
- Changed the default OpenGL installation type to use the GLVND GLX client libraries rather than the legacy non-GLVND libraries.
- Added initial support for Direct Rendering Manager Kernel Modesetting (DRM KMS). See the DRM KMS section of the README for details.
- Added a new kernel module, nvidia-drm.ko, which registers as a DRM driver with both PRIME and DRM KMS support.
- Added support for the following EGL extensions:
-- EGL_EXT_platform_wayland
to enable Wayland applications to run on NVIDIA's EGL implementation,
-- EGL_WL_bind_wayland_display
to enable Wayland compositors to run on NVIDIA's EGL implementation, and
-- EGL_EXT_device_drm
-- EGL_EXT_output_drm
-- EGL_EXT_stream_consumer_egloutput
to enable Mir and Wayland compositors to display their content through EGLDevice, EGLOutput, and EGLstreams.
- Added a Wayland platform library, libnvidia-egl-wayland.so, to allow Wayland compositors that support EGLDevice, EGLOutput, and EGLstreams to share EGL buffers with Wayland applications.
- Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect frame rate reporting on Quadro Sync configurations with multiple GPUs.
- Added support for the Vulkan API version 1.0.
- Improved X colormap precision from 8 significant bits to 11 on GeForce GPUs. Quadro GPUs already used 11 bits of precision.
- Added a new RandR property, CscMatrix, which specifies a 3x4 color-space conversion matrix. The matrix is applied after the X colormap and before the gamma ramp. This property is available on GF119 and newer GPUs.
- Improved handling of the X gamma ramp on GF119 and newer GPUs. On these GPUs, the RandR gamma ramp is always 1024 entries and now applies to the cursor and VDPAU or workstation overlays in addition to the X root window
- Reworked how the NVIDIA driver registers with the Linux kernel's DRM subsystem for PRIME support. As a result, PRIME support requires Linux kernel version 3.13 or newer (previously, PRIME support required Linux kernel version 3.10 or newer).
- Improved the interactivity of applications that use a hardware cursor while G-SYNC is active.
Click to expand...
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
This cute little story appeared on pcworld.com today.

Seems like someone finally did some basic arithmetic and noticed that the number of linux users on steam is going up, not down. Funny enough, he wrote it to correct and article he wrote proclaiming that they were going down.

Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey supposedly sheds light on the OS breakdown among gamers, and it appears to show Linux use declining. But Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey is misleading, obscuring the fact that Linux gaming is healthier than ever.
Click to expand...

The way percentages work can be very misleading, indeed! The author credits this direct criticism from gamingonlinux.com for inspiring the correction.
 
G

Gruso

Member
Respect to him for reporting back. I might post it in the "quo vadis" thread where there was a lot of debate around the original report.
 
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