Stephen M
Author Level
Not sure whether this is particularly good or not as not a gamer but thought this about the SteamOS may be of interest: https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=showheadline&story=6628
SteamOS
- Thread starter Stephen M
- Start date
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
Major Necro here, but there is news that SteamOS is nearing desktop support and it’s really good to see a timeline of how this has gained traction.
www.pcworld.com
This is at a time where Microsoft are not only losing a lot of favour as they‘re forcing AI integration onto users by embedding it into the OS which by the way is just a slightly modified ChatGPT, so you have no say over the data collection currently.
But it’s also off the back of a good year of headline outages for Microsoft in the cloud and extremely buggy windows updates and the especially catastrophic 24h2 update
With windows 10 going out of support in October this year, and a lot of people just not confident in the state of windows 11, people are looking for a way out of the Microsoft ecosystem
And Valve have officially announced a partnership with Lenovo and HP to support their new handhelds (previously windows)
www.techradar.com
www.engadget.com
Make no mistake, with this integration into non-standard hardware, SteamOS is gaining significant traction, and not just in the fact of Hardware support, but big manufacturers are showing their support for it over Windows
Don’t see SteamOS as simply a gaming OS which it may well start out as. See the broader picture, Valve will not settle for a poor user experience, as such they will make package installation far simplified at a GUI level where a lot on Arch Linux (which SteamOS is based on) is still command based.
IF their package manager is intuitive, absolutely no reason why other distros won’t integrate it like they have with SNAPS and Flatpack
And that’s purely package management, another area that Linux struggles with is custom drivers outside of what the kernel supports. With a mega corp like Valve backed by manufacturers like Lenovo, HP and dare I say it…. Dell, you start to have the possibility of either the Linux kernel being far more universally accomplished, or manufacturers releasing solid linux drivers, with valve again incorporating those repositories into their package manager.
And as any OS starts gaining popularity, even if it is simply for gaming initially, developers will start taking notice and purposefully target that platform, we're talking the Adobe's, Google's etc.
And Valve are generally extremely highly favoured for their support of their customers, they have actively gone out of their way be more targeted to gamers, they were the first to start offering refunds for digital products after a certain period. They've gone against industry standard practices with their terms and conditions. Gabe Newell (the CEO) is very famously a gamer at heart, with the release of the first Valve SteamDeck, he actually walked door to door delivering the first batch of them to customers.
People just don't feel this way with Microsoft anymore.
This is basically how Windows got its monopoly in the first place, Microsofts initial product was DOS which they agreed a licensing deal with IBM who were the global kings of the home pc space at the time, and as such the software had instant adoption of most home PCs and as such big support from manufacturers.
The potential here is HUGE, this is a defining moment in the pc era.
Microsoft should be terrified of SteamOS
SteamOS is spreading beyond Valve's hardware. That could threaten Microsoft's hold on PC gaming...or even Windows' hold on the PC market.
www.pcworld.com
This is at a time where Microsoft are not only losing a lot of favour as they‘re forcing AI integration onto users by embedding it into the OS which by the way is just a slightly modified ChatGPT, so you have no say over the data collection currently.
But it’s also off the back of a good year of headline outages for Microsoft in the cloud and extremely buggy windows updates and the especially catastrophic 24h2 update
With windows 10 going out of support in October this year, and a lot of people just not confident in the state of windows 11, people are looking for a way out of the Microsoft ecosystem
And Valve have officially announced a partnership with Lenovo and HP to support their new handhelds (previously windows)
It looks like HP won't be ditching Windows 11 for gaming handhelds after all - but it wants to work with Microsoft to make it better
Updated: It's time for a Windows 11 portable mode...
CES 2025: The Lenovo Legion Go S is the first third-party SteamOS handheld
At CES 2025, Lenovo showed off the Legion Go S, which will come in two different versions: a Windows 11 model and a SteamOS model, which is the first of its kind from a third-party manufacturer.
www.engadget.com
Make no mistake, with this integration into non-standard hardware, SteamOS is gaining significant traction, and not just in the fact of Hardware support, but big manufacturers are showing their support for it over Windows
Don’t see SteamOS as simply a gaming OS which it may well start out as. See the broader picture, Valve will not settle for a poor user experience, as such they will make package installation far simplified at a GUI level where a lot on Arch Linux (which SteamOS is based on) is still command based.
IF their package manager is intuitive, absolutely no reason why other distros won’t integrate it like they have with SNAPS and Flatpack
And that’s purely package management, another area that Linux struggles with is custom drivers outside of what the kernel supports. With a mega corp like Valve backed by manufacturers like Lenovo, HP and dare I say it…. Dell, you start to have the possibility of either the Linux kernel being far more universally accomplished, or manufacturers releasing solid linux drivers, with valve again incorporating those repositories into their package manager.
And as any OS starts gaining popularity, even if it is simply for gaming initially, developers will start taking notice and purposefully target that platform, we're talking the Adobe's, Google's etc.
And Valve are generally extremely highly favoured for their support of their customers, they have actively gone out of their way be more targeted to gamers, they were the first to start offering refunds for digital products after a certain period. They've gone against industry standard practices with their terms and conditions. Gabe Newell (the CEO) is very famously a gamer at heart, with the release of the first Valve SteamDeck, he actually walked door to door delivering the first batch of them to customers.
People just don't feel this way with Microsoft anymore.
This is basically how Windows got its monopoly in the first place, Microsofts initial product was DOS which they agreed a licensing deal with IBM who were the global kings of the home pc space at the time, and as such the software had instant adoption of most home PCs and as such big support from manufacturers.
The potential here is HUGE, this is a defining moment in the pc era.
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TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
...and the latest news is that Insider builds of H2-25 have removed easy access to the tool (bypassnro) to bypass the Microsoft Account requirements.
blogs.windows.com
Looks like I'll be installing a LTSC IOT version at some point. Pity I need to be online for some games to work at all...otherwise I'd not have my gaming PC connected to the internet permanently...just connect, download, disconnect when I need to install a game.
Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 (Dev Channel)
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 (KB5054687) to the Dev Channel. REMINDER: Starting with
blogs.windows.com
Looks like I'll be installing a LTSC IOT version at some point. Pity I need to be online for some games to work at all...otherwise I'd not have my gaming PC connected to the internet permanently...just connect, download, disconnect when I need to install a game.
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
This will only get worse as Windows 12 gains traction....and the latest news is that Insider builds of H2-25 have removed easy access to the tool (bypassnro) to bypass the Microsoft Account requirements.
Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 (Dev Channel)
Hello Windows Insiders, today we are releasing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516 (KB5054687) to the Dev Channel. REMINDER: Starting with
Looks like I'll be installing a LTSC IOT version at some point. Pity I need to be online for some games to work at all...otherwise I'd not have my gaming PC connected to the internet permanently...just connect, download, disconnect when I need to install a game.
I think especially the bypass of installation without TPM support will be nuked out at a kernel level rather than being currently at the registry, although in some ways I do agree with this as I do expect that it will be a requirement for cryptographic support within the not too distant future, BUT, it should still be optional I guess.
I also think Telemetry agreements will be far more intrusive in Windows 12 directly down to CoPilot integration. If anyone saw DeepSeeks telemetry harvesting using online, it's ironic that everyone was up in arms because it was Chinese based, when if they actually looked into what ChatGPT or Llama capture, if anything it's far worse.
The reason I'm linking ChatGPT specifically is because CoPilot runs on GPT4 (currently, sure they will update that to 4o eventually)
ChatGPT is a data privacy nightmare. If you’ve ever posted online, you ought to be concerned
ChatGPT is fuelled by our intimate online histories. It’s trained on 300 billion words, yet users have no way of knowing which of their data it contains.
theconversation.com
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
I've always assumed ALL AI tools were scraping data from everywhere...even if they were promising not to.
Just like those VPN companies who promise 'no logs' and then give police the logs!!!
Just like those VPN companies who promise 'no logs' and then give police the logs!!!
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
This isn't specifically to you by the way, I know you know about this stuff and have the knowledge to protect yourself.
... the wonderful leak internally that Facecracks Llama was trained on pirated material, there's still several open lawsuits ongoing regarding that.
Zuckerberg approved Meta’s use of ‘pirated’ books to train AI models, authors claim
Sarah Silverman and others file court case claiming CEO approved use of dataset despite warnings
www.theguardian.com
Meta Secretly Trained Its AI on a Notorious Piracy Database, Newly Unredacted Court Docs Reveal
One of the most important AI copyright legal battles just took a major turn.
And herein lies the issue. People don't understand the value of data, there is a big reason it's the number one valued commodity in the world, far exceeding Gold. It's the value of what that represents over such a huge sample pool, the power that has over governments, foundations and entire countries and has been realised significantly in the west since 2015 just how badly it can be misused especially by the likes of Facecrack.
The New Black Gold: How Data Became the Most Valuable Asset in Tech
In the annals of history, the term “black gold” traditionally referred to oil, a commodity that powered the growth of modern economies…
As long as we just keep willingly handing it over without concern or governance over who these companies can sell that data to and for what purpose, we're unfortunately fuelling global atrocities that are going to become more widespread.
Unfortunately the worlds justice and financial systems just haven't caught up with how fast technology has advanced, and we're seeing the damage this is having on places like the US, Hungary, Istanbul, Russia, Serbia, just to name a few, and the compounded issues this represents for countries connected to them in any way.
A friend of mine is Chinese born and came over here to live and married an old friend. She’s been UK resident for a good 15 years since she attended university here. She’s still extremely defensive if you ask her what the truth is about how bad the Chinese government are in how much they control peoples lives not because she disagrees, because she’s terrified they’ll be listening in over a smartphone or something and hunt her down. If she’s in a room with all digital devices powered off, she’ll be more open
This is exactly what’s going to happen in the US (it’s already started)
Video shows moment ICE arrested Tufts University doctoral student
The arrest of PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk follows a string of similar incidents targeting international students
www.independent.co.uk
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BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
I've just been having a discussion about this with a Windows fanboy.
They were saying that Linux is nothing compared to windows for gaming stating overall userbase. I was looking at it from a growth rate point of view, and it made me look up some stats from the Steam Hardware Survey.
Check this out.
Since the Steam Deck launched in March 2022, linux user base on steam has gone from under 1% to over 2.5% in the latest May survey results. That's a growth rate of over 150%
www.gamingonlinux.com
Now factor in that the latest SteamOS version 3.7.8 which is the first to support 3rd party hardware so long as it's on AMD hardware was not released until May 23rd, so won't be included in that latest Steam Hardware report.
A LOT of windows users are flatly refusing to move to Windows 11, not just because of the hardware requirements, but also because of security concerns in Windows 11 for privacy. The latest Recall announcement in Windows 11 has caused major pushback in the industry, from users up to security researchers and professionals.
As we all know, how Microsoft work is they'll put in a snooping feature as opt out initially, roll out some windows update that "accidentally" enables it, and eventually mandate it.
Also factor in that while CURRENTLY, Recall requires a Copilot+ PC (which means having an NPU with minimum of 40TOPS), this will unquestionably change. You don't need an NPU to achieve 40TOPS in any way shape or form, for some perspective, an RTX3060 has around 100TOPS power. Microsoft along with others have desperately been trying to aggressively sell Copilot NPU based hardware to users, but it's fallen flat on it's face as there's very little use for them in the real world. The point being though, Recall would physically support pretty much any PC with a dedicated GPU, doesn't need an NPU in any way, and Microsoft KNOW this.
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
SteamOS is built on Arch. A lot of gamers that want other usage outside of gaming will use Ubuntu or Mint (which is Ubuntu based)
Now, ok, numbers are still a drop in the ocean, but forget the total user numbers, and look at the growth trends.
More and more people are moving away from Windows 11, despite Windows 10 going out of support in October. Microsoft have officially announced they will do a paid for extended support option for Windows 10 users for a period of time (they haven't announced any timeline yet) for $30 a year. But Microsoft have historically been very aggressive in MAKING people upgrade to the latest OS and I fully expect this option won't remain for long, remember when Windows 10 FORCED the update, and they've just started doing the same for Windows 11 users up to the incredibly broken 24H2 version
Then couple all this with the recent findings that now Linux gaming performance is around 15% better than Windows even when factoring in Proton compatiblity layer, this is off the back of the release of Linux Kernel 6.14 released at the end of March (a lot of these are actually even before 6.14 was released)
All of this is largely due to Valve's collaboration with both Proton and the Linux Kernel
I think we'll see quite a sharp rise of Arch Linux adoption in next months survey.
I also believe now that Valve know how well SteamOS 3.7 works on desktops with AMD hardware without much need for more work, they will start concentrating on encorporating Nvidia support.
They need to optimise the installer for desktop as currently it assumes you only have one drive installed (as you would on a handheld)
I truly think we're on the cusp of a Linux revolution and I'm hugely excited!!!
They were saying that Linux is nothing compared to windows for gaming stating overall userbase. I was looking at it from a growth rate point of view, and it made me look up some stats from the Steam Hardware Survey.
Check this out.
Since the Steam Deck launched in March 2022, linux user base on steam has gone from under 1% to over 2.5% in the latest May survey results. That's a growth rate of over 150%
Steam Linux Market Share | GamingOnLinux
Steam Linux user share statistics over time
www.gamingonlinux.com
Now factor in that the latest SteamOS version 3.7.8 which is the first to support 3rd party hardware so long as it's on AMD hardware was not released until May 23rd, so won't be included in that latest Steam Hardware report.
A LOT of windows users are flatly refusing to move to Windows 11, not just because of the hardware requirements, but also because of security concerns in Windows 11 for privacy. The latest Recall announcement in Windows 11 has caused major pushback in the industry, from users up to security researchers and professionals.
As we all know, how Microsoft work is they'll put in a snooping feature as opt out initially, roll out some windows update that "accidentally" enables it, and eventually mandate it.
Also factor in that while CURRENTLY, Recall requires a Copilot+ PC (which means having an NPU with minimum of 40TOPS), this will unquestionably change. You don't need an NPU to achieve 40TOPS in any way shape or form, for some perspective, an RTX3060 has around 100TOPS power. Microsoft along with others have desperately been trying to aggressively sell Copilot NPU based hardware to users, but it's fallen flat on it's face as there's very little use for them in the real world. The point being though, Recall would physically support pretty much any PC with a dedicated GPU, doesn't need an NPU in any way, and Microsoft KNOW this.
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam
SteamOS is built on Arch. A lot of gamers that want other usage outside of gaming will use Ubuntu or Mint (which is Ubuntu based)
Now, ok, numbers are still a drop in the ocean, but forget the total user numbers, and look at the growth trends.
More and more people are moving away from Windows 11, despite Windows 10 going out of support in October. Microsoft have officially announced they will do a paid for extended support option for Windows 10 users for a period of time (they haven't announced any timeline yet) for $30 a year. But Microsoft have historically been very aggressive in MAKING people upgrade to the latest OS and I fully expect this option won't remain for long, remember when Windows 10 FORCED the update, and they've just started doing the same for Windows 11 users up to the incredibly broken 24H2 version
Then couple all this with the recent findings that now Linux gaming performance is around 15% better than Windows even when factoring in Proton compatiblity layer, this is off the back of the release of Linux Kernel 6.14 released at the end of March (a lot of these are actually even before 6.14 was released)
All of this is largely due to Valve's collaboration with both Proton and the Linux Kernel
I think we'll see quite a sharp rise of Arch Linux adoption in next months survey.
I also believe now that Valve know how well SteamOS 3.7 works on desktops with AMD hardware without much need for more work, they will start concentrating on encorporating Nvidia support.
They need to optimise the installer for desktop as currently it assumes you only have one drive installed (as you would on a handheld)
I truly think we're on the cusp of a Linux revolution and I'm hugely excited!!!
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
You'll never win over fanboys (aka flat-earthers, covid deniers, etc.) with facts!
I know, I've tried!
I know, I've tried!
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
This is what I've been trying to look for is a broader view of OS useage worldwide since the Steam Deck released in March 2022
I don't know how accurate this is, but it's the best I can find
gs.statcounter.com
It's still small numbers in the grand scheme of things, but there's a definite trend as of end of last year of Windows trajectory worsening.
I wonder what "Unknown OS" relates to?
Really surprises me that OSX users are still substantially higher than MacOS, would have thought Mac users tending to be more affluent would have adopted Apple Silicon far quicker than that
I don't know how accurate this is, but it's the best I can find
Desktop Operating System Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats
This graph shows the market share of desktop operating systems worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.
gs.statcounter.com
It's still small numbers in the grand scheme of things, but there's a definite trend as of end of last year of Windows trajectory worsening.
I wonder what "Unknown OS" relates to?
Really surprises me that OSX users are still substantially higher than MacOS, would have thought Mac users tending to be more affluent would have adopted Apple Silicon far quicker than that
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TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
See the note at the top of the page after you've drilled-down into the Mac share...
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
Ah, that makes more sense then, thanks for pointing that out
As soon as there is an actual real user friendly OS that lets me browse the internet and play games without needing to jump through hoops Windows will be dead to me
It seems every iteration just gets worse, all I want is something lightweight that just works. Until then I'm stuck with Windows
It seems every iteration just gets worse, all I want is something lightweight that just works. Until then I'm stuck with Windows
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
Completely agree, Linux has come a long way though, I was really surprised when I really started getting into it, I think what makes it more complicated is depending on what hardware and use case you have will dictate what OS and more importantly, what Kernel you need to use. And then you need to know what package manager to use for what program as it may be available through multiple but each installer type will have different program experiences.
Once I got my head around that which took several reinstalls and tries and fails, then it started to make more sense.
But with Valves direct input into the Kernel, and Steam Application Manager being so intuitive, as well as the Proton translation layer for gaming, I’m really hopeful SteamOS could be a very user friendly Distro
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Does 3DMark run on steamOS (the Steam store version)?
Is there any difference to scores due to the reduced overhead.
Is there any difference to scores due to the reduced overhead.
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
That’s a good question, I’ll check tonight
TonyCarter
VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
Make it so, oh holy nut-muncher!
Yeah I'm really holding out hope that Valve can crack it, as long as Gabe is around I feel confident in trusting Valve. It'll be an interesting landscape when the inevitable happens because there is just soooo much that could be milked from Steam and we already know vultures have been circling it for years already
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
BlessedSquirrel
We love you Ukraine
Apologies, it was a pretty intense week this week with work and only just getting around to this now.
So after much toing and froing with Linux working out what worked with what I eventually understood that to support the RX 9070 XT natively without having to resort to custom Kernels which I found tended to break really basic things, I ended up installing Ubuntu Plucky Puffin which is their 9 month support cycle cutting edge version. This includes Kernel 6.14.0-15 which natively supports the 9070XT. It also includes the required Mesa drivers (v25). And using Proton 9.0c translation layer in Steam
Under Plucky Puffin, I didn't have to do any fiddling to get gaming working properly, was having endless problems trying to custom update Ubuntu LTS to support it properly (user error, nothing to do with the packages)
3DMark doesn’t work straightforwardly though on Linux, when you first install it, it actually runs through .NET install scripts etc, so it must be running in a virtualised container. You have to edit some Steam system files to hard inject the license key otherwise it runs in Demo mode, you then have to access the virtualised windows registry to further inject license keys. Took me a while to work my way around it but got it working in the end.
I couldn’t get VRMark working though, got VRMark itself opening fine, but when you try to launch a benchmark it just hangs on Collecting System Info and never proceeds.
Bear in mind these windows results were very soon after the GPU launched. Driver updates have unlocked further performance in Windows since then.
Windows Benchmarking March 12 vs Linux June 15
Firestrike 1080p: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/128101980?
@TonyCarter 4090 comparison: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/33062378/fs/33077030
Linux: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/135748164
Firestrike Extreme: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/128355406
TC comparison: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/33075851/fs/33077112
Linux: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/135748795
Port Royal Ray Tracing: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/128356140
TC comparison: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/pr/3303034/pr/3303703
Linux: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/135749095
Speedway Ultra: https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/128404695
TC comparison: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/sw/1995962/sw/1994758
Linux: Unable to run
VRMark Orange Room: https://www.3dmark.com/vrm/128538389
TC Comparison: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/vrpor/694657/vrpor/694744
Linux: Unable to run
VRMark Blue Room: https://www.3dmark.com/vrm/128538980
TC Comparison: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/vrpbr/160543/vrpbr/160573
Linux: Unable to run
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