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What value do they have? They were just custom prebuilt PCs running a special version of Linux that weren’t that much cheaper than a non-Steam Machine PC. Nothing is stopping you from building a PC and installing the same OS running on the Deck (or the old SteamOS) and then calling it a Steam Machine.
Or indeed just buying a gaming PC already running Windows that runs 100% of Steam games with no effort at all.
What’s holding them back and killing the idea of a Steam Machine PC, is that GPUs are ludicrously expensive.
Shoehorn Steam into an Xbox Series S/X… Well that might work, but it needs MS to eat some humble pie.
Except knowledge.
It’s foolish of you to assume that most people want to build a computer.
And before people respond with ‘its just Legos’
There is so much more to it for someone with little to no knowledge.
Bios and firmware updates that require certain CPUs coupled with certain motherboards.
CPU sockets and inter compatibility.
The different specs of any given component and the value they provide to someone looking for specific workflows
Sizing of components and cases
Knowing where to find parts and what prices are acceptable.
Etc, etc ,etc.
Pick something that you know nothing about, let’s say cars just as an example.
Now imagine, let’s, say want to buy a car but it doesn’t come with wheels, you don’t get a list of 4 wheels to choose from, You get, lug patterns, sizing, and type, offset, wheel diameter, wheel width, bead lockers or no bead lockers, 1 piece, 2 piece or 3 piece, etc.
Now you have to spend all this time researching just about wheels, and then how they fit with the car you chose specifically earlier in the process, it would be frustrating and incredibly difficult for people who just want a car.
Go on any thread or forum and ask ‘what GPU should I get’ which is already making assumptions about someones understanding and knowledge (that they even know what a GPU is), and you will get 20 conflicting answers and need to write a paragraph in responses to narrow it down enough.
Present someone with no knowledge this: ‘DDR3-2666 CL9’ vs ‘DDR3-2000 CL7’. How do you really expect someone who just wants to play a video game to just implicitly know what those numbers mean, how they relate to each other etc.
Building a computer is an immensely difficult task for someone who doesn’t know much or anything about it, and believe it or not, the reality is not everyone wants to learn, places like lemmy and other tech focused echo chambers seem to forget that.
Also the scale. With steam scale its likely that they could just buy a massive numbers of gpus and cpus from amd for much cheaper.
Guaranteed good driver support too, since Valve fund devs to work on the AMD GPU drivers on Linux.
All of your comment is true, although it’s ignoring the fairly sizable pre-built market. You don’t have to do it yourself, although I would say people should so they can diagnose issues themselves.
Pre-built sellers just need to offer SteamOS, or other Linux distributions, as an option at checkout instead of Windows.
i’m perfectly happy with my pre-built machines. I like tech and love learning about it but- I don’t really find value in putting a huge amount of time into building my PC from scratch when someone else can do it, and that person knows way more than me already!
The value isn’t for existing PC gamers. It would be for people who are not tech literate, do not know how to build a PC, install an OS, or even tell if a given computer is powerful enough to run a particular game.
I think that’s the real strength (and more importantly, intent) of the Steam deck: to get people who aren’t PC gamers to become PC gamers by making it as simple as a traditional console. Steam machines could provide a similar thing if there were a Steam Machine 1 Verified flag next to games.
I think where valve went wrong was not requiring specific minimum specs. It led to a very inconsistent and hard to support platform.
Steam deck leading to a standard “steam device” hardware platform with consistent OS and hardware is my dream, but I know their goal thus far has been to refine steamos and release it for OEMs to use on their devices.
It would be really great for oems to be able to use steamos. It really is a superior system for handhelds ( and pcs treated like consoles but thats even more niche market )
honestly at this point bundle the dock w rechargeable wireless controllers and let me convert the deck I already love into a pseudoconsole.
Damn digitech synthwah sounds so cool
I would love to have a Steam Machine. I love my Steam Deck. However… the nature of Steam games, so far, even on the Deck, is that you need to bop “ok” every once in a while, or even enter a username or something for some unwashed-ass game, and that’s a lot harder on a form factor that doesn’t have a touchscreen…
Steamdeck + dock is essentially a Steam machine isn’t it?
That’s how I use my steam deck - a dell dock & some controllers
I mean with the fantastic touchpads that steam deck has and the steam machine controller would have it should be possible and quite easy to do.
The steam controller is amazing for that.
I really want an updated steam controller with the same haptic touchpad tech present on the deck. The original controller, while comfortable, just doesn’t compare to the improvements present on the Deck 😭
Two popups before I can read an article means you don’t get read. Bye.
They don’t care, you already saw the ads
I’m sure there’s more ads further down the page and now I won’t be opening any more links to their site.
Using an ad blocker is basically requirement of browsing the internet at the moment.
Built in browsers in apps don’t have them.
Jerboa uses my Firefox app
Depends on which browser is the default, I think. Even if that doesn’t work you can set you private DNS and block most things though.
I have no idea if this works iPhones because Apple pretty restrictive (Do they allow anyone to use anything other than Safari or are they still on that anti-consumer kick), but on Android you can set the browser engine the in-app browsers use. So you can set it to Firefox and then have plugins.
I’m using that now.
Or you can just turn in-app browsers off.
Yes, safari on iOS has a zillion ad blocker apps too
I have no idea if this works iPhones because Apple pretty restrictive (Do they allow anyone to use anything other than Safari or are they still on that anti-consumer kick)
In this instance it’s an oddly good thing that in app browser engines are restricted to Safari: because it gets the ad blocking you set up for Safari. I didn’t even know that site had ads!
That aside, while the in app engine is still locked, Apple has been allowing different browsers (not browser engines, mind you) for many years now and with the eu regulators curiously doing their job lately, they are going to allow different engines too. Although I’ve read that it’s a bit of a trick, because then developers would have to develop and support two different versions of their browsers, one with whatever engine, and one for the rest of the world…
This comes from a Vivaldi user btw.
Gross.
I think people misunderstood what I meant entirely. I’m saying it’s gross to need an ad blocker just to browse the web, which should be in line with the values of the people here. I got down voted badly and I think it is because there was some possible alternative explanation that I still don’t understand.
No u
Ye u right.
Hell yeah brother. Started playing Hades 2 on my custom chimeraOS PC yesterday in the living room. I absolutely love the experience. I’ve been considering getting that Hx100 PC from minisforum and running bazzite on there to replace my custom PC for a smaller console like footprint. The time is nigh!
That controller has some serious Atari Jaguar vibes.
No I want a steam deck and a dock that lets me also slot in a discrete gpu
The future of pc gaming should be tri upgrade platform
Regular consumer should really only have to worry about upgrading their deck, their connector dock, and their gpu
Hobbyists who like to max out may get into the deck and upgrade that should they wish
I just want to play games on my deck on the go, get home and slot it in so it outputs thru my gpu at 4k60, and literally pick up where I left off when on deck
A triple upgrade platform will allow more consumers to incrementally increase performance without overloading them with info ala pc building
So a kid could start out with the deck, and get a dock, then later get the gpu
During generation upgrades people can decide if they want to get one of the three options for upgrades in the new gen
There are some modders experimenting with eGPUs on the Deck, but it’s really impractical. The Deck USB-C connector isn’t powerful enough to handle an external GPU and the OS doesn’t support it.
Valve would need to release new hardware for it to be feasible.
No I want a steam deck and a dock that lets me also slot in a discrete gpu
That GPU would be stupidly expensive and also still hamstrung by the relatively weak AMD APU and associated thermals.
@helenslunch @vmaziman so “active cooling backplate for steam deck” it is then :D
I’ve been a long time eGPU user so that was probably the biggest thing I wanted from my steamdeck. But years on I’m not really sure how much I would use it. I use my CPU heavy laptop and eGPU when I want to game big. I’m not going to replace my laptop with my steamdeck. If I want more power than what my steamdeck has, but play on it, I just stream from my laptop + eGPU.
I still have a Steam Link, does that count? Lol
Me too. And a Steam Deck. But I’d still buy one in a heartbeat.
I love the idea of a Steam Deck or the other portable pcs like it, but man I think it would just sit lol. The techie in me just wants it to have. Same with a VR headset. I’d play beatsaber for a bit and it would be dusty.
I don’t use my Deck much outside my home, and I do tend to just sit on the couch most of the time.
I find I’m way more inclined to pick it up and start gaming that way and I end up using it more than my PC.
I mainly use the Deck to play retro titles, and use my desktop rig to play newer or more demanding games. It was worth every penny, thanks to being so easy to set up for the retro games!
They have. It’s called the Steam Deck.
what people want is the internals of a steam deck but beefed up and easier to open up
A steamdeck, no screen, an evo212 cooler, and possibly just loaded with USB ports. Mmmmmm
an evo212 cooler
So I only bring this up because I had my world shattered like 3 months ago when I built a new PC - the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo cooler is really expensive these days, like, $80-$90 (there are some models that use the same name but have different heat pipe configurations that drop down into the $50-$60 range, but aren’t the ol tried and true 212 that we all bought in the 2010s), and a complete ripoff, and it’s really sad.
You can get some Noctua coolers for a few more bucks, or pay a third of that price for a Peerless Assassin, or pay about half again that price for something from ID-cooling, all for similar or better performance to the 212. It’s no longer the automatic choice it once was. The king has been dethroned.
Dude what!? I bought my 212 for like 35 bucks back in 2014. As far as I know my nephew is still rocking that setup every day since 2019. That’s wild they’re selling them for 80ish…smh my head.
Bazzite is basically this with bring-your-own hardware. A first party Valve version doesn’t make as much sense compared to a handheld like the Steam Deck but it would be pretty cool.
So a Linux computer that looks like a console? I can see how it’d sell, but it’s already available to anyone who isn’t oblivious. You can even install the SteamOS if you want that particular flavor of Arch.
They released the new steam os?
Previously it was only the Debian one available
I have no idea. I assumed they did, but I’m not actually sure.
I don’t think they have yet, which is a bit of a sore point. Third party alternatives like Bazzite may do the job, though.
the point is that you don’t have to fiddle with anything, you can trust the product sold by valve to be good, you have everything preinstalled and configured, and because thousands and thousands of people have the same device it’s easy for developers to target it.
And with the way Xbox has been going, a solid Steam Machine could theoretically replace it in the market. Sure, your old discs wouldn’t work, but it would have all the Microsoft exclusives anyway. Even Sony exclusives are making it to Steam now.
have old xbox discs really not been cracked? would feel very odd if people hadn’t figured out how to run them from regular old CD readers and emulators…
Original Xbox, probably. 360 emulation is still pretty rough. I doubt anyone has a functioning One emulator and definitely not a Series X emulator. Not much interest since almost all of it is on Windows anyway. The only reason I’ve been watching 360 emulation is for Fable 2.
Also, it’s fairly unlikely that Valve would include an optical drive unless they want to license blu ray stuff from Sony.
that looks like a console
Not just looks, but provides the UX of a console. So you buy it, plug it up, log in, and immediately start playing. Even consoles don’t provide that streamlined UX anymore, but ppl want all the benefits console used to provide with all the benefits PC gaming provides now. But the key part is the PC benefits don’t get in the way of the ease of it. You don’t have to install or administer a linux distro, you don’t have to twiddle settings for every game (unless you want to), etc
That’s the big thing. After my postive experience with the Steam Deck, I switched my gaming PC to Linux. There were settings I had to tinker with to get my games running as optimally as they would on the deck, that I assume are set by default on the SteamOS.
An Xbox Series S (or even X) but not locked down and able to run Steam games would be great. But that’s the kind of price you’d be looking for. Price of a PS5 would be the absolute maximum. Any higher, and mainstream people won’t be interested because they can just buy a PS5 for that.
I think it’s achievable at scale (millions of units like the PS5), but it’d be a huge gamble.
So a PC in a cool case?
The problem with going proprietary is that then, well, it’s proprietary. So either they use off the shelf components in which case it’s basically a PC, or they use custom stuff which might improve performance depending on what they do, but will make it difficult to repair and upgrade. Then you rely on Valve producing hardware components, and they’re not really a hardware company, although in fairness they’re also not doing badly at it.
It’s more about the hardware/firmware/software uniformity and reliability for some people. My friend is in this camp, he doesn’t want to need to manage a PC, he just wants a box he can reliably turn on and use.
And to expand a little on your point, uniformity means devs can target specific optimizations/performance. I.e. this will run like this on a Steam medium system.
Internally, yes, basically a PC in a smallish form factor case.
If you’re aiming at the console crowd, upgrades and end-user repairs aren’t a primary concern. But you’re thinking of it like a desktop aimed at the desktop market where those things are more important, and you could hypothetically just do the same thing on the PC you already have, so what’s the point?
For a console the high priority items are being quiet, able to fit in most TV stands and the like without standing out too much, and having the smoothest possible UX - if it’s more involved than unpacking it, plugging it into power, plugging it into the TV, connecting a controller, turning it on and logging into an account to go from sitting in a box on the floor to ready to play (or at least install) a game then you’ve already lost. If installing a game is more complicated than clicking the install button once and waiting for the process to finish, you’ve already lost. If you are required to fiddle with drivers, settings, tweaks or config files to be able to play, you’ve already lost. If you are required to think about package managers, libraries, or any kind of usual PC management stuff, you’ve already lost.
Not really a PC is it? You can’t even buy an APU of the spec in a PS5/XSX and you certainly can’t run it all from one set of unified GDDR6 (and I know people say you can’t run a CPU from that, but you demonstrably can run it well enough to run modern games).
Even just buying a GPU on the level of a PS5 (and that’s somewhere on the level of a RX 6700) is going to take nearly all your budget, leaving you maybe £100 to build the rest of the PC.
I don’t think it’s an impossible problem to solve, but you can’t do it if you’re selling a couple of thousand units.
No it’s not
yes, absolutely, as long as we don’t become ignorant to the huge ethical issues with steam like their decade of running an underage gambling surrogate. sorry, i just take issue with the article pointing out flaws of xbox and playstation without counter-balancing those criticisms with something about valve. valve is certainly better than both sony and microsoft in every regard, but they are not innocent at all
What ever happened to SteamOS? I want to be rid of Microsoft now more than ever.
While an official release would be appreciated, I’d probably just continue using ChimeraOS/Bazzite/whatever
What ever happened to SteamOS?
It’s still going strong! https://store.steampowered.com/steamos
Personally, I just like to install Debian or Ubuntu as the OS, and then install the Steam launcher:
https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-steam-on-debian-linux/
I think the outcomes are pretty similar, for an average user. But I find it a bit easier to search for help about other things I want to do with Debian/Ubuntu.
I say Debian/Ubuntu a bunch of times here because, while I like Debian a bit better, there’s tons of help articles out there for Ubuntu, and 99% of them work perfectly on Debian.
I don’t think it’s still going strong. SteamOS 2.0, the Debian based one that was on the old steam machines has been discontinued and is no longer supported. SteamOS 3.0, on the deck, is Arch based and is not yet officially supported on anything other than a Steam Deck.
Personally, I just like to install Debian or Ubuntu as the OS, and then install the Steam launcher:
Then you don’t get Gamescope, which is kind of a big deal.
And less importantly the direct-launch into Big Picture Mode.
You can set up the boot directly into Big Picture, there are a couple of ways depending on your needs/expectations.
Gamescope did not work for me, I have been gaming exclusively in Linux since proton was published but any time I try to get gamescope working it behaves strangely. I blame my Nvidia card but it’s hard to say.
Sure, Gamescope is the big one. But part of SteamOS is that all of that comes configured out of the box.
Nvidia is probably the problem.
Good points!
I use my current one as a PC as much as for gaming.
I’ll keep that in mind when I build my next dedicated game rig, though!
The whole point of SteamOS is the controller-first interface. If you’re not interested then it’s not for you.
Yeah. That’s why I run the Steam client on Ubuntu. Which works a treat, thanks to the popularity of the SteamDeck.
@helenslunch @MajorHavoc whats gamescope and how does big picture help on a desktop, at least if i have more than one screen and wanna do desktop stuff on the ones that dont have the game on them?
Gamescope is a graphical compositor. It gives you all those neat side menus on Steam Deck.
SteamOS is not for desktops. It’s intended to make your PC into a controller-friendly console for the couch.
@helenslunch didnt they work on a desktop version for steam os? Wouldnt it help with getting people to switch from windows to linux?
didnt they work on a desktop version for steam os?
Yes they launched SteamOS as a downloadable originally alongside Steam Machines. But alas the current official Steam version is not available for anything other than Steam Deck.
Wouldnt it help with getting people to switch from windows to linux?
I’d certainly think so, much in the way that Android did.
I’m not sure about GameScope,I didn’t even realize I was missing out on it.
Big picture is the full screen controller friendly interface, in case you don’t want to connect a mouse and keyboard.
It went to the Deck. I did read an article from someone who forked SteamOS and customized it for their own hardware, but it isn’t a simple process.
Bazzite is probably the closest you can get to a Deck-like experience (and it’s supposed to work for HTPCs), but there’s several other distros that are gaming focused as well, such as Nobara, Garuda, and Chimera.
It became what it is currently the Steam Deck OS or at least the lessons learned were applied to create it. That being said you have distros like Bazzite and Pop OS focused on gaming, you could try those.
I recently deleted my Windows partition and went full Linux for my personal devices. I use Windows for work and it reminds me that I made the right decision.
I use Arch btw
It became what it is currently the Steam Deck OS
That’s still called SteamOS.
Now that TunnelVision has been disclosed to the general public, I’m just trying to finish up my modded games, then I’m going to switch over to Linux and run Windows in a VM as needed.
Even with my pro license, I’m still at the whims of capitalist decision-making; tired of not really being in control of my own computer.
Now that TunnelVision has been disclosed to the general public
That vulnerability affected every OS except Android.
Yes, but you can relegate your network interface to a namespace in Linux, which is a remedy the researchers recommend. You have to use your internet-facing programs in a VM in Windows to achieve the same effect, and that’s a lot of overhead just to protect yourself.
Edit: typo
Interesting, thanks.
You have to use your internet-facing programs in a VM in Windows to achieve the same effect
Eh, there’s 20 different ways to detect DHCP Option 121 fuckery and once you know it’s happening its fairly trivial to stop. Any VPN client worth its salt will be updated in 60 days or less to fix this and existing VPN clients can be hardened against TunnelVision with some fairly simple scripting.
It’s a serious vulnerability but it’s hardly the unfixable world ender that the media has made it out to be.
Good to know. Got any specific sources for the scripting, or should I just search for something like “option 121 mitigation?”
I don’t know if there’s any pre-built scripting out there (yet) for this but it’s relatively straight forward in Windows to use powershell and either look in the registry for the assigned dhcp options ( HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dhcp\Parameters\Options) or check the routing table for illogical routes.
Assuming that you aren’t using split tunneling you could also have powershell check your external IP address for the expected result.
Another possibility is to grab the dhcp test tool from Github, run it in non-interactive mode and then parse it’s output. Something I find VERY interesting is that Andrey Baranov specifically added Option 121 to that tool in March of 2023!
With any of those it’s a matter of what you want to have happen when you detect the problem such as warning the user and disconnecting the vpn or attempting to mitigate the problem by reconfiguring the routing table.
I should point out that Option 121 is a legit thing and it does have valid uses so you can’t assume something nefarious just because it’s being used.
I’ll probably be scripting up a remediation over the next few days, I’ll try and remember to come back and share what I did.
It’s called a Mini PC or a NUC. They already exist. Go buy one and slap Steam on it. Done.
The people who actually want this have already done it.
Yah. Makes more sense for Valve to spend their time improving Proton or working on their reference handheld device. A reference desktop device is a solution looking for a problem.
Valve’s big advantage here is the same as it was with the steam deck: they can sell at a loss and make it back on software sales.
A lot of the appeal of consoles is a polished experience and that they’re generally less expensive up front compared to a comparable power gaming PC. Many consoles are sold at a loss to hit that price point. Valve could actually make cheap gaming PCs that can compete in price and offer a smooth user experience.
Install steam. Run in big picture mode. Done. That’s a steam machine. I don’t get what you think a dedicated machine is going to do any differently. There is a reason Steam abandoned the idea themselves.
Isn’t big picture only 720p?
Install steam. Run in big picture mode. Done. That’s a steam machine. I don’t get what you think a dedicated machine is going to do any differently. There is a reason Steam abandoned the idea themselves.
Big picture mode on my windows PC and the gamescope-focused UI on the Deck look similar, but offer very different capabilities IME.
To name a handful: FSR support for all games - including those that don’t support it, per-game hardware performance profiles, excellent hardware integration - not just limited to the instant sleep and instant wake. With the third party Decky Store you can also configure the fan profile to your liking, control music apps running in the background on the Deck, and more. On the PC BPM these sadly do not exist
I 100% prefer playing on the deck any day of the week - the OS simply makes it so straightforward to jump into a game and forget about needing to also think about maintaining a desktop: no Windows updates, no telemetry service CPU spiking, and no Windows resetting my customized settings or forcing Edge browser defaults after an update.
That said, I don’t particularly have an interest in a full blown Steam Machine - for me the Deck works just fine when docked.
You can install Bazzite instead of Windows to solve the above problems.
I wouldn’t hate a non-portable steam deck, especially if they can make in-home streaming between the steam machine and the deck seamless
The problem is they keep breaking in-home streaming to/from the Deck. My Mac has a significantly more GPU oomph so there are some games I’d like to play streamed, but streaming hasn’t worked in either direction since last year.
I would hope they’d be able to get that working much more reliably when both ends are known to be their hardware…
But also yeah, IHS is a huge coinflip depending on your home network too
Steam link on steroids. now that i think about it, would the steam deck stream to a steam link?
Can’t imagine it’d be worth doing considering you could just dock your deck to the tv. I know the deck is a beast at streaming to it though.
