I’m pinning this article to read later, but I do have to say that the amount of people who have completely missed the point of the SM baffles me. It’s a low power, quiet Linux machine and people seem to have this drummed up idea that it’s some powerful ps5-killing console.
You missed the false advertising as 4k gaming machine. Which it simply isn’t. It’s a 1080p gaming machine
I did actually miss that, but I saw it now. Pretty deceitful of them not to mention the use of FSR upfront.
there are tons of pc, probably even linux exclusive games already, that will never be available on consoles
Exclusive deals are anti consumer practices anyway.
I’ve been saying this for years and always get roasted alive for not wanting to shell out ~$500 just to be able to play one fucking game.
The only reason I ever got to play the new god of war games is because I got into a relationship with someone who has a Playstation. If she didn’t have one I’d have never played.
It’s the same way I am with the switch 2. I’m not buying a whole new console just for a new Zelda (which I don’t even like anymore) or potentially a new smash bros.
I agree. However, the only reason anyone wants those mostly is because of the marketing. I have too many better and cheaper games that I need to get to on PC already. While some of the console exclusives look interesting, I’ve realized they aren’t made for me anyway. They aren’t really made for anyone for that matter. They’re made for everyone, which means they’re made for no one.
How would that even work? It’s literally a PC. It runs Linux. It’s as open a system as you’re going to get.
I guess you could do a linux exclusive?
You likely have reporters thinking it is a console.
If this was oracle/microsoft there would be a publicly available environment variable you can just set yourself, but is technically illegal.
It’s supposed to eliminate the issues of Linux like unstable ABI/API, and fragmentation. -But like with Steamdeck, it’s probably going to have people saying they do more tinkering than actual gaming. Real PC gamers use Windows.
After how well all games worked on the steamdeck I decided to move from windows on my gaming PC and laptop. Probably the same amount of tinkering as with windows. I have not looked back since. Best decision in a long time.
Lol GTFO.
I have used windows starting with windows 3.0, up to Windows 10 because of gaming. My PC is here JUST for gaming, except for stuff like the web and very,very light office work once a month or so, and running LLMs/GenAI for shits and giggles.
You know what I’m running nowadays?
Nobara (Fedora spinoff, because they have NVidia based installations)
And i haven’t seen any performance or stability issues, even tho i used multiple different NVidia cards on this machine, using a PCIe Wifi6 card and and extra PCIe controller to increase my limited NVME space.
Not once has any of the components on my PC acted up, asked for driver installations or something similar, outside of me having to reinstall the graphics and mesa drivers after upgrading from Nobara 40 to 41, and that was because i ran out of space on my boot partition and i didn’t realize it at first.
If you aren’t in the crowd which plays mainly games with Anticheat (and that’s not because of Linux but because of the decisions made by the publishers), Linux is the way to go. I can run games from the DOS era just as well as i can play the latest titles, and emulation support is actually better than on windows with things like Retrodeck. If something doesn’t work, i very often have the option of just dropping by on Github/Gitlab/Codeberg and get help there or simply report a bug that will often get fixed way faster than Microsoft would drop me a “please reboot and if it doesn’t work recover windows” answer on their boards.
If you value gaming, you should value Linux. Because it always was the OS that was ideologically closer to what gamers wanted - and nowadays it’s technically closer.
Edit: I forgot to mention that with Linux native technologies like BTRFS and the deduplication features it offers, it also is very attractive to people who like to mod their games. I have 4 different installations of Cyberpunk 2077 on my PC, all with a completely different mod loadout, and they don’t take up more space than 1 installation and the raw space for the mods themselves.
Your anecdotes contradict professional tests.
Sources, please.
Yes, anecdotes are poor sources. ‘works on my machine’ ignores that same model motherboards can have different WiFi, Bluetooth, USB, and sound chips. -Plain old common sense for people that can actually discuss tech instead of parrot OS propaganda.
And where are your “not anecdotes” when claiming that people do more tinkering than playing on linux machines?
Using Steam, i click “Install” and “Play” after downloading, same as on any Windows machine. The amount of titles that act up is miniscule and it’s mainly older niche titles nowadays. The only time it gets a little bit more involved is when running pirated copies (if you don’t know what you are doing, and that’s my own problem) or manually modding games (again, a very low barrier that becomes nonexistant when using modding clients, either steam workshop or others), and that’s not the common experience.
I have tested around 15k PC titles on my 5950x with either a 3070ti or an 5070 (many more are waiting, but i am only one guy and don’t have unlimited time), and issues are a rare occurrence - i’d say it’s a little bit more when comparing unpatched cutting edge titles than under windows, but for everything older than 2 months there simply is no difference in compability nowadays (unless noone cares about the game at all, which is rare and often a sign that it isn’t worth playing).
The only title i really had no chance of getting to run when pirated was Omori - because of the very nonstandard way of doing things this game uses. But it works fine when buying it and playing legally, so that’s fine by me.
Edit: I forgot to mention that your “fragmentation” argument completely falls flat when taking into account things like flatpak (har har). I like native more for my gaming environment, but the steam deck i use in parallel shows that flatpak is just as able to do the same things as my desktop. And the times where standard chipsets had grave issues with compatibility under linux are gone, unless you are going out of your way to search for the most obscure laptops.
"And where are your “not anecdotes” when claiming that people do more tinkering than playing on linux machines? "
Ever heard of a search engine or professional reviews? -Sorry forgot LiGNUts are allergic to modern tech or common sense.
Don’t bother engaging, mad thumbs is delusionally anti-linux. Their comm is… Interesting to look at.
Real dumb ones.
I spent more time “tinkering” on windows after some updates to figure out how to set it back to how I want it after some update silently resets things to default or moves some setting for no good reason. And then there’s the “hey please use our shit software that you went out of your way to install an alternative to… no? Ok, I’ll ask later” full screen ads, ads in the start menu, ignoring default search engine or browser settings when it could. It was a hostile user experience.
Linux has been such a better experience that windows shills like you are a complete joke. Though interesting that you used hedging language here and talk about “people saying they do more tinkering than actual gaming” rather than “people doing more tinkering than actual gaming”, almost as if you know you’re full of shit but are trying to avoid outright lying for some reason.
‘Ok, I’ll ask later" full screen ads, ads in the start menu, ignoring default search engine or browser settings when it could. It was a hostile user experience.’
Propaganda, or easy to turn off permanently.
‘Windows shill’
Yes, that’s why I suggest Haiku, BSD, Harmony, and Mac.
The propaganda is strong with you.
Not providing a terminal and desktop environment, for instance? Locking down the BIOS? What would it matter if it ran Linux if you could never leave Steam Big Picture?
You could still buy the game on other pcs so it wouldn’t be exclusive to steamOS
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Half life 3 steam machine exclusive would break the internet
Half Life: Linux
They’re waiting for your vim commands, in the test chamberrrrrrr
“Shut it down now!”
“It’s not- it’s not shutting down!”
*cut to scientist mashing keys in vim insert mode as resonance cascade begins*
What will happen if they release the next Half-Life as a Linux only build? There is no Wine in Windows. Is WSL even able to run games?
Wsl is just a VM and it can run graphical apps. I’ve never used it for games, but I’ve ran some intensive simulations through it that used my GPU and it worked fine so probably.
Wine is no longer a vm, they switched approaches a couple years back and now perform translations from windows specific apis and commands into the nearest available Linux version. Slowly refining the process like a fine wine to reduce the differences. That’s also why wine developers work closely with the dxvk devs (direct x 7-12 translated into vulkan regardless of platform) and other translation layer devs to be able to use their tools rather than duplicate the work.
Why would they make games that could only be played on Steam machines?
That would be absolutely insane because number of Steam users who have has to be like 0.00001% or something crazy.
It’s more work to make a shittier experience for their customers. Valve knows that alienating customers is the dumbest possible move to make.
Yet that’s still exactly a thing that many other platforms would do. Maximise lock-in.
And did, for the last 30 years, but Steam now have the benefit of hindsight having seen how the last 30 years of console wars have gone.
It’s also the main reason I haven’t touched the epic store even for the no strings attached (I think?) free games. They started out wanting (and getting) exclusive games before pivoting to free games, showing they were all too happy using business bullshit rather than good competition to take market share, which also implied things about what they’d do if they got to a dominant position.
Gave Newell didn’t get an MBA or the lobotomy that apparently goes with it.
I’m fairly certain all business degrees or official training is just to indoctrinate the people likely to be in charge later. Capitalism as we know it now wouldn’t survive if any ‘next generation’ ever realized how fucking stupid this all is.
I think it’s more likely making a game that’s exclusive to Steam/PC. I don’t think there’s really any way to make one exclusive to the Steam Machine. At most, it could be exclusive to Linux.
Given that it is designed as a general platform that makes zero sense.
Also, why is anyone holding their breath for Valve of all people to produce games?
What a painfully stupid thing to say.
What a painfully stupid article to write
putting an exclusive game on the steam machine would be an extremely dumb move anyways. valves not in the business trying to sell 5+ figure levels of these devices, just to get enough interest going that 3rd parties start to take it seriously.
It’s estimated that they’re selling 12,000-15,000 Steam Machines a weeks and my non-professional back-of-the-napkin math says that’s five figure levels.
