Valve is SO CLOSE to greatness. If there is anyone who could make Linux mainstream, it's Valve. It just needs to make everything work from the GUI desktop.
Hopefully they can fix some of the plasmoids for the desktop crashing (although KDE just restarts itself without issue) and help the flatpak team work out a more transparent way of exposing API calls to allow better permissions controls via GUI flatpak app managers and Linux software stores. Also, vkd3d-proton is in a bit of a sore spot but by the end of the year that should be resolved. Lastly, anticheat but it will take time. I told my local gamers back in 2012 that Valve's Linux efforts were going to be mainstream by the mid-late next decade. It seems I was right and that I'm not crazy, even though my PC buddies looked at me that way.
And SUPPORT for the Nvidia GPU's! I would be installing it on my other PC setup to try it out, but it has an Nvidia RTX card in it as well as my main PC..
Command line is not needed for Linux (Ubuntu for example). It's also not needed for Windows. But it's powerful on both. And on both systems you can't do *everything* without commandline.
That line about not having to open the Terminal was key. If Linux, in any iteration, is to ever be a viable Windows alternative, ease of use for people that aren't experienced in Linus is super important.
I disagree. For the most part Terminal is unused these days. Only for special use have I used it. Same as windows and Mac, it is still there should the need arise, but it's not very often anymore.
I agree with you that this is key for "normal" people, but I love working in the terminal. I'm old enough that I started in DOS way back when and and it always feels like returning home when working in a CLI.
"A little sign-in here, a touch of wi-fi there" You just triggered my PTSD. Several years back my work ordered a bunch of Windows tablets that for some bizarre firmware reason (fixed later) wouldn't work with any of our imaging software, so I had to set up 40 of them by hand. And the volume controls on the side didn't work until after the setup process.
Haven't had to do that myself, but I about twitched when he said that. Then I did twitch - repeatedly - when the laptop I was in the process of resetting prior to sending back for warranty replacement actually fired up that Cortana bit about 15 seconds later.
My predecessor used to setup each and every new machine by hand... that was one of the first things I fixed when I took over the sysadmin job, all new machines are imaged from a customized master that has all of our needed applications and as much config as possible already done. How anyone would make a point of doing that manually by choice is beyond me.
@@battmarn its incredibly far off though actually. software compatibility is horrendous on these other OS. they're barely passable for the most extremely casual desktop user.
Windows has been "in trouble" forever. Windows isn't going anywhere, ever. Simple as. Having said that, having alternatives is great and I'm excited to see what Steam OS has to offer.
Yeah its crazy that gamers think they're the primary demographic for Microsoft. Our needs are not heard by them because their sales aren't mostly from us. They aren't going anywhere and wont change very much.
@@Markie_SC Even then, I can guarantee most gamers use windows only because it comes with their computer, not because it's better or any other reason. As long as windows comes with bought computers, there's no way it's gonna go any time soon.
There is a reason Microsoft in integrating and enabling to run Linux OS/Apps on Windows and I'm all for it. I've been using WSL for many years now for all kinds of software development work. I run Arch Linux on my work laptop but Windows on PC. I'm going to switch my PC to 100% Linux once Steam OS ecosystem has matured enough and I can play at least 90% of games on it without issue.
I just don't like how Linux handles files, because it makes playing mods with games very difficult since Linux will spread files all across the PC, instead of running the program primarily through a main folder.
Valve is really onto something with this. Now they just need to follow through and make a standalone desktop version with proton enabled on a system level and not just in steam.
I think the ball is in Epic (and others) court on that one. Valve would no doubt be happy enough to make users use Steam for absolutely everything but likely they'd also be happy to get collaboration with other providers to make a FOSS gaming system that's agnostic to the client.
@@MrRolnicek I can only see Epic coming out with its own OS, frankly, that locks you in to using the Epic store exclusively. I wouldn't expect any other particularly open-ended systems to come out of the gaming industry any time soon. Essentially Valve wants to topple Microsoft's desktop monopoly for their own benefit, and I am more than happy to benefit from that happening.
it's very promising to see progress on this. Windows is getting ever more intolerable as we go, and they're going to make things worse, not better. Unfortunately, the damned thing does work well and does have minimal friction - mainly, no doubt, because games manufacturers test a lot against it. Getting Linux to work as effortlessly and seamlessly is a bit ask, and we're not there yet. But I have hope we may get there.
Manjaro distro has everything you need to get started playing games out of the box. Proton and Vulkan is a game changer. You can play 95% of the games out there without ever needing to use Windows. In a few years, I full anticipate most people will switch to linux. The inability to play games was the one thing that stopped Linux from fully blossoming. Now that 95% of the games can be played on linux, there's nothing stopping people switching to a free operating system.
No, Windows is not becoming 'ever more intolerable' in the slightest. That is the line parroted from what I call Lintards who would be unhappy with Microsoft and Windows simply because it is not fully open source.
Pandemic hired a lot of novice coder. So a lot of software is flaw. They hired people who come with idea that is awful too. It would be nice having a PC run solely on steam os. That's like console like except in PC chipset layout. It would probably be more efficient for gaming as it run gaming code than a lot of unnecessarily service background.. The plus, you have two ssd that boot up on window of need too
your technically not wrong but... you spelled it wrong. its windoze not windows. steam and linux have their issues hive os i think it was did too apple is a joke so i dont even even consider them for pc users. but im glad to see steam doing as well as they are these days. its been a long time since it was just valve. and boi were they working miracles. hopefully someone fixes this interface problem cause i still have a sweet computer and windoze seems to slow it down every time.
@@BlueRice If SteamOS really becomes a thing I would 100% use it. I am so tired of Windows 10 having 100s of background apps running and making everything worse
ever heard of the saying you die a hero or become the villain? if they become big enough, the switch to the dark side is inevitable and nothing is wrong with that...but MS or Valve or who ever calls the shot will be bad for their consumers
@@sumomaster5585 valve is a private company unlike microsoft. that's why gaben doesn't have to worry about bringing as much profit as possible to investors and is able to focus on making great products
@@sumomaster5585 I sadly agree, Gaben is probably one of the few things saving Valve from turning into a corporation. Only thing we can do is hope that he has someone good enough to keep things clean going forward since the man is already quite old :/
@@Luizfernando-dm2rf if dynasties taught us anything, that's not a good long term strategy. Myabe a bigger company whose main business isn't gaming could be the best way for Valve to survive. MS won't support linux so it's out. Maybe Google? or Amazon? I dunno man but some other company that don't need to focus very hard on the immediate profit
I like POP but get screen tearing because it uses x11. Wayland fixed the issue but tiling doesn't work with wayland. Using Ubuntu 22.04LTS now and happy(for now).
I wish they had system wide wine on SteamOS as well for some windows apps that I still use. I use pure vanilla Archlinux, hopefully Nvidia will catch up now that their kernel driver is open source for RTX Cards at least.
@@phoenixrising4995 Why not use Bottles? They run on Flatpak. Might need to allow full Home access using Flatseal if you don't want to constantly move stuff inside their sandbox, but they work.
As a linux user (programmer by trade, running PopOS) for years having a dual boot just for occasional games I have to say that I didn't had to boot windows in the last 1-2 years as proton is really getting mature enough.
That sounds great. It will open possibilities in many countries where people can´t afford a Windows license. One could install a fully workable OS and charge a few bucks. Win-win, and Gates can go to F himself.
They wont, steam os has one great big flaw that all linux distros have- compatibility with software. I am not talking games i am talking software, like i do graphics work on the side a lot, i would love to switch to linux but it is impossible because some software like Photoshop either does not have an alternative or has an alternative that is severely gimped and obtuse it is borderline useless. And no majoriyt of peopel are not going do jump through hoops that require specific knowledge just to get something to run on a vm or with emulation of sorts, until linux can run big ticket shit like office/ adobe/ etc it will never break windows control.
@@Graine01 imagine paying money to edit photos, kinda cringe I'd consider using windows but many of my favorite software programs don't allow me to edit their theme colors on windows and they don't auto update. The good alternatives on windows have ridiculous subscriptions, DRM, and proprietary files making them borderline useless for any collaboration unless you all shill for the same company.
Until these alternative OS can support all the random homebrewed programs, as well as every single major AAA software release, Windows has absolutely zero competition.
Ever since the inception of SteamOS a decade ago, my theory was they would be release a Desktop version in the future to basically compete with Windows, but also give people an option to boot their PC into a "gaming OS" environment, similar to consoles like Playstation, Xbox, etc. I didn't think - or rather hoped it wouldn't take this long, but it's a long road and more complicated than I originally anticipated. It's so great to see this much progress, and with the Steam Deck, the progress now being 2-3 fold with Anti-Cheat support, Nvidia opening their drivers up, etc. The end of Windows is near bois, I can taste it. One big issue, as someone who runs their business from home, Adobe is mandatory, CAN WE PLEASE get Adobe working natively or as close as possible on LINUX??? I would literally leave Windows right now. Cheers
I thought the same. Ironically certain native Vulkan based engines like Godot are actually running better on Linux based systems than it does on Windows. If people see the benfits, I wonder if this can contribute to a more widespread use of this kind of OS on desktop devices.
Adobe is a shit company and you should switch to morally better alternatives that run on Linux. Photopea or Krita instead of Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve instead of Premiere, etc...
@@aprilnya adobe just has super tight integration between it’s different apps which for a business where time is potentially a shit load of money makes massive savings. For non business situations I wholeheartedly agree though
i've been a full time linux user since 2009 and i sometimes need to use adobe software, for that i fire up my VM and i use the SN from the BIOS to run the latest windows and adobe software. my machine is powerful enough that i don't feel any difference, and i don't need to dual boot. i actually run my VMs in seamless mode, so i don't even really see windows. never had a problem working this way.
@@randombrit13 adobe has amazing artificial intelligence systems for swigt and easy editing it sucks that such an amazing suite of software is owned by a shitty company
"Linux As A Gaming Desktop" is just inches from becoming reality. Valve should push this out the door with or without Nvidia, screw team green if they can't support one of the most important movements in the history of PC gaming.
I already am refusing anything with the NVidia tag on it. They are too predatory. Until they LEAD the charge on open standards, I'll suffer through without their giant logo on everything.
I made the switch last Novemeber in anticipation of my steam deck. I installed EndeavourOS(an Arch based) with KDE and I have thoroughly enjoyed having it as my main gaming OS. The only thing I still boot in to windows for is VR games, as they tend to not work in linux and I got worse performance. But I also have an nvidia card and I've heard that's most of the problem. My next upgrade will be an AMD gpu.
When Win10 security updates stop, this or some other flavor of Linux with proton will almost certainly be almost entirely compatible with whatever I may want to do, so I expect to leave windows then.
good riddance to MS Windows. Its a bloated spying mess of an OS with an inconsistent GUI, gimped right click menu (Seriously I need to right click then left click for advance copy options in WIN11). I find wine to be more compatible than Windows for really old Windows games and apps. MS Windows fail unless you need those 2 app ecosystems mentioned above. I don't and I use Davinci Resolve, Reaper and Krita in the place of Adobe's Software.
Yea, I'm probably off Windows at the next convenient moment, but that possibly means another 5-8 years. I wouldn't mind a swap earlier, but I can't be arsed to change OS if it's working sufficiently. I'm no computer guy and have little interest in creating PC-issues... It's quite possible that most on PCs are even more conservative than me when it comes to OS swaps.
For creating bootable drives Ventoy is a great alternative to flashing the full system image. It is installed to a flash disk from a GUI, then creates a volume to which you only need to copy your ISOs, and is able to store and boot as many as you cqn fit on the disk. It can even leave some extra space for other volumes.
Another benefit i found from it is that if you can copy an ISO on from any system that can read fat32. Found this very useful for when my only system died and i had to use someone elses system to get fix it. Just download, copy, done.
Ventoy is a very good utility for booting from ISO's. Discovered it a year or two ago, never looked back. Just drop an ISO anywhere on the ventoy partition and you are good to go. Best to rename the ISO file to something you can recognize when booting Ventoy though (like "Windows 10 x64 (21H1).iso" or "GParted Live x64.iso" for example). As long as you do not need persistent storage it works great. If you need persistent storage (like when running a 'live' OS image), then a tool like Rufus or the like is necessary.
One could argue that valve has been pushing for this for longer, given that half-life was a dream child born out of trying to prove a point that you could run high-end games on a Windows operating system environment.. it's kind of going back to their like ultra roots in this regard.. now if only there was a new Half-Life game to prove this point
The fact that SteamOS is so usable proves something I've been arguing for years: the only think holding back Linux is the Linux community. Turn it over to a company that actually understands that an OS where "use the terminal" is the only answer to 90% of everything you need to do is never going to gain mainstream adoption.
Valve's the first that presents linux without any terminal usage whatsoever, that's probably why it was so successful compared to most 'beginner focused' distros
I think with more time, testing, and documentation there will be a lot more people willing to use SteamOS as their gaming desktop operating system over paying for Windows. Lots of people who build PCs and install their own operating system usually have the basic skills needed for simple command line tasks on Linux.
I built so many PCs lately that I'm pretty confident that I could do it blindfolded at this point, and installing windows takes nothing more than a few mouse clicks, but ask me to run anything in a command line and it feels like trying to read hyroglyphics without the Rosetta stone lol
Paying for windows isn’t the issue, it’s the locked settings, security Fuckery, and most importantly the performance killing bloatware. Generally, just their anti-consumer behavior.
This kinda takes me back to the days of DOS and when we needed to make boot disks to free resources. Windows made everything 'easy', but we still needed things like DirectX to get the compatibility issues with hardware under some kind of control. Now with many of those issues 'solved', switching to a good OS shouldn't be quite as taxing.
I've been been doing some Steam/Proton and GOG/Lutris in the latest Ubuntu. With a bit of fiddling, I've been having fun with older hack and slash games (Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, Torchlight so far) I'm almost completely off of Windows now. Steam OS has been on my radar for a while. Thank you for this look inside!
Does it really need any fiddling? Torchlight and Grim dawn both played out of the box through proton for me and that was at least a year ago. Although i'm on rolling release distro so that's probably why
@@mementocity that's strange because i have gtx 1060 and for gaming i haven't had any issues woth the games i played. On desktop though it needed some tinkering and power consumption still isn't really optimal
@@mementocity it's Galax 1060 3gb vram version. It was part of a prebuilt and the cooler is pretty bad and it runs hot. But it's been running fine since 2018. Oldest pacman logs show nvidia 415.22-1 driver installed and even then it was running great. Right now i have the latest 515.43.04-1 DKMS. As i've said for gaming nvidia driver isn't bad but at desktop even just dragging window around the gpu goes to boost clocks which in windows it doesn't do.
I've been daily driving Linux for a year now. I haven't looked back to Windows ever since. I hope Valve releases a full fledged distro for SteamOS for desktop/laptop PCs.
@@K3rhos no mate, it's not "based on Linux", it IS Linux. It's based on Arch, just like Manjaro. It's a KDE distro with an optional Steam overlay. You can do everything without the terminal in SteamOS just like in Manjaro or Mint, if you are not doing advanced stuff (in which case you probably prefer the terminal anyway). You have been away for a long time, do you think nothing has changed in the past 10 years? It's like a million years in IT time
The unique ease of use with regards to not needing to use the command line to do important things is HUGE for getting people to switch to this from Windows. I'm seriously considering trying SteamOS out for myself now. Not everybody has interest in learning command line crap to effectively control their OS, and Valve has thankfully realized that when designing SteamOS 3.0
Dude, thanks for posting. I hadn't played around with SteamOS in ages. Arch & KDE, that's what I needed to hear. I will likely get an install of v3 on a spare partition soon, maybe this week. So glad Valve is doing all of this, they have made linux gaming so much easier. I pretty much gave up on windows after 3.11 and Win95 - which meant there was a long period of time where my gaming was crippled. But since Valve developed proton it has gotta so much better. Long Live Valve!
"Valve made an earth-shattering announcement, but probably not the one you were expecting" Why'd you have to remind me man... I had almost forgotten :\
@@mitlanderson About two years ago, Valve announced a new Half-Life game to come out after an agonizing near-silent 15 year development cycle. It was a VR only game, and the expensive new hardware required to play it made many fans upset. The game was also announced to be a prequel instead of a sequel, so it was adding an additional delay before we could see a resolution to the previous game's cliffhanger, which also made many fans upset.
@@thecompanioncube4211 It was utterly incredible. I had to take off the headset many, many times over the course of the game to have a quick happy cry break. I'm still in shock that it finally happened :)
pro tip: if Balena Etcher doesn't work for anyone (for some reason that software seems to hate me), "rufus" might be another slightly-more-complicated option that I personally prefer for flashing drives
Having pre-ordered a Steam Deck myself, I know about how SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, and I learned about how unlike Windows, Linux *doesn't* have any bloat-ware you probably don't want, and yet can't *uninstall* , which means it affords more room on the drive for games; and as someone who has a lot of games but not much room for them thanks to Windows 10 filling *most* of my drive space with that very *bloat-ware* , I'd *love* to have a Linux based OS instead. Unfortunately, my computer uses an Nvidia graphics card, so I guess that's not an option for me. 😔
You forgot one thing. If you are in Desktop mode (KDE Plasma) you will use kwin as the window manager, in gaming mode you will use gamescope which is better for games for the most part.
I would like to see how the SteamOS rights management compares to Windows. Effective parental controls and administrative segmentation could be the bait that gets household and institutional attention.
Almost every flavor of Linux has tools for it. Plus its Linux, if the distro doesnt, someone made a script so you can set them up. SteamOS is built on Arch, so you would want to look it "parental controls for Arch" not "SteamOS" for a more effective result EDIT SteamOS 3.0 is built on Arch, the older versions are built on Debian
@@BrowncoatInABox The key though is -- can this be done without opening the terminal? The average small business owner or parent is highly allergic to such things. Therefore, what clean solutions can come prepackaged with Steam ecosystem or SteamOS? It could even be a separate version, but having a clean UI and integration with Steam family sharing would be a huge boon for adoption.
@@younglingslayer2896 you can attach your existing Steam library to a Linux version of Steam but it will force you to redownload the executable for a large chunk of your games. That can be a 50-200MB download per game. After that the executable will be clobbered and of you reattach the same library on Windows it will likely force you to redownload again and this might happen every time you switch. Apparently some executables are dependent on some sort of a unique client key and it differs between Windows and Linux releases of Steam client, I'm not sure. Anyway this happens even to games that have no native Linux version, it's redownloading the Windows executable on both systems. Also for the time being, performance of NTFS on Linux is bad with high CPU overhead as mentioned. This will get better once Paragon's new NTFS driver deployment is more wide spread, it was integrated into the Linux kernel a few months ago, but it needs some fixing, and there may be some trust issues until it's seen some use, so it may not actually get enabled for the time being.
Would be up to swtiching as soon as Nvidia is supported (fully). Since they seem to be interested in releasing their drivers to open source, this might happen soonish! Gaming has been the only thing keeping me from switching completely.
You can always try things on a VM first. So far, I think PopOS has been doing great as far as making things work for gamers and general desktop users. It updates reasonably fast, allowing quicker and better compatibility with latest hardware. The UI is less arcane than vanilla config, and a lot of things are easily modifiable as well. Best of all, Pop Shop has worked great from my testing, no more issues, it just installs stuff from both Flatpak (user) and .deb (system).
@@FengLengshun If its for gaming, Manjaro distro is the best one to use. If it's for desktop applications, Linux Mint distro. Under no circumstances should anyone use Ubuntu. That garbage distro is full of bloatware and spyware.
@@luminatrixfanfiction Nah, I wouldn't recommend anything Arch-based for first time users. And Manjaro has its shares of issues too, so much so that should just use Endeavor, Arco, or Garuda if they want something Arch-based.
@@FengLengshun I admit it's a bit of a learning curve but while Manjaro has some issues, it's pretty polished for common every day use enough that first time users can use it without getting into the nitty gritty under the hood stuff.
@@luminatrixfanfiction, >Debian based distributions are bloated >I use Arch btw >I use vim btw >VLC < MPV >Python is slow >Knowing how to apply exccessively complicated Regexes for the needs of awk/grep >I use zsh btw >I use ffmpeg instead of video editors >I use FF >I use dwm instead of DEs >I compile all the packages from sources, including the kernel itself (which is ZEN) Pick your pokemons and make up with some new ones!
I'm using Linux as my main OS, but I switch to Windows whenever I want to play a game. Having both in one place without performance issues would be awesome!
If valve would launch this officially, I think we would have much wider adoption. I feel many people just don't want to install an OS from an unofficial source even if it is 99% of what an official would be like HoloISO.
There was lots of good info on this video, and couple good points about Linux. The fact that using the operating system is becoming a more comfortable experience. You shouldn't be a NASA-level scientist to work Linux nowadays, and you don't have to be.
One thing is that launching games on the desktop vs gamescope will make some differences. Some games won't launch or will display wrong, and many times the steam control interface won't hook in to the game. Gamescope mode is able to create a virtual monitor that allows steam to have more control over the game and present the window better and hook controls better, so if a game isn't working in desktop mode I suggest trying it in game mode. Elden Ring is a great example, as you mentioned your controller wouldn't work. It works perfectly in gamescope mode.
i would certainly like to see some viable competition for windows. it is the only way operating system features will ever trend toward user preference again instead of corporate preference.
I've been following your gaming rig virtualisation series for a while, and finally got it to work on my own proxmox server last night. I'd love to see a "Virtualise SteamOS" video 🤩
I've been using Linux off and on for years now. Started on Debian, moved to Pop, went to Manjaro, then Fedora, and then back to Manjaro. Linux has been good enough for normal desktop use, for quite some time. It's been really stable too, with even rolling release distros being really stable. Personally, I've stuck with Manjaro because it's easier to set up than Arch, and can still take advantage of the AUR. The AUR is not perfect, but because of it, I've been able to find all my programs, with no issue. Even if there is not a native build available (built for Deb/RPM), I can usually find it, fully working, in the AUR. Aside from Windows, it is the only platform I feel comfortable installing on friends/families computers. Usually going with Cinnamon, or Gnome. It's great that Valve has become a mainstay in the Linux community, and I can only hope that more companies follow in their footsteps. I hope Adobe soon follows... I mean Nvidia of all companies have started, so maybe pigs can fly. I just hope the... more toxic parts of the Linux community does not bash/troll them, like they are doing with Nvidia, right now. The Linux, and by extension the FOSS community can be absolute elitest gits, sometimes.
I've been having a problem with getting the wifi to work once I installed Manjaro. The live usb version was able to connect to the wifi modem so it had it's own propriety drivers to get the wifi working but for some reason the installed Manjaro keeps disconnecting which implies that the drivers are different on the installed version and the live version. Is there a way I can fix this? I've tried changing kernel versions but no luck. I'm hoping someone with experience can help me.
Great video, love the progress SteamOS has made! I would love it even more if Valve would release an official build of SteamOS for generic hardware instead of forcing us to rely on HoloISO. Love HoloISO, but I think an official build from Valve would go a long way to getting SteamOS more widely adopted. That said Valve may not want that (at least not yet), especially given how the steam deck is doing just fine on its own.
Windows isn't in trouble. Valve recently broke the native Linux games in the Stable Channel. This left everybody in a situation where they were playing a Native game and had to switch to Windows Proton versions of the same game. And cross play Cloud saves is rare with developers. Many were stuck in a situation where they had invested 100s of hours into Linux versions and realise they have to start again in the Windows version. The sort of problems you simply don't get with Windows. I know many who have Steam Deck who have ditched Steam OS in favour of Windows after noticing this weakness of trying to run Multiple OS games on one machine where the developer of the games (often abandoned) has to implement Cross Play Cloud Saves. Moving to Windows on the deck not only prevents this, It also stops the constant breaking of already playable titles on each Steam OS update. As well as Opening up every title in your library as playable.
I'm glad that Valve has already been working on Nvidia support ever since Nvidia open sourced their drivers cause I cannot wait to uninstall Windows 10
If benchmarks are better I'm sure people will insta switch, but a those videos never talk about benchmarks and in the end going through so many changes only to lose 10% fps
@@dethshot_fps I would happinly sacrifice some performance to ditch Windows. I am not a competitive FPS player so performance edge is not my priority. If it works well I am more than happy
I've seen so many people try to convince me otherwise but every time I take a look, and I am no computer or linux noob, I was tinkerign with linux way before it was anywhere near ready for the masses... but the facts are half my games dont work or at least not properly and the audio system for pro audio is shite compared to the windows alternative where all my expensive gear just works.
@@damiengreen28 idk what you mean with audio system. Do you mean pulse audio, or actually it’s replacement pipewire? Your audio gear not being recognised is just a lack of drivers.
I recently installed it on a 12 year old laptop and to my surprise, most of my games worked! They were painfully slow, 3-4 fps, but I'm still impressed they even installed and ran.
what surprises me about this is gpus with lack of support of newer direct x versions would not launch the game due to missing libraries. does proton translate all those incompatibilities or what?
After Steam OS is officially ready for desktops, the next big thing is to make VM single-GPU passthrough easier. Once the general populace has the option to fire up a Windows VM with barely any performance loss on a single GPU, I can see a LOT of people switching to Linux as their only "on-metal" OS. I know I would!
I've been using HoloISO for a couple weeks, very impressive for alpha level software. Dual-boot with Windows is possible, but requires you to edit the GRUB configuration and to have installed HoloISO on a separate drive from your Windows install. Otherwise, not too hard to do. Of course, you could just hit the boot selection menu and select your Windows drive to boot from, or change the setting in BIOS. Only thing other than modifying GRUB that I had to use the command line for was to install Mod Organizer 2 for Skyrim SE. I was able to get all my Skyrim mods, profiles and load order copied over from my Windows install and they work perfectly.
@@flaryx32The arm device probably won't work on holoISO, as Arch linux does not support Arm. steam does not work for arm, so you need something like the apple rosetta stone. This is "box86" which also has an alternative which I cannot remember the name of. I would rather try ubuntu which has an official arm version.
Can you please tell me or link me how to modify this GRUB so i can just select my desired OS from the grub screen instead of having to select boot device from BIOS?
I divided my 1TB drive into 2 letters in Windows, what would happen to them on this OS? would they be merged? inaccessible? or becomes a folder with the letter's names in the file manager?
@@AhmadWahelsa A physical drive can be split into different partitions regardsless of OS. These partitions are called by letters C,D,E,F etc. in windows. Partition info is not stored in the operating system, I think it is on the drive, so they won't dissappear. I assume by "This OS" you mean how partitions are viewed in linux right? Windows uses NTFS as a filesystem, linux default is EXT4. # linux can read windows filesystem, Windows cannot read linux system. To read a file system type you need a driver, Linux has a NTFS driver called "ntfs-3g", Windows does not have a driver for EXT4. So Windows cannot read the contents of the partition with a linux file system, but you can still change the partition to another filesystem if you want. # how to see partitions Partitions are named after their type, normal hard disks and sata ssds are called sd*,(sd=sata disk) where * is the letter of the drive, not the partition. So sda1 is the first partition of the physical sda drive. sdb2 is the first partition on the sdb drive. It is easier to visualize partitions with the Gparted program. or terminal alternatives "sudo blkid"(meaning block device id) or "sudo fstab -l"(filesystem table). # accessing partitions in linux You either use the mount command or just the filemanager by clicking on the drive icon. partitions are found at folders anyway, To mount the sdb1 partition at a existing folder called nice-partition-bro in the home directory do: sudo mount /dev/sdb1 ~/nice-partition-bro So you would view the files as in a folder.
16:15 Zorin OS has this option. If you double click an .exe, it will run. If that .exe is an installer Zorin will prompt the user to install it. If that .exe is an installer for a software that has a linux version, Zorin will ask the user if it should install this .exe or the linux version. I find that awesome!
Zorin is doing amazing making Linux desktop be better. Their desktop layout changer is absolutely awesome. I dont use Zorin but i love what they are doing.
It's KDE, Arch & Steam! Hell YES! But not just on a gaming system! On my daily driver PC too. I am currently on MX, I was on Kubuntu. But with Steams development being so rapid & the emulation people in-bracing the steam deck. Steam OS is looking to be a great Linux distro just for daily use.
Ok I have a serious question, what would be in it for Valve to progress to a fully fledged desktop OS? Also, what would be necessary to convince software devs (not gaming devs) to support the platform? Speaking personally I would dump Windows in a second if this thing actually ran like a native desktop OS.
A minimalist Linux distro, if you can call it a distro, is LibreELEC. It is there to do one thing, and only one thing, run Kodi. SteamOS will be something akin to that, with a single purpose: turn your PC into a games console. If they can make it work, it is a natural step to help enable Steam games on desktop Linux distros, but basically, as I say, I think the purpose of SteamOS is to turn your PC into a games console. Some will want that, others won't.
all valve needs to do is just update steam and proton, and then just test for breakages upstream arch before allowing them into the steamOS repos. Valve doesn't need to continue from there until proton works flawlessly, and once proton works flawlessly then they don't even need to continue. They can just leave it up to the maintainers. SteamOS is a full fledged desktop OS
@@stanzacosmi no. At the moment it is for gaming, which is fine. What i meant is.a desktop os first with integrated gaming. It doesnt work like that at the moment. Like i have ubuntu installed. It works out the box with productivity apps and virtually no setup. To my mind if steamos functioned like that it would be a big door opener
Ah, yea they do make it so you need to install the apps you need from the software center on the KDE side, but I'd still say the fact that they included the KDE side was more than enough to be considered a proper desktop OS
I would really like to try to have Steam OS as a secondary boot. With Windows as my work OS with all my softwares I use as a professional musician and my personal documents. And Steam OS as the "gaming side" of the computer on a single 2TB SSD having no interaction with my work data and personal stuff but still profiting of my beefy workstation hardware. But in my case there are still big stops : - No Nvidia compatibility - Even while gaming I use my studio soundcards and speakers, lots of soundcards don't play nicely with Linux - Compatibility with all Gamepass library
@@WarlonWinterheart If I only wanted a secondary boot for the data security I talked about, I would just install a secondary Windows to not have driver and compatibility issues. I want to try Steam OS to have a gaming centric OS with less background processes, the controller interface and the different look to not feel like I working in the same environnement. (sorry I wasn't watching my TH-cam inbox)
"Tembah, when the walls fell", was also in the same episode where what is on the shirt was said in TNG. As far as an OS on a game server that I intend to build, now that I know about SteamOS, I will now be using it for the OS instead of using windows since SteamOS does what I need it to do.
The Steam Deck has been my gateway into Linux. I've been fed up with Windows for years now, but I didn't expect Proton and everything to work this well and I kinda just thought I'd be stuck with Windows. At this rate I think Windows 10 will finally be my last Windows "upgrade" (lol) though. If Steam OS helps Linux take off for gaming then I just worry what Microsoft's response will be. Anyone who has followed them closely over the years knows that they don't play nice or what most people would call fair when it comes to their market share/dominance)
I think it's safe to assume Microsoft will use their usual tactics. No point repeating them, we all know what they are. But what's different this time is, I don't know if those same tactics will work as they usually do. Microsoft can and has lost battles in the past. Internet Explorer once had an unshakeable dominance over the web browser market, and now even Microsoft themselves are happy to hammer the final nails into that coffin, and are desperately trying to start over again with Edge as the underdog for once. We may see a similar situation play out.. Who knows, maybe one day Microsoft will be launching a 'Windows Edge' that's based on Linux with a Windowsy UI.
@@jeffreyali1456 I can't say I enjoy being spied upon or things like that either, but for me it's mainly that I value efficiency. Every release it seems Microsoft just adds more junk that only serves to get in my way or inhibit my productivity and performance. Their shotgun approach of crappy features and additions that already have better alternatives wouldn't even be as bad if they'd just give you more control over what's installed in the first place. Rather than the "Microsoft knows best and you need all this stuff" install that we get, maybe let us start with something more akin to LTSC if that's what we desire.
@@infasis if it’s mostly about having stuff you don’t want and having little to no control, then I can see that. The spy part I really had no issues. But right now I have an Aya Neo and a Steam deck and honestly it’s a lot easier to handle my games and emulators on my Aya Neo with windows
@@jeffreyali1456 Yeah, it's really impressive what Proton can accomplish on it's own, but sadly, I play a lot of Japanese games and others that need a lot of work still. It would really depend on the person: what games they play, their tolerance to hiccups like audio glitches or having to mess around to make things work right, but in it's current form Proton/Linux alone just wouldn't be enough for me. Even in the few months since I've received my steam deck I have seen substantial improvement in many games and hopefully, publishers/devs will start making compatibility more of a priority, so I'm keeping hope alive. At this point I still find Windows completely necessary due to my gaming habits though.
Considering it's looking more and more like windows 10 is going to be my last version of windows this is good news. I've been using POP OS on my laptop to feel things out, hopefully by the time w10 goes EOL I'll be ready to switch. Hopefully now that Nvidia has open sourced its drivers that can get added as it's a major point for me.
@@opiumized I do have the NVidia driver on my laptop but I currently have a few apps I need in windows that I haven't been able to replace. Nvidia open sourcing the driver just makes me happy after people have been wanting it for years.
I’m planning on building a new desktop in the near future with a $3k budget, and I’d rather like to move away from Windows and to Steam OS if possible. My experience with it on the Steam Deck has left me impressed with the viable alternative Valve has presented as I had never considered Linux in the past.
@@lolololo-fs2po as he showed in this video, in order to use executables you have to use steam "add non steam games" feature to open executables. with using directly I mean being able to just double click the executable instead.
I bet you can set up a WINE or Proton MIME handler for exe files. But I haven't really looked into it, I just vaguely remember that this should be possible.
@@ralakus8784 Valve needs to somehow install wine/proton system-wide instead of just in a sandboxed steam runtime for it to work as expected. In the meantime Bottles really is the best solution for managing your windows apps
Nobody is even remotely close to Windows right now. Not that I want it to be that way, it's just what it is. The best alternatives are barely just passable on a surface level for the most basic casual desktop user.
I'd love to run SteamOS on this PC, but I'd want to wait for an official release. I'm very inexperienced with Linux and I've already had massive headaches while trying Manjaro and Pop OS - I can't imagine I'd have a much better time trying to run on OS that's not officially supported on the kind of hardware I want to run it on yet. That said, actually owning a Steam Deck has given me the best opportunity to learn the ropes with Linux, since the stakes aren't as high - it's just a gaming device, and I don't expect it to do all the things I normally do on a desktop.
> Manjaro and Pop OS I'm not surprised you had issues... I wish picking a distro wasn't such a big problem - a lot of them aren't very good, and it's hard to know which ones are good
I'd hate to say it, but SteamOS isn't going to be much easier than Manjaro; and likely never will be. You will run into exactly the same issues for literally everything else that isn't on steam. The only difference is a bit of steam sugar on top; which is mostly just UI and a preconfigured proton.
@@SleepyBombay I'd steer away from Ubuntu nowadays. It's rapidly loosing marketshare due to the way they treat their users. The times where ubuntu were easily the best are long gone. If your goal is SteamOS, it's best to get used to Manjaro since both SteamOS and Manjaro are based on the same distribution (arch). And most things will behave exactly the same between those 2 OS'es. Additional tools and programs meant for SteamOS are even directly available in the Manjaro package manager.
For me, Manjaro and Steam Proton has been all most flawless. Little work on few titles and no work on most. I have been using Manjaro now since October full time. Your right, choosing performance isnt the only factor. Mind you, i have been getting amazing performance. I think im gona give SteamOS a try sometime. Gona be amazing to see where this goes.
"choosing performance isnt the only factor". Hard disagree. Performance is the only reason we are paying more for a better PC, at the cost of extra power consumption and heat.
Manjaro, Id rather just use straight Arch. Personally I would rather use Fedora Silverblue instead of any of those options as it will someday be the most dummy proof Linux and have easy rollbacks in case you screw something up.
Windows already just works. There's literally no tangible issues that need replacing with another OS. The things people complain about are the most insignificant nonsense these days.
@@derpderpin1568 people *actually* complain about Microsoft's terrible behavior "these days" and gamers tend to be quite open to alternatives if they're good enough and the companies behind them are actually sane
Honestly, this is great to hear and thank you for the breakdown of this. I did want to ask what it was like for controller support? For example, I have a driving wheel, pedals, 360 controller and flight stick / HOTAS. Do they still run okay within this OS?
This is really what makes me reluctant to make the switch as well. I have a HOTAS and rudder setup for flight sims (Warthog) and a Fantec Wheel / Pedals / Shifter setup for racing sims and those where a nightmare on their own to setup on Windows. I am afraid to think what the process might entail to get them all working together properly in Linux.
Regular game controllers mostly work absolutely flawless in Linux, even better than on Windows, a lot of drivers that are not available for Windows at all come pre-installed within Linux kernel (Playstation controllers for example). You just connect the controller and it works right away. As for steering wheels, it's very hit or miss, I've got a Logitech steering wheel that required me to find a random guy's github repo that was kind enough to make his own driver, and then compile it myself. But I also packaged it for Arch User Repository (AUR) so that other people don't have to bother with that. But yeah, when it comes to steering wheels, you should really look up what's the compatibility looking like before buying those to save yourself some headaches.
@@Starcrafter23 Well my point is my fanatec dd wheel and pedals work fine on my windows desktop already and I do ALOT of sim racing + I wouldn't downgrade to a logitech for example. If I'm able to use them on the steam OS then it's pretty much sold for me at this point and I'll start trialing it. Worst case, I'll wait for support.
As soon as you started the Cortana bit the hairs on my neck stood up and I immediately started paying more attention. Triggered my trauma from mass-imaging the PCs at my school a few years back XD
How about a video showing a dual boot of Windows 10 and Steam OS? I certainly would love to see that. :) (Especially if I try it first and completely mess it up! )
Very interesting. Valve is making right steps to make gaming distro.And after just open it so every game company can be use this distro as their default gaming distro.
@@damiengreen28 and the point just blew right over your head. And even so, windows is not even compatible with some older windows-titles where Linux/proton/wine will just power through without issues. Also SteamOS (especially on the deck) is a fantastic experience and brings features not available on windows.
If Steam made a actual desktop image to be more user friendly, like direct exe file support. I would get another SSD just to dual boot it. Having to run everything through steam itself to install does get kind of frustrating. It did frustrate me getting none steam games to run as a Linux amateur
Elden Ring works if you adjust the controller to NOT switch into "desktop" mode. You have to set it to always be in game controller mode. This is due to the overlay system not working, so when you launch the game, the controller is going into a desktop mode and thus doesn't work in the game. You set this up correctly within Steam and your controller will work just fine.
You are the ONLY TH-camr that Cortana had interfered with!. Your puzzled face was priceless!. Others distracted by the dreaded SIRI or the Google Assistant....
@@terrylandess6072 That's why having a company not go public can pay off. GabeN can literally say fuck you I am not answerable to anyone and I'll do what I think is the best
Great video, really looking forward to where SteamOS will be in a year or 2 from now on the desktop. It was refreshing to see such a simple and functional start menu, how well does the search work?
Search on the KDE Plasma Desktop (Desktop Mode on SteamOS 3.0) is great, and, it supports plugins and custom commands which you can manually add to it yourself. So if you are inclined to do so you can set it up such that you can use the "Search" feature to perform Application Specific Tasks without opening up the Application first. You can make it "Context Aware" by using specific phrases or words to trigger the initial "Contextual Awareness"
I'm definitely interested in SteamOS, but I've been on Windows for so long and there's so much that I do on windows I don't know if I could change. Both my laptop and Desktop are used together fairly often, I feel I'd need a side computer that has absolutely nothing on it that I could use to fiddle with it myself before committing to such a change.
Linux works great on older hardware. Just flash some distro's on that old laptop lying around for the past few years and then commit. That's how i did it.
No Nvidia GPU support is the deal breaker for me at the moment. Once they've figured that out inside of the official release, I'm fully onboard with a gaming rig for the living room that doesn't have Windows and runs fully on SteamOS
Just discovered this channel, and I have to say there is some top notch Star Trek ref's here. The Darmok and Jalad shirt, as well as the USS Defiant back ground drop is killer. The content is great as well. Keep up the videos !
I'm very excited to get SteamOS on my computer someday. I wanna give it time in the oven for now though. Very excited about quite possibly having a new viable OS to get away from the walled garden
@@theh0lybible I am just learning about linux so maybe I am missing something but I have a steamdeck so I use the OS on there, I don't see how an arch linux based operating system with basically a skin put on it is more restrictive than windows
Just a heads up. Lots of Adobe's apps from Adobe Cloud is slowly moving into web forms. So far Adobe Express(Last known as Adobe Spark) and Adobe Photoshop is working great as a web standalone.
I would love to give this OS a go!! I ran linux for YEARS and only recently switched back to windows as i got into VR. I almost never play a game that isnt vr anymore. So i would like to see this OS running VR. Is it capable?? super interested in finding out.
Sadly I went and purchased a Rift when it commercially launched - before there were even hand controllers. I say sadly because when Facebook bought Oculus my heart sank - I NEVER use social media (beside TH-cam) and they want users to have a Facebook account to receive support. Grrrrrr. Valve just keeps looking better and better.
I do all of my VR gaming on Linux. If you own a Valve Index or any other steamvr-native headset (vive, vive pro), you should be able to get it to work. It's not perfect and there are a lot of missing features, but you can definitely use it. Game compatibility for vr is actually quite good, as most of them do not use anti-cheat software.
Unfortunately what's still sorely missing in Linux is a decent settings gui (like gnome-disks, gnome-logs, systemd-ui) for managing users/groups/home directories, date & time, locale, managing printer and scanners (no a web interface doesn't cut it) and video card settings and probably other things I forget that might be useful to the average user.
Plasma settings doesn't do users/groups/home directories. It allows to change the current user settings/info through accountsservice. KUser is unmaintained and no longer supported. And it doesn't handle systemd-homed. Same for redhat's crappy python system-config-users. The API interfaces to do that are there, cockpit uses them. But no one has bothered with a GUI yet. There was an attempt by red hat to do a libuser to abstract everything (plain user accounts, LDAP etc..) but that was abandonned as well. It doesn't do date and time, I'm not talking about date and time formats here, I'm talking about setting the system time and date (hwclock), whether you want the system time to be UTC or not, what timezone you want, and enable or disable systemd-timesyncd or some other time sync client of your choice like Chrony. it doesn't do scanners probably because SANE offers no API. And it certainly doesn't do video card settings. Nor any setting for many other kinds of hardware for that matter. You usually have to figure out what the right kernel module option is somewhere and add to some text file in /etc/modprobe.d. You can't edit the bootloader entries or Linux kernel boot arguments which is often needed to make some motherboards fully work. Furthermore while systemd-ui exists, it's unmaintained and hasn't been touched since 2014. As soon as some setting requires root it's unlikely that there is a GUI to change them. All this stuff any desktop OS (let's say OS/2) has had for ages. And why is that ? Because most desktops are not Linux specific but cross platform (they want to support BSD and friends) and there isn't and probably never will be a cross platform way to do all that. Also the desktop environments just say it's not their job and the distros should do it, but the distro maintainers typically have no programming skills. All the money and programmers that is thrown at Linux by big companies is for server use cases. Nobody since Red Hat was bought by IBM and refocused on the cloud cares about the Linux desktop. The only hope is Steam now, since Ubuntu has so far done nothing about this.
It's kind of irresponsible to try to get windows users onto a highly unusual Linux distro with strange permissions and functionality. They're almost guaranteed to run into issues and because steamos isn't a super popular choice for regular Linux users, they can't really get much help either. Something like Ubuntu or mint would be way better
Valve is SO CLOSE to greatness. If there is anyone who could make Linux mainstream, it's Valve. It just needs to make everything work from the GUI desktop.
Hopefully they can fix some of the plasmoids for the desktop crashing (although KDE just restarts itself without issue) and help the flatpak team work out a more transparent way of exposing API calls to allow better permissions controls via GUI flatpak app managers and Linux software stores. Also, vkd3d-proton is in a bit of a sore spot but by the end of the year that should be resolved. Lastly, anticheat but it will take time. I told my local gamers back in 2012 that Valve's Linux efforts were going to be mainstream by the mid-late next decade. It seems I was right and that I'm not crazy, even though my PC buddies looked at me that way.
It will stay a niche OS
can't wait to drop Windows for good once and for all
And SUPPORT for the Nvidia GPU's! I would be installing it on my other PC setup to try it out, but it has an Nvidia RTX card in it as well as my main PC..
Command line is not needed for Linux (Ubuntu for example). It's also not needed for Windows.
But it's powerful on both. And on both systems you can't do *everything* without commandline.
That line about not having to open the Terminal was key. If Linux, in any iteration, is to ever be a viable Windows alternative, ease of use for people that aren't experienced in Linus is super important.
you don't really need to open the terminal in most distros
I disagree. For the most part Terminal is unused these days. Only for special use have I used it. Same as windows and Mac, it is still there should the need arise, but it's not very often anymore.
I agree with you that this is key for "normal" people, but I love working in the terminal. I'm old enough that I started in DOS way back when and and it always feels like returning home when working in a CLI.
@@Chris.Wiley. Good for you.
People cant grasp the meaning behind such statement unfortunately, as you can see in the replies here.
"A little sign-in here, a touch of wi-fi there" You just triggered my PTSD. Several years back my work ordered a bunch of Windows tablets that for some bizarre firmware reason (fixed later) wouldn't work with any of our imaging software, so I had to set up 40 of them by hand. And the volume controls on the side didn't work until after the setup process.
Haven't had to do that myself, but I about twitched when he said that. Then I did twitch - repeatedly - when the laptop I was in the process of resetting prior to sending back for warranty replacement actually fired up that Cortana bit about 15 seconds later.
My predecessor used to setup each and every new machine by hand... that was one of the first things I fixed when I took over the sysadmin job, all new machines are imaged from a customized master that has all of our needed applications and as much config as possible already done. How anyone would make a point of doing that manually by choice is beyond me.
As someone who built over 400 computers I can agree 😭 that hurts every time, when I hear Cortana’s voice my eardrums bleed
Hansaplast makes some top notch noise blocking earplugs. They're comfy, silent and stealthy being vaguely darker skin tone.
✨pain✨
I'm definitely looking forward to the time I can say "Adios" to Windows completely. I run Linux as my main OS and boot into Windows to play my games.
Depending on the games you play, it's not far off
ditto
@@battmarn its incredibly far off though actually. software compatibility is horrendous on these other OS. they're barely passable for the most extremely casual desktop user.
Just need Creative Cloud b4 i can say adios :(
@@derpderpin1568 No it's not? What are you talking about
Windows has been "in trouble" forever. Windows isn't going anywhere, ever. Simple as.
Having said that, having alternatives is great and I'm excited to see what Steam OS has to offer.
Yeah its crazy that gamers think they're the primary demographic for Microsoft. Our needs are not heard by them because their sales aren't mostly from us. They aren't going anywhere and wont change very much.
@@Markie_SC Even then, I can guarantee most gamers use windows only because it comes with their computer, not because it's better or any other reason.
As long as windows comes with bought computers, there's no way it's gonna go any time soon.
@@muufle a lot of people build their computers too… where you choose everything yourself, including OS
Although most will still choose Windows! Lol
There is a reason Microsoft in integrating and enabling to run Linux OS/Apps on Windows and I'm all for it. I've been using WSL for many years now for all kinds of software development work. I run Arch Linux on my work laptop but Windows on PC. I'm going to switch my PC to 100% Linux once Steam OS ecosystem has matured enough and I can play at least 90% of games on it without issue.
Proton and Vulkan is a game changer. You can play 95% of the games out there without ever needing to use Windows.
I love that we can do this tho, my windows is always messing up, Linux is the only thing that has been reliable and stable for everything I do
@@22x86 Yeah :)
@@22x86 Well, my Mac is more reliable than my Linux desktop. But both are infinitely better than Windows.
@@jameswhite1910 yeah windows just seems to fuck up with anything
I just don't like how Linux handles files, because it makes playing mods with games very difficult since Linux will spread files all across the PC, instead of running the program primarily through a main folder.
Valve is really onto something with this.
Now they just need to follow through and make a standalone desktop version with proton enabled on a system level and not just in steam.
I think the ball is in Epic (and others) court on that one. Valve would no doubt be happy enough to make users use Steam for absolutely everything but likely they'd also be happy to get collaboration with other providers to make a FOSS gaming system that's agnostic to the client.
This would honestly make the switch for most people to Linux easier.
@@MrRolnicek I can only see Epic coming out with its own OS, frankly, that locks you in to using the Epic store exclusively. I wouldn't expect any other particularly open-ended systems to come out of the gaming industry any time soon. Essentially Valve wants to topple Microsoft's desktop monopoly for their own benefit, and I am more than happy to benefit from that happening.
@Swim Fan its not windows fault that you have no idea what you are talking about.
@Swim Fan TRust me there are a multitude of reasons why what is happening could be happening and none of them are "windows"
it's very promising to see progress on this. Windows is getting ever more intolerable as we go, and they're going to make things worse, not better. Unfortunately, the damned thing does work well and does have minimal friction - mainly, no doubt, because games manufacturers test a lot against it. Getting Linux to work as effortlessly and seamlessly is a bit ask, and we're not there yet. But I have hope we may get there.
Manjaro distro has everything you need to get started playing games out of the box. Proton and Vulkan is a game changer. You can play 95% of the games out there without ever needing to use Windows. In a few years, I full anticipate most people will switch to linux. The inability to play games was the one thing that stopped Linux from fully blossoming. Now that 95% of the games can be played on linux, there's nothing stopping people switching to a free operating system.
No, Windows is not becoming 'ever more intolerable' in the slightest. That is the line parroted from what I call Lintards who would be unhappy with Microsoft and Windows simply because it is not fully open source.
Pandemic hired a lot of novice coder. So a lot of software is flaw. They hired people who come with idea that is awful too.
It would be nice having a PC run solely on steam os. That's like console like except in PC chipset layout. It would probably be more efficient for gaming as it run gaming code than a lot of unnecessarily service background..
The plus, you have two ssd that boot up on window of need too
your technically not wrong but...
you spelled it wrong. its windoze not windows.
steam and linux have their issues hive os i think it was did too apple is a joke so i dont even even consider them for pc users.
but im glad to see steam doing as well as they are these days. its been a long time since it was just valve. and boi were they working miracles.
hopefully someone fixes this interface problem cause i still have a sweet computer and windoze seems to slow it down every time.
@@BlueRice If SteamOS really becomes a thing I would 100% use it. I am so tired of Windows 10 having 100s of background apps running and making everything worse
Valve is flying under the radar in the tech industry, once they unleash their true power Microsoft will hopefully take a backseat
ever heard of the saying you die a hero or become the villain? if they become big enough, the switch to the dark side is inevitable and nothing is wrong with that...but MS or Valve or who ever calls the shot will be bad for their consumers
@@sumomaster5585 valve is a private company unlike microsoft. that's why gaben doesn't have to worry about bringing as much profit as possible to investors and is able to focus on making great products
@@arkates3625 It's because he personally is focused on that...let Valve be sold to someone and see what become of it in few years
@@sumomaster5585 I sadly agree, Gaben is probably one of the few things saving Valve from turning into a corporation. Only thing we can do is hope that he has someone good enough to keep things clean going forward since the man is already quite old :/
@@Luizfernando-dm2rf if dynasties taught us anything, that's not a good long term strategy. Myabe a bigger company whose main business isn't gaming could be the best way for Valve to survive. MS won't support linux so it's out. Maybe Google? or Amazon? I dunno man but some other company that don't need to focus very hard on the immediate profit
Been running Linux for years. Valve's efforts on Proton have been very much appreciated.
Already running POP on my gaming rigs. Might try SteamOS after it’s matured a bit more. Love what Valve is doing for Linux gaming!
I like POP but get screen tearing because it uses x11. Wayland fixed the issue but tiling doesn't work with wayland. Using Ubuntu 22.04LTS now and happy(for now).
@gilkesisking No, I have a 6800xt.
I wish they had system wide wine on SteamOS as well for some windows apps that I still use. I use pure vanilla Archlinux, hopefully Nvidia will catch up now that their kernel driver is open source for RTX Cards at least.
@@phoenixrising4995 Why not use Bottles? They run on Flatpak. Might need to allow full Home access using Flatseal if you don't want to constantly move stuff inside their sandbox, but they work.
@Swim Fan ah yes, typical Linux snobbery 😂
As a linux user (programmer by trade, running PopOS) for years having a dual boot just for occasional games I have to say that I didn't had to boot windows in the last 1-2 years as proton is really getting mature enough.
I fully and wholeheartedly support Valve's work on this. They are doing an amazing job to possibly shatter Windows to its core
That sounds great. It will open possibilities in many countries where people can´t afford a Windows license. One could install a fully workable OS and charge a few bucks. Win-win, and Gates can go to F himself.
They wont, steam os has one great big flaw that all linux distros have- compatibility with software.
I am not talking games i am talking software, like i do graphics work on the side a lot, i would love to switch to linux but it is impossible because some software like Photoshop either does not have an alternative or has an alternative that is severely gimped and obtuse it is borderline useless.
And no majoriyt of peopel are not going do jump through hoops that require specific knowledge just to get something to run on a vm or with emulation of sorts, until linux can run big ticket shit like office/ adobe/ etc it will never break windows control.
@@Graine01 imagine paying money to edit photos, kinda cringe
I'd consider using windows but many of my favorite software programs don't allow me to edit their theme colors on windows and they don't auto update. The good alternatives on windows have ridiculous subscriptions, DRM, and proprietary files making them borderline useless for any collaboration unless you all shill for the same company.
Until these alternative OS can support all the random homebrewed programs, as well as every single major AAA software release, Windows has absolutely zero competition.
@@Polar_Onyx Imagine using incredibly substandard bad software just to avoid paying for a good product.
Ever since the inception of SteamOS a decade ago, my theory was they would be release a Desktop version in the future to basically compete with Windows, but also give people an option to boot their PC into a "gaming OS" environment, similar to consoles like Playstation, Xbox, etc. I didn't think - or rather hoped it wouldn't take this long, but it's a long road and more complicated than I originally anticipated. It's so great to see this much progress, and with the Steam Deck, the progress now being 2-3 fold with Anti-Cheat support, Nvidia opening their drivers up, etc. The end of Windows is near bois, I can taste it.
One big issue, as someone who runs their business from home, Adobe is mandatory, CAN WE PLEASE get Adobe working natively or as close as possible on LINUX??? I would literally leave Windows right now. Cheers
I thought the same. Ironically certain native Vulkan based engines like Godot are actually running better on Linux based systems than it does on Windows. If people see the benfits, I wonder if this can contribute to a more widespread use of this kind of OS on desktop devices.
Adobe is a shit company and you should switch to morally better alternatives that run on Linux. Photopea or Krita instead of Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve instead of Premiere, etc...
@@aprilnya adobe just has super tight integration between it’s different apps which for a business where time is potentially a shit load of money makes massive savings.
For non business situations I wholeheartedly agree though
i've been a full time linux user since 2009 and i sometimes need to use adobe software, for that i fire up my VM and i use the SN from the BIOS to run the latest windows and adobe software. my machine is powerful enough that i don't feel any difference, and i don't need to dual boot. i actually run my VMs in seamless mode, so i don't even really see windows. never had a problem working this way.
@@randombrit13 adobe has amazing artificial intelligence systems for swigt and easy editing
it sucks that such an amazing suite of software is owned by a shitty company
"Linux As A Gaming Desktop" is just inches from becoming reality.
Valve should push this out the door with or without Nvidia, screw team green if they can't support one of the most important movements in the history of PC gaming.
I like this way of thinking
I mean, Nvidia owns like 80% of the market, they need them.
I already am refusing anything with the NVidia tag on it. They are too predatory. Until they LEAD the charge on open standards, I'll suffer through without their giant logo on everything.
I made the switch last Novemeber in anticipation of my steam deck. I installed EndeavourOS(an Arch based) with KDE and I have thoroughly enjoyed having it as my main gaming OS. The only thing I still boot in to windows for is VR games, as they tend to not work in linux and I got worse performance. But I also have an nvidia card and I've heard that's most of the problem. My next upgrade will be an AMD gpu.
Nvidia doesnt give a shit about gaming.
When Win10 security updates stop, this or some other flavor of Linux with proton will almost certainly be almost entirely compatible with whatever I may want to do, so I expect to leave windows then.
good riddance to MS Windows. Its a bloated spying mess of an OS with an inconsistent GUI, gimped right click menu (Seriously I need to right click then left click for advance copy options in WIN11). I find wine to be more compatible than Windows for really old Windows games and apps. MS Windows fail unless you need those 2 app ecosystems mentioned above. I don't and I use Davinci Resolve, Reaper and Krita in the place of Adobe's Software.
Yeah I'm out as well, should get a few more years of win 10, hopefully by than steam OS will be even better.
almost all linux distros have proton
(it comes with steam, if you can install steam then you have proton)
Yea, I'm probably off Windows at the next convenient moment, but that possibly means another 5-8 years. I wouldn't mind a swap earlier, but I can't be arsed to change OS if it's working sufficiently. I'm no computer guy and have little interest in creating PC-issues... It's quite possible that most on PCs are even more conservative than me when it comes to OS swaps.
@@preppen78 I'd say when Windows 10 dies, Linux will be ready.
For creating bootable drives Ventoy is a great alternative to flashing the full system image.
It is installed to a flash disk from a GUI, then creates a volume to which you only need to copy your ISOs, and is able to store and boot as many as you cqn fit on the disk. It can even leave some extra space for other volumes.
Another benefit i found from it is that if you can copy an ISO on from any system that can read fat32.
Found this very useful for when my only system died and i had to use someone elses system to get fix it.
Just download, copy, done.
Does ventoy have ability to create persistence partitions?
Yumi good too
@@slightlyopinionated8107 yup it does, but it only works on debian based distros
Ventoy is a very good utility for booting from ISO's. Discovered it a year or two ago, never looked back. Just drop an ISO anywhere on the ventoy partition and you are good to go. Best to rename the ISO file to something you can recognize when booting Ventoy though (like "Windows 10 x64 (21H1).iso" or "GParted Live x64.iso" for example). As long as you do not need persistent storage it works great. If you need persistent storage (like when running a 'live' OS image), then a tool like Rufus or the like is necessary.
One could argue that valve has been pushing for this for longer, given that half-life was a dream child born out of trying to prove a point that you could run high-end games on a Windows operating system environment.. it's kind of going back to their like ultra roots in this regard.. now if only there was a new Half-Life game to prove this point
Half-Life 2.9 lol
@@MrKilljay +0.1 LOL!!
Half Life Alyx is amazing. Sorry you don't own a vr headset.
The fact that SteamOS is so usable proves something I've been arguing for years: the only think holding back Linux is the Linux community. Turn it over to a company that actually understands that an OS where "use the terminal" is the only answer to 90% of everything you need to do is never going to gain mainstream adoption.
Valve's the first that presents linux without any terminal usage whatsoever, that's probably why it was so successful compared to most 'beginner focused' distros
Ubuntu did it first. And very well for a while, back in the gnome 2 days
You don’t need to use the terminal for most modern distros
I think with more time, testing, and documentation there will be a lot more people willing to use SteamOS as their gaming desktop operating system over paying for Windows. Lots of people who build PCs and install their own operating system usually have the basic skills needed for simple command line tasks on Linux.
I built so many PCs lately that I'm pretty confident that I could do it blindfolded at this point, and installing windows takes nothing more than a few mouse clicks, but ask me to run anything in a command line and it feels like trying to read hyroglyphics without the Rosetta stone lol
@@hoodie_ninja mindset playing around
Paying for windows isn’t the issue, it’s the locked settings, security Fuckery, and most importantly the performance killing bloatware. Generally, just their anti-consumer behavior.
@@rohtvak3 That's exactly how I feel about Windows in a nutshell.
This kinda takes me back to the days of DOS and when we needed to make boot disks to free resources. Windows made everything 'easy', but we still needed things like DirectX to get the compatibility issues with hardware under some kind of control. Now with many of those issues 'solved', switching to a good OS shouldn't be quite as taxing.
I've been been doing some Steam/Proton and GOG/Lutris in the latest Ubuntu. With a bit of fiddling, I've been having fun with older hack and slash games (Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, Torchlight so far) I'm almost completely off of Windows now. Steam OS has been on my radar for a while. Thank you for this look inside!
Does it really need any fiddling? Torchlight and Grim dawn both played out of the box through proton for me and that was at least a year ago. Although i'm on rolling release distro so that's probably why
@@Vitis-n2v the only ppl having issues are nvidia users
@@mementocity that's strange because i have gtx 1060 and for gaming i haven't had any issues woth the games i played. On desktop though it needed some tinkering and power consumption still isn't really optimal
@@Vitis-n2v thats good to know, which drivers and who is the vendor of the 1060? to try later on
@@mementocity it's Galax 1060 3gb vram version. It was part of a prebuilt and the cooler is pretty bad and it runs hot. But it's been running fine since 2018. Oldest pacman logs show nvidia 415.22-1 driver installed and even then it was running great. Right now i have the latest 515.43.04-1 DKMS. As i've said for gaming nvidia driver isn't bad but at desktop even just dragging window around the gpu goes to boost clocks which in windows it doesn't do.
I've been daily driving Linux for a year now. I haven't looked back to Windows ever since. I hope Valve releases a full fledged distro for SteamOS for desktop/laptop PCs.
Awesome! What distro?
@@K3rhos too obvious troll
@@K3rhos so... do you know what Steam OS is?
@@K3rhos no mate, it's not "based on Linux", it IS Linux. It's based on Arch, just like Manjaro. It's a KDE distro with an optional Steam overlay. You can do everything without the terminal in SteamOS just like in Manjaro or Mint, if you are not doing advanced stuff (in which case you probably prefer the terminal anyway). You have been away for a long time, do you think nothing has changed in the past 10 years? It's like a million years in IT time
@@K3rhos imagine comparing any kind of tech experience from 10 years ago and applying it to today thinking that makes sense.
The unique ease of use with regards to not needing to use the command line to do important things is HUGE for getting people to switch to this from Windows. I'm seriously considering trying SteamOS out for myself now. Not everybody has interest in learning command line crap to effectively control their OS, and Valve has thankfully realized that when designing SteamOS 3.0
Dude, thanks for posting. I hadn't played around with SteamOS in ages. Arch & KDE, that's what I needed to hear. I will likely get an install of v3 on a spare partition soon, maybe this week. So glad Valve is doing all of this, they have made linux gaming so much easier. I pretty much gave up on windows after 3.11 and Win95 - which meant there was a long period of time where my gaming was crippled. But since Valve developed proton it has gotta so much better. Long Live Valve!
"Valve made an earth-shattering announcement, but probably not the one you were expecting"
Why'd you have to remind me man... I had almost forgotten :\
oh.... Ooooh
Am I missing something here?
@@mitlanderson About two years ago, Valve announced a new Half-Life game to come out after an agonizing near-silent 15 year development cycle. It was a VR only game, and the expensive new hardware required to play it made many fans upset. The game was also announced to be a prequel instead of a sequel, so it was adding an additional delay before we could see a resolution to the previous game's cliffhanger, which also made many fans upset.
@@Elephant454 But man that game was good.
@@thecompanioncube4211 It was utterly incredible. I had to take off the headset many, many times over the course of the game to have a quick happy cry break. I'm still in shock that it finally happened :)
pro tip: if Balena Etcher doesn't work for anyone (for some reason that software seems to hate me), "rufus" might be another slightly-more-complicated option that I personally prefer for flashing drives
Most people are recommending Ventoy as an alternative but I've never used it.
I use UltraISO as a backup
dd FTW :)
It's definitely come a long way, wow. Cheers to taking the time to do an in-depth look at 3.0!
Having pre-ordered a Steam Deck myself, I know about how SteamOS is based on Arch Linux, and I learned about how unlike Windows, Linux *doesn't* have any bloat-ware you probably don't want, and yet can't *uninstall* , which means it affords more room on the drive for games; and as someone who has a lot of games but not much room for them thanks to Windows 10 filling *most* of my drive space with that very *bloat-ware* , I'd *love* to have a Linux based OS instead. Unfortunately, my computer uses an Nvidia graphics card, so I guess that's not an option for me. 😔
You *can* run other, non-SteamOS distributions. Pop_OS is popular for that from what I hear.
@@steveheist6426 Thanks for letting me know.
You can run a debloater script
@@Camachameleon is there such a thing?
@@ezrafaulk3076 yeah, there is.
You forgot one thing. If you are in Desktop mode (KDE Plasma) you will use kwin as the window manager, in gaming mode you will use gamescope which is better for games for the most part.
I would like to see how the SteamOS rights management compares to Windows. Effective parental controls and administrative segmentation could be the bait that gets household and institutional attention.
Almost every flavor of Linux has tools for it. Plus its Linux, if the distro doesnt, someone made a script so you can set them up. SteamOS is built on Arch, so you would want to look it "parental controls for Arch" not "SteamOS" for a more effective result
EDIT
SteamOS 3.0 is built on Arch, the older versions are built on Debian
@@BrowncoatInABox would i need to redownload my steam games, or can i just use the external drive with my steam library on it
@@younglingslayer2896 terrible idea if the external drive is formatted at ntfs
@@BrowncoatInABox The key though is -- can this be done without opening the terminal? The average small business owner or parent is highly allergic to such things. Therefore, what clean solutions can come prepackaged with Steam ecosystem or SteamOS? It could even be a separate version, but having a clean UI and integration with Steam family sharing would be a huge boon for adoption.
@@younglingslayer2896 you can attach your existing Steam library to a Linux version of Steam but it will force you to redownload the executable for a large chunk of your games. That can be a 50-200MB download per game. After that the executable will be clobbered and of you reattach the same library on Windows it will likely force you to redownload again and this might happen every time you switch. Apparently some executables are dependent on some sort of a unique client key and it differs between Windows and Linux releases of Steam client, I'm not sure. Anyway this happens even to games that have no native Linux version, it's redownloading the Windows executable on both systems.
Also for the time being, performance of NTFS on Linux is bad with high CPU overhead as mentioned. This will get better once Paragon's new NTFS driver deployment is more wide spread, it was integrated into the Linux kernel a few months ago, but it needs some fixing, and there may be some trust issues until it's seen some use, so it may not actually get enabled for the time being.
Would be up to swtiching as soon as Nvidia is supported (fully). Since they seem to be interested in releasing their drivers to open source, this might happen soonish!
Gaming has been the only thing keeping me from switching completely.
I would love to move to Linux/SteamOS. If things keep moving like this it looks like I will be doing it soon!
You can always try things on a VM first. So far, I think PopOS has been doing great as far as making things work for gamers and general desktop users. It updates reasonably fast, allowing quicker and better compatibility with latest hardware. The UI is less arcane than vanilla config, and a lot of things are easily modifiable as well. Best of all, Pop Shop has worked great from my testing, no more issues, it just installs stuff from both Flatpak (user) and .deb (system).
@@FengLengshun If its for gaming, Manjaro distro is the best one to use. If it's for desktop applications, Linux Mint distro. Under no circumstances should anyone use Ubuntu. That garbage distro is full of bloatware and spyware.
@@luminatrixfanfiction Nah, I wouldn't recommend anything Arch-based for first time users. And Manjaro has its shares of issues too, so much so that should just use Endeavor, Arco, or Garuda if they want something Arch-based.
@@FengLengshun I admit it's a bit of a learning curve but while Manjaro has some issues, it's pretty polished for common every day use enough that first time users can use it without getting into the nitty gritty under the hood stuff.
@@luminatrixfanfiction,
>Debian based distributions are bloated
>I use Arch btw
>I use vim btw
>VLC < MPV
>Python is slow
>Knowing how to apply exccessively complicated Regexes for the needs of awk/grep
>I use zsh btw
>I use ffmpeg instead of video editors
>I use FF
>I use dwm instead of DEs
>I compile all the packages from sources, including the kernel itself (which is ZEN)
Pick your pokemons and make up with some new ones!
I'm using Linux as my main OS, but I switch to Windows whenever I want to play a game. Having both in one place without performance issues would be awesome!
If valve would launch this officially, I think we would have much wider adoption. I feel many people just don't want to install an OS from an unofficial source even if it is 99% of what an official would be like HoloISO.
I was into Darmok and Jalad before they played Tanagra
Riker, his chair mounted.
@@Dmitriy.0 The Picard maneuver may win battles, but the Riker maneuver wins hearts and minds.
Been running linux on everything I have for like four years now. Things have improved a ton in just that time.
There was lots of good info on this video, and couple good points about Linux. The fact that using the operating system is becoming a more comfortable experience. You shouldn't be a NASA-level scientist to work Linux nowadays, and you don't have to be.
One thing is that launching games on the desktop vs gamescope will make some differences. Some games won't launch or will display wrong, and many times the steam control interface won't hook in to the game. Gamescope mode is able to create a virtual monitor that allows steam to have more control over the game and present the window better and hook controls better, so if a game isn't working in desktop mode I suggest trying it in game mode. Elden Ring is a great example, as you mentioned your controller wouldn't work. It works perfectly in gamescope mode.
The day Valve announced they were behind DXVK was the great days in Linux gaming.
i would certainly like to see some viable competition for windows. it is the only way operating system features will ever trend toward user preference again instead of corporate preference.
I've been following your gaming rig virtualisation series for a while, and finally got it to work on my own proxmox server last night. I'd love to see a "Virtualise SteamOS" video 🤩
What about a "steam-headless" docker container?
Would steam on proxmox work? Thought games require direct hardware access to run?
@@mattgeo5039 It does on a Windows VM at least, passing through the GPU. This channel has several videos about it it.
I'm curious as to why you would virtualize SteamOS when you could just run steam in a docker container with the "josh5/steam-headless" docker image
I've been using Linux off and on for years now. Started on Debian, moved to Pop, went to Manjaro, then Fedora, and then back to Manjaro. Linux has been good enough for normal desktop use, for quite some time. It's been really stable too, with even rolling release distros being really stable. Personally, I've stuck with Manjaro because it's easier to set up than Arch, and can still take advantage of the AUR. The AUR is not perfect, but because of it, I've been able to find all my programs, with no issue. Even if there is not a native build available (built for Deb/RPM), I can usually find it, fully working, in the AUR. Aside from Windows, it is the only platform I feel comfortable installing on friends/families computers. Usually going with Cinnamon, or Gnome. It's great that Valve has become a mainstay in the Linux community, and I can only hope that more companies follow in their footsteps. I hope Adobe soon follows... I mean Nvidia of all companies have started, so maybe pigs can fly. I just hope the... more toxic parts of the Linux community does not bash/troll them, like they are doing with Nvidia, right now. The Linux, and by extension the FOSS community can be absolute elitest gits, sometimes.
I've been having a problem with getting the wifi to work once I installed Manjaro. The live usb version was able to connect to the wifi modem so it had it's own propriety drivers to get the wifi working but for some reason the installed Manjaro keeps disconnecting which implies that the drivers are different on the installed version and the live version. Is there a way I can fix this? I've tried changing kernel versions but no luck. I'm hoping someone with experience can help me.
Great video, love the progress SteamOS has made! I would love it even more if Valve would release an official build of SteamOS for generic hardware instead of forcing us to rely on HoloISO. Love HoloISO, but I think an official build from Valve would go a long way to getting SteamOS more widely adopted. That said Valve may not want that (at least not yet), especially given how the steam deck is doing just fine on its own.
Windows isn't in trouble. Valve recently broke the native Linux games in the Stable Channel. This left everybody in a situation where they were playing a Native game and had to switch to Windows Proton versions of the same game. And cross play Cloud saves is rare with developers. Many were stuck in a situation where they had invested 100s of hours into Linux versions and realise they have to start again in the Windows version. The sort of problems you simply don't get with Windows. I know many who have Steam Deck who have ditched Steam OS in favour of Windows after noticing this weakness of trying to run Multiple OS games on one machine where the developer of the games (often abandoned) has to implement Cross Play Cloud Saves. Moving to Windows on the deck not only prevents this, It also stops the constant breaking of already playable titles on each Steam OS update. As well as Opening up every title in your library as playable.
I'm glad that Valve has already been working on Nvidia support ever since Nvidia open sourced their drivers cause I cannot wait to uninstall Windows 10
If benchmarks are better I'm sure people will insta switch, but a those videos never talk about benchmarks and in the end going through so many changes only to lose 10% fps
@@dethshot_fps if it's the only problem its not a hoirrble sacrifice
@@dethshot_fps 10% isn't even true for all games, Elden Ring works better on SteamOS than on Windows.
@@cilian8462 Agreed. I'd easily take a 10% hit to get rid of windows.
@@dethshot_fps I would happinly sacrifice some performance to ditch Windows. I am not a competitive FPS player so performance edge is not my priority. If it works well I am more than happy
I’ve been running Linux for years. I’m very excited that we might finally be recognised as a true desktop operating system
I've seen so many people try to convince me otherwise but every time I take a look, and I am no computer or linux noob, I was tinkerign with linux way before it was anywhere near ready for the masses... but the facts are half my games dont work or at least not properly and the audio system for pro audio is shite compared to the windows alternative where all my expensive gear just works.
@@damiengreen28 idk what you mean with audio system. Do you mean pulse audio, or actually it’s replacement pipewire? Your audio gear not being recognised is just a lack of drivers.
My steam deck will be my first linux os
This has been shouted for the last 20 years, and it will be for the next 20 years... but it will never be true.
@@pastqr Good luck with that... don't forget to order some valium to calm you down.
I recently installed it on a 12 year old laptop and to my surprise, most of my games worked! They were painfully slow, 3-4 fps, but I'm still impressed they even installed and ran.
Why would it not install..
3-4 fps though great, they ran, which one of them will you play?
what surprises me about this is gpus with lack of support of newer direct x versions would not launch the game due to missing libraries. does proton translate all those incompatibilities or what?
7:19 "You might have other task in Mind" Gee..I wonder what those might be. lol
After Steam OS is officially ready for desktops, the next big thing is to make VM single-GPU passthrough easier. Once the general populace has the option to fire up a Windows VM with barely any performance loss on a single GPU, I can see a LOT of people switching to Linux as their only "on-metal" OS. I know I would!
You did exactly what I wanted other youtubers to do, but you did it first ! Kudos ! You got a new subscriber.
I've been waiting for something like SteamOS to migrate from Windows once in for all.
I've been using HoloISO for a couple weeks, very impressive for alpha level software.
Dual-boot with Windows is possible, but requires you to edit the GRUB configuration and to have installed HoloISO on a separate drive from your Windows install. Otherwise, not too hard to do. Of course, you could just hit the boot selection menu and select your Windows drive to boot from, or change the setting in BIOS.
Only thing other than modifying GRUB that I had to use the command line for was to install Mod Organizer 2 for Skyrim SE. I was able to get all my Skyrim mods, profiles and load order copied over from my Windows install and they work perfectly.
is it arm compatible?
@@flaryx32The arm device probably won't work on holoISO, as Arch linux does not support Arm.
steam does not work for arm, so you need something like the apple rosetta stone.
This is "box86" which also has an alternative which I cannot remember the name of.
I would rather try ubuntu which has an official arm version.
Can you please tell me or link me how to modify this GRUB so i can just select my desired OS from the grub screen instead of having to select boot device from BIOS?
I divided my 1TB drive into 2 letters in Windows, what would happen to them on this OS? would they be merged? inaccessible? or becomes a folder with the letter's names in the file manager?
@@AhmadWahelsa A physical drive can be split into different partitions regardsless of OS. These partitions are called by letters C,D,E,F etc. in windows.
Partition info is not stored in the operating system, I think it is on the drive, so they won't dissappear.
I assume by "This OS" you mean how partitions are viewed in linux right?
Windows uses NTFS as a filesystem, linux default is EXT4.
# linux can read windows filesystem, Windows cannot read linux system.
To read a file system type you need a driver,
Linux has a NTFS driver called "ntfs-3g", Windows does not have a driver for EXT4.
So Windows cannot read the contents of the partition with a linux file system, but you can still change the partition to another filesystem if you want.
# how to see partitions
Partitions are named after their type, normal hard disks and sata ssds are called sd*,(sd=sata disk)
where * is the letter of the drive, not the partition.
So sda1 is the first partition of the physical sda drive.
sdb2 is the first partition on the sdb drive.
It is easier to visualize partitions with the
Gparted program.
or terminal alternatives "sudo blkid"(meaning block device id) or "sudo fstab -l"(filesystem table).
# accessing partitions in linux
You either use the mount command or just the filemanager by clicking on the drive icon.
partitions are found at folders anyway,
To mount the sdb1 partition at a existing folder called nice-partition-bro in the home directory do:
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 ~/nice-partition-bro
So you would view the files as in a folder.
16:15 Zorin OS has this option. If you double click an .exe, it will run. If that .exe is an installer Zorin will prompt the user to install it. If that .exe is an installer for a software that has a linux version, Zorin will ask the user if it should install this .exe or the linux version.
I find that awesome!
Zorin is doing amazing making Linux desktop be better. Their desktop layout changer is absolutely awesome. I dont use Zorin but i love what they are doing.
I remain salty that I lost my Steam Controller dongle.
It's KDE, Arch & Steam! Hell YES! But not just on a gaming system! On my daily driver PC too. I am currently on MX, I was on Kubuntu. But with Steams development being so rapid & the emulation people in-bracing the steam deck. Steam OS is looking to be a great Linux distro just for daily use.
Ok I have a serious question, what would be in it for Valve to progress to a fully fledged desktop OS? Also, what would be necessary to convince software devs (not gaming devs) to support the platform? Speaking personally I would dump Windows in a second if this thing actually ran like a native desktop OS.
neva gonna happen.
A minimalist Linux distro, if you can call it a distro, is LibreELEC. It is there to do one thing, and only one thing, run Kodi. SteamOS will be something akin to that, with a single purpose: turn your PC into a games console. If they can make it work, it is a natural step to help enable Steam games on desktop Linux distros, but basically, as I say, I think the purpose of SteamOS is to turn your PC into a games console. Some will want that, others won't.
all valve needs to do is just update steam and proton, and then just test for breakages upstream arch before allowing them into the steamOS repos. Valve doesn't need to continue from there until proton works flawlessly, and once proton works flawlessly then they don't even need to continue. They can just leave it up to the maintainers. SteamOS is a full fledged desktop OS
@@stanzacosmi no. At the moment it is for gaming, which is fine. What i meant is.a desktop os first with integrated gaming. It doesnt work like that at the moment. Like i have ubuntu installed. It works out the box with productivity apps and virtually no setup. To my mind if steamos functioned like that it would be a big door opener
Ah, yea they do make it so you need to install the apps you need from the software center on the KDE side, but I'd still say the fact that they included the KDE side was more than enough to be considered a proper desktop OS
I would really like to try to have Steam OS as a secondary boot. With Windows as my work OS with all my softwares I use as a professional musician and my personal documents. And Steam OS as the "gaming side" of the computer on a single 2TB SSD having no interaction with my work data and personal stuff but still profiting of my beefy workstation hardware.
But in my case there are still big stops :
- No Nvidia compatibility
- Even while gaming I use my studio soundcards and speakers, lots of soundcards don't play nicely with Linux
- Compatibility with all Gamepass library
You'd be better off using a regular linux distribution on a desktop instead of Steam OS anyway. Nvidia fully supported.
@@WarlonWinterheart If I only wanted a secondary boot for the data security I talked about, I would just install a secondary Windows to not have driver and compatibility issues.
I want to try Steam OS to have a gaming centric OS with less background processes, the controller interface and the different look to not feel like I working in the same environnement.
(sorry I wasn't watching my TH-cam inbox)
"Tembah, when the walls fell", was also in the same episode where what is on the shirt was said in TNG. As far as an OS on a game server that I intend to build, now that I know about SteamOS, I will now be using it for the OS instead of using windows since SteamOS does what I need it to do.
Why the first mention to the awesome shirt so low? shame on this comunity
The Steam Deck has been my gateway into Linux. I've been fed up with Windows for years now, but I didn't expect Proton and everything to work this well and I kinda just thought I'd be stuck with Windows. At this rate I think Windows 10 will finally be my last Windows "upgrade" (lol) though.
If Steam OS helps Linux take off for gaming then I just worry what Microsoft's response will be. Anyone who has followed them closely over the years knows that they don't play nice or what most people would call fair when it comes to their market share/dominance)
I think it's safe to assume Microsoft will use their usual tactics. No point repeating them, we all know what they are. But what's different this time is, I don't know if those same tactics will work as they usually do. Microsoft can and has lost battles in the past. Internet Explorer once had an unshakeable dominance over the web browser market, and now even Microsoft themselves are happy to hammer the final nails into that coffin, and are desperately trying to start over again with Edge as the underdog for once.
We may see a similar situation play out.. Who knows, maybe one day Microsoft will be launching a 'Windows Edge' that's based on Linux with a Windowsy UI.
What’s so bad about windows?
@@jeffreyali1456 I can't say I enjoy being spied upon or things like that either, but for me it's mainly that I value efficiency.
Every release it seems Microsoft just adds more junk that only serves to get in my way or inhibit my productivity and performance.
Their shotgun approach of crappy features and additions that already have better alternatives wouldn't even be as bad if they'd just give you more control over what's installed in the first place. Rather than the "Microsoft knows best and you need all this stuff" install that we get, maybe let us start with something more akin to LTSC if that's what we desire.
@@infasis if it’s mostly about having stuff you don’t want and having little to no control, then I can see that. The spy part I really had no issues. But right now I have an Aya Neo and a Steam deck and honestly it’s a lot easier to handle my games and emulators on my Aya Neo with windows
@@jeffreyali1456 Yeah, it's really impressive what Proton can accomplish on it's own, but sadly, I play a lot of Japanese games and others that need a lot of work still.
It would really depend on the person: what games they play, their tolerance to hiccups like audio glitches or having to mess around to make things work right, but in it's current form Proton/Linux alone just wouldn't be enough for me.
Even in the few months since I've received my steam deck I have seen substantial improvement in many games and hopefully, publishers/devs will start making compatibility more of a priority, so I'm keeping hope alive. At this point I still find Windows completely necessary due to my gaming habits though.
Considering it's looking more and more like windows 10 is going to be my last version of windows this is good news. I've been using POP OS on my laptop to feel things out, hopefully by the time w10 goes EOL I'll be ready to switch. Hopefully now that Nvidia has open sourced its drivers that can get added as it's a major point for me.
Why not just download the Nvidia driver? Works great. I imagine if you still use Windows, having everything open source isn't your primary goal.
I only keep a WIndows 10 partition for one thing - the HTC Vive wireless adaptor has no Linux driver.
@@opiumized I do have the NVidia driver on my laptop but I currently have a few apps I need in windows that I haven't been able to replace. Nvidia open sourcing the driver just makes me happy after people have been wanting it for years.
I’m planning on building a new desktop in the near future with a $3k budget, and I’d rather like to move away from Windows and to Steam OS if possible. My experience with it on the Steam Deck has left me impressed with the viable alternative Valve has presented as I had never considered Linux in the past.
Once steamOS supports nvidia grapics and using executeables directly, I am definitely going to consider using it on my gaming laptop. :)
@@lolololo-fs2po Being able to click/double click on an exe to run rather than having to go through steam's non-steam game process I assume
@@lolololo-fs2po as he showed in this video, in order to use executables you have to use steam "add non steam games" feature to open executables. with using directly I mean being able to just double click the executable instead.
I bet you can set up a WINE or Proton MIME handler for exe files. But I haven't really looked into it, I just vaguely remember that this should be possible.
@@SianaGearz shweet going to have to look into this a bit more. ^_^
@@ralakus8784 Valve needs to somehow install wine/proton system-wide instead of just in a sandboxed steam runtime for it to work as expected. In the meantime Bottles really is the best solution for managing your windows apps
I guess Valve finally learned how to count to three.
Nobody is even remotely close to Windows right now. Not that I want it to be that way, it's just what it is. The best alternatives are barely just passable on a surface level for the most basic casual desktop user.
I'd love to run SteamOS on this PC, but I'd want to wait for an official release. I'm very inexperienced with Linux and I've already had massive headaches while trying Manjaro and Pop OS - I can't imagine I'd have a much better time trying to run on OS that's not officially supported on the kind of hardware I want to run it on yet.
That said, actually owning a Steam Deck has given me the best opportunity to learn the ropes with Linux, since the stakes aren't as high - it's just a gaming device, and I don't expect it to do all the things I normally do on a desktop.
> Manjaro and Pop OS
I'm not surprised you had issues...
I wish picking a distro wasn't such a big problem - a lot of them aren't very good, and it's hard to know which ones are good
I'd hate to say it, but SteamOS isn't going to be much easier than Manjaro; and likely never will be. You will run into exactly the same issues for literally everything else that isn't on steam. The only difference is a bit of steam sugar on top; which is mostly just UI and a preconfigured proton.
if u have a spare laptop just flash it into ubuntu and explore it same thing with mint os their good for new comers like you
@@SleepyBombay I'd steer away from Ubuntu nowadays. It's rapidly loosing marketshare due to the way they treat their users. The times where ubuntu were easily the best are long gone. If your goal is SteamOS, it's best to get used to Manjaro since both SteamOS and Manjaro are based on the same distribution (arch). And most things will behave exactly the same between those 2 OS'es. Additional tools and programs meant for SteamOS are even directly available in the Manjaro package manager.
would love to see the "proprietary streaming services" become a little more open too with this shift in the landscape.
For me, Manjaro and Steam Proton has been all most flawless. Little work on few titles and no work on most.
I have been using Manjaro now since October full time. Your right, choosing performance isnt the only factor. Mind you, i have been getting amazing performance.
I think im gona give SteamOS a try sometime. Gona be amazing to see where this goes.
Some manjaro devs are kinda scummy though
@@rustyshackleford4514 You spelled "people" wrong.
@@RobertMizen True
"choosing performance isnt the only factor". Hard disagree.
Performance is the only reason we are paying more for a better PC, at the cost of extra power consumption and heat.
Manjaro, Id rather just use straight Arch. Personally I would rather use Fedora Silverblue instead of any of those options as it will someday be the most dummy proof Linux and have easy rollbacks in case you screw something up.
I'm definitely going to try this out. thanks for making this informative video!
New to the channel. I like how the beer just creeps lower and lower with each cut of the video. Thanks for the info job well done 👏
If valve finally comes out with a "it just works" linux desktop
that runs windows games without issue..
Windows will be dead to most gamers
Windows already just works. There's literally no tangible issues that need replacing with another OS. The things people complain about are the most insignificant nonsense these days.
@@derpderpin1568 people *actually* complain about Microsoft's terrible behavior "these days" and gamers tend to be quite open to alternatives if they're good enough and the companies behind them are actually sane
As long as I have a terminal I'm happy.
My next machine will be a SteamOS desktop.
... and as long as you need one, linux will never become a mainstream desktop os.
Honestly, this is great to hear and thank you for the breakdown of this. I did want to ask what it was like for controller support? For example, I have a driving wheel, pedals, 360 controller and flight stick / HOTAS. Do they still run okay within this OS?
I might do a little research into that soon. I have a number of joysticks and wheels, so I'm curious as well.
This is really what makes me reluctant to make the switch as well. I have a HOTAS and rudder setup for flight sims (Warthog) and a Fantec Wheel / Pedals / Shifter setup for racing sims and those where a nightmare on their own to setup on Windows. I am afraid to think what the process might entail to get them all working together properly in Linux.
Regular game controllers mostly work absolutely flawless in Linux, even better than on Windows, a lot of drivers that are not available for Windows at all come pre-installed within Linux kernel (Playstation controllers for example). You just connect the controller and it works right away.
As for steering wheels, it's very hit or miss, I've got a Logitech steering wheel that required me to find a random guy's github repo that was kind enough to make his own driver, and then compile it myself.
But I also packaged it for Arch User Repository (AUR) so that other people don't have to bother with that.
But yeah, when it comes to steering wheels, you should really look up what's the compatibility looking like before buying those to save yourself some headaches.
@@CraftComputing That would be great! I'm going to do some research over the coming weeks, any information I get I will return to this thread!
@@Starcrafter23 Well my point is my fanatec dd wheel and pedals work fine on my windows desktop already and I do ALOT of sim racing + I wouldn't downgrade to a logitech for example. If I'm able to use them on the steam OS then it's pretty much sold for me at this point and I'll start trialing it. Worst case, I'll wait for support.
I’m already in the process of installing it on a second hard drive to try it out. Thank you for the informative video! I can’t wait to try this out.
As soon as you started the Cortana bit the hairs on my neck stood up and I immediately started paying more attention. Triggered my trauma from mass-imaging the PCs at my school a few years back XD
I was begging for a gaming os with Linux ever since Linux was a thing , we need steam
2:32 nah bro. The main benefit is that you can say "arch btw" 😀
How about a video showing a dual boot of Windows 10 and Steam OS? I certainly would love to see that. :)
(Especially if I try it first and completely mess it up! )
I see a lot for beer, gaming, Steam, custom PC building, Star Trek... You've got yourself a subscriber! 🤓
Very interesting. Valve is making right steps to make gaming distro.And after just open it so every game company can be use this distro as their default gaming distro.
Hope Valve restarts production of their controller and promotes easier compatibility with more games, it's an amazing controller
I would like to see a new steam controller with all the inputs of the steamdeck
You can use 'Bottles' for instance to install windows applications, still not double-click, but a little bit more seamless
you know whats even more seamless, using windows to run windows apps.
@@damiengreen28 and the point just blew right over your head.
And even so, windows is not even compatible with some older windows-titles where Linux/proton/wine will just power through without issues.
Also SteamOS (especially on the deck) is a fantastic experience and brings features not available on windows.
If Steam made a actual desktop image to be more user friendly, like direct exe file support. I would get another SSD just to dual boot it. Having to run everything through steam itself to install does get kind of frustrating. It did frustrate me getting none steam games to run as a Linux amateur
Elden Ring works if you adjust the controller to NOT switch into "desktop" mode. You have to set it to always be in game controller mode. This is due to the overlay system not working, so when you launch the game, the controller is going into a desktop mode and thus doesn't work in the game. You set this up correctly within Steam and your controller will work just fine.
You are the ONLY TH-camr that Cortana had interfered with!. Your puzzled face was priceless!. Others distracted by the dreaded SIRI or the Google Assistant....
Im hoping for an official PC release. Hope Valve has the balls to compete against Microsoft.
Valve has been giving the industry the finger for years and I applaud them for it.
@@terrylandess6072 That's why having a company not go public can pay off. GabeN can literally say fuck you I am not answerable to anyone and I'll do what I think is the best
Great video, really looking forward to where SteamOS will be in a year or 2 from now on the desktop. It was refreshing to see such a simple and functional start menu, how well does the search work?
it can't be worse than the win10 search
Search on the KDE Plasma Desktop (Desktop Mode on SteamOS 3.0) is great, and, it supports plugins and custom commands which you can manually add to it yourself.
So if you are inclined to do so you can set it up such that you can use the "Search" feature to perform Application Specific Tasks without opening up the Application first.
You can make it "Context Aware" by using specific phrases or words to trigger the initial "Contextual Awareness"
I'm definitely interested in SteamOS, but I've been on Windows for so long and there's so much that I do on windows I don't know if I could change. Both my laptop and Desktop are used together fairly often, I feel I'd need a side computer that has absolutely nothing on it that I could use to fiddle with it myself before committing to such a change.
Linux works great on older hardware. Just flash some distro's on that old laptop lying around for the past few years and then commit. That's how i did it.
@@kalmonsalmon1946 that’s how I started using Linux😂, man the sleepless nights and stress, nothing like jumping straight into the fire
use dual boot
No Nvidia GPU support is the deal breaker for me at the moment. Once they've figured that out inside of the official release, I'm fully onboard with a gaming rig for the living room that doesn't have Windows and runs fully on SteamOS
Just discovered this channel, and I have to say there is some top notch Star Trek ref's here. The Darmok and Jalad shirt, as well as the USS Defiant back ground drop is killer. The content is great as well. Keep up the videos !
I'm very excited to get SteamOS on my computer someday. I wanna give it time in the oven for now though. Very excited about quite possibly having a new viable OS to get away from the walled garden
Jumping from one walled garden to an even more restrictive garden is hardly anything to get excited about.
@@theh0lybible I am just learning about linux so maybe I am missing something but I have a steamdeck so I use the OS on there, I don't see how an arch linux based operating system with basically a skin put on it is more restrictive than windows
@@yourstatistacs steam os is has less functionality and available aps than windows.
@@theh0lybible my grandma sits everyday for 12 hours before going to bed
@@yourstatistacs great
Just a heads up. Lots of Adobe's apps from Adobe Cloud is slowly moving into web forms. So far Adobe Express(Last known as Adobe Spark) and Adobe Photoshop is working great as a web standalone.
better to have a native app running, than in a browser.
I would love to give this OS a go!! I ran linux for YEARS and only recently switched back to windows as i got into VR. I almost never play a game that isnt vr anymore. So i would like to see this OS running VR. Is it capable?? super interested in finding out.
VR unfortunately is still a sore spot on Linux, it may be a thing by mid 2020 though.
Sadly I went and purchased a Rift when it commercially launched - before there were even hand controllers. I say sadly because when Facebook bought Oculus my heart sank - I NEVER use social media (beside TH-cam) and they want users to have a Facebook account to receive support. Grrrrrr. Valve just keeps looking better and better.
@@phoenixrising4995 guess we missed the boat on that one huh
I do all of my VR gaming on Linux. If you own a Valve Index or any other steamvr-native headset (vive, vive pro), you should be able to get it to work. It's not perfect and there are a lot of missing features, but you can definitely use it. Game compatibility for vr is actually quite good, as most of them do not use anti-cheat software.
@@lennart3100 *VRChat a couple days ago*
"Im bout to end this man's whole career."
Two great things in this. SteamOS and your t-shirt. I love it.
Love your shirt. I only re-watched that episode yesterday! :)
I really hope they do this. I'm ready to leave Windows for good.
Unfortunately what's still sorely missing in Linux is a decent settings gui (like gnome-disks, gnome-logs, systemd-ui) for managing users/groups/home directories, date & time, locale, managing printer and scanners (no a web interface doesn't cut it) and video card settings and probably other things I forget that might be useful to the average user.
Like "Plasma Settings"?
@@longnamedude3947 Right? I thought most, if not all of these were part of the plasma settings app.
KDE is miles ahead of gnome.
Plasma settings doesn't do users/groups/home directories. It allows to change the current user settings/info through accountsservice. KUser is unmaintained and no longer supported. And it doesn't handle systemd-homed. Same for redhat's crappy python system-config-users. The API interfaces to do that are there, cockpit uses them. But no one has bothered with a GUI yet. There was an attempt by red hat to do a libuser to abstract everything (plain user accounts, LDAP etc..) but that was abandonned as well.
It doesn't do date and time, I'm not talking about date and time formats here, I'm talking about setting the system time and date (hwclock), whether you want the system time to be UTC or not, what timezone you want, and enable or disable systemd-timesyncd or some other time sync client of your choice like Chrony.
it doesn't do scanners probably because SANE offers no API.
And it certainly doesn't do video card settings.
Nor any setting for many other kinds of hardware for that matter. You usually have to figure out what the right kernel module option is somewhere and add to some text file in /etc/modprobe.d.
You can't edit the bootloader entries or Linux kernel boot arguments which is often needed to make some motherboards fully work.
Furthermore while systemd-ui exists, it's unmaintained and hasn't been touched since 2014.
As soon as some setting requires root it's unlikely that there is a GUI to change them. All this stuff any desktop OS (let's say OS/2) has had for ages. And why is that ? Because most desktops are not Linux specific but cross platform (they want to support BSD and friends) and there isn't and probably never will be a cross platform way to do all that. Also the desktop environments just say it's not their job and the distros should do it, but the distro maintainers typically have no programming skills.
All the money and programmers that is thrown at Linux by big companies is for server use cases. Nobody since Red Hat was bought by IBM and refocused on the cloud cares about the Linux desktop. The only hope is Steam now, since Ubuntu has so far done nothing about this.
OpenSuse has these already in the Yast control panel which is software also written by them.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard the line "Windows is in trouble .............. " every time another OS is promoted in the last 30 years!
Great video content. I was trying to focus so badly though but the background music trumpets were very distracting lol
It's kind of irresponsible to try to get windows users onto a highly unusual Linux distro with strange permissions and functionality. They're almost guaranteed to run into issues and because steamos isn't a super popular choice for regular Linux users, they can't really get much help either. Something like Ubuntu or mint would be way better