Is Valve ready for the SteamOS release?
Many of us will have already played around with SteamOS and the newer version, SteamOS 2.0. While most people like the interface and the Valve elements that are implemented into the distribution, some have had a more difficult time getting to grips with it.
Reading through the SteamOS forum, and a number of other forums, there are plenty of people who have great things to say about the operating system. We’ve found it to be worth installing and using, and although it has been a little flaky at times – depending on the machine we’ve tested it on – it is, on the whole, generally stable and usable.
Naturally, the OS won’t work perfectly on every system that’s currently available; the same would apply to Windows too. However, with some of the problems that have been pointed out, we’re wondering if SteamOS will be ready for the November launch of the official Steam Machines.
The Good
SteamOS 2.0 is going to be Valve’s big gamble for living room and gaming domination in the next year. Despite Nvidia’s new Shield, there’s still a lot of faith in the whole Steam Machine and SteamOS project.
The new update, to 2.40, sees various fixes and updates, plus an intriguing addition in the form of an auto-repair function. The auto-repair will work when a package configuration or installation has been interrupted for some reason, or when a driver build has been interrupted and results in the system not rebooting correctly.
The auto-repair will effectively take over, and attempt to repackage, install and configure whatever needs fixing, and it will not apply any updates on the system shutdown until the user has requested it.
This is an interesting addition, where the user will have to explicitly acknowledge the SteamOS alert in order to apply the update, rather than the previous way of having SteamOS update itself at shutdown.
One of the major updates in recent months is the addition of more advanced driver packages for AMD and Nvidia, and more specifically the relevant drivers for the new Steam Controller.
Valve has put a lot of effort into making sure the basic building blocks of its range of PC gaming machines is ready from the off. The foundation of GPU drivers, complete with the main controller, goes to show that Valve is at least still committed to the project, despite the length of time it has spent getting it off the ground.
The Bad
Unfortunately, there are some problems with SteamOS too. These usually come in the form of sudden crashes; an unusable system; drivers not implementing correctly; problems with the networking, power and reboot; and odd login problems too. In effect, it’s the usual kind of stuff a working Linux distro deals with on a daily basis – especially one that’s being tested by thousands of users.
However, that deadline is looming, and unless Valve has an ace up its sleeve and can suddenly come up with the goods in time, then there could be some rather unhappy new Steam Machine users out there.
Will It? Won’t It?
We’d like to think that SteamOS is going to hit the ground running and perform magnificently. True, there will be teething problems; there normally are. But on the whole, we’re quietly confident in what Valve has invested in.
But what about you? Do you think SteamOS will be ready and will deliver on the Valve promise of the ultimate living room media and gaming centre?