there's so many rumors swirling around valve lately a new steam controller in
mass production steam link on Raspberry Pi 5 new branding guidelines suggesting
powered by Steam OS consoles is that for handhelds like this one from Lenovo or
is it for the return of steam machine game consoles either way it really looks
like valve is ramping up to make a serious challenge to Microsoft's desktop
dominance and I sure hope they do some
of you probably remember that valves teos started as a response to the threat
of Microsoft creating a Walled Garden with Windows 8 a threat that not only
hasn't gone away but might be even greater than ever with the consolidation
of the Xbox and Windows stores there's only one small problem as good as Steam
OS is delivering a conso like gaming experience for thousands of PC games
even ones that were only ever intended to run on Windows valve still hasn't
made a version that's designed for me to put on my custom PC or have they as it
turns out Val has been working away in the background preparing Ste OS for its
promised official wide release so I
think now is as good a time as any to see what the experience is like if you
download Steam OS and throw it on your PC it's also a good time to learn about
our sponsor Amazon Luna whether you're on the go or on the couch you're covered
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more before you type that comment yes I
know I don't need to wait for Steam OS to be a Linux gamer but in spite of what
your friendly neighborhood neck beard may claim most Linux dros still involve
a lot of manual faffing about to get things working and if Linux gaming is
tricky for me you're little cousin Joey mainstream is going to be screwed that
is why we need steo projects like Hollow
ISO Kera bite and the other one that
you're furiously typing in the comments right now are glimpses at a beautiful
penguin powered future that could be but the fact of the matter is that barring
some kind of Earth shaking change when regular people make the great penguin
migration it's going to be on a steam powered train let's see what the setup
process is like now I'm no Joey I at least know what a computer is but I want
to play my games and my favorite games include ano 1800 and tape to tape not
GRUB boot entry simulator I want it to be actually easy as we're filming this
there are two ways for a non-developer to get Steam OS 3 option one buy a steam
deck easy but you're stuck with a steam deck option two download the Steam deck
recovery image flash that to a USB key and install it on compatible Hardware
Val is committed to making a proper installer before the the full release
but that's the way you do it now less easy and it doesn't help that at the
time of filming Googling install Steam OS actually leads you to the build your
own steam machine page for the old Debian based Steam OS too from like a
decade ago that's kind of rough for Joey though to valve's credit at least it
links to the page for the steam deck recovery image so I think we can figure
it out we used Rufus to image it to a USB drive booted the live image picked
this option to reimage our steam deck
then we basked in this glorious wall of fast scrolling text and that's it we've
installed Steam OS on our hardware for a total cost of
$0 take that Microsoft and thanks gabin
but does it work well the thing is we won't know until we reboot because
everything that you've seen so far can be done even on unsupported Hardware
what do you mean unsupported Linus Linux supports like everything doesn't it
well yes but also no Linux is an
umbrella term that we use to describe many distinct Computing experiences and
it's up to the maintainer of the Linux distribution to decide what it does and
doesn't do out of the box and as you'd imagine the steam deck recovery image is
developed for well the steam deck first and foremost which results in some key
hardware requirements the big 2 being a discreet AMD GPU and an NVMe boot drive
to install all to also this is fun
during the setup process there is not any kind of prompt for which drive or
which partition you'd like to install to it just assumes that you want to totally
overwrite the drive of your steam deck so consider yourself warned while I'm
throwing out warnings there's also limited firmware included support for
Marvel network cards for example is mostly missing and there are some
special requirements around sleep modes the tldr though is basically use the
hardware that you can find that is most similar to a steam deck if you want to
try this for yourself right now for our test system then we went with an AMD
ryzen 5 500g on an Asus Prime b550 ma
motherboard with 16 gigs of ddr4 memory from gskill that's a big steam Tech now
we did notice some mentions of NVIDIA in recent Steam OS patch notes so we did
try installing with an RTX 3060 GPU but
while we were able to boot the USB drive and we were able to clone the image to
the NVMe drive we were not able to continue with the setup process and
instead got this garbled screen our mission today does not include
troubleshooting drivers or the Linux boot process I don't care if you think
it's easy Joey doesn't so we listened to
valve and switched back to a Radeon RX 7600 where we had a much better time
getting through the actually refreshingly simple setup pick a
language pick a time zone pick a network and let it do its thing now I don't know
why I get a battery low warning on a desktop but in the grand scheme of
things that's a pretty small issue and a few minutes later we can sign in either
with our username and password or via the Steam mobile app after a quick
scroll and click We're Off to the Races in game mode now you've probably all
seen the steam deck interface at this point cosmetically it's basically
desktop big picture but valve tries to squeeze out a little bit of extra
horsepower by running it on the lighter weight gamescope micro compositor
instead of in the full top environment that we'll look at in just a moment the
UI is okay with a keyboard and mouse but
it's really designed to be navigated with a controller from the moment you
boot to the moment you finish your last one more round and then head to bed
let's give it a shot oh you got one of my favorite games on here let's go no
way is this the new horory steam controller yep definitely a controller
ooh these not even analog
triggers oh what a terrible shot to them
I know I know it sucked boom take that boom take that oh no I think the most
remarkable thing about this gaming experience is that there is absolutely
nothing remarkable about it this is exactly what it's like to play this game
on Windows complete chaos okay we got 10
seconds one last Rush here we go here we go here we go here we go here we go oh I
barely even get a shot away you know what you call it barely I call it a shot
where's your shot that's what I thought oh this controller feels really cheap
can I switch over to a different one I can find something yeah it's probably
the controller Jordan it's got to be the it's a controller issue is the dongle in
there you have a cable right in front of you you could probably use I mean that's an option I guess oh it's an Xbox
controller I mean sure yeah that should work okay here we go here we go
theoretically this should just flawlessly work cuz you know Steam OS
let's go oh there we
go yeah no that makes sense that makes sense yep all good here we go just shoot
thank you finally it's such a seamless
experience it's kind of mindblowing to me like I know Steam OS has been out for
years now at this point but the fact that this just works so flawlessly so
effortlessly is mindblowing to me okay
break up pass here we go here we go here we go here we go here we go come on
someone put the [ __ ] in the neck this is awful well Steam OS won't make you a
better gamer that's for sure all right let's play something else installed what
do we got hey how about some uh vampire
survivors play some casual
games oh balls oh balls I'm taking
damage I'm taking damage from bats what am I the Joker nothing buddy oh yeah
here we go got that King Bible oh let's
go here's my king Bible boom boom boom take that zombies you got nothing oh my
goodness what in the Sam heck is going on here get out of here you lousy bats
man I forgot how hard it is when you don't have all the upgrades and stuff
and all the better characters and everything it's freaking hard I need
upgrades I can't get my Jewels I need them man I got to set this up in my
living room like I have a Windows install that has Steam on it and is
configured to launch steam in Big Picture Mode every time I turn it on but
I never bother with it because it's Windows and it's just like stupid and
tedious and Windows update and just like it's not a console like experience
and that's ultimately what you want in the living room you don't want to get up and go find your stupid mouse and
keyboard and like you can use a mouse and keyboard we'll talk a little bit
more about that later but you don't have to you can just be ready to go that's
the Steam OS experience and I'm I am loving this what about all the just like
special like steam decky stuff like hardware monitor and stuff like that
like can we do any of that what button that the buttons on that controller
actually the buttons on the three do oh sorry wrong controller uh hit Xbox 8 no
no no I'm going back to the I'm going back to the steam controller okay so I
got my three dots here it's all there okay that's that's
kind of cool if you don't have a steam controller yeah Xbox button and a we'll
bring that up okay it's Xbox button and a yeah all
right hey cool well let's disable the
frame limit what do we have any of that for performance overlay level oh cool so
that's just that like 60 FPS counter that we've got the normal counter thing you would get in Steam deck oh we can
enable h HDR I wonder if it's going to work though we can try it and do
maternal let's try it and do maternal why does it not look that
HDR it's just oh cuz the game's not in
HDR okay all right well that'll help
cool let's go with
ultra and no racing that's probably a
better bet Vala has done some work on getting HDR to work in Linux with the
steam Deco Leed what I don't know is how well it's going to work on a TV this TV
also not the brightest HDR TV so maybe
not our our best case scenario for testing in fact honestly it looks not
great I do wonder how much of it is the TV though but everything thinks it's HDR
maybe this is one area where there's a little bit of room for improvement here
hey the game's running great though getting 163 FPS and HDR is something
where the Xbox and the PlayStation are going to give you a just works
experience then again like I said before I don't know how much of the problem is
just the fact that this TV is not very good uh I don't know how to play this
game with a controller really you could always keyboard and mouse it but you oh
right what am I even doing right now oh
let's go all of a sudden you got good right
it's almost like there is a superior control scheme no couldn't
be oh what where'd you go oh no there we
go the bottom line is that for living room gaming most of what I would need is
here the the 8bit do controller we tried worked out of the box with its dongle or
failing that any modern wired or Bluetooth controller should pick up
without too much trouble and I didn't have any issues with networking or sound
though your mileage may vary there a little bit like I mentioned before I
would say that one glaring problem is that games launch at the steamex native
1280x 800 resolution but this can be
fixed by manually setting the system resolution in the settings and then
Games should pick that up between Pro and Native Linux versions of games there
is a huge library now like Man compared
to the last time we did a gaming on Linux video there's an enormous library
of games that just work now and while
there have been some regressions notably for online competitive titles where the
developers don't want to maintain their anti-che on Linux game compatibility has
mostly been growing steadily I think with the right Hardware I'm pretty much
ready to say that building a Steam OS game console for your living room is
pretty awesome however I can totally see
why valve has held off on saying the same most Gamers demand more than just
my steam game works and there are some essential tools that can't simply be
added from inside game mode like Discord and Alternate game stores like goog and
Battlenet and hey this is a PC right
what if I need to get some actual work done how is desktop mode coming along I
guess now is a great time to continue using the mouse and keyboard that I've
got right here power and switch to
desktop that was quick it looks like pretty much any other Linux desktop
although it isn't quite Ste os3 is what's known as an immutable operating
system if you already know what that means and you have strong feelings about it steo it's probably not meant for you
if you don't know what that means the oversimplified tldr is it means you
can't screw it up too badly because it locks down critical system components
and it will reset itself when you reboot that doesn't mean you can't install
software it just means that you're effectively limited to what's available
in their flat pack based discover software Center these flat packs might
not be as efficient as if you installed via a package manager but what it shows
is that valve learned very well from their community's love of hey how do I
fix X and Counterstrike press F10 trolling that
has taken place over the years they've made Steam OS pretty hard hard to bung
up too badly cuz think about it realistically poor Joey would almost
certainly fall for the old rmrf asterisk trick at least once now to be clear
there are ways outside of their all applications list here to install
software we even found this script on GitHub that allows us to install dozens
of non- steam stores but for the joy out there here's a standard disclaimer about
running scripts that you find on the internet all willy-nilly I'd recommend
that you stick to the the software Center the question is if you do that
can you get any real work done here let's see our browsers oh internet there
okay web browsers Li wolf Vivaldi Brave
just the chromium web browser man there's a ton of options here this is
great and if you consider how much of it you do in a web browser these days
there's a good chance that we can get a lot of what we need to do done uh what
about Discord though we mentioned Discord earlier hey there it is four
stars boom install Shameless plug for the LTT
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nutshell great backpack 150 bucks go for
it LTT Store.com what else we got here oh dude oh no we've lost them forever
space conet pinballs in here here we go here we go here we go here we go let's
go B really B come
on come
on oh come on on come on come on okay coming back to
Discord realistically if you want to be able to use it while you're in game mode
you need to add it as a non- steam app in desktop mode first it's not a big
deal but it is the kind of thing that could trip up a less informed user you
can also do that with other apps like non- Steam games and browsers a browser
can really come in handy over time in game mode now of course it is worth
noting that since you're not concerned about conserving battery life and
squeezing using every last drop of performance out of mobile Hardware you
don't actually need to go back to Game Mode at all steam works just fine here
on the desktop and as much as I love touchpads and joysticks sometimes a
keyboard and mouse is just plain a better way to use a computer with
standard peripherals I can happily use my browser and apps just like I would on
Windows macOS or any other Linux the slome folder is persistent so you don't
have to worry about losing your files when you reboot it just resets the
system files so that the turn it off and turn it back on really does work to fix
most things and other than that it pretty much just works like I would
expect a computer to work pretty much we did run into a funny scenario a little
while ago we were trying to get an old printer working with generic drivers and
I had a brainstorm that went oh man Linux I bet Linux will work well I'll
just grab a steam deck that already has Linux on it and yeah that's when I
learned that Steam OS does not include support for printers out of the box and
you might come across similar gchas over time let's see if they've added it no
they have not neat so steis it's pretty
great right now but it's clear that there's a bit of work to be done so what
about those rumors we were talking about could new Steam Machines be announced
and released at any time absolutely and
I think we're due valve has spent years getting Steam OS to the point where it's
at they've made some hard decisions along the way but overall it works great
on the right hard hardware and it keeps getting better and the playable game
library is huge now with no signs of slowing down with that said is steam os3
ready to Dethrone Windows not yet
there's enough prickly edges that keep it from being a totally smooth
experience and you can make the argument that Windows has a lot of prickly edges
too but the difference is that so many more people know how to troubleshoot it
so here's what I'd say as on valves to-do list they need a simple installer
they need outof thee boox support for a lot more hardware and just one or two
more passes of spit and polish also printer support I do believe that
they're going to get there though especially if Microsoft decides they want to risk their market share by
forcing their store on everyone or if they keep making unreasonable Hardware
demands now I think all that's left is to unreasonably demand that you hear
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using our Link in the video description if you guys liked this video maybe check
out our last video on Steam features that you might not know about there's
some really cool ones in there