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forget what you know about Chromebooks this is a gaming laptop now steam is

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finally coming to Chromebooks baby and that means that you and all of your

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Chromebook friends can finally join the elite League of Gamers or does it we

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tried the steam Alpha and it's cool but it might actually be Chrome itself that

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isn't ready for gaming let me explain why after our sponsor build Redux build

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Redux offers competitive pricing as compared to building a PC yourself their

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website makes it easy to configure your build alongside their helpful support

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guides head to build ru.com Linus and start creating your PC Today the easy

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way the thing that makes Chromebooks great is also what makes them awful for

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gamers a laser focus on Simplicity you

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can do browser things and maybe run a couple of Android apps but that's about

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it sure in 2018 Google added a Linux

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implementation called crostini that allows you to use pretty much any

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desktop environment you'd want on your Chromebook but that's not an improvement

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to Chrome OS you can do that on any computer but with the introduction of

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native steam gaming this 11-year-old OS

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much like an 11-year-old human looks like it will be doing a lot of growing

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and changing in the coming years so how does steam on Chromebooks work well

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since it's an alpha you'll have to switch to the dev channel change a few

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flags and type a couple lines into the terminal and boom you're up and running

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assuming of course you have a supported Chromebook we have

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two the Acer Chromebook spin 713 and the

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ASUS Chromebook CX9 so why these two

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well they are among the six supported devices that can run this Alpha Yes you

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heard correctly just six 11th gen Intel Chromebooks are supported for the alpha

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support should expand as this rolls out but for now like the Food Network you

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can get a taste vicariously through our video yum tasty first up let's talk

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about gaming performance we were hoping compare Steam on Chrome OS to these same

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machines running Windows by swapping the m.2 ssds but uh yeah no they won't even

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boot up turns out these Chromebooks use core boot instead of UEFI meaning we'd

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have to flash firmware onto them but since these are un loan from their

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respective manufacturers we couldn't do that that means a one toone comparison

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on the same laptop will have to wait until steam is available on Chrome OS

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Flex the version of the OS you can install on any machine for now what we

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can do is compare the steam to running Steam games in crostini on the same

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machine now remember it's an alpha there

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are a bunch of issues like no dx12 games

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weird performance and scaling at non-native resolutions and a Kanye West

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level of General instability so while you should take these results with a

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pinch of salt if you're chomping at the bit to pee some G's on your cbook here's

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what you can expect our limited benching gave us some strange results you could

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say they were a little bananas LTT

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store.com halflife loss Coast worked swimmingly with very slight gains in the

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alpha over the Linux implementation but when we look at the Tallow principle

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well things get interesting in Christini the game was unplayable scoring between

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0 and three frames per second but when it ran through the alpha well look at

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that that's a playable game but curiously it performed substantially

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better on our lower spec I5 Chromebook a strange Trend we noticed in all of our

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benchmarks despite the i7 equipped CX9 possessing more execution unit than the

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GPU on the I5 we think it's a driver issue on the Intel side of things

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because it persisted in both Christini and the alpha but we were unable to nail

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down exactly what was happening in other Alpha weirdness we tried to Benchmark

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shadow of the Tomb Raider but that just stopped working altogether after an OS

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update that's what an Alpha's like folks

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now the bugs are to be expected but the thing that shakes my belief that gaming

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could succeed on chromos is that PC gaming often requires tinkering and

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Chrome OS is by definition a limited OS

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for example file management is horrendously obfuscated you can't tell

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where your files are located in relation to other folders or even navigate to

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your steam game files you can see the file structure by using steam's file

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browser but you can't do anything with it if Google wants to take gaming

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seriously they need to make it easier for people to troubleshoot and manage

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their device you know it's like medium level tinkering Chrome OS has this

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massive Chasm between the limited things typical users can do and the unlimited

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possibilities available to developers but what about Gamers it's like you get

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the choice between a tricycle or a unicycle I need a middle ground where

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can I do things like install a mod or tweak Graphics or power management

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settings without needing Dev level knowledge of the OS you can't just power

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wash your problems away when you have a quarter terabyte of content to

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redownload but let's talk about why Google is bringing steam to Chrome OS at

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all back in 2013 Google took a stab at making Chromebooks premium with the

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Chrome book pixel a laptop that was just a couple hundred shy of directly

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competing with the MacBook Pro and it was a flop reviewers liked the hardware

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but no one wanted Chrome OS so Google tried again and then again and again and

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after nearly a decade I think that Google has finally realized that if they

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want to sell a premium Chromebook they need to sell the idea of a premium OS

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and gaming is part of that idea especially for the next generation of

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Chromebook buyers you see Google has been invading schools all over the world

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leading to scores of children being brought up on Google's OS and as they

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switch from their school provided laptops to their own personal devices

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Google is hoping they don't want to jump ship by making Chrome OS a compelling

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package as a sole personal computer Google would love for you to switch but

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they're trying to get your kids to stay and gaming will be a core part of that

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retention plan wait a second how does stadia fit into all this

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aha you forgot about stadia didn't you in classic Google fashion it seems like

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the left hand doesn't really know what the right hand is doing because bringing

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steam to Chromebook seems like it's going to harm stadia's growth I mean

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sure local gaming and game streaming are different but stadia is Google's gaming

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brand and it seems like they're fine to just kind of leave it in the wings

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rather than make any effort to integrate it into Chrome OS in my opinion that

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would be a more logical move stadia as a cloud-based service is more in line with

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chrome os's vision of a cloud-based future whereas traditional PC gaming

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that is being introduced by this steam Alpha is kind of antithetical to how

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Chrome OS has always worked oh this one

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died how appropriate and there are other reasons

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I don't want a game on a Chromebook anyway the OS sucks at translating

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trackpad inputs to Accurate Mouse movement window management is slow and

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frustrating and the design language has a general lack of information density

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and I can't change any of it while I certainly welcome the idea of

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playing games I already own on my Chromebook for this to work properly

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Google needs to really commit to making gaming a good experience and that means

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that Chrome OS will have to become something it's never been that might be

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good for gamers but bad for people who are happy with Chrome's lightweight

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Simplicity it's a balance that will be hard to find but Google I think you

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could do it so long as you don't abandon

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out the one where lonus struggles to buy his son a Chromebook against lonus as

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will we make him do these things for content