Hands-on review: Updated: SteamOS beta
Introduction
Update: We've included new developments surrounding SteamOS to our hands on review, including its expanded hardware support, new apps and functionality, and Steam Machines' unfortunate delay. Check out Page 2 and Page 3 for more! Additionally, we've penned an article on why we think Valve's Steam Machine dream is very alive - read on for our thoughts.Just a decade ago, Seattle-based Valve software was best-known for creating the first-person shooter Half-Life series. At the time we were eagerly awaiting the next installment of Gordon Freeman's sci-fi adventures in Half-Life 2.
But Valve's side project, the Steam games distribution platform, was gently bubbling away as faster internet connections and more capacious hard drives meant that we could do away with physical media.
Today we're in much the same boat. Anyone who has ever so much as handled a controller is waiting for the Half-Life 3 announcement. Steam has gone from being a controversial and slightly annoying way of getting games to the PC gamer's title hub of choice. Bubbling away in the background this time is SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system which forms a big part of the company's plan to infiltrate the living room gaming space.
Last week, 300 lucky US Steam users received their Steam Machines – prototype small-form-factor PCs capable of running SteamOS. At the same time the company released a public beta of the operating system, so anyone who fancied building their own Steam Machine could give it a go.
Well, almost anyone: "Unless you're an intrepid Linux hacker already, we're going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out," Valve said.
It could change everything. Not only does it threaten Microsoft's dominance of PC gaming, which appears to have slipped a little with Windows 8, but it could finally push the Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation out of that lucrative little gap beneath your television. Tiny media PCs that you can strap to the back of your plasma TV are a growing market, but they lack a coherent operating system, especially since Microsoft dropped Windows Media Center in Windows 8.
SteamOS, then, promises to sit somewhere between Windows gaming and console usability. It's built around Steam's Big Picture mode, which is designed for large screens and controller-based interaction. A custom Debian Linux distribution sits behind the whole thing, which means it's capable of web browsing and running programs as well as its gaming raison d'etre. As you'd expect from a Linux-based operating system, it's completely free and totally open-source.
It's a win-win situation for Valve, too. Even if SteamOS completely fails, its coffers will be lined for eternity with the estimated billions Valve makes from the Steam platform alone. But curiosity got the better of us, and we just had to try out SteamOS for ourselves to see how Valve is shaping the future of gaming.
Valve's Steam Machine dream is still alive
2014 was a quiet year for Steam Machines. Interest waned across the board after Valve announced in May that systems would be delayed until 2015, leading many to write them off as the PS4 and Xbox One saw price cuts and picked up further traction.However, with Valve gearing up to launch an army of Steam Machines at the GDC 2015 conference in March, and positive signs from developers who are more frequently porting or releasing triple-A titles to SteamOS, we argue that Valve's Steam Machine dream is still very much alive.
Installation and hardware requirements
Valve was particularly stringent with SteamOS's requirements at first. On the outset, you needed a 64-bit Intel or AMD-powered PC with at least 4GB of RAM, a 500GB or larger hard drive, and an Nvidia GPU. To get it up and running you'll also need a 4GB minimum USB drive, and a UEFI-compatible motherboard.Today, SteamOS is compatible with older BIOS systems as well, opening support wide for older gaming PCs. Also, the interface now supports dual boot, so no need to sacrifice your gaming rig to Linux entirely. The hard drive will still be completely wiped during the installation process, but fortunately terabytes are cheap these days.
We had our test PC ready to go, with an Asus Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, a Core i7 processor, 32GB of RAM, a 2TB hard drive and an Nvidia GeForce Titan graphics card - more than enough to run SteamOS. If you're running an AMD or Intel graphics card, Valve has promised support for these "soon." Just bear in mind, it's Valvetime we're talking about here.
Anyone who's installed Windows from a USB drive will be familiar with the process - copy the relevant files across, reboot the PC, jump into the BIOS and choose to boot from the USB drive instead of your primary disk. Except for us, it didn't work at all.
We tried every combination of USB drive and port we could find, as well as a whole host of different installation methods, but each and every time it would kick us back to the BIOS. Valve wasn't joking when it said this beta of SteamOS is for "Linux hackers".
With 10 USB drives hurled at the wall as if it was a tech dartboard of frustration, we decided to try running it in a virtual machine, courtesy of Oracle's do-it-all VirtualBox Manager. After a little fiddling with various commands (thanks, internet) we had it up and running. We've never been so glad to see a Linux login screen.
A week from now it may be a different story. There are legions of Steam fans with a decent knowledge of Linux fiddling with Valve's installer and software to get it to work. Within hours of release an enterprising Redditor had found a way to get it to install on non-UEFI computers, and forums are bustling with hackers desperate to make it work with their dodgy and decrepit hardware.
Of course, running SteamOS in a virtualised environment is hardly a fair test. We planned to compare benchmarks between Windows and SteamOS, but as it's running in an emulated machine running on an emulated graphics chip, performance suffered immensely. Even Big Picture's neon bubbles jerked around the screen. However, we did get the opportunity to poke around in Valve's game-changing operating system.
Games and apps
Anyone who has used Steam's Big Picture mode will be familiar with the look of SteamOS. It's essentially the same, except you don't have to go through a layer of Windows or OS X to get to it. The ambient, percussive music forms a non-intrusive soundtrack, the wallpaper is a stack of games floating around in mid-air, and it switches between the controller and keyboard fluidly. It's easy to navigate, especially with an Xbox controller, and it's on a par with other console's interfaces.
The act of running and buying games is Steam's forte, and these are taken care of with the library and store, respectively. Titles scroll horizontally, so you can see each and every new Minecraft clone quickly and easily. And once you've logged into your account, you can buy games as you would if you were using Steam's store or web interface.
Valve includes its own web browser, with bookmarks set up for popular sites such as YouTube, Google and Reddit, and you can add favourites to this page. There's support for multiple tabs so you can flick incessantly between sites, while controller-based text entry is handled via a nifty flower-type interface, which uses the thumb sticks and buttons to choose groups of letters.
Getting to the Linux desktop isn't supported out of the box, but it can be enabled via the 'Interface' option in the settings screen. Once you're there it's a bare bones affair, with a few standard apps such as a calculator, document and image viewers, the Iceweasel web browser and a disc burner. The good news is that as it's running a standard version of Debian you can add Linux programs via a package manager.
For the time being, the SteamOS client merely handles gaming and the web, but Valve has bigger plans for it. Multimedia content, such as Hulu, Netflix and Spotify, is in the pipeline, all presented within the SteamOS Big Picture mode. It's a boon for those who wish to use their TV computers for more than just gaming - which is pretty much everyone.
In February, Valve launched Steam Music on SteamOS to a select number of beta testers. The service pulls tracks from your local music library and pulls up relevant album artwork for display. The service is rather limited at the moment (some streaming solution would be nice), but don't think for a second that Valve's work here is done.
Then there's the slight matter of gaming itself. Approximately a third of our Steam library is available for Linux. Valve has ported its Source engine to the open-source operating system, so its blockbuster games like Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal are all available. Indie titles - which generally require less coding to drop into Linux - are also downloadable, and you'll find Rust, Super Meat Boy and Bastion on the store.
Valve is pushing bigger developers towards Linux. You'll already find underground shooter Metro: Last Light and soccer spreadsheet Football Manager 2014 on the store, and real-time strategy Total War: Rome II is in the process of being ported. The big unknown here is how many developers and publishers will want to develop for Linux on top of consoles and PCs. It is, after all, an entirely different operating system with a whole new load of bugs and idiosyncrasies to deal with.
Valve has a novel, if slightly awkward solution to non-Linux games: streaming. If Windows and SteamOS computers are connected to the same network you can stream games from the former to the latter. Having a Windows PC running all the time sort of defeats the point of a Steam console, but it could be the only way to get your favourite games running.
Valve launched this streaming feature to the SteamOS beta just before the summer, though we've yet to be able to test it. (It also works on any computer running Steam, but still requires a Windows PC as the source.)
Verdict
Forget the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 - Valve's SteamOS is the biggest shake-up to the gaming industry yet, a free operating system that allows gamers to roll their own machines. It's still very much in the nascent stages of development, and the beta isn't exactly easy to use, but as a proof-of-concept it's intriguing and potentially monumental.
We liked
There's a lot of programming and coding magic behind SteamOS's deceptively simple interface, and Valve has done a great job of building an entire operating system specifically for gaming. In Linux, tinkerers can go behind the scenes and alter settings as they wish, and, like Google's similarly open-source Android, it will only be made better by fervent fans.
While we wouldn't choose SteamOS as our operating system of choice at the moment, there's still a great deal of potential here. In-home streaming could deliver on a promise that has been made many times before, and multimedia services will put it on the same level as the consoles as the hub of a home entertainment centre.
We disliked
At the moment, installation requires a great deal of patience, moderate Linux skills and a narrowly defined PC setup - none of which most gamers have. If you're not into the intricate ins and outs of Debian distributions, we'd only recommend running it out of curiosity. You can experience a far more user-friendly version of Steam for Linux by sticking Ubuntu on your computer and installing it there.
We're not too sure about the future of Steam's huge games catalogue in Linux. This could improve in the future, and Valve is undoubtedly throwing incentives at developers to get their games onto the platform as we speak. But the fact that a Steam Machine will have to be tethered to a Windows PC to play the majority of games is a bit of a failure.
Early verdict
Even if Valve's SteamOS fails to take off - and we doubt very much that it will - it's still a big raised middle finger at Microsoft's PC gaming dominance, not to mention a warning to the consoles.There is a lot of work to be done here, particularly in regards to the installation methods, but these are forgivable given its very early beta status. And since Steam Machines were just delayed to 2015, there's plenty more time for Valve to get SteamOS in fighting shape.
Additional reporting by Joe Osborne
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Opinion: 5 reasons Valve's Steam Machine dream is still very alive
Dreaming of a Steam Machine future
Steam Machines? More like has-been machines, am I right? Actually, no: while many people are giving Valve's PC-console-hybrids the cold shoulder, this gamer reckons they'll be worth the wait.I realise that I'm part of a shrinking group still backing Valve's SteamOS-powered Linux boxes, and it's not difficult to see why the hype around them has all but evaporated. Several controller-related delays, U-turns by seemingly committed hardware partners and a lack of news from the top has made many think that Valve is blowing hot air.
But with a big reveal looming, ongoing support from developers and the fact that Valve has billions in its coffers to get Steam Machines off the ground means that they still have a bright future ahead. Don't believe me? Direct your eyeballs at the following:
1. The biggest Steam Machine launch yet is just around the corner
It seems like an eternity since Valve announced that Steam Machines wouldn't be seeing the light of day until 2015, but the wait is almost over.
The company is gearing up for a big push in March, when it will show off a whole new fleet of systems at GDC 2015 which takes place on March 2 - 6 in San Francisco. Make no mistake about it: Microsoft has raised its game by allowing PCs to stream Windows 10 games to consoles, but running games natively on Linux is cooler -- and Valve needs to bring the fight.
Expect it to go all-guns blazing by showing off an eclectic range of systems ranging from entry level options geared for 1080p gaming all the way up to power-guzzling 4K-ready battlestations.
Oh, and you should also get to see the final version of THAT Steam Machine controller...
2. Half Life 3, Left 4 dead 3 and Portal 3 could launch at GDC
If you're struggling to think of a reason to own a Steam Machine, I've just given you three. TechRadar News Editor Hugh Langley put it best in his summation of why Valve's big reveal could provide one of the most mind-blowing moments of any gaming expo, like, ever:
"Just imagine it: Gabe Newell takes to the stage, the crowd falls silent. He doesn't say a single word, he just rips off a black tablecloth to reveal a line of Steam Machines.
"He then opens his mouth and simply says: 'Half-Life 3. Portal 3. Left 4 Dead 3. All available on Steam OS right now. I am your saviour.' The crowd goes wild, we quit our jobs. Life is glorious once again."
Believe.
3. More game developers are onboard than ever before
Slowly but surely, developers are getting onboard with SteamOS, the Debian-based Linux distribution that will run on Valve's Steam Machines.
Texas-based Aspyr Media, which has already ported titles including as Civilisation V, Civilisation Beyond Earth, Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel to Linux to the platform, is a major player and recently stated on Reddit that it is making a "long bet" with Steam Machines, which are "the only way Linux gaming will move forward".
Other game studios are similarly supportive: Epic Games' Unreal Engine and Crytek's CryEngine feature Linux support, and the companies behind Metro 2033 Redux and Metro: Last Light Redux -- 4A Games and Deep Silver -- recently released dedicated Linux versions that they claim "rival the DX11 Windows versions in terms of graphical fidelity and performance".
Perhaps one of the best signs for Linux gaming yet came just this weekend when Valve announced that big-ticket zombie shooter Dying Light is landing on SteamOS at the same time as Windows. While the OS may pose any danger of dethroning Windows just yet, it's putting up a good fight considering it hasn't even launched.
4. SteamOS is free and may provide smoother gameplay than Windows
The allure of kicking back in the living room playing games on a Steam Machine with the graphics cranked up beyond anything the Playstation 4 or Xbox One could muster is still strong -- and you shouldn't have to break the bank to do it.
SteamOS is free, meaning you can ditch Windows and put the money you would have spent on a license toward a slightly better Steam Machine. Sure, Windows 10 is being offered as a free upgrade for one year, but you still need to have previously purchased Windows 7 or Windows 8. Additionally, Steam games are often cheaper than their console equivalents, with sales and free-to-play sessions cropping up throughout the year.
And then there's the potential performance benefits. Valve's operating system is designed to be like a console's in the way that it takes up as little resources as possible to ensure games are played with the highest-possible frame rates. I'll be keeping a keen eye on benchmarks between Steam Machines and equivalent-spec Windows rigs to see how they square up, and you should too.
5. Steam Machines encourage competition in the market
Steam Machines aren't only going up against each other, they're also bringing the fight to consoles, PCs and mobile devices. It's essentially a massive free-for-all that will shake up competition at every price point -- and that's great news for consumers.
You can't play down just how exciting a "third option" will be when it comes to choice. Need a keenly-priced Steam Machine for playing RTS games and steaming services to the living room TV? Take your pick. Or how about a sleek-looking mid-range system for bouts of CS: Global Offensive? Then peruse benchmarks and shop around for the best bang-for-buck spec. Perhaps you're dreaming about a high-end rig hooked up to a 4K TV showing GTA V in all its glory. Don't worry: they'll exist.
It's taken a while for it to get here, but Valve's Steam Machine future is far from a pipe dream.
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Opinion: Windows 10 is just what an OS should be, and that's why no one cares
In the lead-up to this week's Microsoft presentation, everyone – including us – referred to it as "the Windows 10 event," and of course the consumer features of Windows 10 were indeed detailed. Today, however, nobody's talking about Windows 10.
That's a slight exaggeration. The specialist tech press – including us! – is poring over the details of Windows 10, exploring what Cortana on the desktop, the Spartan browser and the new gaming features will mean when Windows 10 ships. What's more, Microsoft's decision to make Windows 10 free for the first year is justifiably generating lots of column inches too, as analysts work out what this means not just for consumers but also for Microsoft's business model and its bottom line.
But all of that is overshadowed – not just in the tech press and the mainstream media, but on forums, Reddit, Facebook and Twitter – by HaloLens and the Surface Hub.
This is inevitable and understandable, but it's nevertheless not especially healthy.
More foundation than flash
In the BBC satire series The Thick of It, a government minister tries to recover from an earlier bungle by using a press conference to announce that there's nothing new to announce. His department has been doing the kind of good, solid, dependable work that the press always ignores in favour of attention-grabbing new innovations.The non-press-conference doesn't go well. That's because however much we might tell ourselves that we're good, meritocratic citizens who care about the things that are really, truly important, we are instinctively drawn to the new and to the shiny.
It's happening with the Windows 10 event too. Windows 10 is actually a remarkably bold OS. It might still prove a fool's errand, but Microsoft's vision for a truly unified operating system across mobile, tablet, desktop – as distinct from Apple's dual-platform, cloud-linked strategy and Google's the-cloud-is-the-platform strategy – is nothing if not audacious.
Still, it sounds like business as usual, and not even skipping a number does anything to make Windows 10 seem like anything other than just the latest in a long, drudging line of updates to something that provides fundamentally the same interaction paradigm that Microsoft introduced nearly thirty years ago.
Even if it was called something new – a name that signalled this was something daring – who would get excited about it? It's an operating system. Microsoft may well want people to love Windows, but it's very hard to get the general public to understand what an operating system is, never mind summon up any strong feelings about one – and if you're aiming for a positive strong feeling, you've got an even tougher job.
Holograms, though? Holograms, we can get – and can get excited about. Let's gloss over the fact that what Microsoft showed off was only a hologram in the way movies have done "holograms" for years. This is cool, sci-fi-level stuff.
And giant tablets? Even if we think they're a bit daft, we understand what they are, and they look good in a thumbnail for a news story on the front page. The Surface Hub is new (or at least a new iteration of an idea so rare that few people will have seen one) and so it too is something to get fired up about.
Windows, though. Windows is dull. Sure, Windows 10 might be wonderful. Indeed, this new Microsoft has an encouraging energy about it, and there's reason to think it might be. But few people get seriously exercised about an operating system.
Good news is no news
Of course, the irony about that The Thick of It scene is that, while the situation came about by mistake (and naturally the press was furious about being dragged to a non-announcement), the principle was perfectly valid. Teach the media a lesson: stop being obsessed with the new, and respect the value of the well-executed, behind-the-scenes work that everything else depends on. And that's a pretty decent definition of an operating system, wouldn't you say?Yet here we are; Microsoft announces arguably its most radical plan ever for arguably its most critical product – and makes it free to boot – but we're all talking about a toy that so far is no more real than one of its own fake holograms. We ought to be more impressed with bricks and mortar than smoke and mirrors.
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Opinion: iCloud is a major weakness: will Apple ever fix it?
Those who are interested in the state of Apple as a company will know that online services are not its forte. Unlike Google, Amazon or Microsoft, Apple doesn't seem to be able to catch a break online, revamping the failed MobileMe into iCloud only to have it hacked and abused in several high-profile cases, and experience serious amounts of downtime, damaging the credibility of iCloud and the credibility of Apple itself.
Apple's cloud issues all started with MobileMe. First released in 2008, MobileMe was the precursor to iCloud focused more around the Mac and various desktop-based services, such as iWeb. The service cost £99 (around $150, AU$185) per year and was used by very few and worked even less of the time.
As iOS and OS X started to merge in 2010, Apple released iCloud and combined the features of MobileMe (minus some of the desktop-specific software) with more mobile-friendly software, such as location tracking for a phone. Email addresses, which were previously @me.com, were transitioned to @icloud.com and iMessage was introduced, offering a WhatsApp-like experience for texting exclusively for iPhones. Apple had, it appeared, turned over a new leaf when it came to online services.
But the problems didn't end there. Over the years iMessage has seen various outages, creating angry customers who had to rely on plain old SMS, eating into text plans as opposed to data plans with only Apple to blame. In the summer of 2014, iCloud got hacked, releasing high-profile celebrity nudes onto the internet. Other cases of identity theft from an iCloud account, allowing a hacker to gain access to the most sensitive of information, have also occurred.
Banished to the low ground
Popular web and iOS developer Marco Arment wrote recently that Apple had lost its "functional high ground" in terms of software quality and this is reflected in iCloud. Google and Microsoft produce world-class software products both online and offline, and have effectively claimed the "high ground," as Arment calls it, offering far more reliable services than Apple is able to.In many ways, Steve Jobs' mantra of owning the "whole widget" is responsible for Apple's online faults. Instead of outsourcing the development of online technologies to a company that can handle it, Apple chose to develop them in-house and, as such, now has to develop hardware and software, both online and offline. A herculean feat that even Apple cannot manage.
The central premise of Arment's piece is that marketing has overtaken software in terms of importance at Apple, superseding the need for a quality product and replacing it with a need for a product to a deadline, which is usually just a year.
Speed is the priority
Arment argues that a value consensus has been reached within Apple that dictates speed is the most important factor when developing software, and for the software to improve Apple would need to uncouple software releases with hardware releases. And if overall software improves, it stands to reason that Apple's online services would improve.Beyond reliability, many are clamouring for Apple to add more features to iCloud, the most notable of which is to open up the service to developers to work with, just as Google has done with Drive, or Dropbox does.
The "walled garden" approach works with devices and much of iOS, but having an online service exist in a vacuum is setting it up to fail, and Apple should be aware of this. Just as iOS has grown over the years to include third-party services at a system level – sharing on Facebook or Twitter, for example – iCloud needs to grow to allow other services to link in, expanding beyond what it is currently capable of on its own.
Many of these improvements would only affect developers who know what "API" stands for (Application Programme Interface) or are interested in the inner workings of iCloud, but they're also vitally important to consumers. Apple does not own the "whole widget" when it comes to the online experience and it is damaging the company's ability to integrate iPhone hardware and software.
Before iOS 8, Apple's mobile operating system was essentially closed and wouldn't even allow for seemingly elementary features such as sharing to third-party apps or a third-party keyboard, hallmarks of the Android user experience for many years. Post-iOS 8, the company seems far happier to integrate with third-parties and that integration is likely set to continue, opening up Apple's ecosystem to a larger group of developers, albeit at Apple's behest.
Crumbling credibility?
The primary problem with iCloud is that it doesn't "just work" and this creates problems for Apple's overall image. Just as Arment is arguing in his piece, each failure on Apple's part detracts from its credibility and image, eroding the loyalty of its customer base and damaging Cupertino's reputation in terms of reliability.Whenever iMessage does down, Twitter and other social networks light up with angry users asking Apple to sort it out – and this negative response will be remembered. Developers are also becoming increasingly angry on a different level, railing against Apple's unwillingness to open up the service and watching the quality of software deteriorate simultaneously.
Apple still has a chance to fix the damage that its tardiness is causing – it is unlikely that consumers are going to boycott iPhones on a large-scale because iMessage occasionally goes down – but each little incident chips away at the company's credibility while its competitors, principally Google, increase their lead in the online space.
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