Steam OS - It huffed and it puffed... but it's nothing more than hot air!
A few years ago when I first heard about Steam OS I was intrigued, did this mean gaming on Linux would be on par with Windows? Would Steam OS be the ultimate operating system for gamers?
Fast forward to today and Steam OS has been around for over three years, and what's interesting about that is the web does not seem to be talking about it. So it's time to find out why.
http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/
After following the Steam OS instructions from their site, I created my Steam OS USB installation media and rebooted my PC. Upon boot there was the option of an automatic install and expert install. I went for the automatic install although there were problems formatting my hard drive. It didn't work, so I rebooted and chose expert mode.
Despite the name expert mode, all I did was click next until I came to the formatting hard drive screen. My hard drive had Ubuntu 16.04 LTS installed and this was causing a conflict with the automatic installer. Unfortunately expert mode was not able to resolve this. At this point I decided there was only one option, boot from a Ubuntu Live USB, open a terminal and sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda. Essentially a write zero to my hard drive. I only did this for 10 seconds, enough to destroy the partition information on the drive.
With this done I rebooted with the Steam OS install USB media and chose the automatic option, it worked. After a while, it completed the install and rebooted into Steam OS, prompting me to login. After typing my details the steam verification process asked me for the code that was sent to my email address. If at this point you do not have another system or smart device to access to your emails with, good luck.
First impressions...
If you have used the big picture mode in the windows steam client, this is what the Steam OS interface is. Immediately I noticed it was slightly sluggish compared to Windows.
I have 31 compatible games in my library and tried the following games, Dying Light, Tomb Raider, Bioshock and Serious Sam 3.
All I can say is the performance of each one was shockingly bad. Lots of stuttering and considerably lower FPS. I ran the Tomb Raider benchmark on Ultra settings (Tress FX disabled), here are my results.
Steam OS / Windows 10
Minimum 43.9 FPS / 64.0 FPS, Maximum 69.7 FPS / 104.0 FPS , Average 56.0 FPS / 82.5 FPS
It is a very big difference, with Steam OS it is hard to believe I am using an Intel 4790K with all cores at 4.4GHz coupled with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960. Three years and this is the result, now I know why the web isn't talking about Steam OS. On that note, I'm done.
Fast forward to today and Steam OS has been around for over three years, and what's interesting about that is the web does not seem to be talking about it. So it's time to find out why.
http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/
After following the Steam OS instructions from their site, I created my Steam OS USB installation media and rebooted my PC. Upon boot there was the option of an automatic install and expert install. I went for the automatic install although there were problems formatting my hard drive. It didn't work, so I rebooted and chose expert mode.
Despite the name expert mode, all I did was click next until I came to the formatting hard drive screen. My hard drive had Ubuntu 16.04 LTS installed and this was causing a conflict with the automatic installer. Unfortunately expert mode was not able to resolve this. At this point I decided there was only one option, boot from a Ubuntu Live USB, open a terminal and sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda. Essentially a write zero to my hard drive. I only did this for 10 seconds, enough to destroy the partition information on the drive.
With this done I rebooted with the Steam OS install USB media and chose the automatic option, it worked. After a while, it completed the install and rebooted into Steam OS, prompting me to login. After typing my details the steam verification process asked me for the code that was sent to my email address. If at this point you do not have another system or smart device to access to your emails with, good luck.
First impressions...
If you have used the big picture mode in the windows steam client, this is what the Steam OS interface is. Immediately I noticed it was slightly sluggish compared to Windows.
I have 31 compatible games in my library and tried the following games, Dying Light, Tomb Raider, Bioshock and Serious Sam 3.
All I can say is the performance of each one was shockingly bad. Lots of stuttering and considerably lower FPS. I ran the Tomb Raider benchmark on Ultra settings (Tress FX disabled), here are my results.
Steam OS / Windows 10
Minimum 43.9 FPS / 64.0 FPS, Maximum 69.7 FPS / 104.0 FPS , Average 56.0 FPS / 82.5 FPS
It is a very big difference, with Steam OS it is hard to believe I am using an Intel 4790K with all cores at 4.4GHz coupled with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 960. Three years and this is the result, now I know why the web isn't talking about Steam OS. On that note, I'm done.
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