Your thoughts on SteamOS?
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http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/09/valve-announces-linux-based-steamos-as-basis-for-living-room-gaming/
Valve Software's SteamOS was announced today and here is a summary:
"Why a new OS? Valve says that with SteamOS, the company has "achieved significant performance increases in graphics processing, and we’re now targeting audio performance and reductions in input latency at the operating system level."
"The Linux-based platform will also be freely licensable to hardware manufacturers, allowing a wide number of "Steam Box" living room PCs to germinate. Newell has previously called Windows 8 a "catastrophe" for the gaming market, so it's not at all surprising that his company decided to move forward with a more open option under its direct control."
This also makes you wonder if they are going to license their improvements under a Free Software compatible license and release upstream to the Debian and Ubuntu repositories.
It'll end up being like the OpenPandora, the Ouya, and other such things. A mixture of free and proprietary software for the overall purpose of running proprietary software. Not something I have any respect for.
If they make improvements and release them as free software, that's good, but I doubt there will be much of this. They'll probably just do so when they're required to by the GNU GPL. I would also expect Tivoization to happen.
It's a (possibly) free operating system designed to run proprietary software. What's to like about that?
It is not "possibly free": at least the video drivers are proprietary and so is Steam.
I am a translator!
I wonder what the free software community thinks of this device?
http://www.gcw-zero.com/specifications
If I understand correctly only the wireless firmware is non-free (the graphics should be supported by a free driver). Not sure about the BIOS though.
I know about that; it's basically just a less powerful and keyboardless version of the OpenPandora (even though it's made by different people), and it shares all the same problems: no wireless or hardware acceleration without nonfree software, designed to play nonfree games via emulation, and made by people who think nonfree software is a bonus. The last two apply to every "open source handheld" out there to date, and I would expect any future "open source handhelds" to continue the trend.
The core problem with these devices is that they are "designed by gamers, for gamers"... and these "gamers" play nonfree games. So even if they claim to be in support of "open source", they only use free software for the purpose of playing these nonfree games: making emulators efficient, convincing developers of proprietary indie games to port, etc.
Trisquel includes emulators too, like Zsnes and Scummvm.
We had this discussion once if there's a problem with those old roms. Many people in the free software movement share my opinion that playing these roms is acceptable; you may think differently but you can't blame this project for something even trisquel does.
No wireless or hardware acceleration is true for many pc's out there and though I would recommend buying such a pc if someone doesn't need neither wireless nor hardware acceleration.
Also these pc's are very often designed to use proprietary software like windows. No problem for me if I don't have to use it and can install something else.
> Trisquel includes emulators too, like Zsnes and Scummvm.
Yes, but the Trisquel community isn't centered around them. Take a close look at the OpenPandora website and you'll notice that emulators are heavily flaunted; it's the main purpose of devices like these.
> Also these pc's are very often designed to use proprietary software like
> windows. No problem for me if I don't have to use it and can install something
> else.
That's not the case with these devices. They are built with one particular OS in mind (SuperZaxxon for the Pandora, OpenDingux for the GCW Zero) and porting a different OS is non-trivial. The OpenPandora has no proper 100% free OS running on it; just SuperZaxxon, Slackware, and a pseudo-Debian environment inside of SuperZaxxon, and as a side note, when I brought up the idea of making a 100% free OS work on the Pandora, there was a lot of negative response and no indication that anyone was interested.[0] The community in general is hostile to the free software movement and thinks it's "extremist".[1]
So in reality, if you buy one of these devices, you are going to be entirely on your own with a device that is less powerful and less durable than a very cheap netbook you can get at Wal-mart, is certain to have the same limitations you risk having with said cheap netbook (no 3-D and no WiFi), and has no completely free OS properly working on it. If you use the OS they designed it for without the nonfree bits, many games won't work, and the "maintainers" of them won't care because it works for everybody else; and you will have to manually scour the forums and software repositories to find free software. And if it isn't the OpenPandora, you won't even have a (crappy) keyboard built into it for all that trouble, and if it is the OpenPandora, you will spend more money than if you actually got a more powerful laptop from Think Penguin.
No matter how you look at it, buying one of these "open handhelds" with the intent of running only free software on them would be incredibly foolish.
[0] http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/11076-request-completely-free-os/
[1] http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php/topic/14049-respects-your-freedom-certification/
It seems that one of the motivations for Valve creating an OS is that they can create a custom distro based off of Ubuntu (rumored to be 12.04) and create a walled garden for their services.
The stories say they wanted to improve the video and audio support in the Linux ecosystem, but is it just for proprietary video firmware and drivers? If its just for that, it sucks as the improvements will only be for that specific OS.
If they put the time and money to work with ATI or Nvidia to improve the free drivers and re-release back upstream, then that would benefit everyone. I highly doubt that is their intention though. Still, it would be nice considering most of their work is cut out for them by using Ubuntu.
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