(Mostly) Open Source SteamOS Forked into Homegrown ISO For Other Machines (neowin.net) 22
"While Valve has yet to actually release a proper ISO for SteamOS 3 used on the Steam Deck, others have been taking it into their own hands to provide," reports GamingOnLinux, "like with the new HoloISO.
"This is possible, since 99% of what SteamOS uses is open source (not the Steam client though)..." So people can easily hack away at it to do whatever they want. [HoloISO] is not exactly the same as SteamOS 3 but it's probably the closest I've seen yet, with the main packages coming direct from Valve with "zero possible edits" the developer says.
It's described as a "first beta release."
Neowin supplies some context: Back in early March, Valve released the Steam Deck recovery image for Deck users who need to get back to a factory state. When it was released, many of us over at the Steam OS subreddit did the first thing any reasonable enthusiast would do and tried installing it on a standard PC. The results of this approach were mixed, and only partial successes were achieved. Then HoloISO happened....
The first release, called 'Ground Zero', was released today and allows users to install Steam OS on any machine. But there are some things you need to know before installing this for yourself....
There's a bunch of caveats, but the article still concludes that "If you're team red and you want to give this a shot, head over to the project's Github page to read more and download."
Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the story!
"This is possible, since 99% of what SteamOS uses is open source (not the Steam client though)..." So people can easily hack away at it to do whatever they want. [HoloISO] is not exactly the same as SteamOS 3 but it's probably the closest I've seen yet, with the main packages coming direct from Valve with "zero possible edits" the developer says.
It's described as a "first beta release."
Neowin supplies some context: Back in early March, Valve released the Steam Deck recovery image for Deck users who need to get back to a factory state. When it was released, many of us over at the Steam OS subreddit did the first thing any reasonable enthusiast would do and tried installing it on a standard PC. The results of this approach were mixed, and only partial successes were achieved. Then HoloISO happened....
The first release, called 'Ground Zero', was released today and allows users to install Steam OS on any machine. But there are some things you need to know before installing this for yourself....
There's a bunch of caveats, but the article still concludes that "If you're team red and you want to give this a shot, head over to the project's Github page to read more and download."
Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the story!
Sweet! (Score:2)
Interesting, but I'll stick with the Raspberry Pi. (Score:1, Interesting)
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Yes and no.
If you enable the right options for the kernel, you can use qemu (or some other suitable emulator) to on-the-fly translate for other architectures. Performance is garbage, but you can get x86 executables, such as WINE, to run.
https://github.com/AlbrechtL/R... [github.com]
If you dont mind defunct (and no longer maintained) commercial software, there is also the Eltech's EXAgear Desktop emulation stack.
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Car analogy: "I can see the potential in 2 zone climate control in the cabin but I think the combustion engine is the way to go since you can run electronics from the alternator and use that to run an AC.
Wut?
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I think the Raspberry Pi is the way to go, since you can use Wine to run Windows games to an extent
What Windows games can you run on a Raspberry Pi via Wine?
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I think the Raspberry Pi is the way to go, since you can use Wine to run Windows games to an extent
What Windows games can you run on a Raspberry Pi via Wine?
Microsoft Solitaire Collection I guess.
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Not as pessimistic as that, but reasonably close.
Anything 3D (DX7 and up) is going to be basically garbage tier. However, there were plenty of DDraw based games that are basically just 2D, and those would be perfectly playable this way.
Starcraft, Age of Empires, Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri, etc.
An RPi 4 has a strong enough ARM processor to handle reasonably demanding faux 3D via software MESA GL rendering for older 3D titles, and thankfully that portion of the stack would be running natively. This would pu
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That depends on how nitty gritty you intend to get...
Most things that are DirectDraw (old 90s titles) will run just fine, even with QEMU being the back-end.
If you use the exagear desktop emulator as the back-end, the emulated CPU is about on par with a 500mhz pentium 3.
The graphics subsystem inside the raspberry pi is not intended for 3D rendering of any kind, so the opengl stack will be solid software based rendering. At least that portion of the stack can run natively, though.
For retrogaming, such as wit
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That depends on how nitty gritty you intend to get...
Well I guess the expectation is that if you're talking about a SteamOS alternative then a decent amount from within the timeframe in which has Steam existed, i.e. within the last 2 decades.
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You will need a platform that has 3D acceleration then. Preferably one with Vulkan drivers.
Then your bottleneck is just the fake CPU. (assuming you go the ARM route)
An nVidia Shield, for instance, has a real GPU, with Vulkan support.
https://developer.nvidia.com/e... [nvidia.com]
Paired with the defunct Exagear backend, or a streamlined QEMU backend, it could play some reasonably newer games, but not at really high pixel resolutions. (lots of overhead in the emulation)
Again, Exagear's emulator pretty faithfully gives a "
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The RPi is meant to be a hobbyist tinkering platform, not a game console.
Yes, hence my response to "I think the Raspberry Pi is the way to go, since you can use Wine to run Windows games to an extent", in that for gaming the Raspberry Pi is not the way to go.
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That's almost certainly the aim of RMS, but very few at the upper echelons of development are nearly so zealous.
Re: Open source? (Score:2)
That's usually for free (as in freedom) software. Open Source has many benefits beyond not being tainted by privative software.
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"This is possible, since 99% of what SteamOS uses is open source (not the Steam client though)..."
How can 1% of the OS be proprietary?
I thought the whole point of open source was that it was viral, precisely to stop this kind of thing.
There are many Open Source licenses. Some of them aren't viral. The best examples of these would be the MIT and BSD licenses. Note however that I know of no Open Source license that allows mere users to remove the copyright notice or to change the license. That right belongs exclusively to the owner of the software, at least in countries with copyright laws similar to the UK and US.
The GPL, a Free Software license, is viral with regard to derivative works, mainly this would be the small system utilities th
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steam it self is closed source, so about 1% of all programs from steamOS being close source is probably close enough
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How can 1% of the OS be proprietary? I thought the whole point of open source was that it was viral, precisely to stop this kind of thing.
Separate binaries. Each with their own license.
If you have a set of source code files, and they compile into (for example) a single binary, then any changes or additions are 'drawn in' with the open source files. That's the 'viral' part. Which isn't bad or 'dangerous', it just means changes / additions that you include, are covered under the same license as what you started with. If you want to keep those changes / additions proprietary, then don't contribute them to be part of open source projects.
The
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There's a bit of an issue how this works for libraries that are distributed as separate (binary) files, but linked together in the same executable later. For example BSD style licenses should allow this, iirc probably some other open source licenses too. Depending on the license details, this may even differ for static and dynamic linking. Better consult a specialist lawyer if you run into this :-)
For dynamic linking, the viral component is the difference between the GPL and the LGPL.
. GPL would consider your work a derivative work if it links to a GPL library.
An LGPL library is not viral, in that you may link to it with non-open source components.
If you link to a GPL library, you accept the terms to the GPL- including your own component that is linking to it.
Most GPL libraries are LGPL for this reason. They want to be able to be used by proprietary components, as it enriches the ecosystem provid
Slightly disapointed in Valve (Score:2)
SteamDeck and SteamOS appear to be fantastic products and they should be proud of them. Love them and the concept.
But, if I recall, they were going to release SteamOS 3.0 shortly after the deck. It's been like 2 or near 3 months now, it's kind of time to ship this thing.