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I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point: > Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own a
by sudobash1 3mo ago
I am pleased to see hardware not being locked down as a selling point:
> Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
It feels very commonsense that you should be able to run whatever you want on the computer that you have purchased, but it is surprisingly uncommon.
- tonymet 3mo agoAnd I like knowing that I will own the hardware long term. I have so many bricks at home with great hardware and locked boot loaders.
- all2 3mo agoThe urge to tear down the stack of cellphones I have and pull the boot flash chip hits me occasionally. It would be a substantial project, though, so I haven't done it. Yet.
- inigyou 3mo agoYou have to do things. You can't sit on project ideas forever while they become obsolete. A lot of things on my project ideas file became obsolete while I didn't do them, and that is sad. I even had enough time to do them but still wasted it on places like HN.
- all2 3mo agoI know. It hurts to let things die in my project backlog. But there's so much of 'life' outside the project log that I don't have time. I have to prioritize. I feel the 'don't waste time on HN' thing. I'm working on it, minimizing social media usage, minimizing non-productive screen time.
- jamespo 3mo agoThey must have gone obsolete quickly as your account is only 4 months old
- tonymet 3mo agohow far down the chain does the protection go? if you swap the flash chips can you just boot or do the other chips expect a signature upstream?
- gruez 3mo agoAFAIK there are signatures that are checked at the SoC level. In other words, it's not a write lock that can be bypassed by flashing the chips directly.
- retired 3mo agoI do hope they will release drivers for the Steam Machine, otherwise the openness isn’t very useful. Or at least make it possible for others to make drivers by publishing specifications. Edit, reply to bjord as I am rate limited: HDMI CEC, the chipset, GPU drivers, controller receiver etc. Edit, reply to robhlt: Thanks! Hope we can get that ported to Windows
- robhlt 3mo agoFor HDMI CEC they've already published their user-space daemon: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/linux-cec https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/holo/linux-cec
- bjord 3mo agodrivers for what else, exactly? valve is already regularly upstreaming work in major open source linux drivers (and has been for a long time) for example: https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Old-AMD-Linux-Love-Song https://www.phoronix.com/news/Valve-Old-AMD-Linux-Love-Song
- ThatPlayer 3mo agoThey did take almost a year for Windows drivers for the Steam Deck OLED: https://steamdeckhq.com/news/windows-is-now-supported-on-oled-steam-deck/ https://steamdeckhq.com/news/windows-is-now-supported-on-ole...
- asattarmd 3mo agoThey need to do that because, in some sense, they're competing with Gaming PCs, not really with Gaming consoles. Gaming consoles sell their consoles at a discounted price because they can recoup a lot of it when selling games. Steam can't have a markup on games because they share their marketplace with other PCs.
- tuna74 3mo agoSteam has a very high markup compared to its competitors like Epic Games Store.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- dummydummy1234 3mo agoBut if they subsidize the hardware, non game users will purchase the hardware and use it for non game use-cases, where valve cannot recoupe the costs. A interesting scenario would be to sell the hardware at cost, but include a 30% off ticket to the steam store (up to a few hundred dollars, in savings).
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- SchemaLoad 3mo agoInstead they made the right choice and subsidise the software. Valve has been sending patches for Linux for over the last 10 years as well as giving SteamOS out for free for other hardware now.
- Dylan16807 3mo agoIf you don't want to play games, why would you buy a steam machine? Even with a subsidized price, you could get a mini PC with no GPU for half that or less.
- 3mo ago
- ThatMedicIsASpy 3mo agoThat is why the frame will be the most interesting to the people on HN. A VR PC you can do whatever u want with.
- ApolloFortyNine 3mo agoYou can install whatever apk you want on your Oculus Quest.
- willis936 3mo agoAs long as you're running Zuck's spyware OS. The frame is a a linux box with fancy packaging and peripherals. You will be able to put arch on the frame and turn your new singular hobby into building drivers.
- Dilettante_ 3mo agoBut can I uninstall Meta Horizon OS and install Gentoo?
- sekh60 3mo agoGotta get that -O3 flag.
- solid_fuel 3mo agoMy quest is currently sitting in a drawer because it refuses to play the games I already bought unless I "verify" my "meta account" - which they demanded I create in order to use the oculus locally - by uploading my drivers license. Which I, of course, refuse to do. Last I checked you needed either a developer account or a jailbreak to load "whatever apk you want" onto the quest, and there didn't seem to be any jailbreaks around. If this state of things has changed, please do share! I would love to be able to actually use the hardware I already paid for.
- socalgal2 3mo agoExcept without color AR it will not as many of the interesting things HNers want to do require it.
- theshrike79 3mo agoXbox Series S/X, PS5 and both Switches are pretty much commodity hardware. Nobody has even hinted that it would be nice to have a 3rd party store or the ability to run whatever OS on them freely. I keep wondering why.
- izacus 3mo agoI guess you weren't listening because all of them have healthy homebrew communities and people defeating the DRM. I'm not sure if you're being dishonest or just ignorant of the console hacking scene.
- theshrike79 3mo agoMostly wondering about legislators being Super Concerned about Apple (and Google to a smaller degree) not allowing 3rd party software. But for consoles it's just crickets. We shouldn't need to "defeat the DRM", it should be allowed full stop.
- bigfishrunning 3mo agoLegislators *use* cell phones though; very few of them use video game consoles.
- theshrike79 3mo agoMillennials are also legislators, people who have grown up with consoles. Not every politician is a boomer.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- Lammy 3mo agoYou're the one being dishonest and ignorant comparing defeating DRM to something that is open from the start
- willis936 3mo agoValve gets it. I very much want to support them and vote with my wallet. Unfortunately the Steam machine isn't a good fit for me. I will buy the frame in a heartbeat though. HMD with a FOSS OS? That's in its own class.
- cryptoegorophy 3mo agoOne can still be a billionaire and not use shady tactics.
- __MatrixMan__ 3mo agoFor at least a short while. I'm not sure it's a stable configuration.
- bnlxbnlx 3mo agounfortunately, not that straightforward in valve's case. they created a nasty gambling system with their loot boxes that exists outside controlled casino environments and which impacts young adults a lot.
- HDBaseT 3mo agoThe systems in Counter Strike are some of the least abusive in all of gaming. Open up Roblox and see the sheer amount of loot boxes via Robux with Pay 2 Win items, battle passes, daily rewards, etc. Counter Strike meanwhile has item skins which don't impact the game. They aren't more OP, in fact, most of the time they give you a disadvantage. Counter Strike is an 18+ game. Kids shouldn't be on this anyways.
- ok_dad 3mo agoThe problem with visual only loot boxes is that people will pay for rare skins and so everyone still gambles on that stuff. I don’t know if they solved that, used to be you’d buy the keys to unlock them and hope to profit from selling a skin. Adults should also be protected against dark patterns like this.
- tuyiown 3mo agoI like that we can write the story that Microsoft sold their software with the home computer on the idea of productivity at home while the actual incentive was entertainment, and valve ends up justifying buying gaming hardware with the incentive that it can do productivity.
- veber-alex 3mo agoI don't understand, what is so special about this? They are selling a x86 PC. All x86 PCs sold by everyone are open and you can install whatever you want. It's commodity hardware packaged into a small box. There is nothing special here. Trying to sell it as it if Valve are more consumer friendly here is nonsense.
- AlienRobot 3mo agoI think it's because if it was someone else (e.g. Epic), they would have locked down the hardware and sold it like a console or smartphone where you can only install things from their app store.
- danhor 3mo agoThe PS5 and Xbox are also very close to being an x86 PC, but you're not installing your own OS on there even though there are few technical hurdles if the manufacturer removed the mechanisms to prevent that.
- archagon 3mo agoI think what's special here is: 1) Full compatibility with SteamOS. You won't have to fiddle with drivers/hardware/whatever to get it working[1]. 2) The physical hardware is maximally condensed, more so than you'd be able to do yourself with a SFF build. I'd have definitely considered this if I wasn't already doing my own SFF stuff. Gaming on the Deck is a delight and I'd love that console-esque experience for my primary gaming PC as well. [1]: Incidentally, it looks like they're working on broader support. Sweet! https://www.theverge.com/games/953411/valve-steamos-desktop-nvidia https://www.theverge.com/games/953411/valve-steamos-desktop-...
- abnercoimbre 3mo ago> I'd love that console-esque experience for my primary gaming PC as well. So does the typical gamer who's not a nerd like GP. I'm not framing it as an insult, more like a reminder: we infamously ignore the power of brands and sensible defaults chosen for you.
- 3mo ago
- Thaxll 3mo agoI mean it's a PC, you can install whatever your want on a PC.
- amelius 3mo agoYes, a Personal computer as opposed to Apple's computer.
- mahboi 3mo agoEven Apple's PC lets you install whatever you want
- gt0 3mo agoRealistically only macOS runs on Macs, Linux worked on the early M series but not later models, as far as I know.
- mywittyname 3mo agoSo long as the developer pays the Apple Tax to have their code signed. Otherwise it will be marked as sus and the user has to go into Security, and manually allow the software to run. (alternatively, you can have them use the terminal to bypass setting the security bit). This is a step back from older versions that had an "Trust This Program" button right there during execution. And indicates a clear roadmap to ensure no unsigned code can run on OSX. Apple could handle dev keys for free, if this was actually about security. But they don't because its another step on their road to locking down OSX like they do iOS and ensuring they make every platform developer pay their taxes. Developers also can't access the biometric security features at all without an Apple dev account either. Even for my local software that I build for myself, I cannot use fingerprint unlock without an Apple dev license. I don't really want to pay $100/yr to release free software for OSX, so I don't.
- jitl 3mo agoand it makes Steam Deck the best console ever made. i picked up Darksiders 3 a few weeks ago to play on my deck. at some point i realized i was pretty underleveled but i didn’t wanna grind. so, opened chatgpt in desktop mode and uploaded my save, asked it to write me a script to set my souls/xp/money to whatever number. it analyzed the save and spat out a bash/python script. after a chmod +x it worked flawlessly. done from bed took like 15 mins to figure it out end to end. no other what other (handheld) console in history combines the depth of library, the slick console experience, and also lets you chmod +x.
- lfkdev 3mo agochmod +x makes it executable. Also, at this point just use a trainer
- jitl 3mo agoa trainer takes more work and substantially worse security. i can code review 40 lines of shell+python at a glance cannot say the same for most general purpose trainers
- tripleee 3mo agoThe steam deck is way too under-powered to be "the best console". Best handheld, maybe, if you really value portability.
- matheusmoreira 3mo agoIt is surprisingly powerful for a handheld. Somehow Cyberpunk 2077 ran really well on it.
- theshackleford 3mo ago> It is surprisingly powerful for a handheld It's in fact one of the least powerful handhelds (of the x86 class.) > Somehow Cyberpunk 2077 ran really well on it. With significant dropping of settings across the board, with 30-40fps at best and frequent drops into sub <20fps during the action. That may count as "really well" depending on your definition I suppose. I wouldnt tolerate it, but i'm sure many would/do.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- foo12bar 3mo agoReminds me of the PS3 and its OtherOS feature.
- kakacik 3mo agoYou write this on the forum where often in apple-based topics folks here defend locked down system ie on phones for themselves as something actually superior. Its often paid PR or folks to deep in the topic to have objective opinions (or simply employees/shareholders) but still, I've had that talk few times and downvotes were flying left and right.
- dd8601fn 3mo agoI’m fine with both. My phone and my “console experience that’s more open than an xbox” are wildly different scenarios, for which I have different needs and expectations. There are alternatives for both, if/when I ever want them.
- ondiendkendkw 3mo agoYou’re comparing apples to oranges and complaining none of them are tomatoes. Not a valid argument by any stretch of the imagination.
- tootie 3mo agoI got a Steam Deck for my son. Docking it to an external monitor with mouse and keyboard in desktop mode is just running a nice desktop Linux with KDE Plasma by default. I showed him the basics and it's perfectly usable for his school needs. And he can still put it in his bag and play Skyrim on a train ride.
- Levitating 3mo agoIt's also convenient since they're now facing multiple anti-trust lawsuits.[1] [1]: https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dutch-non-profit-set-to-take-valve-to-court-for-keeping-game-prices-high/ https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/dutch-non-profit-set...