

Is Valve’s SteamBox a contender for the next developer workstation? - edoloughlin
http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/01/is-valves-steambox-a-contender-for-the-next-developer-workstation.html

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corin_
This article misses the point of steam boxes, entirely.

Misconceptions the author appears to be under:

1.) Valve are releasing hardware. They are not, and do not plan to.

2.) Laptop steam boxes will come in the future. This makes absolutely no
sense, the _entire_ purpose of SteamOS is big picture mode for TV gaming. It's
not even meant for desktop gaming, yet alone on-the-move gaming.

3.) Ironic that in his discussion of where Mac users might flee to he says
"Dell and HP got nothin’." when one of those companies is creating one of the
first steam boxes which Valve announced on Monday (Dell)

4.) Also ironic that in that same paragraph he dismisses Linux, without
realising that if you close the gaming part of a steam box all that's left is
linux. Not even a new OS based on a linux kernel, just linux.

Just a really poor article which didn't need to be written.

Disclaimer: I work in marketing on behalf of one of the steam box
manufacturers, the above views are my own and do not reflect those of any
company.

~~~
dkhenry
I am thinking the writer saw a nice piece of hardware that wasn't made by
apple and for a second he is thinking what would happen if he stepped outside
the reality distortion field that consumes the west coast.

~~~
corin_
I think it makes complete sense to someone who knows only very basic
information about steam boxes, without any distortion field needed.

If you take a look at the beta box Valve released, it's based on linux and it
looks sexy. If that's all the information you have then sure, Valve might
threaten Apple.

But the author's job is to find out more information than that, and with all
the recent press that isn't even 3 minutes of research to do.

------
bryanlarsen
I think the article is dead on -- I'm seriously considering one myself.

From the perspective of a developer, a Steam Machine is simply a Debian
machine that is _certified_ Linux compatible. People have been screaming for
this for years. Even if you install Ubuntu or Fedora, you know that the
components have been selected for Linux compatibility. That means something.
Granted, 99.9% of standard desktop components are already Linux compatible so
it's not a big deal, but it's one less thing to worry about.

How many devs dual boot to play games? Maybe not the majority, but there's a
huge market there too.

Plus, don't underestimate the appeal of something that's not just another
beige box.

From the perspective of hardware vendors, Steam OS makes a lot of sense too.
If you want to sell a "Linux" machine, you'll have lots of demands to support
Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Arch, etc.

But now they can sell a Steam machine, and get away without supporting the
other flavours du jour.

Of course, the ironic thing is that modern development is much more OS
agnostic than it has ever been: as long as your machine can run Vagrant, you
can run anything you want. Linux does run Vagrant better than other OS's
(because you can use vagrant-lxc), but that's minor.

Lots of gaming is being done on laptops and tablets. If SteamOS does well on
consoles, I do expect Valve to try and get a piece of that market too. That'll
be at least a couple of years, though.

------
thearn4
> _OS X is evolving into a slightly more capable version of iOS, and we’re all
> dreading the day when the only way we can compile and install our own
> software is by using Apple’s proprietary tools and going through the App
> Store._

There does seem to be a closed app-store trend in OSs now, but I'm not really
convinced that a 100% walled garden on OSX is a forgone conclusion.

------
dkhenry
I don't know if I can accept the prognostication of someone who thinks that in
2003 "any self-respecting developer was carrying a MacBook, preferably the one
the size of a small aircraft carrier". My preferred development environment
has been Linux running on a _desktop_ since I started programming. Why would I
move to the much less capable OSX or to a neutered version of Linux, when I
can just install fedora or ubuntu and have a much more capable ( and in my
opinion better ) workstation ?

~~~
__--__
Because not everybody wants to spend days or weeks figuring out why their
video or wireless drivers aren't working. They want to get to work.

Until OS X 10.7, it was a beautiful version of linux that just worked. "Less
capable", ok, maybe, but I don't see it. My entire work environment (zsh+bash
scripts+vim) seamlessly copies back and forth between linux and OS X. Most
linux utilities are available via homebrew. Those that aren't I compile from
source. It's just like any other linux distribution on that front. It's not
perfect, but I get up and running a lot faster on OS X than on any linux
distribution.

I'm on Fedora 19 now and in many way I have the same issues with linux I've
had since I first installed Red Hat 7 in 2000. The lack of progress on certain
fronts in the linux world is staggering.

~~~
dkhenry
I still don't understand the concept that Linux doesn't just work. I have
built multiple desktops and used at least three labtops since 2005 all of
which have run Linux and I have _never_ had a hardware issue that wasn't
caused by me messing with things. More so then windows and OSX everything has
always just worked on Linux. I have had issues with windows needing drivers
and OSX not letting me actually use my hardware ( try setting the resolution
on a retina macbook ) but the _only_ issue I ever had with Linux was that I
needed a special kernel to get my Chromebook pixel to have a working
touchscreen.

~~~
__--__
You've never run an NVidia graphics card or had a broadcom wireless card? What
about discrete graphics? My current peccadillo is the nouveau driver crashes
my laptop if I try to put it to sleep. My wireless card also disconnects
intermittently and has difficulties coming back from sleep. These are three
major areas for a laptop that have never quite worked right out of the box:
graphics, wireless and power management.

I don't want to spend days (weeks!) fixing this stuff and never quite getting
100% there, yet that's exactly what I'm doing right now. Since 10.7, OS X has
become insufferable to use, so I switched back to Fedora.

I'm not trying to say OS X is perfect nor that linux is crap. But categorizing
linux as "just works" and OS X as "less capable" are provably false. There's
also a real vacuum right now for a developer OS that's powerful, easy to use
and graphically beautiful. OS X used to fit that bill, but doesn't anymore.
Linux never will.

------
noir_lord
No (invoking Betteridge's law of headlines).

Also this article is silly.

"So, yes, if you want to call this fantasy, pie-in-the-sky thinking, I’m
guilty as charged. If you think the near-term future of software development
will be based on some platform other than the laptop/desktop, I wish I could
agree. All these “ifs” aside: if I were Apple, I would be looking over my
shoulder. At Valve."

He sums up the ridiculousness far better than I can in his own article.

~~~
quarterto
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5742893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5742893)

------
jiggy2011
In that "Steambox" is a synonym for "PC" then yes , I suppose it is.

------
jbb555
But.... A steambox is just a standard PC in a nice box suitable for using on a
TV. And sure you could probably do some work using steam os if you install
applications. Or you could install a more mainstream linux and then install
steam which seems to work just fine already.

Not sure of the point of this article.

------
eponeponepon
Interesting thought. I've personally been totally sold on SteamOS since it was
announced, but it had simply never occurred to me that it might have any more
utility than the strapline of playing games on your TV.

Now I'm just more stoked for it.

------
willvarfar
The article bemoans the fear that Apple will insist we use it's app store for
macs too.

Yet is putting forward a move to SteamOS, an OS ___named_ __after the app
store it is built to promote...

~~~
eponeponepon
I think it's a bit unfair to characterise SteamOS as a promotional campaign
for Steam based on name alone. Would you say the same for iOS and the iP\w*
device ecosystem?

It seems fairly clear to me that these boxes will stand or fall on their own
merits.

[Edit: typo]

~~~
corin_
He didn't mean as a promotional campaign, he meant to promote use of Steam,
i.e. to get people to use it - which people who buy steam boxes will be doing.

------
yawniek
hopefully they can create an app ecosystem that not only consists out of
games.

~~~
adricnet
[http://store.steampowered.com/software/](http://store.steampowered.com/software/)

100 titles today. Seems to be building momentum slowly, but it's there.

