

Build your own Steam Machine - smacktoward
http://store.steampowered.com/steamos/buildyourown

======
dustcoin

        What are the SteamOS Hardware Requirements?
            ... 
            Hard Drive: 500GB or larger disk
      
        Default Installation
            ... The image provided here requires at least a 1TB disk.
    

It is odd that they are publishing these specs and making the default image so
large when <500GB SSDs are the ideal drives for gaming computers.

~~~
wtallis
SSDs are great, until your game library outgrows them. At the moment, it may
be hard to fill half a terabyte with Linux games, but it's pretty easy on
Windows. I've got 350GB of Steam games installed on my Windows machine, and
I'm not a big spender on games. I've just bought Humble Bundles and one or two
things during each of Steam's major sales.

~~~
sillysaurus2
I invested in 64GB of RAM. I have a little script to create a 32GB ramdisk on
startup. Whenever I want to play a game, I copy its folder to the ramdisk,
rename the original, then symlink it from the original location to the
ramdisk.

SSDs are great, but ramdisk gaming loads in like five seconds flat. I suppose
games will outgrow ~48GB in several years, but my hardware will grow old by
then anyway.

~~~
cbhl
How long does it take you to copy its folder to the ramdisk? Is this longer
than it would take for e.g. the Linux kernel to figure out it should cache
that folder in memory by itself?

~~~
staunch
The advantage is that it's definitely all in memory the first time you read
it. For games this is very nice.

------
brownbat
I wish viable gaming Mini-ITX builds ranged from $200 to $500, not $400 [1] to
$2500 [2]. I'd really like to see SteamOS price competitive with consoles. I
know that hasn't been the trend in the past, but PC part prices are a better
value now than ever, it feels like should be almost in reach of a $300 shuttle
with SteamOS that gives consoles a run for their money.

[1] [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mini-itx-do-it-
yourself-...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mini-itx-do-it-yourself-
game-console,3531.html)

[2] [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-mini-itx-
overcl...](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/high-end-mini-itx-
overclocking,3506.html)

------
mwill
Is UEFI boot support being required unusual? Caught my eye, I don't often see
it listed explicitly as a requirement.

~~~
edwintorok
You can create a BIOS bootable CDROM using grub-mkrescue[1]:

    
    
      (mkdir steamos && cd steamos && unzip ~/Downloads/SteamOSInstaller.zip) && grub-mkrescue -o steamos.iso steamos
    

It boots with QEMU:

    
    
      truncate --size 20G /var/tmp/disk.img && qemu-system-x86_64 -cdrom steamos.iso -hda /var/tmp/disk.img,if=virtio -vga std -m 2048 -enable-kvm
    

[1]
[https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Making-a-...](https://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Making-
a-GRUB-bootable-CD_002dROM.html)

------
gcb0
So?

i could install Linux on any box and then give valve full control by having to
run steam as root...

what can I gain with that? It's not like my graphic card will work magically
anyway as Idoubt they do anything else besides install the peoprietary nvidia
driver

------
voltagex_
Something has gone wrong with Steam's caching/CDN solution, possibly because
people have been hitting the direct URL instead of this one (steamstatic vs
steampowered.com)

You'll probably need to wait until the rush dies down a bit.

------
SmileyKeith
Disappointed that AMD and Intel graphics aren't supported yet. Didn't see
that, installed, black screen after booting from Grub. Hopefully they'll
release those versions soon.

~~~
cbhl
As someone who only games casually, and has Intel Integrated graphics in all
his Linux machines, I'm really happy that Valve decided to stick with one
graphics platform and make that experience really good for their initial
release. It means getting the code out to as many people ASAP.

Early releases of Canonical's Unity also initially were nVidia-only, IIRC, so
I would consider this par for the course. (There's also the difficulty in
finding ATI/AMD chips with all the people mining scrypt cryptocurrencies...)

~~~
bad_user
Intel Graphics come with open-source drivers and it's the only graphics card I
haven't had any problems with in Ubuntu.

~~~
cbhl
How old is your graphics chip?

About a year or two ago I gave up trying to make two machines (one with i810G,
one with i865G) work with Ubuntu because the drivers seemed to regularly
regress.

