
Valve’s SteamOS now supports Vulkan - 1gang123
http://steamfreecodes.com/steamos-now-supports-vulkan/
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pjc50
The domain "steamfreecodes.com" is highly suspect-sounding, and it looks like
this article is simply stolen from PC World:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035020/linux/valves-
steamos-...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035020/linux/valves-steamos-now-
supports-vulkan-the-cross-platform-alternative-to-directx-12.html)

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fluxsauce
OT, but that site is a giant scam and the content is literally copied and
pasted from a different site -
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035020/linux/valves-
steamos-...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035020/linux/valves-steamos-now-
supports-vulkan-the-cross-platform-alternative-to-directx-12.html)

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bryanlarsen
It's kind of sad to see the nVidia recommendation. Vulkan is significantly
based on AMD's work with Mantle -- it'd be nice to see them profit a bit from
that work. Also we need to keep AMD around as a viable competitor to nVidia.

~~~
TillE
AMD is more than welcome to write better Linux drivers. And hopefully Vulkan
makes that a bit easier by its low-level nature.

~~~
bryanlarsen
That's actually the reason why AMD's Vulkan is delayed on Linux. It's going to
be based on the open source AMDGPU driver than on the old closed source firegl
driver.

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AdmiralAsshat
Well this is a good first step.

I still feel kinda bad for Valve on the whole vis-a-vis SteamOS. Everyone up
to Linus Torvalds pins their hopes on Valve to mainstream Linux enough to be a
serious gaming competitor to Windows [0]. That's certainly alot of pressure to
put on a company that just wants to sell games (and, ya know, _develop_ a
game, once in a blue moon).

[0] [http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Says-Linux-
Bin...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Says-Linux-Binary-
Packages-Are-Terrible-Valve-Might-Save-the-Desktop-458087.shtml)

~~~
pjc50
SteamOS is what you might call an escape valve.

Valve make their money from selling games. Microsoft now have a store of their
own. If Microsoft ever decide that they're the one legitimate way of selling
Windows apps and turn Windows into a locked platform, then Valve are dead
overnight. Having SteamOS gives them an option which is not beholden to anyone
else. I'm not sure if the Steam Machine is ever going to be a viable console
competitor, but doing it this way is a relatively cheap approach to gradually
attempting to do that.

~~~
phatfish
As you say I'm sure Valve saw the warning signs around Windows 8 and the
possibility of Microsoft limiting 3rd party stores in some way.

I believe SteamOS probably gave them some bargaining power as a Dell AlienWare
gaming machine was the only one Microsoft gave in to letting boot to something
other than the Start Screen, it booted to Steam.

This was during the period where PC/Laptop vendors were crying out to be
allowed to boot to _anything_ that helped users work out WTF was going on with
their new PC :)

Valve are getting developers on board slowly with Steam OS, the new Street
Fighter being a pretty big release that has a SteamOS port at launch. They
seem happy to play it slow at the moment, as always ;)

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davexunit
Looking forward to the Mesa 11.3 release, though I'm disappointed because it
seems my laptops processor is a generation too old (sandy bridge) to use the
new Vulkan driver. Maybe some day...

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skrowl
All 8 users of SteamOS will be excited to hear of this development!

