What do you do when you own a handheld gaming device that you really wish was a Steam Deck? You install SteamFork on it, that's what you do.
Posts tagged as “SteamOS”
Also included: FCC requires TP-Link to allow users to install open source firmware on routers, five new distro releases, new releases of LibreOffice and KDE Plasma, and Microsoft releases Skype 1.3 Alpha for Linux.
FOSS Week in Review
Maybe because we’re in the last 30 days or so of real summer — as opposed to calendar summer — or perhaps because most ‘Mericans are glued to their TVs as the Clinton/Trump heavyweight bout gets underway in earnest, but this has been a slow news week in the FOSS world. However, there are some notable items worth mentioning.
FCC supports open source Wi-Fi firmware. For the last several months many open sourcers have been up in arms because it looked as if the door was being closed on open source on Wi-Fi routers after the agency changed it’s rules around radio interference on the 5 GHz band, making it difficult for router makers to allow users to install open source firmware on their routers. All along, the FCC claimed that shutting out open source use wasn’t part of the game plan, but we FOSSers are a suspicious lot and we weren’t buying it.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Gaming on Linux
Bad news first: Psynoix’s Rocket League will not be out for Linux this year after all. Earlier this month the community manager for Rocket League, username Dirkened, said the game would be released for Linux before the end of December. However, since then Psynoix CEO Dave Hagewood told a fan of the game in an email that there will be a delay but it will still be coming out. A Valve representative with the reddit username Plagman issued an apology to the community on behalf of Psyonix, taking the blame for the delay:
Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot
Just in time for the holiday season comes some exciting gaming news. There’s good news, not-so-good news,and bad news this week.
The Good News: The wildly popular game Rocket League is expected to be playable on GNU/Linux soon. Rocket League is a multiplayer physics based Soccer game played with fast booster, rigged vehicles in place of athletes, and is the sequel to Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars! Since its release last year for Playstation 4 and Windows, Rocket League has gathered a huge following, which has only increased the demand for a Linux version.
Anticipation has only been building since the SteamOS icon appeared briefly a few weeks ago on the Rocket League store, though to the disappointment of Steam users everywhere it isn’t ready for installation. The news was officially announced in August via Twitter that the game would soon makes its way to SteamOS/Mac after celebrating a million sales on Steam, and last week the news was broken by Steam forum moderator Volodesi that the game should be available before the end of the year. There’s no solid release date yet — the year’s end date isn’t official — but it sounds as if the release is in its final stages.
Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot
The Steam machine is now publicly on sale as of last week, but it’s not off to the best start. A couple of weeks ago, Ars Technica compared the performance of games when running on Valve’s Linux based SteamOS and Windows 10. Six Valve games were tested on a single machine and results showed a 21 to 58 percent frame rate drop when running on Linux. While only six games were tested out of an entire collection of around 1,800 available titles, the games used Valve’s own Source engine, which is designed for Linux and SteamOS. Valve had previously stated that Steam games run faster on Linux, so it was expected that any of Valve’s own Source engine games would run smoothly.
Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot
Over the last week, many Linux users on Steam were left in a state of confusion when noticing that some Linux games have had their SteamOS icon removed. For those unaware, the SteamOS icon certifies that a title is playable on Linux, including SteamOS, and soon, on Steam Machines.
A reddit user, mykro76, took note of this in a post last week:
Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot
It wasn’t long ago that gamers avoided Linux like the plague, citing the lack of games as their main reason. When I was growing up, there were next to no major games to play on Linux and it seemed no developers cared to try. However, with the help of companies like Valve, 2K, and Aspyr Media, that’s quickly changing. More and more games are becoming available, with even some being Linux exclusives, including a launch on Steam of Don’t be a Patchman this past July.
Hunter Banks has been a part of the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) Family for the past 13 years. When not writing about open source gaming, he’s working on creating his own games. Follow him on Twitter @SilvrChariot
FOSS Week in Review
First things first: When the sun comes up on a sleepy little town down around San Antone, it’ll mark the start of Texas Linux Fest, the sixth annual two-day Linux/FOSS hoedown deep in the heart of the Lone Star State, this year about halfway between Austin and San Antonio. Lots of great speakers with lots of great sponsors give this show a more local feel than the one earlier this week in the Pacific Northwest, so if you’re in the neighborhood, you should give the fest a visit.
If I asked which two aspects of human life helped propel the digital revolution the most, do you think you know the answer? Would you believe me if I told you it’s computer games and the adult industry? Now, for obvious reasons, we will discuss just the former.
Computer games came about in their vast, colorful abundance in the 80s and really shattered the myth that the computer was just a thing for the academy and finance. At that time the PC became affordable. When coupled with DOS it brought about a revolution, spearheaded by a whole generation of people enjoying entertainment at the tips of their fingers. No longer did you have to leave the comfort of your home and head over to the modern equivalent of the arena. You could have all the fun you wanted, with yourself, by yourself, right there.
Igor Ljubuncic, aka Dedoimedo, is the guy behind the Dedoimedo web site which made a second place showing in our Best FOSS or Linux Blog competition for 2013. He makes a living out of his very hobby – Linux, and holds a bunch of certifications which he says “make a nice pile in the bottom drawer.”