What is the with the SteamOS fascination? I loaded it up on a HD and played around in it. It's about as useful an OS as the one that is on my BluRay player. Games and an awful full screen Web Browser. Why would you vastly limit what your PC can do for a console UI? It is madness.
It's the same reason many of us run XBMCbuntu or similar distros that boot directly in to a HTPC frontend. We want a nice 10 foot UI built to act like an appliance. We have other PCs to use as full PCs, these are our lesser/spare/old PCs that we're using to fill a role. As long as they fill that role well nothing else matters.
That said, SteamOS is still Debian underneath and is about the easiest thing in the world to get to a pretty standard desktop. You can do anything you could do on any other Debian derivative, it just boots to a gaming-focused UI by default. Nothing is being "vastly limited".
I played around with SteamOS for a bit, but lost interest quickly. You can still have a nice 10 foot UI with a regular PC. All my TVs and home theater are connected to fully capable Windows gaming machines that can either game on their own or Steam stream from my or my wife's main gaming rig. On top of that, you can load up Steam BPM, XBMC, Media Center, any browser of choice, or whatever else you want without being limited by an appliance. The appliance thing is great, but not if you need five appliances to do five different things.
If you want a real gaming experience on your PC, I recommend on getting the CybertronPC Borg-Q high ranked based on consumer satisfaction (see http://www.topreport.org/desktop/ for example...)
IT's designed to offer the stability and ease of use of consoles on PC; for gaming mostly. Biggest barrier to people becoming PC gamers is how complex it is, troubleshooting, mods, even graphics settings are more than many are willing to do. They just want plug and play functionality, not work or configuration. Steam Box is seeking to address that problem.
If people happen to start using them as media center's for the living room as well, all the better.
Well, there goes all hope of it being reasonably priced. Hopefully they'll have an i5 or i3 version in the works, as an i7 is just a silly degree of overkill. I'd rather an i3 and either pocket the difference or ask them to stick an mSATA/M.2 SSD in there for caching.
I wonder if the GR8 will be using desktop cpus. I guess if heat were really an issue they would go with the S or T models at 65w and 45 watt tdp respectively.
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Sttm - Monday, June 2, 2014 - link
What is the with the SteamOS fascination? I loaded it up on a HD and played around in it. It's about as useful an OS as the one that is on my BluRay player. Games and an awful full screen Web Browser. Why would you vastly limit what your PC can do for a console UI? It is madness.wolrah - Monday, June 2, 2014 - link
It's the same reason many of us run XBMCbuntu or similar distros that boot directly in to a HTPC frontend. We want a nice 10 foot UI built to act like an appliance. We have other PCs to use as full PCs, these are our lesser/spare/old PCs that we're using to fill a role. As long as they fill that role well nothing else matters.That said, SteamOS is still Debian underneath and is about the easiest thing in the world to get to a pretty standard desktop. You can do anything you could do on any other Debian derivative, it just boots to a gaming-focused UI by default. Nothing is being "vastly limited".
nathanddrews - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
I played around with SteamOS for a bit, but lost interest quickly. You can still have a nice 10 foot UI with a regular PC. All my TVs and home theater are connected to fully capable Windows gaming machines that can either game on their own or Steam stream from my or my wife's main gaming rig. On top of that, you can load up Steam BPM, XBMC, Media Center, any browser of choice, or whatever else you want without being limited by an appliance. The appliance thing is great, but not if you need five appliances to do five different things.Ortanon - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
The point you guys seem to be missing is that it's free.wintermute000 - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
Free and unable to play 90% of the catalog vs 100 buck windows license and the full steam catalogue....curtwagner - Monday, December 8, 2014 - link
If you want a real gaming experience on your PC, I recommend on getting the CybertronPC Borg-Q high ranked based on consumer satisfaction (see http://www.topreport.org/desktop/ for example...)ZeDestructor - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
I say bring on the streaming appliances!Just think of it: dump the big, heavy, dual-GPU, 6U rackmount in the basement and stream to all manner of thin clients around the house.
Hrel - Thursday, June 5, 2014 - link
IT's designed to offer the stability and ease of use of consoles on PC; for gaming mostly. Biggest barrier to people becoming PC gamers is how complex it is, troubleshooting, mods, even graphics settings are more than many are willing to do. They just want plug and play functionality, not work or configuration. Steam Box is seeking to address that problem.If people happen to start using them as media center's for the living room as well, all the better.
krazy_olie - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
What I like about this is that it's a pre-built machine that uses that to it's advantage. It's borrowing from the Mac Pro.Anonymous Blowhard - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
> GR8 equips an i7 with a GTX 750 TiWell, there goes all hope of it being reasonably priced. Hopefully they'll have an i5 or i3 version in the works, as an i7 is just a silly degree of overkill. I'd rather an i3 and either pocket the difference or ask them to stick an mSATA/M.2 SSD in there for caching.
krazy_olie - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
it may mean 'up to i7'... hopefully. i5 would be more matched.Storage isn't clear for space/heat reasons I would have assumed ssd
CknSalad - Tuesday, June 3, 2014 - link
I wonder if the GR8 will be using desktop cpus. I guess if heat were really an issue they would go with the S or T models at 65w and 45 watt tdp respectively.