SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck

[CaffeineAddict]

This was only a matter of time, SteamOS on PC's and laptops!

Steam News - SteamOS expands beyond Steam Deck - Steam News

The Legion Go S - Powered by SteamOS is the first officially licensed third-party handheld powered by SteamOS

store.steampowered.com

 

[KGIII]

They've tried this before, albeit with a few small differences.

It's a better strategy today as handhelds are beefy handhelds are quite popular. Even I own a couple now, though I am mostly doing retro gaming.

 

[f33dm3bits]

I own a SteamDeck but I don't use it very often, but I bought it just to add to the sales statistics.

 

[KGIII]

I own a SteamDeck but I don't use it very often, but I bought it just to add to the sales statistics.

I have Steam installed on one of my systems. I should probably revisit an old thread of mine about dipping a toe back into gaming. It took a while for me to act on it - as such things often do - but I've been doing a bit of gaming.

I'm mostly revisiting games I've played before, so they call it retro gaming. There are some great emulators out there and finding roms is not much of a challenge.

Most of what I download is stuff I once owned. They're things I have previously paid for.

But, you can download every single Atari 2600 game (from well before your time, I'm afraid) and all 661 titles will take up less than 4 MB of your storage. That's uncompressed. The download itself is like 3 MB.

We have rules, so I won't link to sites with rooms that aren't necessarily legal. Just because it's 'abandonware' doesn't mean we have any rights regarding it. I did find my Fallout CDs. I also installed WINE and associated bits. (I could also load it through Steam, I guess - using my own copy of the game and not buying it from them.) I'm not sure if I want to do a Windows VM, use WINE, or use Steam. I haven't gone that far.

Anyhow, to remain on topic, it's great that you bought one. You've added it to the numbers. You can now sell it, if you want. They do pretty well in the used-market.

I wonder if we'll get a glut of cheap devices with SteamOS on them?

Right now, there are a zillion retro gaming consoles, in all shapes and sizes. Sites like AliExpress already have handheld devices that run Windows. Using SteamOS would save them money, unless they decided to keep Windows underneath it and just run Steam.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Anyhow, to remain on topic, it's great that you bought one. You've added it to the numbers. You can now sell it, if you want. They do pretty well in the used-market.

I'm keeping mine because it's still a nice device to have for if I were to go on vacation and were to want to bring a gaming device with me.

 

[KGIII]

I'm keeping mine because it's still a nice device to have for if I were to go on vacation and were to want to bring a gaming device with me.

I'm about to go on a bit of a vacation. (I'll still be here, albeit sporadically, though I am setting up a VPN so nobody will know I'm gone!) I'll take a laptop and a cheap handheld gaming device - an RG35XX that can be left in a hotel room without bugging me too much. It's just a drive around the surrounding states, mostly staying off the beaten path - but with forays into larger population centers at night for hotels. I'm not digging the RV out of storage for it. We'll just take one of the SUVs and call it good.

As for the Steam Deck, there's already a community that are modifying it. If you're handy with a soldering iron (and working on surface mount tech), there's a lot you can do with it. I believe that you can buy things like better screens, add memory, change controllers, and stuff like that.

 

[Fanboi]

Well this certainly is a move forward, especially with a brand as big as Lenovo. Only sad thing is it won't outsell the Nintendo Switch 2 (which will be as big a marketing sham as the Nintendo Switch). Still, I reckon it's a stepping stone.

But, you can download every single Atari 2600 game (from well before your time, I'm afraid) and all 661 titles will take up less than 4 MB of your storage. That's uncompressed. The download itself is like 3 MB.

I was just having a convo with a mate of mine the other day about this, although it was about Famicom/NES (Atari's a little before my time): How most AAA games today are > 100GB and how I can get more hours gameplay out of a < 256kb ROM. I only play "retro" games these days. Completely lost interest interest in modern games (except for the few decent indie titles that crop up now and then). The odd bit of gaming I do is done on emulators.

 

[KGIII]

although it was about Famicom/NES

~1300 NES games totals ~146 MB. (Yes, that's an M.)

Those are compressed, but there's really not of a lot of compression going on as they're binary files and not easily compressed. (Ain't nobody got time for writing that algorithm, one optimized for the specific binary files used by NES emulators.)

I don't think that's quite a complete ROM set.

You can download this ROM set:

Internet Archive: View Archive

All of those add up to 127 MB. My set is from Kinhank on a Botocera external drive. (Cheap... So cheap... They even used an HDD rather than an SSD. I'll get around to fixing that at some point.)

EDIT: Do please NOTE that I did not, and will not, link to ROMs. Please do the same.

Also, the site I'm linking to is actually recognized and supported as a library by the American Government. It's full of abandonware and some not-so-abandoned wares.

 

[Fanboi]

~1300 NES games totals ~146 MB. (Yes, that's an M.)

Those are compressed, but there's really not of a lot of compression going on as they're binary files and not easily compressed. (Ain't nobody got time for writing that algorithm, one optimized for the specific binary files used by NES emulators.)

I don't think that's quite a complete ROM set.

You can download this ROM set:

Internet Archive: View Archive

All of those add up to 127 MB. My set is from Kinhank on a Botocera external drive. (Cheap... So cheap... They even used an HDD rather than an SSD. I'll get around to fixing that at some point.)

EDIT: Do please NOTE that I did not, and will not, link to ROMs. Please do the same.

Also, the site I'm linking to is actually recognized and supported as a library by the American Government. It's full of abandonware and some not-so-abandoned wares.

Sadly, even archive.org took some damage recently for their book lending. They get their share of copyright strikes by big business. Even Vimm's Lair got hit a year or so ago and that included lots of games that weren't even available in the US (or outside Japan).

 

[KGIII]

Sadly, even archive.org took some damage recently for their book lending. They get their share of copyright strikes by big business. Even Vimm's Lair got hit a year or so ago and that included lots of games that weren't even available in the US (or outside Japan).

I am not surprised. They host a lot of material that is, like it or not, still protected by copyright laws.

We may not like it, but we don't technically have much of any rights. If you once paid for the game, you might be able to make some sort of claim in the courts. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Abandonware might be abandoned, but it doesn't mean we can use it. Unless they've put the material in the public domain (or given Archive.org some rights), they still very much own the material. Then, in many cases, it's not always clear who owns the rights - and the rights are often owned by multiple entities.

Hmm... I think we can discuss copyright without it being too political. I think we'll find we're on similar pages with the subject. I'm a content creator and even I think copyright laws need to be reformed.

But, all that software is covered by copyright laws - and trademark laws. (We don't get to use their mark, at least for however long it remains valid. Trademark can end much sooner than copyright and trademark requires defense. Copyright requires none of those things and lasts for like 100 years.

I will say that I've personally been able to find any title I'm looking for. I'm not into obscure JRPGs, for example. However, the hardware I've purchased has come with many titles like that.

If you want a dirt cheap entry to handheld retro gaming - which includes both the ability to use other operating systems and supports an SD card, look no further than the GB300. It's a lot of fun and I spent less than $6.00 USD on mine because it went on sale. It's never very expensive.

That's another one that is truly disposable. As I've moved on, I'd just hand that one out to someone who had some interest (and was local/in my house and talking about it).

You can also find HDDs full of thousands of ROMs and set up with Botocera. As a Linux user, you're quite familiar with this process - 'cause it is Linux. It's a 'live' distro and you just boot to it to get to the games.

 

[Fanboi]

I am not surprised. They host a lot of material that is, like it or not, still protected by copyright laws.

We may not like it, but we don't technically have much of any rights. If you once paid for the game, you might be able to make some sort of claim in the courts. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

Abandonware might be abandoned, but it doesn't mean we can use it. Unless they've put the material in the public domain (or given Archive.org some rights), they still very much own the material. Then, in many cases, it's not always clear who owns the rights - and the rights are often owned by multiple entities.

Hmm... I think we can discuss copyright without it being too political. I think we'll find we're on similar pages with the subject. I'm a content creator and even I think copyright laws need to be reformed.

But, all that software is covered by copyright laws - and trademark laws. (We don't get to use their mark, at least for however long it remains valid. Trademark can end much sooner than copyright and trademark requires defense. Copyright requires none of those things and lasts for like 100 years.

Yup, pretty much on the same page. As a soon-to-be author (I hope), I can say that I honestly would not mind if even 20 years from now people could have my book free. People that want to and can support authors/developers/musicians will still pay for things (where there's still a distributor), but in a world where one could somehow enforce copyrights, most people would forego older stuff for the latest, greatest. I understand this "small" copyright period probably doesn't work well for corporate models, so I think a fair copyright period for books and music would be around 50-70 years, regardless of all the variables in the DMCA about the author's life + X years (which keeps changing) or Y years (which also changes) in total. When it comes to films and games, they have generally shorter lives. So I think a cap of 50 years on movies is enough. Very few "youngsters" today know about things like Back to the Future, etc., let alone most of the classics. I mean even the more modern stuff, like The Matrix (I actually saw a Youtube video -- didn't watch it in full -- of a girl who'd never seen it, which is scary because I suddenly realised that there are adults born after what feels like yesterday). Games go stale almost per decade, but definitely after 20 years, hardly anyone new is playing them outside of the "retrogaming" culture. So I'd drop 25 years as a safe number. Something that's irked me for a long time is the state of abandonware because some of it won't even run outside DOSBOX. Actually there are Windows games that people on Windows are using WINE under WSL to play, which is really ironic. So retro interest actually keeps this alive. If it weren't for a small community, a lot of software would actually be lost and that's sad because -- and call me nostalgic -- I think a lot of it shaped my childhood. So culturally, it's relevant.

With Trademarks, I understand because they're still used, be it logos or characters, and in the latter case, they are rehashed to death (like Mario in Nintendo's case) because they're a sort of symbol. The line gets blurry, I guess, because older games featuring trademarks, could fall under scrutiny, but with some minor tweaks, I'm sure the DMCA could be adjusted for this by some of the smart lawyers who charge 10k an hour. They had legal experts -- maybe not the most practical kind -- draft the DMCA, so I figure with better guidance, we could fine a compromise.

If you want a dirt cheap entry to handheld retro gaming - which includes both the ability to use other operating systems and supports an SD card, look no further than the GB300. It's a lot of fun and I spent less than $6.00 USD on mine because it went on sale. It's never very expensive.

That's another one that is truly disposable. As I've moved on, I'd just hand that one out to someone who had some interest (and was local/in my house and talking about it).

You can also find HDDs full of thousands of ROMs and set up with Botocera. As a Linux user, you're quite familiar with this process - 'cause it is Linux. It's a 'live' distro and you just boot to it to get to the games.

GB300 looks pretty good. Battery is a little weak, but as you say, it's good as a disposable. It sure is easier than my thinking of trying to modify a smartphone or use a small SBC like a Pi Zero. I do like the idea of Botcera --looked it up, looks like it covers everything OOTB -- though I'd probably still need a dedicated machine as I find dual booting a pain. Most of my machines have insane uptimes as I only tend to reboot if something goes pear-shaped. My desktop PC's uptime is usually well over 3 months and most of the time, it's only because in SA our power supplier, our only power supplier (an SOE) is terrible and we get lots of blackouts.

 

[KGIII]

though I'd probably still need a dedicated machine as I find dual booting a pain.

That is what I've done. I bought a refurbished computer just to see if it was worth it and it's a solid little machine. I've just been using that as an emulation station.

I've decided (as of just yesterday) to do this. I figured I'd see if I can stick with a theme and so I bought some cheap RAM to upgrade the system.

Unfortunately, I've limited my choices quite a bit. It's a SFF computer, meaning I have very limited choices when it comes to PCIe devices - such as a graphics card. I've found some that will at least make it marginally better.

 

[Fanboi]

Unfortunately, I've limited my choices quite a bit. It's a SFF computer, meaning I have very limited choices when it comes to PCIe devices - such as a graphics card. I've found some that will at least make it marginally better.

Anything <= PS2 era is more/less CPU bound (well, all emulators are compared to graphocs card needs) so you'probably get away with a low-profile GT 710 (although it's cheap, it'll handle emulation) just to offload the strain on the CPU (in PCSX2 you can hand some CPU tasks over to the GPU). For anything, pre-PS2, I find an iGPU -- even my laptop's intel graphics -- works fine (mednafen, openMSX, etc.). So you probably don't need anything fancy gfx card-wise.

 

[KGIII]

Anything <= PS2 era is more/less CPU bound (well, all emulators are compared to graphocs card needs) so you'probably get away with a low-profile GT 710 (although it's cheap, it'll handle emulation) just to offload the strain on the CPU (in PCSX2 you can hand some CPU tasks over to the GPU). For anything, pre-PS2, I find an iGPU -- even my laptop's intel graphics -- works fine (mednafen, openMSX, etc.). So you probably don't need anything fancy gfx card-wise.

I was legitimately surprised to see PS3 (Gran Tourismo 5) play on a beefier computer. I haven't tried it on the now-dedicated system. I doubt it will run well, but we'll see. I recently ordered a 'professional' sim that's quite fancy, so that will scratch my emulated racing itch. (Ask in a PM if you're interested.)

And, yeah, the GT 710 is looking pretty good. There's a GT 1030 that's 2 or 4 GB that should also get me solid PS3 performance. It should also do other consoles from that era. They are still "expensive" on the used market. By that I mean, they're not far off the price to buy them still new and in the box. I may go that route, but I've not decided.