What EXACTLY is Valve's SECRET Linux project?

You can find me on these socials:

You can email me at gardiner-at-heavyelement-dot-io

# Common questions:
What distro(s) do you use?
* Office PC: Manjaro GNOME
* Laptop: Manjaro GNOME
* GPD WIN 2: Manjaro GNOME
* Steam Machine: Ubuntu 16.10
* Server: Ubuntu 18.04

# What do you use to edit your videos?
Audio editing: Audacity
Video editing: KdenLive

# What are your machines specs?
Office Rig:
* AMD Ryzen 7 1800x
* AMD Vega 64
* 16 GB RAM
* Manjaro GNOME

Steam Machine:
* Intel Core i7 at 3.8 GHz
* Nvidia GTX 970 4GB
* 12 GB RAM
* Ubuntu 16.10 w/ Steam Compositor

Backup Rig:
* Intel Core i5 at 3.4 GHz
* Nvidia GTX 750 Ti
* 8 GB of RAM

Server:
* AMD FX 6300 at 3.5 GHz
* Nvidia GTX 750 1GB
* 8 GB RAM

BTC: 34Qzes77WJoyBaypBNvhG1Ei6WSUC6Bs1p
ETH: 0x148e816D2cc2c533126dA7B3b5179Ad9aB25c7aF

[seguramlk]

Yeah. I think they'll try to sell the "Steam machines 2.0" but now with a huge difference, they'll come Proton powered and it will be able to run windows games

[rytisliaucys]

I've switched to Linux many times before, but always went back to Windows due to one issue or another. Now I am back on Linux Mint and am planning to stay. It amazes me how fast it's progressing, it's crazy. If two months ago I couldn't run natively supported games properly, now they run on better framerates than Windows, somehow. Linux has better audio and video quality on my laptop, and obviously runs much more stable. At this point, if you are not a hardcore gamer (even though with Proton that is no longer that much of an issue) or a graphics designer (let's be honest, Gimp is not Photoshop), I see no reason for anyone to stay on Windows. It robs your wallet of money and gives you inferrior experience for it.

[onionknight]

i think valve making a pc/console a real console made by them not 3rd party scammers.

[maxharrison]

Why would Valve need to pump this much money just to make a backpack? That would only be for such a niche set of games you might as well just choose native Linux VR games. The streaming platform does seem more probable but I reckon there's more.

[TiagoTiagoT]

I wear glasses with the Vive and I've had no issues, my lenses don't even touch the Vive's lenses in the closest lens distance setting. Look up the internal dimensions of the Vive and measure your glasses to see if the width and height fit.

[Ratteler]

If Udoo ever get their shit together, the Bolt V8 is powerful enough to make a VR device in a fanny pack.

[williampaxtonrobinson]

Windows 10 October Update 2018 was deleting files during the update so the average user who doesn't back up lost data and system restore is bricking the OS. So a lot of consumers are calling for recovery media. They just patched it a few days ago but this could be the beginning of the end of Windows and good riddance. I hope to see Microsoft be forced to take Linux seriously and move their catalog to Debian based Distros then go onto the rest of Linux. Microsoft is upsetting a lot of business users with this debacle.

[conagher]

Wow, Linux-powered VR backpack idea is legit

[Piotr-vwuj]

Where is this link to story "microsoft visits valve" that you said you will include?

[BrunoWillianAndrade]

Good idea of the backpack. But the best solution for that product would be using Windows mixed explorer. And I don't see drivers for that kind of hardware been ported by Microsoft

[DoubtfulYT]

I just switched to Linux due to drivers being deleted by windows and I can't play games like fornite but other games like Tf2 or Team Fortress 2 run like a boss. On windows I got 3o fps now I get 100+ fps it was a huge increase. Though you can't play all games some games compatible or games compatible with wine you can game your head off with a 2008 laptop.

[BruceBigby]

Linux is also a good platform for research for Valve.

[KrK-EST]

Yes the HTC one is quite ok for people with glasses (my friend bought a full system) and i did some testing just 2 weeks before October, and linux was a bit unstable, week later it was much better.
The stable version of SteamVR was not stable, the beta hotfix was the only to work on linux (fedora).

[phil.]

"Holodeck level of awesome"

I WANT THAT SO MUCH!!!

[arranmc]

I personally think Valve might be working on a first party Steam Machine and Valve now know from the past that it was lack off games and central distribution of the hardware that killed the third party Steam Machines off

[SkiRush]

What if the entire point of proton is preparing for the future where Microsoft either kills win32 or does some other inhumane thing to the world of computing that allows all games released under win32 to run on other platforms. Where development would move elsewhere, like Linux, but all past games would still work.

[zvc]

I've heard before that old pc games generally dont work properly with modern versions of windows, but thats generally really old games, but I guess thats more the game devs fault than it is microsofts. Say a game was released when windows xp was the newest windows available, of course the devs would ensure it runs well on windows xp, well if it doesnt run properly on windows 10 today, most of the time, nobodys going to bother to fix that, besides wine devs that is of course.

[Voodoo_S]

Battlefield is already x64 only and has been for a while now, I think the last Bf game that had a choice between x32 & and x64 was Bf4 (or maybe Hardline but I'm not sure because I don't own/ play it)

[iZehta]

Could Valve also be working on improving gaming on their own distro, SteamOS?

[UnixfoxEurope]

Can you add https to the offtopical website?