The Steam Machine: I built a SteamOS console... but is it worth it?

Should you build yourself a Linux-based game console in 2023??
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⬣ CATAN WE TALK ABOUT CONTENT CREATION PODCAST ⬣

#SteamMachine #SteamDeck #ChimeraOS

[TriVoxel]

By the way, that little issue where you need to set the resolution for each game was fixed in an update yesterday!!! Also, I recommend going into display settings and turning off automatic resolution detection there so Steam displays at native resolution, for me it's 4K now!

[ShaunTirubeniTech]

That's a cool and fun project. It's so satisfying seeing spare parts sprinkled with some used than can make an awesome gaming PC. Even better with trying to make it your very own Steam machine. Great job and awesome video!

[tuanht]

Get an Xbox wireless adapter. You can pair your new Xbox controller without plug in keyboard to be able to enter bluetooth GUI. Just press pairing buttons on both dongle & controller. ChimeraOS are supported the dongle thanks to xone project.

[alib]

Just finding this video. I had some wonkiness with ChimeraOS and HoloISO too. I ended up landing on HoloISO_Tweaked, which is being actively maintained and IMO is a much better experience than mainline. Your point to the Xbox controllers being confusing is one the reasons why I chose PS4 as my controller of choice - when you connect them with steam input running, each one gets assigned its own color on that front LED. I managed to stuff a 5800x3D and a 6950XT in a 22L case and stick it in my media center. It absolutely TEARS UP most anything at 4k, with the rare use of some FSR to keep things buttery smooth. It's an absolute treat.

Some of the QoL things I've done to get the best console-like experience:
- Wake from sleep with a Bluetooth controller
- Custom Fan Curve in OS
- Overclocked GPU
- Undervolted CPU
-Steam download speed fix

I don't think it's worth it for everyone...yet. The momentum of these homebrew projects like ChimeraOS, HoloISO, etc, plus the development investment from Valve...it's undeniable. I don't think I'll ever see "The Year of the Linux Desktop" in my lifetime, but the Linux gaming community and experience is only going to grow and improve.

[Twylight]

Hey! I’ve been doing the same thing as you.

Chimera was way too buggy and HoloISO, as you discovered was a no go. I was getting the same bugs as you were with Chimera… trouble with launchers and with resolutions. Also it WOULD NOT accept higher refresh rates. Issues with controllers too.

I went with Manjaro KDE and had steam start with the PC in to big picture mode. The bugs are basically gone and the experience has been sublime.

Make sure to enable compatibility for all games in the Steam settings. It’ll make your life easier.

I’m running a 7800x3d and a 7900 xtx on my 120Hz 4K TV. I’ve stopped using my consoles at this point.

It’s great!

I’m subbing! Hope to see an update video as to how you solved or pivoted to get around these problems!

One more note… if you are using an elite controller, make sure to remap your buttons in steam and create a profile. These Xbox controllers are detected improperly by steam to have incorrect button maps.

Cheers!

[BruhPoole]

wait what, i looked at the subs and was shocked. with this quality i thought you were a big channel. good stuff

[GeminiNight]

Found your channel on the refurbished deck news video, but just wanted to say that you've earned a sub. Your video quality is really nice, good editing, good quality voiceover, nicely balanced music. You deserve many more subs to come. ^_^

[ClaytonMathisVO]

I had Alienware Alpha R2 for many years. I have a tower now and I still have it the Alpha. It's great little PC for the time it was released! I should turn it into a steam machine!

[linuxretrogamer]

Been running HoloISO for around 18mths on my 4K TV (5600, RX6600XT, 32GB). Been working great for me. I’ve been using 2 Steam Controllers which integrate perfectly. I initially ran Bluetooth but also ran into issues so now I just use the Steam Controllers official USB dongle.

If I was to start a fresh I’d probably go ChimeraOS. But honestly, it’s been the best games console experience I’ve ever owned (previously ran Series X, PS4, PS3, X360, etc).

Not convinced by using Windows and booting into Big Picture Mode. I fear I may loose some controller integration magic and/or Gamescope window scaling.

Gamescope is the glue/magic layer that seems to set HoloISO/ChameraOS/SteamOS apart from other solutions when going for a big screen games console experience.

I’m aware you can run Gamescope on any Linux, but there’s a level of integration here. Using it as the Window Manager, that really pulls thing together and eliminated issues so had previously when running the regular Steam Client and Big Picture Mode on other distros.

[erickelayda]

Great Video. I'm doing the same thing but a tad different setup. I had my steam machine run headless (No monitors connected) adn connected via ethernet. I game on it either through my TV, phone or tablet via Moonlight/Sunshine (best IMHO) or SteamLink. The lag isn't noticeable and I can say for certain that it feels as if I'm playing on it directly. I play fighting games and Elden Ring, so timing your inputs is a must.

Just like you, I had a bunch of issues with Chimera and HoloIso and after days of hair pulling trying to resolve them, I ended up running Win11 (de-bloated) and Steam to start in BPM. I don't have any BT controller issues as it's taken care of by either Moonlight or Steamlink, and it works flawlessly. The best thing is that I can install and use PC Gamepass and I'm not limited to the games I can play. The downside is you lose some in-built functionality from SteamOS like gamescope. To go around that issue, I run lossless scaling app from Steam.

[deneirtubes]

Your Bluetooth issue might not be caused by the OS, but rather by the motherboard. I also have a Gigabyte motherboard, although the B550i version, and if it suddenly shuts down due to a power outage, Bluetooth doesn't work at the hardware-level when I turn it back on

To fix this, unplug the PC from the outlet and hold the power button for like a minute to drain the capacitors of their remaining charge. This would reset the Bluetooth module back to a fresh state and hopefully bring back Bluetooth functionality

Hopefully this works for you as well

[boltronics]

Nice video. In my case, I found an old PC in my building's e-waste bin about two months ago and, after experimenting with Batocera.linux and Chimera, ended up turning it into a little HoloISO box. I'm posting this from it right now! It's much weaker than what you have though (an AMD A6-6400K, but hey it was free...). I had some spare parts I've collected over the years from upgrades and the like, so I put in 16Gb of RAM and an R9 Fury X (which is way too powerful for the CPU it's paired with honestly, and there wasn't enough room to mount the radiator in the small case so I had to get creative with zip ties). I then purchased a dirt cheap Crucial 500Gb SATA SSD (since the computer is a bit too old to have NVMe ports).


The keyboard I use is a Logitech K600. I also have a Steam controller, and Xbox Series X controller as well, and all are connected via official dongles instead of bluetooth. I can actually use the Steam controller to navigate the bootloader menus like this, which is a nice feature!

Since I'm CPU limited in almost every game, I just use this machine to stick to lighter games (like Othercide which is entirely turn-based) as well as games of its era. It works fine for things like that. I'm planning on upgrading my main desktop soon (to prepare for Starfield since I'll need a 6+ core CPU) so will probably replace the CPU/Montherboard/RAM combo with my overclocked i7-6700K and 32GB of RAM, which will be able to do most things fine and I can just stream anything else I want to play from my new desktop.

Regarding HoloISO git commits being old, that doesn't matter much. There is a little complication with having to mess with the Arch repository configuration (since Arch changed the format) and there were instructions on what to on a Reddit post somewhere, but once setup, it'll pull down OS updates directly from Valve in basically the same way that a Steam Deck does, leaving you with a great experience.

[Krrly]

very entertaining video! really suprised you don't have more than 500, 000 subscribers yet keep it up!!

[TheLotw]

Its not like the SteamDeck. 1st off when in gaming mode steamos uses gamescope which 99.9% of all Linux distros do not, they use mutter (for Gnome type) and kwin (for kde type). So right off the bat there is a major difference and Valve has spent lots of time and money making that work great.

[notenoughtime]

This channel deserve more subs great quality content

[FederalSpy]

Great video! But please, more B-roll and less staring straight to my soul haha! Great work man! 👌

[ryanhines]

When doing remote play from a linux machine to remote play a windows machine, the two best experiences I have had was using Parsec or using Moonlight or the AMD equivalent for AMD gpus.

[DreamerSouls]

One of the most annoying issues I've had with Bazzite is Bluetooth completely breaking on my system, nothing will show up in the devices section in Big picture mode and when I go to desktop mode it shows that no Bluetooth drivers at present and it's only solved by powering off my system disconnecting all power and clearing all residual power. I've also had some issues with some random crashes in the middle of games sometimes they will work sometimes they don't.

[pauluk]

I think if Valve made a Steam Machine now, it could do much better than what they tried to do years ago, after all, the Steam Machine had a few problems that games didn't run well on Linux and the price point didn't offer anything over what you could get by building your own gaming rig.

Now, Proton is in a good place and with that, gaming on Linux is in a good place, but we should remember, the success of the Steam Deck is on two fronts, the ease of use and attractive price point, the question is, can they deliver on the price point whiles having decent specs? After all, a home based Steam Machine would have to be more powerful than what the Deck is by quite a margin.

As for ease of us, well, assuming they follow the same model as the Steam Deck, so basically, a single hardware platform that they can focus on like they did with the Deck, it could work out for them.

Whereas, if it's a Steam Machine with random hardware parts and just sticking SteamOS on it, that kinda defeats what Valve is aiming to do, which is a hybrid PC/console, that offers much of the openness of the PC and much of the ease of use of consoles, in other words, a PC platform but fixed level hardware on the core specs.

What Valve is doing with the Steam Deck is creating a platform, to do that, you need stability and reasonable life cycle, if the hardware is constantly changing, it might as well be a PC with all the problems that come with that, but if Valve say release 2 or 3 Steam Decks per normal console cycle and do the same for a home based PC console, whiles selling at an attractive price point and having reasonable specs, I can see that being appealing for many PC gamers that don't want the hassle of PC gaming and maintaining the system and even more appealing for console gamers that want to jump into PC gaming.

Normally, consoles have too long of a life cycle of around 7 or 8 years, which a lot of hardware changes happen over that, but 2 or 3 hardware spec upgrade would likely be enough to keep up with the times, whiles making it easy for Valve to maintain with little worry for gamers and even for developers to target them more.

In the end, Valve cracked it with the Steam Deck by having a good price point for the specs and ease of use which is far better than what we normally get with PC gaming, if they can pull that off for a home based PC consoles, they could be onto something and to put it another way, if Valve release their own PC console and support it, that would be far more reassuring than slapping SteamOS on any PC rig with random parts.

[MotownBatman]

New Sub! Dryden, MI
Great Video, Im currently working on (for no particular reason) Setting up Chimera in ProXmoX..
Not working just yet, but still trying