AlienWare (so Dell) has just unveiled a gaming PC running Ubuntu and Steam, designed to be hooked up to a TV – essentially a Steambox. “With over 25 gaming titles available and more being added, users can access Steam For Linux to play online games, including your favorite titles like Team Fortress 2 and Serious Sam 3.” Everything starts out small, but with Valve going full throttle with this, expect this library to grow.
Go Ubuntu!
When you go to build yours, the first thing you see is an offer for a xps 10 Windows RT tablet. What a load of crap.
Edited 2013-04-05 22:07 UTC
25? Steam offers 100 or so titles for Linux:
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux
Still, if I were going to build a box for gaming, Linux/Ubuntu would definitely NOT be my first choice.
Why? Its a reasonable machine that doesn’t need a lot of horsepower. It will run just as fast 3 years from now as it does today. Not Windows malware or spyware. And Valve has pledged support for it for the future. You also can get a great warranty on a pre built linux workstation which is hard to come by and its got the hardware to do 3d intensive tasks.
Sorry i3 machines simply don’t have the horsepower for a decent gaming experience.
Sorry my Windows 7 install is just as fast on my work machine as it was 2 years ago when I got my machine.
However Ubuntu hasn’t. Dell got burnt before when the next version of ubuntu didn’t work on “ubuntu” certified hardware and the canonical haven’t been brilliant on QA.
i3 is decent for gaming, if you have good vga card. And NVIDIA GeForce GTX 645 is quite good one, I heard.
True this.
i3, Geforce 645 is good for gaming now, but when the next-gen consoles come out we will have games that will push PCs again.
If I was spending money on a new machine I would go for an i5 or better, same with the GPU.
You can customise and buy any of those 4 listed:
—
Intel Core i7-3770 3.4GHz Quad Core
Ubuntu operating system
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600MHz (2 DIMMS) *
1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 *
—
So its not limited to just the i3 version.
Windows tends to crap out performance wise after a while due to the registry, the single worst ill thought out idea to ever hit any operating system. The concept of a registry is just stupid and shit.
You can bring up any anecdotal evidence you want to back up your claims, it still doesn’t change the fact that Windows (including 7) is known to suffer performance issues over time due to registry bloat. This is why Registry Cleaners exist.
To me it seems quite opposite, Dell must have been happy with the previous trials to now offer a greater range of Linux based platforms.
FYI: Ubuntu 12.04 is LTS release with 5 years support, so it does come with 5 years support from Ubuntu.
No but I wouldn’t buy $1000 machine that has a 1.5 GB 660GTX if I wanted a gaming machine.
No it doesn’t I have a few hundred programs installed on my work PC. This is a myth from the Windows 2000 era.
No Dell are getting in on the hype of Steam on Linux.
Except they don’t actually keep up to date with things like browsers and they are reducing the support.
you dont have to buy the $1000 model there are also i5 versions… It just makes your original point about the i3 moot.
Anecdotal evidence. It still doesn’t change the fact that the registry gets bloated and causes a degradation in performance. Its not a myth, its a fact.
From Microsoft themselves:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2498915
Article ID: 2498915 – Last Review: March 16, 2011 – Revision: 3.0
[/q]
A myth from windows 2000 era, are you sure ? Even Microsoft doesn’t agree with you. The last update to that article was in 2011.
Sorry non of those machines are future proof. Ubuntu has iffy track record with updates and supported hardware at best. It still isn’t a good deal.
It hardly ever happens. I have not seen modern machine have problems to do with the registry and I work in an office with over 100 windows 7 machines.
While it can happen doesn’t mean it always happens.
In your opinion.. At least you now admit that it can happen.
In my opinion and for me personally Linux / Ubuntu is better than Windows as a desktop os and has been for a long time.
FFS. I admit that it could be a problem if you install every shite piece of software under the sun.
No it isn’t in my opinion, we could argue backwards and forwards all day. I have not heard anyone until this conversation ever complain on forums, work (I work in Micrsoft shops for most of my career) and personally that have ever had that problem.
It is rare.
And I disagree strongly with it, as a desktop Linux user since around 2003.
For the following reasons:
* Unless you have very standard set of hardware a lot of the times you are down to the command line to bring things like WiFi online.
* Constant churn in the big DEs, Gnome has pretty much started again and KDE threw everything all away to start with KDE4. Then you have unity that is tied to ubuntu.
* Lack of integration between apps that use competing toolkits.
* Certain Distros pushing out things that are completely unready (Unity at Launch), Pulse Audio etc.
It isn’t as bad as it was, but to get anything done reliably you need to drop down the CLI. The update tool in Fedora doesn’t work well for whatever reason with my laptop.
There never a distro that doesn’t have niggly little problems. I won’t go on about having to install Things like Steam and Spotify on Linux being ridiculously difficult because lib versions change quite often.
Edited 2013-04-08 12:32 UTC
Regarding Linux DEs, I’d recommend Xfce to everyone who is tired of the KDE and Gnome bullshit. Here’s why:
-As far as I can tell, the dev team has never broken everything just to scratch an itch. Versions are made of cautious, iterative improvements, that seem to be based on actual user feedback.
-It’s remarkably snappy, but with a fairly complete feature set like other lightweight DEs.
-It’s very stable, new features can be a bit of a hit and miss but they tend to stabilize after a few minor releases (though things you’ve come to expect on other DEs, like automount or files on the desktop, can be new here. It’s the main drawback of their cautious approach to development as far as I can tell)
-It works well in its default setup, and can be tweaked pretty deeply.
-While receiving less love than KDE and Gnome from distros, it’s still pretty well integrated in Ubuntu and Mint. Actually, for some reason, Xfce-based spins tend to be less crashy than others in areas which shouldn’t be related, such as audio and composited graphics.
One of the reasons why I got into the Linux universe is that I was tired of Windows and OS X releases trying to reinvent the world, following some weird vision that I don’t feel part of, and breaking my software and workflows as a result. It seems to me that in the Linux world, a combination of the right distro and the right DE can be used to avoid that, and so far Mint 13 Xfce has done it for me.
Edited 2013-04-09 06:32 UTC
LXDE is also coming along nicely – a good choice for all those people used to “classic” Windows or KDE3 UI layouts.
You should then contact both Dell and Canonical, for you seem to know more than they do about their current situation:
http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/dell
Whoopie doo.
When the next ubuntu release doesn’t work reliably on these machines, I sure certain people on here will have selective memory again.
“Selective memory” as in assuming your own biased uninformed opinion constitutes a fact somehow?
People always forget when Linux makes massive problems … the moment Microsoft makes a mis-step it is fact for 20 years.
Ubuntu update actually broke machines which at the time which were Ubuntu certified. QA isn’t their strong point.
… thanks for proving my point.
What point?
I would love to know because there isn’t any you proved. How is my opinion biased or uninformed?
You haven’t proved anything you have just stated it and not refuted anything I said.
So Why don’t you actually argue instead of saying “I have won” when not really saying or arguing anything.
I find your comments usually add nothing to a discussion and are normally just massively pedantic or missing the point.
Edited 2013-04-08 21:28 UTC
All I need to say to you is this again:
From Microsoft themselves:
You can live in denial all you want that is straight from Microsoft.
Your comments begin to seem ever more bitter and twisted as Linux gains in popularity. Linux / Unix now controls the tablet market and the smartphone market.
Your precious windows is fast falling out of favour. The Microsoft smear campaigns only serve to show how ever more desperate Microsoft is getting and I love it.
Thank you Valve for porting Steam to Linux, for making the Steambox’s primary platform Linux, thank you.
The i3 is the cheapest option, but there are also options for an i5 or i7 for that X51.
I didn’t say Linux wasn’t up to the task, but for the foreseeable future, games will be ported to Windows first, and Linux… if you’re lucky.
Apparently the trend for the past few years has been to port games to consoles first, and then to windows…
Apparently consoles and more and more tablets/mobile. The story is changing with customers shifting away en mass from PC to tablets/mobile consumer-devices. That may hit first-ego shooters last but games genres are more then that and lots of them already shifted to more profitable app markets. The future is OpenGL.
Edited 2013-04-08 06:54 UTC
Why? You can play Frozen Bubble and TuxRacer.
Edited 2013-04-06 21:19 UTC
I have a feeling this is the first wave of things to come. I am waiting for my dell developer xps laptop to arrive:
http://www.dell.com/Learn/us/en/555/campaigns/xps-linux-laptop?c=us…
even available in the Netherlands Thom
Now this, I wasn’t actually expecting Dell to be jumping in feet first like this, a gaming rig seriously ?. This is pretty awesome I have to say.
Dell seems to understand most of us using Linux actually want good hardware and are not after budget systems.
Once the steambox is officially released, the proper AAA games will also be released for it. We know left 4 dead 2 is working on Linux, I wonder what else Valve have cooking.
As proprietary systems seem to become increasingly locked down, by hardware systems Restricted boot, or DRM systems that require permanent connections to the Web, whilst harvesting user information it seem to me that may be ready for….
Oh please, no thanks on the drm.
You would never remember buying a retail boxed copy of half life 2 ep1 and having to install steam? That’s the only reason I have a steam account. What about people all over Europe stuck with a game they could not play, why because to play single player you needed internet. You would never remember that, I bet you don’t remember buying physical games that can be resold and borrowed. I gave my friend my steam user and password so he could play half life two, along with the retail box. That is pathetic!! Once the serial is registered to me, that’s it.
You have always been able to game. On Linux, I was gaming on Linux since q3 and et. Take steam crap and keep it. Give me stand alone ports.
Steam is DRM at its finest, then to make things worse.
If you want to play. You have to update. On a 50meg connection you would still download at 700kb/sec.
There is a reason a lot of companies are signed up with steam, its not because of the digital distribution either.
Download pacsteam and see for yourself, they have a list of compatible games, if you install a game that’s not on the list. The game won’t work. Yes that’s DRM on top of drm. Not to mention you can actually get banned from your account and won’t be able to access the games you are renting from them.
Oddly I do remember but I’m not a gamer the only game I ever really got into was the original Doom. I’m aware of Steams DRM but at least with Linux its not built into the very nature of the platform – you can choose what to install and what not to install.
“With over 25 gaming titles available and more being added, users can access Steam For Linux to play online games, including your favorite titles like Team Fortress 2 and Serious Sam 3.”
Hahahahahahahaha
If your head weren’t stuck so far up your ass, you’d know that games on Steam aren’t your typical fart apps that fill Apple’s or Google’s online stores. Steam carries ~1900 titles in total and the figure quoted in the article (25 linux games) is wrong anyway. A single look though the Steam online store tells you that the actual number is 97, or about 5% of their entire catalog.
And what makes you think that “97 games” doesn’t deserve “Hahahahaha” also?
Because the first release of Steam on Linux was less than two months ago. If this rate of release (or porting) is maintained, Steam for Linux would overtake the Mac catalog by about the end of this year (100 games per 1.5 months, Mac has ~600 games, so about 9 months from now). Whether this will happen remains to be seen. Chances are the Mac ports will also get released at a similar rate, since both platforms are *nix/OpenGL-based, so work done on one translates into little porting effort to the other.
Scoffing at a just-released platform for having little software available is like ridiculing a 2 year-old for not being able to run the Marathon. The interesting thing isn’t the current value of the number of games available, it’s the first derivative of it, and that appears to be a clear positive (and it’s growing, i.e. the second derivative is positive as well) for Steam on Linux.
There will be more and more of this happening, it’s great to see, for people who think there aren’t many Linux games visit http://www.gamingonlinux.com and see the vast amount of news on games everday!
It would be nice to have alternatives to Windows and consoles to play games – but real alternatives not something you can only play open source games or games from humble bundles like Steam for Linux offers now.
Ouya is not an alternative. You can hook your phone or tablet or pc stick to the big screen or to a monitor and Play Android games.
Alienware “gaming” PCs with Ubuntu aren’t an alternative, Linux + Steam isn’t a viable option atm.
Gamers like to play AAA games and MMORPGS. Until such titles come to linux, we can’t talk about an alternative to Windows or consoles.
Let’s hope that Valve will be successful and manage to push linux gaming. The more platforms, the better.
Nice to see you be a little bit optimistic about the Linux ecosystem for a change
Regarding AAA titles, I also think that this is what will make or break any “Steambox” candidate, which is why the Serious Sam bit in the announcement got my attention. Does anyone know how the developers of such a game were led to release such a title on Linux, and if the process can reliably be extended to more games in the future ?
Edited 2013-04-08 06:31 UTC
Thanks, Dell!
A pre-built pc with Ubuntu installed on it… Not impressed.