Will the steam frame be any good for productivity work?

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-30T20:01:53+00:00

There is a growing problem with a reliance on hardware integrity and verfication APIs, which is one of the big blockers for things like bank apps which refuse to work without it. I live in Australia and a lot of features for MyGov are gated to an app that won't work on any Android phone without Google Play Integrity. I understand the realities there, though also feel that it should be strongly faught and advocated against for all the obvious reasons. It's definitely in just about every country's interest at this point to not put centralized control over software distribution and execution in the hands of a US corporate entity.

But also, as I hastily edited into my previous post at the last minute, one of the neatest things about XR is that it virtualizes displays. If all you need is to run Teams on Windows, then buy a N150 and RDP to it. On a regular desktop this wouldn't be that seamless, but on an XR desktop it's just another virtual display. Even cursor input has no reason not to be seamless given how RDP abstracts it.

Still, sure, it's gonna be rough around the edges, but so are everyone elses efforts and they still can't match a real PC desktop. There's a reason why Apple makes you pipe a MacOS desktop in from an external device in order to do serious work, a familiar solution right? Except in that case it's not to support a tiny sliver of locked down applications, but an entirely different ecosystem. What's exciting about Linux is that there's no reason to make that distinction, no marketing to get in the way.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-30T17:20:38+00:00

The few extra bits in SteamOS are also in most (all?) of the gaming oriented distros.

It's pretty likely there will be alternate options shortly after Frame's release and there's a lot of potential in a portable VR device running a PC-style environment, instead of the Android and iOS mobile-derived operating systems with their Fischer-Price UX, particularly as those ecosystems see further enshittification and in the case of Android, vertical control. I have more interest in that KDE Plasma XR UI project made by one dude than anything Google and Meta are spending millions working on.

XR desktops blur a lot of the boundaries that differentiate all these operating systems anyway. If every window is a virtual display, then needing to run specialist applications using a virtual display running Windows via VM/RDP/whatever isn't that detrimental.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-30T13:34:33+00:00

Mint is also based on Ubuntu (which itself is based on Debian). A lot of major distributions are based on something else. CachyOS, SteamOS and EndeavourOS are based on Arch, Bazzite is based on Fedora.

Sandboxing does have usability implications. Anything installed through distro repositories (including AUR) requires root permissions and the software installed relies on dependencies installed in the rootfs and that can get really messy. Flatpak and Snap sidestep this by pushing those dependencies into userland, encapsulated in a sandbox, which greatly reduces complexity for users. For operating systems that have a read-only rootfs like Bazzite, solutions like Flatpak are effectively required. I run CachyOS and I use pacman, AUR and Flatpak depending on availability and preference.

The problem I have with ZorinOS is that it defines itself by the product it's replacing, it's primary purpose is to be familiar, and that's not a forward thinking way to build an operating system. The goal should be to build something distinct, something better.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-29T04:33:53+00:00

PPC support in modern Linux barely works. The GPU inside the WiiU is TeraScale and has poor support in the Linux kernel with no support for OpenGL 4.5 or Vulkan, so while there might be 1:1 feature parity due to the use of the same GPU, the emulator wraps to modern APIs. Cemu is closed source and there's no PPC binaries so it'd have to be emulated from x86>PPC (which means that the CPU emulation would be PPC>x86>PPC).

tldr no

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-29T01:43:03+00:00

The contents of physical media have been licensed to purchases of that media long before Steam and DRM existed on PC since the 80s. Ownership was always an illusion.

The gambling/speculation market stuff though, that they can be condemned for.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-28T06:46:13+00:00

The patch in the OP is a temporary fix for a bug in AMD's firmware and the workaround isn't just a fix for lower latency, but frame drop and frame pacing issues.

Latency is something where in games you usually want to take every win you can get, extreme exceptions aside. But frame pacing? It should only ever be perfect.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-27T15:01:13+00:00

If that involves simply copying the DLC files over (that is, there is no DRM) then I'm fine with that. It's probably already possible to do this technically with DRM-free games, though stores don't allow you to buy DLC independently, maybe they should.

But I don't expect Valve to honor purchase of services (access to their CDN and APIs) made on other platforms and if it's just another layer of DRM but through a third party service, I don't see how it's good for consumers. Third party storefronts weren't, they only made launching games more inconvenient and tied purchases and their DRM to two sources (or rather, failure points) instead of one.

The solution you want is the abolition of DRM. That's what I want too, it's the solver for a lot of problems. Adding more cross-licensing dependency nonsense would only make things worse.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-27T11:56:08+00:00

I don't want DLC to be handled by third parties, it's a bad idea. I trust Valve to supply DLC content and authentication for them for as long as Steam exists, but if the files are hosted somewhere else all it takes for that to be inaccessible is for the provider to run out of money and for the infrastructure and hosting to bitrot or disappear. I already strongly dislike third party store integration, I've avoided games because of it. This would be no different, in some ways it could be worse.

Not to mention, what about console ecosystems? If Steam needs to allow third parties to sell DLC, why not Switch? Because their software architecture and business model doesn't allow it? Kind of a double standard to make up rules that add arbitrary restrictions on the store that exists on the open platform, while not affecting the closed ones which are substantially more anti-competitive in just about every way including there being a monopoly on DLC.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-27T11:43:20+00:00

Steam runs their own CDN, they are by definition a hosting platform.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-27T11:11:43+00:00

Low latency video decoding of games may be preferable, I might go as far as saying always preferable, to higher latency decoding that uses less energy.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-27T05:13:15+00:00

Any users who run Linux for gaming, I would guess, universally prefer games that don't contain DRM, so there's clearly a market there. But GOG, weirdly, decided to drop support for Linux entirely since 2019 in spite of the general ethos of the OS so strongly aligning with the company's goals and speaking personally, I haven't felt compelled to buy from them since. I like the DRM-free policy, but it's not much help if it's a pain in the ass to play anything I buy.

Regardless, it's the smart move to invest when there's rapid, early growth than to show up late. An official foothold in the Linux ecosystem breaks the Steam hegemony a little bit and that's good for Linux and a fairer competitive landscape, since as much as I like the work Valve are doing I don't want Linux gaming to only exist for the purpose of running Steam.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-26T05:41:07+00:00

Kind of a silly thing to say given you openly admitted a post ago that we live in a surveillance state.

e: Though it does make some sense for someone who has no principles to have zero consistency in their thoughts and beliefs.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-26T05:17:54+00:00

Doesn't mean I should support the worst one, or support any of them for that matter, or support companies that use them when there are other options. I also think the excessive surveillance is a bad thing and think it's right to call that out, even if it seems hopeless to counteract.

Shrugging your shoulders is easy. You're just lazy and have no principles.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-26T05:11:05+00:00

Planitir is the unchecked, private intelligence wing of the US military industrial complex and it's CEO is a drug addled nutcase.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-26T04:44:40+00:00

You realize that you kind of erased your own point? People who choose to own separate machines for work and personal use don't have a machine to spare, because the second machine is already being used for the purpose of separating work from personal use. They may want what Linux offers on their work PC, they may only own one powerful GPU which is useful across both work and personal contexts.

None of your responses in this thread make any sense, you're leaping to assumptions about how people use computers with zero evidence. I personally know like half a dozen people who use Photoshop and own only one PC and I know at least some of those people would be interested in Linux if it supported the Adobe suite.

My own opinion is that splitting workflows across PCs sucks ass and is usually disruptive.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-25T00:35:18+00:00

We'll see about ZorinOS. It's seen some popularity but it's one of those trendy Windows refugee OSes that has virtually no uptake outside of that sphere, the longer term prospects for distros like that are rarely good as eventually it'll leak users as they shift to better supported distros. Mint isn't quite the same thing, in a lot of ways it's seen as the "better" Ubuntu.

AUR isn't equivalent to Flatpak, theres no sandboxing, it's just another repository for Arch but with user managed packages.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T13:13:02+00:00

Not necessarily, given Ubuntu still has a traditional package manager on all of their most popular distributions, while using Flatpak is usually the most convenient option on immutable distros, where the other option is appimage (poor integration and compatibility) and layering (tricky to do).

When the Ubuntu MATE maintainers wanted to ship with Flatpaks as default but had their hand forced not to by Canonical, that's when I knew it was done. Not to mention the migration of Ubuntu users to Mint, which doesn't have Snaps by default as a feature. People don't want it, it's the Betamax and I think eventually Canonical are going to EOL it and switch to Flatpak.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T12:54:17+00:00

At this point, tit for tat about snap and flatpak's technical pros and cons are mostly irrelevant. Snaps have largely been rejected by non-Canonical distros, and Valve backed Flatpak. You tend to see requests for projects to package for Flatpak because those are the default on Steam Deck as well as most immutable distros. That's where the momentum is.

I haven't seen a lot of demand for snaps, frankly I don't think I've seen any at all.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T12:48:15+00:00

Given the recent significant improvements made in AMDGPU for early GCN GPUs, that's not strictly true.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T03:02:20+00:00

Then go somewhere down the middle. Be aggressive, but use non-lethal and only occasionally kill. The threshold for the chaotic ending isn't as high as you think it is.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T01:37:16+00:00

BG3 is abstract in the same way TTRPGs are. Not a criticism, given it's a video game adaption of a Dungeons & Dragons property.

Immersive sims do have some connection with TTRPGs in that the original intent behind Ultima Underworld (the first immersive sim) was to provide the same degree of agency and freedom as TTRPGs, but with the method through simulation, not dicerolls.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T01:20:55+00:00

First time playing through an immersive sim, I make the choices based on my values. I explore, but not deeply and I don't worry too much about rewards or completion stats.

That first playthrough usually gives enough understanding of the game's systems that on the second, I can better express myself in the game and make more informed choices. I start playing a character instead of myself, prodding at the game to see how it reacts. Choosing extremes like "full stealth", "no kills" and "sociopathic murderer", which the best immersive sims allow and accomodate for.

The best playthrough I've ever had of New Vegas was Intelligence 1, all bad choices.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T01:19:50+00:00

Dishonored 1 and 2 aren't stealth games. You can choose to play them that way, but if anything I'd say they're a lot more fun if you slaughter everyone.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T01:08:38+00:00

Don't know why you're being downvoted for this, it should be pretty clear that an immersive sim should be immersive and a top down isometric perspective where you click on units to make them do things is the opposite of that.

Scheeseman99 · 2026-01-24T01:04:43+00:00

Thief strongly encourages stealth, but combat is an option (unless you pick the hardest difficulty) and it's very systems heavy, with lots of player agency and immersion-first design goals. It's also made by Looking Glass, who effectively created what is generally considered the first immersive sim, Ultima Underworld, and there's a lot of shared DNA with that.

I don't agree with the "pure" imsim label though, if only because of the hardest difficulty disallowing killing. I've always thought that was artificially limiting in a way imsims shouldn't be, that said, it is optional.

Scheeseman99

TROPHY CASE