Discussion
I built a desktop PC last year running Bazzite and it's been fine so far. I'm running AMD CPU but more importantly GPU too due to seemingly more support for video drivers on Linux based distros compared with Nvidia. I didn't really have any issues on Windows but fancied trying something different. My only quirk is with Bluetooth which sometimes requires me to remove and reinsert the Bluetooth dongle if my controller has gone to sleep due to inactivity. Sometimes it's fine. I've not quite bottomed that niggle out yet.
Installation wise it was like installing a Redhat or CentOS distro but ends up booting to Steam with the capability of dropping back to the underlying Linux OS.
Installation wise it was like installing a Redhat or CentOS distro but ends up booting to Steam with the capability of dropping back to the underlying Linux OS.
sjg said:
Will be same as Steam Deck, so anything with anticheat (eg Fortnite, CoD games) will be out.
Ah I see. No Fortnite and no TF2 apparently, so that pretty much kills the idea from the off. Seems like a fairly significant own goal from Valve then, unless there's plans to correct that?vladcjelli said:
I’m kind of looking into using some old bits and bobs for similar.
Almost decided to go a different way - chromeOS running games through GeForce now.
Thinking it might be a bit simpler in the long run than fighting with trying to iron out Linux quirks.
We have a Shield Pro console in the playroom already, I had tried Steam Link to stream games from the PC to the Shield but even on a 1Gbps wired network it seemed a bit laggy to be usable. GeForce Now is also interesting but my free account seems to mean waiting in long queues to get to play anything and I don't want to pay cash if it's not going to work or still mean waiting - do you have any experience with GeForce Now?Almost decided to go a different way - chromeOS running games through GeForce now.
Thinking it might be a bit simpler in the long run than fighting with trying to iron out Linux quirks.
8bit said:
We have a Shield Pro console in the playroom already, I had tried Steam Link to stream games from the PC to the Shield but even on a 1Gbps wired network it seemed a bit laggy to be usable. GeForce Now is also interesting but my free account seems to mean waiting in long queues to get to play anything and I don't want to pay cash if it's not going to work or still mean waiting - do you have any experience with GeForce Now?
Nope but I’ve seen others on here extolling it’s virtues.I use Geforce now quite a bit and it's great. I don't really see any difference in streaming from the cloud vs game streaming from my PC using either Steamlink or Moonlight/Sunshine.
Only drawback with Geforce Now is that it only supports a subset of games on Steam or Epic and doesn't seem to have the full library of Xbox Live titles for streaming that the native XCloud streaming has. That said, it supports pretty much all of the big names as they come out and has decent 'back catalogue' support. eg. I have 357 games available to play on GFN from my Steam, Epic and Xbox libraries:
As regards local streaming, I've had better results from Moonlight but Steamlink runs pretty well and seems to be less hassle with aspect ratios (my native PC monitor screen is 32:9 but my TV is of course 16:9, this causes issues when trying to run some games as they get letterboxed or letterboxed and pillboxed). When you go over 1080p on Steamlink, certain games seem to get noticeably laggy. I've seen that on Control and Days Gone .. on Moonlight they stream perfectly at that 1440p.
Only drawback with Geforce Now is that it only supports a subset of games on Steam or Epic and doesn't seem to have the full library of Xbox Live titles for streaming that the native XCloud streaming has. That said, it supports pretty much all of the big names as they come out and has decent 'back catalogue' support. eg. I have 357 games available to play on GFN from my Steam, Epic and Xbox libraries:
As regards local streaming, I've had better results from Moonlight but Steamlink runs pretty well and seems to be less hassle with aspect ratios (my native PC monitor screen is 32:9 but my TV is of course 16:9, this causes issues when trying to run some games as they get letterboxed or letterboxed and pillboxed). When you go over 1080p on Steamlink, certain games seem to get noticeably laggy. I've seen that on Control and Days Gone .. on Moonlight they stream perfectly at that 1440p.
Lucas Ayde said:
I use Geforce now quite a bit and it's great. I don't really see any difference in streaming from the cloud vs game streaming from my PC using either Steamlink or Moonlight/Sunshine.
Only drawback with Geforce Now is that it only supports a subset of games on Steam or Epic and doesn't seem to have the full library of Xbox Live titles for streaming that the native XCloud streaming has. That said, it supports pretty much all of the big names as they come out and has decent 'back catalogue' support. eg. I have 357 games available to play on GFN from my Steam, Epic and Xbox libraries:
As regards local streaming, I've had better results from Moonlight but Steamlink runs pretty well and seems to be less hassle with aspect ratios (my native PC monitor screen is 32:9 but my TV is of course 16:9, this causes issues when trying to run some games as they get letterboxed or letterboxed and pillboxed). When you go over 1080p on Steamlink, certain games seem to get noticeably laggy. I've seen that on Control and Days Gone .. on Moonlight they stream perfectly at that 1440p.
Ah that's really useful, thanks. How is Geforce Now for queuing once you've paid up? I had a look to see pricing options yesterday and it seems to all be "sold out"...Only drawback with Geforce Now is that it only supports a subset of games on Steam or Epic and doesn't seem to have the full library of Xbox Live titles for streaming that the native XCloud streaming has. That said, it supports pretty much all of the big names as they come out and has decent 'back catalogue' support. eg. I have 357 games available to play on GFN from my Steam, Epic and Xbox libraries:
As regards local streaming, I've had better results from Moonlight but Steamlink runs pretty well and seems to be less hassle with aspect ratios (my native PC monitor screen is 32:9 but my TV is of course 16:9, this causes issues when trying to run some games as they get letterboxed or letterboxed and pillboxed). When you go over 1080p on Steamlink, certain games seem to get noticeably laggy. I've seen that on Control and Days Gone .. on Moonlight they stream perfectly at that 1440p.
Regards Steamlink, my PC runs 2560x1440 but the TV the Shield Pro is connected to is 1080p, does that mean there's some downscaling going on? Would I have to change the settings on each game to run at 1080p whilst attempting to stream them, in that case?
8bit said:
Ah that's really useful, thanks. How is Geforce Now for queuing once you've paid up? I had a look to see pricing options yesterday and it seems to all be "sold out"...
Regards Steamlink, my PC runs 2560x1440 but the TV the Shield Pro is connected to is 1080p, does that mean there's some downscaling going on? Would I have to change the settings on each game to run at 1080p whilst attempting to stream them, in that case?
I barely ever have to queue ... the last time I had any sort of wait was over the Christmas/New Years holidays when a couple of times I had to hold for about 1-2 mins for something to become available.Regards Steamlink, my PC runs 2560x1440 but the TV the Shield Pro is connected to is 1080p, does that mean there's some downscaling going on? Would I have to change the settings on each game to run at 1080p whilst attempting to stream them, in that case?
Recently, GFN tightened down on number of hours you can stream when paid up. Previously, it was 'infiite' but now its a certain amount per month, 100 hours I think (extra hours chargeable). You can roll over a certain amount of unused hours to next month. I don't stream anything like 100 hours a month anyway but worth noting if you are a planning on playing a lot. I would imagine a few people were really hitting the service hard so probably this should help reduce potential wait times for the majority of users.
Before I got a nice 4K OLED I was using a 1080p telly and it was no problem to run games at 1440p on the PC end - they just auto-downscaled to 1080p. Seemed to be a slight picture quality improvement too - it's a bit like super-sampling. As I said, a couple of games did seem to cause lag issues on Steamlink >1080p but I don't see the same effect on Moonlight for the same games at the same res.
Currently running just about everything at 1440p on the PC side and letting my Shield TV upscale the result to 4k - looks really good. The only real annoyance is that some games insist on running within the desktop resolution but scale to fill it. As my desktop is 32:9 it means everything gets squished into a matted format on the 16:9 display. Only happens with a small number of games and then typically when using Moonlight. Steamlink copes far better. Also, Gamepass games are really bad for insisting on running within the desktop res, I usually end up streaming them either via GFN (which supports many of them if you link with the Microsoft Account) or on my Quest3 which has an official Gamepass streaming app.
Not an issue when streaming with GFN as it assumes standard 16:9 format.
8bit said:
GeForce Now is also interesting but my free account seems to mean waiting in long queues to get to play anything and I don't want to pay cash if it's not going to work or still mean waiting - do you have any experience with GeForce Now?
I recently upgraded from the performance tier of GFN to the 4K/Ultimate tier. Very occasionally had to wait for 30 seconds at peak times on performance tier but never on Ultimate. I presume it's what Nivdia is limiting membership to ensure no excess queuing. For actual performance with Steam it's fab, obviously only for games on GFN, but new games are added all the time, last week sudden I was able to play Batman games that were on my Steam account.
Best thing for me with GFN is how easy it is to play games on pretty much any device anywhere, though obviously Weapons grade WiFi is needed, as at 4K, 60 FPS, you will easily get through 15-20 gig of data per hour!!!
However hooked up to a 4K projector and big screen it looks fab, and the convenience game access is unbeatable. Got bored of Forza this weekend, saw I could pick up Warhammer Total War for the price of a half decent bottle of red, about 1 minute later I was enjoying facing off the Chaos horde on a 100inch screen
. GFN recently got officially supported on the Quest headset, so I can now play on a an equivalent of a 100inch+ screen any where, including the kitchen table/graden shed, however because it's running of Chrome on Android keyboard/mouse isn't supported which means I cannot play games like TotalWar. Luckily the versatility of GFN means I have to make do on the laptop till a native Quest app is launched.
I don't like spending ££, but I'm enjoying the ultimate tier of GFN. As well as 4K and essentially every graphics options set to max, the games load faster than on the performance tier. Given a weekly shop in ASDA can come to three figures, I have no issues paying the ££ needed for GFN.
Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 1st March 22:55
8bit said:
sjg said:
Will be same as Steam Deck, so anything with anticheat (eg Fortnite, CoD games) will be out.
Ah I see. No Fortnite and no TF2 apparently, so that pretty much kills the idea from the off. Seems like a fairly significant own goal from Valve then, unless there's plans to correct that?vladcjelli said:
It's the one thing valve can't control. Not really an own goal.
Its more of a chicken and egg scenario. The developers won't include support for anticheat because there aren't enough linux users to justify it. And linux users wont play these games because anticheat doesn't support them.
Given how seamless things like the big picture mode is, the death of windows 10 and TPM 2.0 support requirement in windows 11, means that if it were not for anticheat a lot of people would benefit to moving over to steamOS/linux
Its more of a chicken and egg scenario. The developers won't include support for anticheat because there aren't enough linux users to justify it. And linux users wont play these games because anticheat doesn't support them.
Given how seamless things like the big picture mode is, the death of windows 10 and TPM 2.0 support requirement in windows 11, means that if it were not for anticheat a lot of people would benefit to moving over to steamOS/linux
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