Posts by Boothy 1376 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2011
Update: Apparently just in the last few hours, Valve have now confirmed (via Gamers Nexus who did the original interview with Valve, who provided the above information) that all shipped Steam Machines will be coming with a single 16GB stick. So no dual 2x8GB configs.
Makes upgrading easier I guess.
Expensive indeed.
I've seen a few cost breakdowns now, even buying at consumer prices everyone seems to have managed to spec a home built machine that is anywhere from 20% to 100% faster than the Steam Machine, for the same price or less than what Valve are asking for here! (Based on equivalent, but often better, parts to what's in the Steam Machine).
Obviously assembly costs need to be factored in, but even so, the Steam Machine (unfortunately) just isn't remotely good value for money, especially considering that Steam OS can now be installed on basically any (vaguely modern) hardware, as long as it's using AMD GFX (which is arguably a better experience on Linux anyway).
Seems if people really do want a Steam Machine, it's likely better to just build your own.
Apparently due to the issues getting hold of RAM, they are expecting some machines to be a dual 8GB config, and others a single 16GB stick.
All machines do have 2 slots available, and all will be 16GB total, but you could end up with a RAM in single or dual channel mode, and no way to know in advance.
They claim little impact to gaming when using a single channel config (I suspect RAM bandwidth is probably more of an impact on higher spec hardware), and at least if prices drop again at some point, it's easy to just buy another 16GB stick to get a 32GB total for those machines with just one stick, unlike those with 2x8GB who'd need to replace both sticks.
Quote: "Zelensky has been issuing ultimatums to Belarus to remove air defences from their borders, or Ukraine will attack them."
No he hasn't, he's asked Belarus to remove, or switch off, Russian radio repeaters that have been fitted to Belarusian radio towers close to the Ukrainian border. These are being used by Russian for navigation and guidance in drone attacks in the North.
I also had an Amiga connected via Demon back then.
I used to frequent #DISA back in those days on IRC. (Demon IP Support Amiga), set up to mirror demons news group of the same name, to provide live support for Amiga users, but ended up become a nice little community of mostly Amiga owners, but also just people who liked to hang out and chat. I used to provide assistance in setting up the TCP/IP stack on the Amiga back then.
Even had a few IRL meetups, one of which involved a couple of women from the USA saying they'd come to visit. Much dubiousness later, and they actually turned up! They were on a European trip for a few weeks, and rented a cottage close to where we were having the meet up. So two USA women, meeting up with half a dozen guys from the UK they'd never seen or met, only talked to over IRC!
Innocent times!
Back in the late 90s, early 2000s, we had lots of Windows boxes, mix of NT, 2k and 95 (for some old DOS apps that didn't like NT).
We also had a policy of lock-if-away, which was often ignored.
If it was my turn to hold the fort at lunch time, and had nothing better to do, I'd wander round the open plan office, although only in the bays for our team, maybe 30 desks, looking for any unlocked machines.
If I found one, I'd take a screen-shot of the desktop, create a new folder on the desktop and drop any other desktop icons into this new folder, then rename that new folder to something like My Documents, or to match something that had already been on the desktop.
I'd then set the wallpaper to the previously created screen-shot, set the task bar to auto-hide, and if needed move the previously created folder so it blended in with the new background.
On return, you'd have people plugging in a different mouse because clicking didn't work, rebooting, the occasional rude word etc. Before figuring out what was up.
Happy days.
Same here, also on a 5800X3D, paired with a 9070XT (and on Linux for gaming, removed my last Windows install a while ago).
Typically most AAA type games will hit 100% on the GFX card (if I allow it, I typically add an FPS cap), and the CPU is somewhere around 20-30% at the same time, so the GFX card is the bottleneck, so I see no need to upgrade at this point.
Granted a nice new 9800X3D (or similar) would give a small performance boost, due to gaming typically still often having a single thread doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but that uplift isn't much, and would require a new CPU, Motherboard and RAM, as a minimum, due to the switch from AM4 to AM5, and it's just not worth it to me, even before the AI bubble (I hope!) wrecked the price for DDR5 (~£400 for 32GB atm!).
The joys of poorly implemented password, and login processes!
Back in the late 90s, not long after starting my IT journey I was tasked with trying to hunt down a potential bug in some custom 'software' we were using. (Quotes, as it was mostly just shell scripts on an AIX UNIX box connected to a rack of diail-in modems (we were still a year or two away from starting using this new fangled thing called the Internet).
Anyway, it was a login process, using a simple username and a password, all over an old dial-up system, to download customer specific data. No encryption, no security of any sort really!
Somehow someone had noticed a certain user was accessing other customers data (they could see files being downloaded in the logs), and no one could figure out how. So I was asked to have a look, as I knew my way around shell scripts, and these had been written years earlier by someone long since retired.
I found out that the usernames were all assigned to customers, and they were all a simple 4 character ASCII, and uppercase only. e..g. ABCD
The customer data was all held in a directory structure that also matched this user ID, e.g. /path/path/abcd and files in there used the same ID in the name, e.g. abcd123456.csv which is how someone noticed files being downloaded by the wrong person. The issue was they couldn't figure out who the person was, they could see files being downloaded in the logs, but not which username was associated with the down-loader, as that field was blank!
I noticed on login the script would 'cd' into the users data directory, so for example an 'ls' would only show what was inside the abcd directory, but...
I found a few major issues:
1. The script did not check that the 'username' field being passed in, actually contained anything!
Plus worse still the 'test' the script did to see if they were a valid user, was to see if that user had a corresponding directory. i.e. If you log in as ABCD does /path/path/abcd exist? If not exit.
So passing nothing (e.g. "") would test for, and drop them into /path/path/!!
2. The login was not locked down in anyway, you could even use cd .. to move up the tree!
3. There was zero restrictions at the file system level, no assigning usernames to actual system users, the file and directory permissions were all set to full read for everyone!
So as this was the bad/good old days of 'just fix it', I added a null/empty check, and a 4 character length check for the username, and a 'chroot' to the script to lock users into just their own directory.
This was meant to be a tactical quick fix, whilst someone else would look at a more strategic solution, which of course never happened. The system chugged on like this for another 3 years or so, before it was replaced with something a bit more modern (it was already about 5 years at the time I joined the team).
I enjoyed the problem solving at lease :-)
These are specifically for going after the larger drones, such as the Shahed's and similar. i.e. fixed wing, not very manoeuvrable, not the quad-copter type $300 drones, those need a different solution.
Plus how on earth would these small drones, that can do typically 50 to 200 miles per hour, explode in the engine of a jet that is around 2-8km away (the min-max effective range of the missiles) and cruising at around 3 times or more of the speed of these drones? Even top end interceptor drones max out at around 280mph, nowhere near fast enough to catch any jet in cruise, and as far as I know, the only aircraft flying drones have shot down so far have been a few helicopters, mainly by flying in front of them.
The only jets I know of that have been shot down by drones, were from boat drones fitted with anti-aircraft missiles.
Also the Hydra 70 rockets that these APKWS kits fit to, can be fitted with both Air burst (timed) and Proximity Air burst fuses, along with things like Flechette warheads (usually for anti-personal), so they do not need to hit the target, just get close enough. Add to that the accuracy is stated (warwingsdaily) as being around 0.5 meters, and the Shahed 136 and derivatives (in active use with Iran and Russia) as an example of an expected target, has a length of 3.5 metres and a width of 2.5 metres, so a pretty big target well within the stated accuracy.
So no, you would not be using a $40,000 missile to shoot down a $300 drone, that's a different use case, and not relevant to this APKWS rocket system.
May not be the same issue, but my $work laptop, which also forces Windows 11 onto me, did something similar a while back.
On investigation, I was now showing 3 network devices, in a machine that only has WiFi and a single Ethernet port! I had WiFi disabled, and the 'extra' NIC was also Ethernet, on a machine with physically just one socket.
My guess was that the Ethernet driver had somehow crashed and restarted, but now showed as a new NIC.
Rather than risking accepting changes etc. I just did a good old restart, and all was well (within Windows limitations of 'well'). Not happened since, and I have no idea what the cause was!
So quick update. That was easy! So easy I've got the server, one desktop and one android device up and running already.
And as an extra bonus, the Nextcloud Android app actually works properly with KeyPass files!!
No idea if this is common, but for some reason a couple of years back after an update to Drive, it just stopped launching the KeyPass app (any of them) when trying to open a filename.kdbx file.
A local copy worked fine, as in save from Drive to local file system, then open, so Android OS itself was happy to open these.
But trying to open by tapping inside 'Drive', which worked fine for years before, and all you get (still happens now, I just checked) is 'The file type is unsupported', even trying to force an 'Open with' inside Drive just takes you to 'No preview available' when what it should do is let you pick the app you want to open the file with, not try to preview it!
But the Nextcloud app simply just worked! Click, immediate which app list, pick one, set as default, now opens as expected. Happy Happy Joy Joy song!
My only regret is not doing this earlier, but I've had other priorities recently!
I already am :-)
Just setting up a Nextcloud server in docker on my TrueNAS environment. Dashboard has just launched, so time to start some learning, and I'm assuming settings up accounts etc.
Next will be my main desktop Linux (Mint), same system I'm accessing TrueNAS (headerless) from (and typing this), so should make debugging, if needed, easier. I've got another Arch env, so that will be next.
Apparently there are also ways to use a gdrive (I've got 100GB) as a Nextcloud backup, so I might look into that as an option, but it's not a priority initially.
After that my Android devices, so that's bits going to be interesting to look at. i.e. Do I leave it local over WiFi only, or look into remote access (or a 3rd party hosted cloud version?).
Some other annoying 'features' of how this works currently are (perhaps this is just me on Mint, but it's the same 'Online Accounts' as used in Ubuntu:
It mounts the gdrive as a network folder, with a path like: google-drive://name@gmail.com/<ID>
This means lots of local apps and programs can't see this location in file manager windows (save as etc). So you end up saving locally, then manually moving into gdrive.
Meta data for the files can also be created incorrectly, (i.e. Type). As an example if I create an empty text file, via right click create new, I get an empty text.txt file as expected, but rather than the Type showing as 'Text', it shows as 'Empty document', even through the original template is correctly set to Text, and adding text to the document, does not update the Type. I ended up adding some text to the default template for text files, so it now sets the Type correctly. Not a big issue, but still.
Another annoyance is the file names do not show up correctly in many application when you open them. i.e. Open a text file called text.txt in the default editor, and it shows up as a 32 character ID instead (i.e. UUID/GUID), but oddly if you go to Save As, the file name in there is the correct one! Libra Office is even worse, the file name shows as an entire path full of UUIDs, and Save as gives you the GUID, not the real name. This also makes switching between windows difficult, if for example if you have multiple spreadsheets open at the same time, as you can't tell which is which by the name.
A final one is that some ap[plications simple can't save changes, once opened. So for example LibraOffice seems to be fine, as well as the default Text editor, but KeePass 2 databases updates always fail (and I've tried multiple different Keepass apps, they all fail in the same way). So updating these requires a copy to local drive, open and update changes there, then copy back to gdrive.
I was only really using gdrive as the Windows integration just worked (tm), and for me was far more reliable than Dropbox which I'd used years earlier. But I've completely ditched Windows for home use (still stuck with it for $work), so how easy it is in Windows is now irrelevant to me.
I have been toying with the idea of Nextcloud, so perhaps this is the final push I needed.
Quote: I think this shift to Soc will do to Nvidia what digital photography did to Kodak
Maybe 5+ years ago, but unlikely now, their gaming revenue (i.e. discreet GFX cards) was around $11.35B in FY2025 (ending Jan 2025). A decent chunk of money, but that was only 8.7% of their total revenue.
On the other hand, their data-centre side generated $115.19B in the same period, representing 88.3% of total revenue.
Gaming revenue actually grew in FY2026 (ending Jan 2026) to $16.04B, but data-centre grew more to $193.74B, so its revenue share also grew to 89.7%.
The only way Nvidia are going to end up in trouble, is if/when the AI bubble bursts.
Yup, I've got an ancient Hotmail account that I use as a general dumping ground, typically using aliases for anywhere I sign up with.
I've just checked, and I have 40+ junk mails, and whilst a couple of them are false positives (e.g. there is one from gog.com that looks likely to be real), but the other 95% of them all follow the same pattern, emotes in the subject, names like Costco, FedEx, Starbucks, Lowe's, Walmark etc, with none of the From email addresses being valid (for the few I checked) and subjects like Exclusive offers, or Congratulations for winning something etc etc. In other words, very easy to recognise as actual junk.
But all of these junk messages have a red 'Unverified' label, so why pass them on to me in the first place? Just filter them out!
Quote: A Department of Commerce release cast the agreement as a "massive reshoring of America's semiconductor sector."
Erm, America's semiconductor sector is still in the USA, small and far behind in comparison to Taiwan's.
The semiconductor sector in Taiwan, is Taiwan's, nothing to do with the USA other than they are the biggest customers for Taiwan's industry.
Almost identical path to myself.
Bought my first Windows machine with 95. After that first machine I upgraded or built the systems (desktops) myself from components.
I went 98 then 98SE
Tried Me, back to 98SE
Then XP
Later on to Win 7 (I still have my dual DVD box for Win 7 Home Premium, with the separate 32 and 64bit disks inside).
I avoided the 'upgrade' to Win10 for quite some time, applied the upgrade in situ (for the 'free' upgrade), and it broke my install (lots of driver issues, and the installers/uninstalls would not run under Win 10!). A fresh install worked afterwards.
Nothing about 11 has ever been appealing, and plenty of things to keep me away. So I purposely checked that TPM was disabled (provided by my 5800X3D CPU), and also turned off Secure Boot, to stop Win 10 from updating itself to Win 11, but also so I could install Linux without messing with secure boot stuff.
I dropped Mint onto a second M.2 drive, in a dual boot setup (boot loaders on separate M.2s so Windows wouldn't mess up my Linux install). I gradually wiped my other non OS drives (another M.2, and two SATA SSDs) swapping them from NTFS to ext4 (mainly game installs from Steam, so don't need anything fancy there).
This was 2 years ago now, I used to switch regularly initially, but I think I've booted into Windows once in the last 6 months, and that was only to check something.
After updating my NAS a little while back, and getting a couple of 6TB externals for redundancy (and off site (i.e. my Mums house) storage), I plan to do one final boot into Windows and back it all up, then a wipe and stick Linux on that drive as well. Might try out CachyOS for a change.
So time to say goodbye to Windows, you won't be missed.
Thanks Liam. I followed the link and then did a search, seems other people had also noticed the same issue during earlier upgrades a few days to a couple of weeks back.
Initially here under Cinnamon (now closed): https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/13312
But copied over to here as a Mint issue (Open): https://github.com/linuxmint/mintreport/issues/110
One of the comments in the 2nd link states:
In short, vainfo needs to be added to the depends list. This seems like something that should be done prior to Mint 22.3, so that the full capabilities of mintreport can be used from the installation medium as well.
The 2nd Open issue hasn't been assigned to anyone yet, so perhaps needs a few up-votes or 'Me too' comments adding to the thread to get it noticed.
Just in case anyone else notices this change and wants to revert it.
Previous Nemo showed a tree view for directories/folders in the main right hand window of Nemo, via little arrows that you click on the expand the view into the folders. For some reason after updating Mint, the tree view was now disabled.
Personally I quiet like this tree view, such as being able to look in more than one directory at the same time in the same window. Without it, you have to double-click folders, and can only view the contents of one at a time (in the same window).
Turns out it's an option (of course it is!): Edit menu > Preferences > Views > List View Defaults > Tick box: Show folder expanders
Also just updated here, and so far I like the changes, nothing too radical, and everything still intuitive. Plus the update itself was quick and painless (a few seconds to run in the background, then a restart that was as fast as a normal restart).
The only (minor) issues I found so far was while looking in the updated System Information panel, specifically on the new GPU tab, the Name entry is blank for some reason, despite showing 9070 XT on the first System Information tab, and the GPU>Hardware Acceleration section showed Video Playback as being disabled and in Software mode, which I was sure was not the actual case.
A quick DDG and it seems the new System Information has a soft dependency on vainfo, which is not included in Mint by default (no idea if this is different now with a fresh install).
A quick...
sudo apt install vainfo
and a relaunch of System Information app and GPU>Hardware Acceleration>Video Playback now shows Enabled (VA-API) as it should.
Seems without vainfo installed, it just assumes Hardware Acceleration is disabled, rather than showing an NA or similar!
Edit: Clarity
Similar, been on Mint for just over 2 years now, dual boot into Win10, but I haven't booted up Windows now for months, and the last time was just to run updates.
I game, browse, watch or listen to media, do a bit of Python (learning just for the fun of it), and a little bit of CAD for 3d printing, so don't need anything professional, plus BambuLabs support Linux natively (one of the reasons I picked one of their printers).
The only competitive multiplayer game I play is War Thunder, and that's native Linux, so for myself, the kernel level anti-cheat stuff isn't an issue (and I wouldn't wan't those games on Windows ether, keep your mitts of my kernel!).
Currently thinking of wiping the Win 10 drive and dropping CachyOS on to it (I have 3 x M.2 NVME drives, one for Windows, one with Mint, and then the 3rd is an ext4 mounted under Mint for game installs, with the OS drives having their respective boot loaders only on their own drive, so Windows doesn't mess with Mint etc on updates). I also disabled the CPU based TPM and secure boot, in order to stop Win 11 for being installed on the sly, like MS did with my Win 7 to Win 10 install years back!
Even drivers haven't been an issue for new hardware, I got an AMD 9070XT at launch, and the updated firmware and drivers had already been released before the hardware was released (although as I'm on Mint, I did have to manually do a few changes there, but that wouldn't be an issue on something like CachyOS or Bazzite.
Even their web site is poorly implemented.
The login requires an extra ID (NS&I number) in addition to the username and password, so using a built in password manager doesn't work (by default). Not that much of an issue, as I store the details in a separate KeePass file anyway, but still.
But worse the initial login always (for me anyway) just drops you back to the login page, no error, no indication of why, and you have to put the details in again!? 2nd time it will get in fine.
They do not have the option of any sort of proper MFA (e.g. code generator etc), and as far as I can see, they force the use of SMS for one time access codes, which are used if you log on from a 'new device'.
And I say 'new device'. because on first access from an actual new device, it goes through the SMS process to add it as a new trusted device, but this doesn't really work properly. Not sure how they are fingerprinting the device/browser, but it only works for a short while, like days, after which you have to go through the SMS process again, even though I'm on the same machine using the same browser.
Even their secure messaging system is unreliable. first few unread messages you read, remove the 'unread' status, but after that, they stay at unread, even after being read! I have to log out and back in and read the messages again for the status to be updated.
And don't hit page reload or the back button at any point, as they'll just log you out!
Most of the 'new' desktop CPUs just seem to be binned versions of the existing range, that clock a little higher whilst at the same TDP. (Perhaps yield quality improvements?). So these likely just scale linearly with the clock speed increases, so single digit % improvements.
The only one of the new CPUs I'm curious about, and not mentioned in the article, is the 9950X3D2, which is basically the 9950X3D but now has 3D cache on both CCDs, rather than just one. Giving the 9950X3D2 a total of 192MB of L3 cache (96MB per CCD).
Currently for the 9950X3D the scheduler will favour either the 3D cache CCD, or the slightly faster none 3D cache CCD, depending on workload type.
With the 9950X3D2 both CCDs have 3D cache, and run at the same speed. but using both CCDs would likely incur a latency penalty (due to using the Infinity Fabric), compared to just using one CCD at a time (for things like gaming etc). But the brute force of another 8 cores with 3D cache could likely overcome that penalty.
Article states 14 posts, but only two visible for me currently, both from 3 hours ago (it's 17:13 UK time as I write this).
Plus a post I made earlier is not visible, not even under my own 'My posts' link! Tried multiple browsers, including from my phone via 5G, bypassing my local network, just in case it was my Pi-Hole or other stuff.
Anyone else have the same issue? Assume this post ever shows up of course!
Seems gamers have moved over a bit faster, at least according to Steams HW survey (just updated with Novembers data) *
My guess being gamers will typically have more modern hardware on average, that a regular non gaming user, and no business or operation impact to worry about.
Note, % figures are <u>all</u> OS share, not just Windows. (and are rounded to 2 decimal points by Valve, so likely don't add to 100%).
Win11 now at 65.59% (up 2.02% from last month)
Win10 now at 29.06% (down 2.08% from last month)
Also a tiny amount still on Win7 at 0.08% (down 0.01% from last month).
If you note, the total down for Win 10, is more than the up for Win 11. Add the drop in Win 10, and that's a small (0.07%) migration away from Windows overall.
OSX was also down by 0.09% (now at 2.02% share) but Linux was up 0.15% (now at 3.20%).
* Worth noting that Steam HW surveys are a random sample of users each month, and it's opt in, so data fluctuations do happen.
You don't even need AI for this!
Audit what software you have, (i.e. perhaps just the ones that you pay an invoice for each year, especially the expensive stuff), then send out a questionnaire each year. Perhaps with options for 'Never/Occasionally/Regularly'. Please tick one.
It's it's overwhelmingly Never, then let everyone know and don't renew!
If it's Occasionally, but a bit pricey, then get someone to look at alternates.
Similar here. I've some older titles that either don't run in Windows 10 (and presumably 11 as well), or are a bit crash happy.
Examples:
Sword of the Stars Complete Collection - Crashes under Windows, hates Alt+Tab, insta crash. No issues under Proton, including Alt-Tab.
Command & Conquer™ Generals Zero Hour - Regularly crashes under Windows 10, still happens sometimes in Proton, but nowhere near as often.
STAR WARS™ Knights of the Old Republic™ II: The Sith Lords - Regularly crashes under Windows 10, no issues under Proton.
Worth noting, I'm on an AMD CPU and GPU, and AMDs drivers are pretty good for Linux (first class support by AMD).
Hardcore gamers are a small minority. The Steam Machine is aiming at the mid point, and sits bang on the current most common hardware configuration.
41% of Steam users are on 16GB RAM, 27% are on 6 core CPUs, 33% have 8GB VRAM.
The most popular GFX card is the RTX 3060, which is years old now and only a little more powerful than a PS5, and the Steam Machine GFX hardware estimates seems to put it also a little faster than a PS5, although not as fast as the Pro.
Also 53% of Steam users only have a 1080p display, with 4k only accounting for 4.65%, and a similar number on Ultrawides. So most users don't need a powerful PC anyway.
So as currently specified, the Steam Machine basically matches the majority of the Steam user base.
About 18% of Steam users have less than 6 CPU cores, about 33% have less than 8GB VRAM, and around 12% have less than 16GB RAM. So for those users, the Steam Machine would even be an upgrade.
I could image even hardcore gamers buying one of these to compliment their exiting rig. Main rig on a desk with keyboard and mouse in one room, whilst having the Steam Machine plugged into the TV in the living room for more controller type games, and either playing less demanding games directly, allowing for local multiplayer, or run more demanding games on the main PC, and stream it to the Steam Machine.
What will be critical is the price. Too costly and people will just build their own.
Not sure how static things will be, although I suspect this incarnation of the Steam Machine will likely set the base level.
Valve are apparently talking to other companies about making their own versions (like they tried, and failed, years ago with the first attempt), which will likely be more powerful devices. Although Valve being Valve, they are not even hinting at who these companies are, or what spec any other machines might have.
I'm kind of curious now that they have Steam OS running on ARM, if any Steam Machines might also be ARM based?
I'd also like to see a regular ISO for Steam OS, that could be installed on any regular PC, laptop or desktop.
Regarding your game porting comment, Steam OS is Arch Linux based, but few companies are writing native games for Linux. So most of the games in use in Steam OS (or Linux in general) are the Windows versions of the game running via the Proton compatibility layer (a customised version of WINE).
So for things like PS5 games, you still have to wait for the publisher to bring out a Windows (or Linux) version first, before you'd see it available on these machines. On the plus side, some previous PS exclusives are now available on Steam, such as the Horizon games, The Last of Us games, Ghost of Tsushima etc.
You also have things like the 'Halo: The Master Chief Collection' already in Steam (Reach, 2, 3, ODST & Combat Evolved).
Some individuals may have abandoned it, but the market is still growing each year. A quick quote from a Business Insight article written just a few weeks ago:
The global virtual reality (VR) market size was valued at USD 16.32 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow from USD 20.83 billion in 2025 to USD 123.06 billion by 2032, exhibiting a CAGR of 28.9% during the forecast period. North America dominated the VR market with a market share of 35.53% in 2024.
Source: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/industry-reports/virtual-reality-market-101378
On the money side, Steams net revenue was around $10.8 billion in 2024, with profits of around $1.2 billion, Valve only employs around 350 people, so that's about $3.5 million in profit per employee (higher than Amazon, Google or Microsoft). Apparently Steam (the platform) accounts for something like 90%+ of that money, but only about 80 of the employees work directly on Steam itself, the rest doing game dev. hardware etc.
So they are not short of money! Also Valve Corporation (the parent company) is privately held, with majority ownership by Gabe Newell, the founder. So no pesky shareholders to get in the way.
Not mentioned in the article, but the Steam Frame, as well as being able to run things locally on ARM, is also designed to act as a wireless VR headset for any other PC running SteamVR (including the Steam Machine, or any other regular PC with Steam on it), so you're not just limited to the GFX performance of the headset itself.
Also no lighthouses this time like with the Valve Index etc, tracking is done from the visor using four cameras.
The new controller also includes the same VR tracking tech as the VR controllers that come with the Frame, so if playing something better suited to a regular controller (flight sims, driving etc), then you can see the new controller in VR, so no lifting up the visor, or using the external cameras, trying to find the thing.
If you look at the Steam hardware survey (i.e. gaming sector), Intel are even lower at ~57% and AMD at ~43%, and it's a steady shift in AMDs favour going back 18+ months at least.
I also saw some discussions with retailers in the USA, EU and the UK, they all basically said they are constantly restocking AMD, whereas they are only selling budget end Intel CPUs, and the top end Intel parts are just sitting on the shelf, almost no one want's them.
Seems as people refresh their systems, they are gradually shifting over to AMD. It's just the better options right now, and I'd say has been for a while now.
It doesn't help that Intels previous couple of generations had stability issues on some systems (voltage issues damaging the CPUs), so that burned a few people, and then when the new generation came out, such as their flagship Core Ultra 9 285k, it was slower that the previous gen i9-14900K! (In gaming), so leaving Intel users with no real upgrade path if they wanted to stick with Intel.
AMD have some astoundingly good CPUs currently, especially the X3D versions for gaming, and they keep their platforms for much much longer.
AM4 came out in 2016 with original Zen, then it went Zen+, Zen2 and Zen3, and AMDs last CPUs to be released (so far) for AM4 were the 5500X3D and 5600F, which came out in June and September this year! That's 9 years of platform support so far.
AM5 came out in 2022 with Zen 4, followed by Zen 5 last year, and AMD have confirmed Zen 6 due late next year, will also be AM5. The rumours are that Zen 7 will also be AM5, although that's from leaks, not confirmed by AMD yet, as far as I know, but if true Zen 7 is expected around 2027-2028, so that's potentially 6 years of support so far for AM5.
Still on AM4 myself (Started with a 3800X then swapped that to a 5800X3D), just not seen the need to jump to AM5 yet, maybe next year (give DRAM prices time to come down again!).
Crap software in modern cars just seems to be the tend currently!
I've got an almost 3 year old Cupra, part of VW group of course.
I also have to turn lane-keeping off every trip, otherwise it tries to steer me into either the side of the road, or into oncoming traffic, depending on its mood! The worse one is the M62 West bound exit for the M606, as you come off the M62 onto the slip-road on the left, the car is absolutely adamant it's going to just keep going straight on instead of following the slip-road off to the left, which would mean cutting across the right hand slip road lane and going straight onto the hard-shoulder of the M62!
The collision warning seems to hate parked cars, especially on bends where the parked car is basically directly in front, and the car just doesn't notice I'm already following the bend, so not even vaguely getting close to the parked car, but nope, big red warning on the dash and hits the brakes!
Speed limit detection is also terrible. There is a parkway I drive along regularly (think small bypass around a housing estate), this is a single carriageway road, three proper (i.e. not mini) roundabouts one at each end and one in the middle, and about 2 miles long total. It's 40 mph along the entire length, no change of speed at all, with the occasional 40 repeater signs along the route. The car on the other hand thinks it's 30 at some points, then back to 40 (the repeater signs) then back to 30. One of these times is by the middle roundabout, as the left side exit (that I don't use) does drop to 30, so I suspect the car is picking this up in error (still not an excuse). But at no point on the rest of the road is there any change in speed, or any other side road with a different speed sign, or any other speed signs other than the 40 repeaters! I've even checked Street View! So I've no idea why the car thinks it keeps changing to 30! Google Navigate or Waze (via Android auto) on the other hand show 40 for the entire length! I have to keep my foot on the gas ready to push forwards, otherwise the car will brake on it's own down to 30!
I just checked my own library, I've been on Steam since it launched (over 2 decades ago!) and have 100s of games (some AAA games, I also buy lots of smaller indie titles, and often wait for sales, especially for the AAA titles, let them fix bugs and performance issues before I buy!).
79% are Platinum or Gold, so run out-of-the-box (Platinum just works, Gold usually needs a small tweak [*] and then runs perfect afterwards)
13% are Silver, so might have minor glitches, but otherwise still works fine.
2% are Bronze, so typically have issues, such as crashing, and might need more tweaking to get to run stable.
1% Borked.
The remaining ~5% are games with no reports (typically very old games no one plays anymore).
Note, I do not play many competitive multiplayer games (War Thunder being one exception, and that's native Linux). So nothing in my library has the kernel level anti-cheat.
Of the borked games, none of them were current, or even vaguely recent. 2 of them were very early VR experiences (e.g. NVIDIA VR Funhouse). 2 were multiplayer games from years back, where the companies have shut down and the servers are long since gone (Marvel Heroes Omega for example), another 2 are de-listed titles (e.g. Age of Empires Online) and 1 was an open beta which ended back in 2015! The only Borked slightly more recent title is a VR video player called 'GizmoVR Video Player', which is free, and seems to have been abandoned about 5 years ago, although seems to still work in Windows.
Of the no report ones, most of those seem to be things like discontinued expansions/DLC, such as 'Sword of the Stars: Argos Naval Yard Expansion', as this was rolled into a Complete Collection version years ago.
* Note, any needed tweaks are documented in ProtonDB for that game, so generally no searching forums etc needed, and typically require either some command line parameters adding (in Steam for that specific game), or might need a specific run time installing, which is typically managed via protontricks.
Chuckle. Who knows, I suspect it's difficult to predict currently until we start to see some longer term trends.
The gamingonlinux site has a tracker for Linux market share (based on the Steam hardware survey), so shows the trend over time. : https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/
Basically it hit 1% around mid 2021
2% around the start of 2024,
Now 3% in Sep 2025
So:
~2.5 years to go from 1% to 2%
~1.8 years to go from 2% to 3%
There seems to have been a marked uptick in just the last 6 months, with around 2 thirds of that increase to 3% being in those last 6 months.
If the last 6 months trend continues, we could see 10% in less than 5 years, but this could just be a short term trend due to Win 10 EOL, and things might settle down again.
Oddly, if you look at English only Steam users (last chart on the above page), the % for the Linux share jumps to 6.61%, seems Linux is way more popular with English speaking users for some reason!
Looking at some absolute numbers, based on Valve reporting they had 132 million active monthly users back in 2022 (very likely higher now), that means an estimated 4 million plus active Linux users each month (based on the 3% number).
I never said remove anticheat, the thing is you don't need kernel level access for anticheat, this is a choice the devs for specific games have made. There are plenty of multiplayer games out there with anticheat that don't touch the kernel.
These devs might not have much choice in the future anyway, as Microsoft have stated they plan to remove kernel level access, thanks to issues like CrowdStrike.
The likely best long term way to identify cheaters is to monitor behaviour from the server side, rather than trying to detect cheat software on the client side.
is an increase in coverage of gaming on Linux (excluding Steam Deck) on popular YouTube (and other sites) tech and gaming channels, that previously only ever covered gaming on Windows desktops (or laptops).
No big shift over yet, but the fact that it's being talked about at all on these quite large channels (millions of subscribers) is a big change from just a year ago, plus the comment sections are full of people who've either already switched to Linux, or people curious about giving it a go. Some channels like Gamers Nexus (2.5m followers) are talking about adding in Linux benchmarking.
A common theme in discussions seems to be many people just hating the direction Windows is going, and looking for a alternate path.
Also likely helped that it hit mainstream tech news sites (such as Toms Hardware) recently that someone on YouTube got hold of a ROG Xbox Ally (an official XBox, aka Microsoft, handheld gaming system that runs a slimmed down Windows 11), and stuck Linux (Bazzite) on it, and got Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to run at 32% better FPS than Windows. Most other games didn't get the same boost, but had apparently a more consistent FPS (smoother game play) in Linux than under Windows. Also sleep mode (enter and exit) was basically instant under Linux, but took around 40 seconds to sleep and 15 seconds to resume in Windows.
As far as I'm aware, the only anti-cheat system that don't work on Linux are the kernel level ones, and to be honest, not sure I'd wan't to be installing those on Windows anyway! (Not that I use Windows for home use anymore anyway).
Granted this does mean quite a few of the bigger multiplayer games won't work on Linux, unless the devs change how this works, something that they might have to do if Microsoft go through with their supposed intention to remove kernel level access.
Not trolling, just curious.
For myself I used to use Hibernation (in Windows) years ago when it meant a faster boot from cold than a regular true cold start (I'd full shut down on Friday night, but Hibernation Mon to Thus).
But with faster SSDs and CPUs I gave up using it, as Hibernation caused occasional issues (hardware sometimes not initialising correctly, memory fragmentation etc), that a reboot would fix. The then newer and faster systems would boot up in less than say 10 seconds anyway, so my use of Hibernation to me just wasn't of much use any more.
If I want to save state (such as having lots of application/programs open that I want to continue with the next day), I'll just sleep/suspend, which sips very little power these days and gives you an instant resume. I could see the hybrid approach being useful for people working on the move, so might have a lack of available power, but I mostly WFH, and sometimes on client sites, so I've always (baring a power cut!) got power.
For non $work related use, I am on Linux (Mint) as my daily driver, but I always just full shut down each day, using Hibernation has never actually crossed my mind, hence being curious about why other people might find this useful?
This site is also quite nice for UK leccy: https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live
They currently show the UK as being 12.2% Renewables, which they only include Solar, Wind and Hydro. Biomas comes under 'Other' and Nuclear under 'Low Carbon'
51.3% currently coming from Gas!
Another nail in the lid for Win 11 as far as I'm concerned.
For home, I use a home built Desktop as my main and have a Laptop as a hardware backup just in case.
The laptop was never going to get Win 11, it barely ran Win 10! It's an old Intel Centrino (Core 2 Duo) and came with Win 7 originally, so that ages it a little. It now has Mint, and is fine for browsing etc. Just don't try to use it if not plugged in to the mains!
Desktop is dual booting with my old Win 10 install on the original and faster M.2 (from when I first built the system back in 2019), and Mint on a 2nd M.2 (not quite as fast, added later originally as a location for Steam games). Been using this set up for almost 2 years now, and have almost exclusively been using Mint for the last year, so Windows just not needed any more (for me).
Been doing a final clear out of the old Win 10 system, and plan to wipe and install a fresh copy of Linux to this faster M.2 and it will become the new primary OS. Perhaps a move to CachyOS this time, as half my time on this system is gaming, Mint works fine, but it needs a bit of tweaking (nothing difficult) to use newer drivers, firmware and Kernels. Whereas CachyOS covers this out of the box.
Obviously not everyone can escape Windows, typically down to specific software (Adobe, games with Kernel level anti-cheat etc), but I don't use any of these.
Unfortunately I'm stuck with Win 11 for my corporate provided $work laptop, so I can't escape completely!
Yup, seems the regular transmissions from services like Starlink can be filtered out, as they are predictable signals, but these same systems apparently constantly leak other RF frequencies, from things like the on board electronics, and these are less predictable so harder to deal with.
Seems there are no regulations currently on leaking other RF signals for satellites, so no requirement to add shielding, or a Faraday cage etc, to block these errant signals, as that would add weight and cost, so companies like Starlink simple don't bother.
I just double checked, it was a Logitech G7, circa 2005. 20 years ago, jees I feel old!
A quick search and apparently the first ever optical gaming mouse only launched the year before in 2004 (the Razer Viper), so the G7 was very early gen for a optical gaming mouse, let alone a wireless one.
I would image the poor (by modern standards) battery life was that this was an early model, so likely not a very efficient silicon, plus laser, plus low latency/hi refresh, all focused on gaming. It also had a muti LED charge indicator for the battery, which were constantly illuminated when in use (so that you could pre-plan to swap before it went flat).
I've got a modern Razer DeathAdder v3 Pro, and this lasts days even when gaming, no battery swapping, and just uses a very flexible and light braided USB-C lead to charge (although half the time I forget to unplug again and just use it wired!).
My favourite Logitech mouse, from years back now (long since dead), was a wireless gaming mouse, which had a quick release battery.
It came with two Li-ion batteries (proprietary, about the size of a small matchbox, but half as thick) and a separate USB charger that sat on your desk.
So you'd have one charging, with the other in use, and just hit an eject button under the mouse, and slot in the charged one. Quick enough to do even mid game.
Battery would last a full day for normal use (browsing etc), and perhaps 2-3 hours of constant fast moving gaming (Unreal Tournament etc).
