14 DAY TRIAL // Developers have been trying for years to make Linux a global platform and to make it available to the masses and not just a select few, but Linux has now become the future of gaming in a surprising manner.
Valve had big plans with Linux, but they managed to keep them a secret for a long time. We can't even guess if their decision to develop SteamOS, a Linux-based operating system, happened before or after the release of Steam for Linux.
The Steam developers have now announced that their SteamOS will be housed in a sort of PC gaming consoles built by various companies, with AMD and Nvidia support.
Shortly after the announcement for the Steam Machines, the name of the upcoming consoles, both AMD and Nvidia made some pretty amazing announcements of their own, that will completely transform Linux, if we take them at face value.
Nvidia stated in a very enthusiastic blog post that they have been working with Valve to improve the driver performance for OpenGL and to port Valve’s content library to SteamOS.
“Engineers from Valve and NVIDIA have spent a lot of time collaborating on a common goal for SteamOS: to deliver an open-platform gaming experience with superior performance and uncompromising visuals directly on the big screen,” stated Nvidia'a Mark Smith.
On the other hand, AMD has just announced the “revolutionary” Mantle, which is “a combination of both API specifications and GPU drivers, Mantle will allow developers to fully unlock the graphics potential of the GCN architecture of the new (and likely the previous) Radeon series, through low-level high-performance drivers.”
Even more amazingly, Mantle is actually open source so Nvidia could easily repurpose this technology to work with its chipsets, and it's set to replace DirectX 11, where possible.
AMD made sure that everyone knows that the Mantle announcement had everything to do with SteamOS, an it's very possible that the technology will arrive on Linux Steam Machines in no time.