Steam on Chromebooks Enters Beta, Adds AMD Support (arstechnica.com) 11
It has been almost three years since Chromebook users got word that Steam support is coming to ChromeOS. We're still not totally there yet, but today Google announced that it's ready to enter beta testing. From a report: In a blog post, Zach Alcorn, Google product manager, announced that Steam on Chromebooks is available as a beta with ChromeOS 108.0.5359.24 and later. Steam on ChromeOS entered alpha in March, and Alcorn said the updates announced today are based on "thousands of gameplay reports." The Steam on ChromeOS alpha required not just an Intel CPU, but also an Intel 11th-gen Core i5 chip with Intel's Iris Xe graphics. The beta supports Intel's latest 12th-gen chips and extends support to Team Red. Alcorn said the beta supports AMD's Ryzen 5000 C-Series CPUs.
Why no container? Video acceleration? (Score:2)
Is it because of video acceleration / Mesa that it's not simply running the Linux client in a container?
(ChromeOS supports containers as far as I remember, so running SteamOS in a container would be the most obvious approach to me, but I suspect that for "security reasons" Google doesn't allow 3D hardware access from within the containers.)
You also still have the option to unlock the chromebook, wipe chromeos, and install a proper linux.
(This coincidentally written from a Chromebook-class laptop running a f
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Or, you know, install SteamOS - if that's still a thing.
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They could use the Vulkan proxy with a container, so from that perspective it would be just as safe. Containers are almost certainly not safe enough for Google to be comfortable with them though, fine for hobbyist puttering about in dev mode, not for installing third party applications with an official seal of approval.
Container are a DevMode feature? (Score:2)
Containers are almost certainly not safe enough for Google to be comfortable with them though, fine for hobbyist puttering about in dev mode,
Wait, what? Containers are a dev-mode only feature on ChromeOS? I though that dev-mode was for changing the Linux installation / i though the whole purpose of containers on ChromeOS was for people to run Ubuntu without needing to enter dev-mode and install Ubuntu over the current ChromeOS?
not for installing third party applications with an official seal of approval.
Wait, isn't what ARC literally already is? A container-based way of running Android apps on ChromeOS?
So you can install "seal of approv"ed (Android) apps on your Chromebook?
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The Android sandbox is a whole lot more constrained and tested than standard Linux containers, even then they aren't happy about it.
https://chromium.googlesource.... [googlesource.com]
For Termina and Steam they use VMs. Termina layers containers on top of the VM.
Need beefier Chromebook hardware (Score:4, Insightful)
My Asus C302 was nearly top of the line Chromebook hardware when I bought it a few years ago. It has a Celeron and maybe as much as 4GB of RAM.
Not going to get much out of Steam with that. And there aren't, unless things have changed a lot, a ton of powerful Chromebook devices out there set up to run this well.
Also, how does Steam interact with ChromeOS' "everything in Google Drive if possible" filesystem model? Local storage is in the Chrome downloads folder - easy enough to wipe by accident, or a local SD card, if you're lucky enough to have one, and a slot for it.
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My Asus C302 was nearly top of the line Chromebook hardware when I bought it a few years ago. It has a Celeron and maybe as much as 4GB of RAM.
You can get a Chromebook Enterprise Spin 714 with an i7. Times have changed, and you have not kept up.
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Yeah, Chromebooks were meant to be a cheap device and thus used low end hardware - I mean, they were meant to browse the web and stuff like that, and none of that needs high end GPUs for CPUs.
Finding one with anything more than Intel integrated graphics is difficult - you don't need a fancy GPU to play back video. Even 4K video doesn't require a whole lot of GPU these days.
No doubt there will be higher end Chromebooks, but will it be at such a compelling price?
Steam games are fine - they can download the ga
Looking for a good Chromebook for this (Score:2)
I love my steam deck but it's not great for 4X games on the go. My Pixelbook Go is not going to work for this (way older gen CPU); I'm trying to figure out what a good successor would be for a high-end Chromebook with ideally 16G+ of RAM and a big screen.
(Endless Space 2 on the go would be great)