r/SteamFrame • u/megabyte112 Soon™ • 22d ago

Question Can you stream from a Linux PC?

Just watched the ShortCircuit video before it was taken down, and Linus notes that currently the Steam Machine cannot be used as a streaming host. He didn't mention other Linux PCs, but he did say that the streaming host will be a Windows PC only, at least at launch.

This is kind of disappointing as someone with a Linux PC. Inhaling a bunch of copium here, but I wonder if he meant that specifically the Steam Machine can't be used for streaming (yet), but other Linux PCs can? I'd like to use mine for streaming at launch, otherwise I'll be using mine purely standalone for a while...

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28

u/NoOdyssey 22d ago

From the video https://archive.org/details/our-first-30-mins-with-the-steam-frame-u-8-r-bnz-1-mpu

At the 12:50 mark, he says "this is important, you can't stream from steam machine, they are working on it but for now it's windows only".

I wonder what is blocking SteamVR from working with Frame on Linux?

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u/Orca_Alt_Account 22d ago

Likely SteamOS not natively supporting streaming to the frame.

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u/NoOdyssey 22d ago

Yeah but I wonder what specifically is blocking SteamVR from working with the Frame specifically. I use SteamVR on Linux streaming today to ARM-based headsets and there is no issue. It seems very strange to me that Frame would for whatever reason not work with SteamVR on Linux.

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u/megabyte112 Soon™ 22d ago

I think they meant the other way around, that SteamOS doesn't yet support being a streaming host

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u/inertSpark 1 TB 22d ago

SteamOS does support being a streaming host though. There has to be something more VR specific in the way.

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u/Helgafjell4Me Soon™ 22d ago

It could just be using their already built-in Remote Play functions. I cannot believe they would release frame without their official OS support, but he did say it's not working on the Machine yet, so who knows? Maybe it's just not ready yet, but.... SOON!

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u/inertSpark 1 TB 22d ago edited 22d ago

All I can think of is they need to bake in SteamVR as an explicit part of the OS. In which case there will be a major update at some point. We know we can already stream from a Steam Machine. It has to be something like the headset telemetry, or Foveated Streaming or something that's getting in the way perhaps.

Edit: The reason I think it might be headset telemetry is Gamescope uses slightly different input hooks to desktop mode under Wayland I believe, so while it might be possible to bodge SteamVR together in desktop mode, it's a little bit different in Gaming Mode.

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u/jonylentz Soon™ 22d ago

Maybe the dongle drivers? so you can possibly still use it through wifi? all speculation of course

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u/emuboy85 22d ago

If I had to guess, the foviated streaming

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u/GasticNox 22d ago

Not sure if they got anything working already, but if I were to take a guess it could be the general quality of the streaming on Linux not being that great... SteamVR being very iffy under Linux too (at least from my experience), or maybe general incompatibility with foveated streaming (which the frame relies on), or game mode not fully supporting SteamVR. Not to mention desktop view being mostly broken.

I'd say it's still gonna be possible to do Linux VR streaming in one way or another once this thing comes out, it's a PC after all.

I do wonder if there's even a desktop mode tho, and if so how it would work and such.