Feature Request: Steam Deskop Environment: BIg Picture Mode without background compositing

[Brinehaart]

It would be nice if we could launch Steam directly from the login screen. The users can select Steam as a desktop environment from LightDM and once the user logs in, he/she directly accesses steam in Big Picture mode without having a seperate desktop environment running in the background, similar to what XBMC offers.

[ÜberNoob]

I believe without this feature a promised Steam Box is just not possible.

[Brinehaart]

Yeah, but I was hoping that we could be this feature before the release of the Steambox. It would definitely increase performance by a LOT!

[SUSEd]

But not while in beta. Its buggy now. Crashes very often.

[szygi]

Have you seen steamlogin project? It's basically what you are looking for.

https://github.com/thor27/steam-login/

[Brinehaart]

I don't like the idea that it runs with a window compositor and it's quite buggy as it is. Also, once Openbox is installed (it's one of the dependancies to the steamlogin project) it adds 3 extra "desktop environments" to your Ubuntu which makes the login DE list overcrowded.

[ÜberNoob]

As a matter of fact, a window compositor (and a window manager in general) is not actually an essential thing in Linux windowing stack. If you guys only need fullscreen Big Picture, you don't need any kind of WM at all.

[ThOR27]

Origineel geplaatst door Novicus Arcanum:

I don't like the idea that it runs with a window compositor and it's quite buggy as it is. Also, once Openbox is installed (it's one of the dependancies to the steamlogin project) it adds 3 extra "desktop environments" to your Ubuntu which makes the login DE list overcrowded.

There is no Openbox dependency since version 2, you can just uninstall openbox
There is no compositor enabled
It has much less bugs in version 5.

Download and test it, please. If you find any bugs please report it.

In all 5 releases I had 2 bug reports, one of them regarding the usage of git and the other a bug in steam itself, so if it has so many bugs as you say, please report it, so I can fix it.

https://github.com/thor27/steam-login/

[ThOR27]

Origineel geplaatst door A(II) Rh+:

As a matter of fact, a window compositor (and a window manager in general) is not actually an essential thing in Linux windowing stack. If you guys only need fullscreen Big Picture, you don't need any kind of WM at all.

Yes you need a window manager. Without it you can't get correct focus on new oppened windows as for example games. You don't need (and probably don't want) a window compositor manager.

[Brinehaart]

Thank you Th0R27! I'll download it and test it again!

[Brinehaart]

Okay, Thor, I've downloaded it and tested it again. It's AWESOME. All the previous issues have been fixed BUT there is one problem left. Big Picture Mode is still bugged (I think from Valve's side). After a few seconds from launch, Big Picture mode detects an immaginary controller that is always moving the cursor to the top left. Even on Unity, the issue persists. This makes it impossible to navigate with the keyboard and impossible to select a game and press on "Play" with both the keyboard and a mouse. In other words, if Valve doesn't fix this issue, Big Picture Mode will remain useless.

[ThOR27]

Novicus: Are you using a Macbook?

Because macbook (and some other notebooks also) comes with a motion sense stuff to prevent damages if you drop the notebook.

This motion sense stuff is detected as a joystick on Ubuntu, in that case maybe will be a solution if you find you have a /dev/input/js0 in your computer, than try to find which module is associated by this device (don't remember how to do that, google it :P) and then remove the module that is creating /dev/js0 with rmmod <module-name>

hope it helps!

-EDIT- Also you could add it to a blacklist on /etc/modprobe.d

[Brinehaart]

I've actually did the brave and foolish action of deleting /dev/input/js0 and the Big Picture mode is now more usable. Still has bugs but is usable! Thanks a LOT Thor I'm very grateful! PS: I'm not using a Macbook I'm using a PC that I assembled myself

[Brinehaart]

Actually I found a few issues: 1 - Steam Overlay mode is bugged: After pressing ♥♥♥♥+tab you are presented with Big Picture mode and you can't interact with it. 2- the performance of TF2 seems less stable compared to it when running with Unity. It crashes or stops working more frequently. I'm not sure if this has to do with the steamlogin or with TF2 Beta since its performance isn't that perdictable in the first place.

[ThOR27]

I will try it out here to see this issue with shift+tab... it can be with miss detection of a closing game....

there are some hacks with steam-login that I hope someday will not be needed anymore, since all this stuff will be correctly handled by steam itself.

thanks for the report! As soon as everything is correctly ironed out I will create the steam-desktop project, in this one I pretend to go beyond running steam at login, but also offer resolution/screen management, sound management, all accessible through steam big picture with mouse/keyboard/joystick support.

[Brinehaart]

Sounds neat! Valve should assist you in this! What gamer wouldn't want a desktop environment dedicated for gaming?! Keep up the awesome work :D