hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1493.txt

Episode: 1493
Title: HPR1493: The Next Gen is You (1/2)
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1493/hpr1493.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:11:35

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Let's go.
Oh, hi. I didn't see you there. I was just busy playing a video game. Welcome to Hacker
Public Radio. My name is Klatu. In this episode of Hacker Public Radio, I'm going to talk a little bit about steam, specifically steam OS, but but even more broadly, just steam on Linux. So as you probably know, steam valve, whatever has announced that the next big thing in in valve is that steam OS, a Linux, specifically Debian Linux based distribution of just steam as an OS. Kind of, I guess, like at Chrome OS, except
instead of being web browser at the center of everything, it's steam, which I really didn't even know what steam was until fairly recently. So it was exciting news when they announced this, at least for people who are gamers or who are interested in gaming. I would not classify myself as a gamer, but I definitely have a lot of respect and interest in the gaming culture. In this episode, we're going to talk about building the hardware that you might need to have a steam box of your own or a steam machine, as I guess,
where they're officially being called. And we'll talk about making sure that you're building the computer for compatibility, both hardware, inter-compatibility, and software and hardware compatibility. And we'll talk a little bit about setting up the software side of things, although that's actually a lot easier than you'd imagine. So I know that in, well, in episode 1040, steam as, as steam was covered by, I think, Lorddraken Blue, maybe, pretty sure. And then in some other episode, think Claudio, I think, was talking about building.
And then we're going to talk about building computers and kind of how to do that, how it was done. So a lot of this is something that's kind of been heard before, but all of it in this episode is very specific to the, you know, contextually to playing games on Linux. I probably don't need to say that steam OS right now, well, I probably do need to say it because I don't know when you're hearing this. But right now, today, May, April, April, something, 2014, steam OS is still in beta. It's not finished yet. There are no steam machines.
There are no steam machines out on the market. The steam controller doesn't even exist yet. Well, it does exist actually. People are playing at GDC, but it doesn't, you know, you can't go into a store and buy the steam controller. This is all very, very, very early in the game. And that kind of raises the question, well, is steam OS, or even just steam on Linux on it, you know, on any given distribution, is that the right choice for you? I think invariably the answer is going to be yes,
to deal about this, you know, steam OS and steam machines out on the market and steam being a Linux distribution. More than any kind of allegiance to Linux that I might have, which, believe me, is a lot. But more than that, just from the gaming viewpoint, is that this means that you can be both a PC gamer and a console gamer all at the same time. If you think of it that way, you know, I mean, steam is essentially, if you think of turning on a PS3 or 4, I guess, and hitting that initial, that interface,
that OS that no one thinks of as an OS, but it is an OS where you're just kind of choosing what you want to, you know, choosing what you want to do within the interface, and then popping in your disk and going into your game, playing the game. I mean, that's, that's the console experience, and you have, you don't have a keyboard, you don't have a mouse, you just have this controller, and you've got this dedicated machine to playing games. And the next, or the big deal right now, of course, the big thing that everyone's excited about is the, the quote unquote, next gen consoles. That is the updated consoles that have come out,
now fairly recently still, that have replaced the old consoles, and consoles historically, they're not very, you know, they're not released every other year. They, they go a long way between releases. PS3 has been around for, I don't know how long, and it's gone now, I guess, but, or PS4 is out, so I guess it's phasing itself out, but that's what consoles do. But, but with Steam OS, or Steam on Linux, the opportunity to have that console, but then to also be the custom builder of that console, that's a big deal.
So it kind of means that the next gen is you, you know, you're building your own next gen console, you're putting your own console OS onto the box, and then you're playing it. And so you can be both the snobby PC gamer who needs that, you know, fancy water cooled system, as well as the person who sits on the sofa, and just kind of relaxes, and, and doesn't mess with the mouse and the WASD stuff. So that's a powerful thing. So I think that eventually, yes, it's going to be for you.
If you like to play games, you're going to absolutely love Steam OS, or Steam on Linux, and I do keep saying both because I, to me, they're essentially the same. The result is the same. I mean, it's a trickle down effect. Steam OS being released, coming out, and kind of making things totally available through the Steam interface means that if you just install Steam on Linux, then you're going to be able to download those games, the same games, and play them on your Linux computer.
But, you know, with console style controls. So eventually, yes, it will be for you. But right now, today, maybe for the next two or three or four months, I don't know how long, but it's going to kind of depend. What kind of gamer you are. I mean, if you're the type of person who compulsively, involuntarily pre-orders and plays every triple A title that is released, then you should probably wait. You wouldn't want to switch to Steam OS quite yet. You wouldn't want to build a Linux box, well, yes, you would.
You wouldn't want to make that your own console. It's because it's just not, the games aren't here yet. Like, as of right now, I think we have, like, Metro last light left for dead. What is it? Portal 2, I think, Half Life. You know, there's a handful of really popular and really good games available, but it's not like every game that you used to have for your PS3.
Every game that you could have right now, if you go into a store and purchase for PS4, I assume I don't really know. You know, the selection just isn't quite there yet. So that's something. Now, if you're just a casual gamer, which I would definitely classify myself as, if you're just a casual gamer, then Steam will be everything you ever wanted it to be right now for yourself. It's super simple. No brainer, you should do this.
If you're someone pondering where to go next, you know, if you're going to go next, Gen console, if you're going to go Steam OS, whatever, then it probably wouldn't hurt to go ahead and start investing in Steam OS right now in terms of, you know, getting to know Linux a little bit better, building a box, pimping it out a little bit.
Still, is that still said, pimping something? Do you pimped something to make it good? I don't really know. But, you know, you might want to build a computer and make it really nice, because like I said, this is the next Gen Valve style. This is a computer that you can make as powerful as you want. Call it your console, sit down with a controller and go.
Okay, so there are a couple of different considerations that you need to factor in when you're building your own Steam Valve machine console.
And those are, as I kind of mentioned, the hardware side of things, compatibility and by compatibility, compatibility, I mean everything, hardware compatible with other hardware, hardware compatible with software.
And then the third thing is the software itself, the OS, let's call it, because it's more than just software, where it is software and so much more, I don't know. So there's those three things, hardware compatibility.
And we'll just say OS, everything having to do with the way that you use the thing. So let's tackle the hardware stuff first. If you've never built a computer, take heart, it's not hard at all.
I have heard a lot of people, I was very surprised to hear that a lot of people said that building a gaming computer or building a computer, it all was really, really hard. And I don't doubt that they think that it's very, very difficult, but it doesn't have to be that way, honestly.
I went into building computers with no knowledge of building computers. The only, like, hardware experience I had was upgrading RAM.
There was actually an upgrade for a CPU or something like that that I remember doing at one point. That was pretty cool for, you know, in the Mac crowd, that was a big deal.
Because you were, you were like a genius, you, you modded your, your hardware, you were like king if you did that. So I did that once, and that, that, that was pretty cool. But that was the only thing.
I, I didn't really understand what a motherboard was. I literally thought that only, quote, unquote, PCs, like window boxes had motherboards. I didn't, I thought, oh, apples don't have motherboards. It was living a sheltered life.
So I came in with some hands-on experience, like, opening things, not, not frying things, taking things out of slots, putting them back in.
But I didn't know anything about power supplies, motherboards, CPUs, fans, all this stuff. So it can be very confusing at first.
But once you know what to look for, and you talk a little bit to some people who know, it is, it's actually super, super easy. And I have to say this episode and my whole, the, all the computers that I've ever built at this point would never have been possible without the great, great help of everyone in the August planet, the IRC channel on free note.
So if you're building up a computer, jump on IRC, go into August planet, see who's in there, talk to them. I spoke with just a bunch of great people, Poké, Cobra2, Snack Machine Bee, Jay Lindsay.
Lots of people who, who, who built lots of computers, they, they chimed in. They all helped me figure this stuff out.
Okay, so the first thing in a hardware is pretty simple and pretty obvious. It's a case. You've seen a computer case before. Those are the big towers that sit under desks at offices or on the desks of geeks, gamers at, at home.
So, you know, you need a desktop, right? You need something to put all the parts into. Cases are the one thing I think in building computers that, that actually have a shelf life, they're, they're actually a long term investment.
So, it just kind of depends on your budget. You can either get a fairly cheap case or you can get like a super expensive with LED lights, blinking and fish tank on the inside, you know, whatever you want, like a really fancy case.
It doesn't matter. You, you can do either one. The cool thing about it is that it will probably last you for the rest of your life. I mean, computers have not in terms of the case that you put them into. They haven't really changed that much. So, that's the good news.
The bad news is that there are some really, really cheap cases out there, like some, you know, 20 bucks, 25 bucks. Those are as cheap as they sound. So, be careful.
If you buy those cases, I mean, I bought one of those once for at, at my job, my old job because I, you know, we needed to build a computer for cheap. And so, I bought the cheap case and it came literally bent. I had to bend it back into shape because it was just, it was like 10.
So, be careful. Get like a moderately priced case. Again, ask around. Get, get some, get some case names that, that people trust. I, I myself have used cooler master with a lot of success, but there are lots of other cases out there. So, I don't think I'm like advertising for cooler master is just what I happen to have gotten because someone told me, yeah, get those. Those are pretty safe. But there, there's a lot of cases out there. Look, look around, look on some YouTube videos for reviews and, and figure out what you want.
The important thing about a case is knowing the, the size of the size of motherboard that the case can, can accept. There are a couple of different sizes of motherboards. There's like ATX and mini ATX and micro ATX or something. And obviously don't want to get like a miniature case and then buy a full size motherboard and not be able to put your motherboard into your case.
So, probably know if you're getting a miniature case, but just keep that in mind that that kind of sizing will, will be important when you try to put the motherboard into the case. You want to think about cooling a little bit. I mean, you don't have to think about it a whole lot unless you just want to, but make sure that, you know, the, the case is built semi intelligently with, with plenty of room for fans and things like that.
Again, I just kind of go with cooler master because they seem to have pretty intelligent designs. But honestly, I've used lots of different brands and I've never really been bitten by it by any of them except those super cheap ones.
But even those, I mean, after I've meant them back in the shape, they did the job. And one real thing that you may want to think about is, if there's room for expansion, my, my good friend Gore Tilt, a computer, it was a shuttle brand case and it's super nice, super beautiful case.
And very small and, and there's not really a whole lot of room for expansion. I mean, it's, you get the case, you get the, I think the motherboard might have come with the case. I could be wrong about that. In fact, I'm sure I'm wrong about that.
But you do, you know, you have to get a miniature motherboard, I think, and put it in there and you can, you can do everything you need to do. But, I mean, if you wanted to add more stuff, you just can't. You're limited to like very tight spaces. Everything else has to become external.
So if you're getting a case for gaming, for serious computing, you may want to make sure that you've got, you know, some expansion bays, both PCI and hard drive and stuff like that.
So that's, that's, that's the case, not, not a whole lot to it. Oh, think about USB ports too. I mean, think of, and, and headphone ports. A lot of the new cases now have these things on the front or on the top as well as on the back. And that's always a nice feature.
And the next thing that you need to get for a build is a motherboard and there are two different kinds of motherboards. Generally speaking, there are motherboards that work with Intel CPUs and there are motherboards that work with AMD CPUs.
You want to make sure when you're purchasing the motherboard that you're also purchasing the CPU, essentially, or at least commit, obviously, to whichever way you're going. You do need to know that those two go very, very close, those two are very, very closely related.
Now to further complicate things, whether or not you go with Intel or you go to AMD, there's something called a socket type. So you need to know that you're not only getting an Intel motherboard or an Intel compatible motherboard, but the socket type of the CPU that the motherboard can accept might be an LGA1150 or an LGA1153 or whatever.
Or if you're getting an AMD, you might find that your motherboard has a socket of AM3, I think it is, or FM2+, and so on and so on. So pay attention to that. Really pay attention when you're getting your motherboard or speccing it out.
Look at the motherboard. Look at the CPU that you've got in mind. Make sure that they fit together. That's the important thing there. There's another hidden gotcha that I found out the hard way. That is the wattage.
The CPUs and computers require electricity and in order to power them fully, they're going to require a certain amount of wattage. If you have a motherboard that is rated for, let's say, a 95 watt CPU and then you accidentally buy a CPU that requires 125 watts, guess what's going to happen? They're not going to work together. I mean, they'll fit. It'll seem like it's all working and then you will turn it on and the computer just won't start because there's no brain.
The brain is there, but it's not getting enough power, so wattage is important. The other things on a motherboard that you may want to sort of consider, depending on your budget, these may or may not be deal-breakers, different onboard features. The motherboard's got a lot of stuff on it. It's got RAM slots, slots for RAM, and some other boards have two slots, meaning that you can put two sticks of RAM into it or some have four.
If you get one that has two, then obviously you're limited, right? You have to get all your RAM up front or else you're going to have to throw out that RAM when you upgrade.
Four slots is nice, but a lot of times the cheaper motherboards, of course, will have only two RAM slots. How many PCI slots does it have? How many PCIe slots does it have?
If you're really, really technical and picky, you can look at even things like bus speeds and things like that. Certainly make sure that they've got all the different kinds of connections that you would want for hard drives too.
Make sure that you've got plenty of SATA connections for whatever you're going to do. So just kind of look at the specs of the motherboard.
And of course, after that, you will need a CPU. CPU, if you're listening to this show, you probably know what a CPU is. Think of it. I mean, it's weird because gaming is a very specific thing.
And obviously CPUs and the whole GPU versus CPU thing is a very tricky subject because depending on what you're doing with your computer, the GPU may or may not matter much or the CPU may or may not matter much.
So in gaming, it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but largely it is the GPU. And because it's doing real-time graphic rendering, like real-time 3D rendering on the spot, there's no way that your CPU can do that kind of calculations, not with modern gaming.
So in gaming, your graphics processing unit, your graphics card is going to be really, really important. And if you were bringing me a lump sum of money, I would probably take the bulk of it, like if you brought me a lump sum and said, okay, I need to get a CPU RAM and GPU.
I would take the bulk of it and put it towards the GPU, the graphics processor, and then give you back, like maybe 50-50 of the remainder, you know, so 25%-25% for the CPU and the RAM, or they're about.
So I mean, it depends on how much RAM is costing, but you get the idea. GPU should have a bigger slice of the pie than the CPU or the RAM alone.
So the CPU, I mean, you should get something modern. I certainly wouldn't build a gaming box using, you know, an Intel Core Duo 2 at this point, but definitely, you know, you don't need to go crazy with the CPU, because honestly, once you do the typical tasks, like launching the application in the first place, or, you know, whatever segment of it is sitting in RAM now, the CPU kind of sits back and just kind of keeps everything going while the GPU does all the heavy lifting.
So bear in mind that your CPU and motherboard need to be the same. They need to talk the same language, either Intel or AMD. Socket type is important, and the wattage is important.
You can compare CPUs if you're really up in the air at this great little site called CPUboss.com. Really, really neat. It'll just compare any two CPUs that you throw at. I mean, a lot of the information may not mean a whole lot to you, but at least you can kind of see, you know, if you're up in the air between like an AMD and an Intel, and you just kind of want to see if they're similar or not, that might be a site to check out.
Other little considerations when buying a CPU, just be aware, it should have a heat sink and a fan. That's like this big metal thing that kind of sits on top of the CPU. That helps all that heat get off of the CPU into this sort of metal bracket thing that they call a heat sink.
And then usually there's a fan that sits on top of that to then cool that heat sink off. So not all CPUs will come with that. Most will, if it's in a big box, then it probably comes with the heat sink and the fan.
But there are some sites, a new egg specifically in the US that will sell CPUs not in those boxes. They sell them sort of as, I think they call it OEM or something. You know, it's like you're supposed to be, I guess, like a vendor or something, and you're buying the CPU to put into another computer.
And in this case, you are, you're putting it into your own computer. The problem with that is that it doesn't come with a fan. But you can always buy a fan separately. That's just something to be aware of.
And another little thing to be aware of is that CPUs are sometimes locked and sometimes unlocked, meaning that they can be overclocked or not without getting too deep into CPU theory, such as I can.
And CPUs are rated for optimal performance. You know, like Intel will say this is a 3.8 gigahertz chip. And you know, that's what we believe. That's how we, that's where we feel comfortable rating this chip.
But actually, if you, if you demand more of the chip, you can actually get like more like, you know, 4.2 gigahertz out of it or something like that. So that's overclocking.
Some CPUs can be overclocked. Some cannot. It just kind of depends. It's never been a deal breaker for me because I don't really mess around with overclocking myself.
I mean, I do, but not really. I don't think about it. And if you're like one of those CPU gigs or you want to become one of those CPU overclocking themes, then, you know, just be aware.
Some CPUs will not let you overclock them because Intel or AMD decided that that wasn't something that they're going to let you do.
I have gotten pretty lucky so far and managed to stumble upon, you know, unlocked overclockable CPUs and very easily over, you know, it's just something you'd set in the, in the motherboard, like the BIOS or the EFI.
You can just tell it to overclock the CPU unless the CPU is locked. So just be aware of that. So that's that. Oh, yeah. So the big Intel, the obligatory Intel versus AMD debate, right?
So far, I have completely let the price of the motherboard CPU combination decide for me. Like if I can find a good deal on the motherboard that takes Intel and then I find an Intel chip and the combination of those prices is better than what I could find for the motherboard and the AMD chip that I'm looking at.
At that moment, then I'll go with that and vice versa, but I tend to favor AMD just because it does tend to be cheaper and I don't really see, honestly, I don't really see that much of a performance difference.
Compiling code and stuff like that, you may start to see a difference, but I'm assuming that if you're running steam OS for gaming, you're not going to be compiling a whole lot.
But maybe you'll be programming games at some point in which case, yeah, think about clock speeds, think about how many cores you have, how many threads you could get going, things like that. But generally speaking, for me, Intel AMD, I don't really know, I don't notice the difference. So just do whatever your wallet tells you to do.
Ram, standard answer, get a lot, can't have too much, at least that's what they say. Honestly, I wouldn't go crazy.
Bigger bytes is probably plenty. I've had in its hour before I never touched the 24 RAM mark. I just could not get my system to use that much RAM. It just never did.
Seems to be good. I still, I very rarely reach that peak, no matter what I'm doing. And honestly, on my current, the desktop that I've built recently, I've got a poultry gigabytes in there.
I'm not feeling bad about that at all. So I say get a lot, but if you're on a budget, can upgrade later, maybe, or whatever. Okay, graphics processor. That's the important thing that's really, really important for gaming rig.
You kind of need that to be powerful, quite frankly, buying a graphics processor is basically like buying a whole computer. It's, it's like a computer on a little PCI board. I mean, it's a big deal. It's very powerful, famously powerful.
Everyone's kind of learning how to harness that now. And from a gaming standpoint, I've got to just, I got to say Nvidia.
And I know that a lot of people hate Nvidia, and I'm not saying I love Nvidia myself, but I am saying that in terms of support for 3D gaming Valve with Steam, with their product Steam, have worked very hard to get Nvidia compatibility.
And Nvidia is a big secret black box type of company. And unfortunately, the only way to ring secrets out of them is to be a big company like Valve and go talk to them and have one of their people come over to your office and reprogram a chip if there's a little bug or point you at a bug.
Literally, I've seen that happen. I mean, that's, that's how secretive Nvidia is. And it's, it's not cool. It's not great, but we're building a console. And if you want the performance that you, that you really, really expect, you need to get an Nvidia card.
Again, you can go to GPUboss.com and compare different Nvidia cards or, you know, different, any card, really. But like I said, Nvidia is where you need to be for this. So GPUboss.com is very good for that.
And there are Nvidia cards that range from, let's say, 180, all the way up to like 900, 1113, $100. So, you know, again, let your wallet be your, your decision maker, I guess.
Better GPU card, you have the better performance. You're going to get out of your games. So don't skimp on that. Throw money at that if you want a lot of performance. And even if you only want moderate performance, you're going to need a, you should get a fairly decent card.
And I'm not going to say what fairly decent is right now because that's going to change, you know, in a year or six months, two years, whatever.
So just look at what games are requiring right now. How many, you know, what kind of graphics card they say that you need in order to play the game that you want to play and try to approximate that.
If it's a system requirement, then get that. But, but otherwise, you know, try to try to get along those same levels. And again, GPUboss.com will help you decide what you can get that would be similar to, to like sort of the standard gaming card that is out, you know, right now.
Okay, so next, of course, we need to talk about hard drives. Hard drives are important. Honestly, there's no way that you should be building a modern system right now without going SSD. And I know that historically there's been a lot of question about SSD.
Oh, can it be trusted? Is it reliable? Will it die in three months? I've been running a 500 gigabyte SSD drive in my laptop for a couple of years now. It's been great. It's been running on JFS.
I've just made a couple of little tweaks to the FS tab. And it's fantastic. I've been running a 256 gigabyte SSD in my tower. And it's been great. That hasn't been for quite as long. But I mean, it's been fantastic. And I even had back up my old job as 16, a little tiny 16 gig SSD drive. Actually, it's right here on my desk.
Where is it? Well, it's there. And I just had the essential applications where on that SSD drive the 16 gig and everything else lived on a normal hard drive. So if you want, if you need to do a split, that's fine.
You know, I don't know if I would go 16 gigs anymore. I'd probably go like maybe 32 or 64 if you can and then get like a terabyte or whatever, you know, normal drive and put that in the tower. And then you'll have the best of both worlds.
But having an SSD drive for your system for the operating system portion of your environment is just fantastic. You will be amazed. I mean, the speed increase is just mind blowing. So please do that for yourself. Trust me.
There's just absolutely no reason to have anything but an SSD drive in a modern computer. Really, it's just, it's that big of a deal. So we're almost at the end of the hardware list here. Don't worry. Cooling, cooling, of course. Again, I mean, if you want to become that kind of geek who thinks who sits around thinking about, okay, how am I going to cool my system?
You know, what kind of fancy water cooling system can I create? I think go for it. Me, I throw a couple of fans in the in the case and hope for the best. And so far, it's worked.
So fans usually come or frequently I should say come with the case and then another family will come with your CPU. And between those two, it all pretty much just kind of cools stuff.
But if you're going to be doing a serious high res beautifully, highest settings all the way around, you may need something more thought out. And in that case, go on the websites, listen to the geeks who know everything about cooling.
Get this fancy thermal paste for the CPU, sit down and and spec out the airflow of your system. I mean, just go for it. But for me, I've never been that much, I've never really done that much thought about it.
One thing about fans too though, of course, is that they are noisy. You can, you may be able to hear my fan in the background as I speak. And then of course, also you need power, power supply unit PSU sometimes is what they call it.
The important thing here is that you get enough power to account for the sum of all of everything above. Like if you've got a 95 watt CPU, and I don't know, just throwing out a number here 125 watt GPU, then I mean, right there, you should at least have 200 and 215 or something.
And watts, you know, I mean, you just write because those two things added together, demand that you have that much power. With a fairly low spec machine, you can probably get by with like a 320 watt PSU. But definitely do the math or a little bit of math, you know, round up frequently and get a power supply unit that can definitely power your computer.
I think I used to have a 500 watt for a while in my old computer, my old job, and that was overkill. I did the math afterwards and realized that I could have gotten by with a lot less. I think a 400 would have done.
And then in my current system, I do, I have a 320 watt power supply, and it works brilliantly. Of course, in the system, I, again, I'm using SSD, I don't know if that uses a lot less power or not, but I also don't have a DVD drive.
There's nothing going on there. And that is, of course, the other thing, DVD drives, I don't even know if people still do those, but if you want one, you could get one of those. They're usually pretty cheap. You may want like a Wi-Fi card that could be helpful if you don't have wires running through your house. So Wi-Fi card would be something.
And again, just, you know, like for the Wi-Fi card, go to wirelist.curnel.org and look up the Wi-Fi card that you found and make sure that it's compatible with Linux. Just do all the research ahead of time so that when you install everything, there are no unpleasant surprises.
And then last but not least, and this is actually, I mean, really not least, is the game controller itself? I mean, part of the whole idea here is that we're making a console for ourselves. We're not, we're not doing the PC gaming experience unless you want to. But for me, I mean, the appeal, one of the big appeals of the Steam experience is the console-like experience of it. And that means there's a gamepad rather than a keyboard and a mouse.
So again, right now, there is no Steam controller. There is, there are prototypes and I guess probably press, you know, things for people to play at like GDC and packs and these other game conferences, but they're not on the shelves.
So for that, I just, I, I went on trade me, which is the New Zealand version of eBay. And you kind of, I just looked around for game pads and they had this off-brand gamepad called, well, it didn't, it was off-brand, it didn't have a name. It literally where, where there would normally be a brand, it just says USB, universal serial bus. That's what it says, like in white logo, like letters, it's just, it says it's USB.
Because I guess if you weren't sure, then you could always look down at your controller and confirm to yourself, yes, it is USB. There's no branding on whatever. So I took a gamble on that. It was 11 bucks, 11 New Zealand dollars and plugged it into my computer on Slackware. It just worked, it just worked right out of the box. And on the distribution that I'm using for Steam, which I'm not going to tell you because you should never use this distribution for Steam, Fedora.
I plugged it in and it didn't work and that was only because the drivers weren't installed. They, they prune out those drivers for the default, you know, a kernel compile, which that's fair. So you just install kernel, kernel extra modules and joystick dash support and suddenly everything works. But I'm getting ahead of myself. So the point is that apparently Linux from what I understand has a lot of great support for game pads.
It's just happily there, there seems to be not that much variation in game pad specs, like the specification for that is just it's pretty, it's fairly universal. I think it's called XX pad maybe or something like that or maybe that's the Xbox control. I don't know.
Point is, from what I understand, it's apparently pretty darn good. And the thing that you need to do is just make sure that you've got that driver. So there's either the Xbox driver or I guess the other driver, like whatever it is and they tend to work with game pads.
This one that I purchased ended up being something called dragon rise. I only know this because when I plugged it in just out of curiosity, I looked at D message and sure enough, it said like dragon rise was the name.
And I think maybe it was micro tech is the is the brand that it comes up as. But again, it's it's unbranded itself. So I really don't know. It is not wireless. I have no experience with wireless game pads. So you'd have to look into that to make sure that that works for you if you want to do that. But I've seen online people do that. So so it may actually work. Okay. So it's getting a little bit long this episode.
So why don't we why don't we break for today? When we come back in the next episode, I will talk about putting all this stuff together, making you know, building the actual computer, which again won't actually take that long.
And putting the software on the computer, which again doesn't actually use not really that hard. So good luck. If you have any questions, let me know.
Clat 2 at hackerpublicradio.org or clat 2 at member.fsf.org and have a good time. Try to build a computer. It's a lot of fun. Very, very satisfying. And we'll talk about it more next time. Thank you for listening.
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