I imagine it would make a huge bump if Valve were to announce “Wait no longer, SteamOS is here!!”, even if their release is just an overnight reskin-fork of (Bazzite/CachyOS/PopOS).
I say this as someone who tries to tell people, stop waiting on Valve, and try out a few of the options. I’m glad I found a distro that works for me, but I didn’t enjoy the original search. I certainly got pressured into it as Microsoft really put as much effort as they could into making Windows as terrible as possible; and it was not “Everything works 100% out of box!” But the move was worthwhile.
SteamOS is already an extant distro (based on Arch btw), it’s what they use for the steam deck/machine/frame. It’s also available to download but there is no official support. I’ve been meaning to try it on my desktop, as I primarily use it for gaming anyways
Yes, but as it exists that distro is very dedicated to the task of supporting Valve hardware, and has done very little to generalize support to other generic hardware.
That’s fair. I agree that it would be nice for them to properly release SteamOS for general hardware. I think valve probably doesn’t want to get roped in to providing tech support for hardware platforms they don’t control beyond what they do for steam.
My impression is that their priority is building the hardware to show what’s possible in the form factor, then get third parties to buy in to the ecosystem to keep it going (which we’re seeing with steamos support for the Asus and Lenovo handhelds). The software has to be polished and well-received to get this buy-in, which is easier when they have control over the hardware.
Their strategy with the original steam machines (circa 2015 I think?) skipped the first party hardware step and they didn’t do well with the software execution either- although iirc that’s where the big picture mode, steam controller, and generally better controller support came from.
I imagine it would make a huge bump if Valve were to announce “Wait no longer, SteamOS is here!!”, even if their release is just an overnight reskin-fork of (Bazzite/CachyOS/PopOS).
I say this as someone who tries to tell people, stop waiting on Valve, and try out a few of the options. I’m glad I found a distro that works for me, but I didn’t enjoy the original search. I certainly got pressured into it as Microsoft really put as much effort as they could into making Windows as terrible as possible; and it was not “Everything works 100% out of box!” But the move was worthwhile.
SteamOS is already an extant distro (based on Arch btw), it’s what they use for the steam deck/machine/frame. It’s also available to download but there is no official support. I’ve been meaning to try it on my desktop, as I primarily use it for gaming anyways
SteamOS wikipedia page since the steam page keeps redirecting me to the app
Yes, but as it exists that distro is very dedicated to the task of supporting Valve hardware, and has done very little to generalize support to other generic hardware.
That’s fair. I agree that it would be nice for them to properly release SteamOS for general hardware. I think valve probably doesn’t want to get roped in to providing tech support for hardware platforms they don’t control beyond what they do for steam.
My impression is that their priority is building the hardware to show what’s possible in the form factor, then get third parties to buy in to the ecosystem to keep it going (which we’re seeing with steamos support for the Asus and Lenovo handhelds). The software has to be polished and well-received to get this buy-in, which is easier when they have control over the hardware.
Their strategy with the original steam machines (circa 2015 I think?) skipped the first party hardware step and they didn’t do well with the software execution either- although iirc that’s where the big picture mode, steam controller, and generally better controller support came from.