In an IGN interview, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais said that “[they] want [SteamOS] to be at the point where at some point you can install it on any PC”. Below is a transcript of the interview. I tried to clean it up to my best ability.
Just like Steam Deck paved the way for Steam OS on a variety of third-party handhelds, we expect that Steam Machine will pave the way for Steam OS on a bunch of different machines in either similar form factors, different perf envelopes, different segments of the market, and get to a good outcome there. We definitely want to encourage people to try it out on their own hardware. We’ll be working on expanding hardware support for the drivers and the base operating system. Just last week, we fixed something that was preventing us from booting on the very latest AMD CPU platforms. Last month, we added support for the Intel Lunar Lake platforms. We’re constantly adding support and improving performance. We want it to be at the point where at some point you can install it on any PC, but there’s still a ton of work to do there.
If the embedded video doesn’t take you to the correct part of the video, the correct timestamp is 5:37.
EDIT: Here’s the written article of the video:
https://www.ign.com/articles/valves-next-gen-steam-machine-and-steam-controller-the-big-interview
Whether you like the idea of SteamOS or not, this will be the easiest way to get Linux into the mainstream for gamers. And at a time when Windows is forcing everyone to buy a new PC it really couldn’t come sooner. If Steam timed this right they could really fuck over Microsoft. I honestly can’t think of a more hilarious scenario in which Windows potentially gets dethroned.
Steam gets a lot of deserved flak for their anti-consumer practices and gambling, but it’s honestly amazing how much they can do as a company. It’s amazing the things you can accomplish when you don’t have shareholders to deal with.
I’ve seen a lot of folks waiting for this to make the switch, it’s silly but having a familiar name attached to it gives them a sense of comfort, and SteamOS is solid for what it is.
I’m not a fan of its whole “read only filesystem” shenanigans and wiping things on upgrade, so I switched my Deck to CachyOS Handheld, but I acknowledge it does those for a reason, adding a safety net to the “console-like” experience for most users. Admittedly that feature may be just the thing some inexperienced users would need in order to not break the thing.
It may limit stuff for a more technical user But for common folks? It makes it reliable, a lot reliable
Yep, exactly
It’s the bell curve meme
I know people (and was, once upon a time, one of them) that are really scared of accidentally breaking something. To them, being told “Don’t worry, the important bits are locked down anyway, so you couldn’t even break them” is a promise of safety. They might not strictly need it, but how would they know in advance?
(I did break things, eventually, and learned that I can fix them too, but I took a leap of faith that most users wouldn’t and probably shouldn’t dare)
And should they be not native English speakers, they’ll wonder why the desktop is only in English, why they can’t even check the spelling of their native language. Or why playback of WebM videos glitches.
I really like my Steam Deck and actually use it as desktop PC from time to time but you can tell desktop mode is an afterthought. Traditional Linux distributions are actually a better choice for regular users. Valve luckily open sources and upstreams everything of SteamOS other than the actual Steam client, so it’s not like SteamOS has some special sauce nobody else gets.
What makes it even funnier is, that steam is started by former Microsoft employees
I 100% agree about this being the opportunity for Linux to be brought into the mainstream but for a different reason.
This will divorce Linux from Linux bros. Most people aren’t interested in doing any of the stuff Linux is good at like running servers, they just want to run their apps.
Right now the only way normie users hear about Linux is by stumbling into a Linux bro who started ranting at them.
While Linux bros have been great for popularizing Linux on the backend and with technical people you literally could not pick a worse demographic to represent a product to the general public.
If they release Half Life 3 day 1 of Steam Machine launch, Linux gonna get so much attention, probably biggest bang of the decade.
Microsoft will dominate corporate, SMBs, government and education. That’s what they care about.