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
When it comes to this i personally tend to agree with what Brodie Robertson always says in his videos about SteamOS. It’s kinda silly to keep waiting for an official release when things like Bazzite exist, but if the SteamOS release helps with more people making the switch, then that’s still a good thing in the end.
For sure, I’ve been running Linux as my daily driver since… 2005? Fuck… and ran it on the side even before that. And I’ve been trying bazzite on my gaming PC and it’s been pretty cool. But I’m still pumped about SteamOS, not because I’m planning on running it, but because any success SteamOS has will be likely directly applicable to Linux desktop gaming in general.
Every game that adjusts something to test on SteamOS will make it better for me off SteamOS. Every peripheral that is built to work with SteamOS, all the user demographic numbers that set priorities withing the gaming industry, are all great.
I’m excited for the year of the Linux desktop.
Year of the Linux couch.
I am not waiting for it because I personally want to use it. I’m excited for the industry shaping power a Linux OS released by Valve will have.
I mostly agree with that, but the problem with Bazzite and CachyOS is that they are made by small teams. Distributions made by small teams might die because of some small problem, like a key member of the team being unable to continue with the project. Bazzite team, for example, earlier this year said that they would stop maintaining the OS if a proposed change to Fedora would go through, because their team wouldn’t be able cope with the change.
SteamOS on the other hand, being developed by a company with a lot of money to throw into things, is much more resilient OS, and I think that makes it better for larger masses of users.
I agree.
But as a sidenote, a few interesting facts:
Those are silly comparisons.
How many distros have failed? How many Linux projects in general? (Since we’re comparing random shit)
I am comparing random things, yes. If you don’t find this trivia interesting, please ignore it.
This is a big reason why I would prefer a SteamOS Desktop over Cachy and friends. Also, documentation that is designed for people who don’t have an interest in becoming masters of the terminal. My general impression of Linux as an intermediate user, is a Tower of Babel situation, everyone having different procedures for how to resolve the same issue.
It’s a matter of priorities. A large portion of Linux users don’t actually care about adoption. They’re not selling the os, so the docs aren’t designed for anyone who isn’t already a user.
Valve on the other hand is paying people for documentation and good ux. That’s enough to significantly boost the quality.
I find the archwiki immensely useful.
Bazzite is downstream from fedora, which i’ll remind you is partially handled by red hat, aka a large ass company with “a lot of money to throw into things”. The bazzite developers only handle a smaller portion of the maintenance that distributions require, and really only as much as they want and are confident in handling.
And yet, as demonstrated by the kerfuffle earlier, they can’t survive if Fedora makes a swing too big for them.
True, but anything running Bazzite could just as easily run Fedora atomic instead and basically no one could tell the difference. Fedora is sponsored by one of the largest tech companies on the planet.