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
Problem is Microsoft has leverage in several enterprise categories like teams, office, etc.
There have been successful corporate switches in Linux, with even dedicated 1:1 UX skins to keep even the most poorly skilled users happy, but lots of corporations are just way too vendor locked.
It doesn’t matter how total garbage win 11 or teams gets, anyone locked in is gonna be stuck, kinda like what happened with vmware.
Microsoft’s biggest mistake though is basing their QoL and overall OS design on the home market. If they lose their leverage there, even mid size or older corps may seriously consider transitioning or trialing Linux as a test.
It’s very hard to convince leadership to abandon vendor locked deals, but they eat up anything that demonstrates slashed costs and improved productivity. If a vendor like SUSE shows up with a complete package, they may genuinely consider if MSFT takes a real nosedive.