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
It’s more reliable, but more tedious. Kind of like a walled garden, like Apple and Android phones. You can’t just go download random software and install it willy nilly like Windows. I mean you can, but that process is more involved. Flatpaks and Appimages are what most users will be limited to.
Absolutely, it is a huge drawback, but the good part of it is that the user is less prone to accidentally fuck it up.
It’s quite a trade-off, the more raw control you give to the end user, the more prone they are to breaking things. Of course, exceptions always apply, but in a “generic Joe” kind of user, it tends to follow that
There are plugins and addons for now I didn’t felt limited when i ran a speech to text engine in game mode to chat more easily in games.
It’s kind of a microcosm of switching to Linux in general, but more emphasised. Beginners will have no issue at all playing within the boundaries; experts will find the workarounds like nix, containers or switching to a different distribution; semi-skilled users might be driven away or become frustrated.
Yep, exactly
It’s the bell curve meme
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.
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.
While I generally agree with your overall assessment. The thing you have to understand is that Microsoft has largely written off home users. At least written them off as a concern. They are much more focused now on corporate, government, and AI. Whether or not home users remain trapped on their products, matters less to them. Compared to the other groups.
The recent revelations about meddling by Microsoft corporate into their gaming division, closing so many successful studios. Canceling massive projects. Without regard to how much time, energy and resources were poured into them. All to meet some arbitrary 30% margin of profitability. They’re betting in the short term on the other groups to keep home users trapped and helpless. And short term it will work to an extent.
But the time is right for valve to push right now regardless.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
If you left college a decade ago and you need to hide you porn you have other issues buddy. And steamos being based in arch will be helpful for a lot of people too
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.
I agree.
But as a sidenote, a few interesting facts:
- Debian is older than Google.
- Arch (2002) and Fedora (2003) both have outlasted more than 298 Google projects.
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.
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.
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.
Linux is getting too mainstream I gotta switch to freebsd /j
It’s just not the same if you don’t have to fiddle for hours to get a game to run, is it?
I thought that was the game of Linux, the fiddling.
There’s certainly a satisfaction in getting something to work in an environment it was never intended for.
But I can’t deny that it’s also nice that most games just work nowadays.I just create new problems to solve to scratch that itch.
Year of the BSD when?
Year of the BSD when?
When Mac OS X launched?
When iPhone launched?
When PlayStation 4 launched?
MacOS is “Unix” in paid certification dollars only.
MacOS is “Unix” in paid certification dollars only.
macOS, the Darwin layer specifically, is totally a BSD. Even with the Mach bits in the kernel because Mach itself is derived from BSD.
The fact that the origins of maxOS (OSX) is forked from BSD means nothing. Apple has rewritten just about everything from the ground up at this point.
That’s like saying that the year of Linux came when Android release. Sure, but it’s a bastardized monster clone of the original.
That’s like saying that the year of Linux came when Android release.
It’s usually “Year of the Linux Desktop” and Android is a mobile platform, not a desktop OS.
it’s a bastardized monster clone of the original.
Android developments did benefit areas like power saving, so why the hate. Android is no GNU/Linux because of the lack of glibc.
Haiku or bust!
ReactOS, so I can go against the flow but still not use Windows
I just run headless Linux and imagine that I’m playing games.
I’m so hardcore I run Linux without a CLi!
Watching the boot log eh?
OS/2
MINIX is the way
Nah, Plan 9 is the real Unix.
They have a unique opportunity here to capitalise on Microsoft’s mistakes.
I’d say it’s even more unique than a valuable competitive mistake/opportunity.
Valve has the chance to grow the brand and make a bunch of money and all the other standard goals for a company, sure. But they also have the opportunity to benefit the world in subtle but significant ways while getting richer.
A normal megacorp might not give a shit about that last part. But a company that is majority owned by one individual who is already a billionaire that looks like santa claus and presumably cares about his legacy and maybe even other people… it might just be possible!
It’s even still a valid course of action if there’s literally no interest in making the world better.
They’ve potentially found a way to make their nearly omnipresent e-commerce platform share a name with the operating system, which is coincidentally mostly developed by others. They get to associate their name with a few tens of billions of dollars of development effort for a fraction of the cost.To be clear, this isn’t bad or anything. It’s quite literally what a lot of the people doing all that legwork want. It just doesn’t require any altruism from valve. They make money selling games, and they sell more games when people think it’s easier to play them. A desktop with the ease of a console is a big selling point for a lot of people.
I am hoping that Gabe someday creates a PayValve service, to let perverts and LGBTQ+ customers to have a True Neutral transaction processor. Just a 1% fee would let Valve get a little bit of profit from everyone who doesn’t use MasterVisa - including competing game stores, or other markets.
Guy who owns the online, PC version of Gamestop: “What if we took on Microsoft and kicked those mfers in the balls?”
I am very excited for steamos, give me my VR capabilities on Linux and I’ll say goodbye to Windows forever.
Valve has news for you
Valve also used Windows 11 on their own demos for VR streaming to the Steam Frame
I do believe they called out that the steam machine is designed to work with the frame, right? I’d have expected to see Linux SteamVR updates leasing up to this, to get it fully fixed up and tested ahead of time, though I might also have missed something…
The ad for the Steam Frame specifically says it’s compatible with the whole Steam family, Deck, Controller, and Machine. I expect Steam Deck will only be a virtual screen, as well as it’s standalone capabilities. If that’s all it can do with the deck, that’s enough for me. If it can do VR as well, even better. Either way, the frame also runs on SteamOS, so that will be Linux, and if they can’t support streaming VR from the Machine they will be crucified.
I suppose the thing I’m worried about is more general Linux SteamVR support than the streaming itself… But duh, the headset can run games on Linux standalone, so they’ve gotta have SteamVR working well. The only question is, am I behind on the news, or have they been holding back the updates internally?
I hope it was just them working out the hardware required to meet their goals, and the software required to make it work. Fingers crossed. I don’t plan on buying one on release, at least not before I’ve seen a number of reviews.
Well I hope the new one isn’t limited to ARM chips…
You can run it streaming from a PC. The architecture of the source PC can be anything that’ll run SteamVR, assumedly.
Yes, the question is will SteamOS ARM (or whatever they call it) be limited to the Steam Frame.
@artyom@piefed.social I saw a headline that they’re open to other vendors using it. With the Deck it took them a long time and there’s still not any kind of public build process AFAIK though.
I might suggest you take a look at Envision and see if that doesn’t get you what you need right now?
I appreciate the suggestion and it does look fascinating, but one of the biggest reasons I’m stuck on Windows is; put simply, I need my computer to function more plug and play as I use a lot of creative programs to make VR content. I’m not as good at the code side of a lot of Linux but know enough to get by.
I get really frustrated when I have to fix XYZ bug or configuration every time I use my computer when I need my machine to make content. Adding more complexity to my processes is just not good for me.
Understandable! Hopefully it gets to that point soon. A lot of people are sick of Windows and I’d love for it to be as smooth a transition as possible for everyone.
I really hope they sell the GabeCube in retail outlets. It’ll be a Linux machine you can just plug in and use. A lot of people will buy it as a console and then realise it works fine as a PC. That’s the kind of promotion Linux needs right now.
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Why not use a reshipping service?
I have to rely on scalpers or stores who sell it for triple it’s value. I want the controller
The 8bitdo Ultimate 2 series of controllers are fine pieces of hardware. Yes, they don’t have the trackpads but they have TMR sticks (probably the very same model as Steam Controller 2) and they are even compatible game consoles.
The biggest problem is that there are four very similarly named controllers (“Bluetooth” is the highest end and compatible with all BT devices even phones) but that’s it. No need to throw money at scalpers if good alternatives exist.
PS: If it behaves like Steam Deck’s controller, it’ll be useless without Steam running and merely acting as mouse.
Nvidia please make a dedicated driver team for Linux. IIRC one of the biggest stumbling block for a general SteamOS release is subpar Nvidia performance on DX12 games that can get around 30% performance degradation. Even Valve assigned a team of engineers to work on this specifically.
There is a fix coming for the Nvidia performance problem. It’s going to take some months for all the pieces to fall in place. See this video for more about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpXINAMaljA
Nvidia’s shit Linux support is why I’ve been stuck with Windows despite how badly I want to switch to Arch. You get no Nvidia Control Panel, no Nvidia App, no ShadowPlay, no RTX HDR, no 3D Settings panel; basically the only thing you can do with an Nvidia GPU on Linux is render 3D graphics. Which is fine if all you do with your PC is CAD or non-competitive SDR gaming. But I paid for all these extra features and so I’d like to use them.
Can’t even switch to an AMD GPU, either, because I like Ray Tracing too much, so I’m stuck waiting on Nvidia to get their shit together (or AMD to finally release a GPU that can handle RT @ 4K120) before I can finally ditch Microsoft for good.
Obvious solution: Build a D3D12 to D3D11 translation layer, kinda like DXVK but in reverse
That’s significantly more difficult than the opposite since many DX12 features are not in DX11
Yeah it was a pretty obvious shitpost. With the complexity of the API anything more sophisticated than solitaire is basically untranslatable.
I hate Microsoft shoving AI down our throats. I will not upgrade to AI Windows. I just don’t want to port over to a new OS because: (1) I like 10’s GUI, (2) I don’t trust an OS that I might not be able to run word or excel on because I do so much on them, and (3) my version of Windows doesn’t have ads on it.
There are alternatives to Microsoft Office like LibreOffice and OnlyOffice. Plus you can still use Office 365 in a browser if it “has” to be Microsoft Office.
LibreOffice has been so good. As a non-power user I haven’t even noticed a difference, aside from the lack of bullshit.
I’ve used both Libreoffice and Onlyoffice along with Microsofts offerings. I’ve gone several hours in onlyoffice to only notice when I’m saving that I was using Onlyoffice instead of Microsoft Excel. That’s how similar they look.
Yep, the browser version has been good enough if you’re not working with 500 MB excel files that’s been used since 20 years ago. Even the people at my work has switched to the web version of office.
my version of Windows doesn’t have ads on it.
Windows 7?
My EU Win11 doesn’t show any ads either.
I’d be surprised if that turned out to be the case, but I’ve never used EU Windows 11. Is it a special no-ads version?
Windows 10 definitely has ads - I recall seeing something pushing the Xbox on the lock screen a while back. That counts IMO.
Yeah there’s been loads of threads with surprised Europeans when it comes to Windows ads, because we just don’t get them.
… That is not true. We get app recommendations in the home screen and we get a “news” panel. Those are ads. You can’t disable the recommended apps thing either. Recommended by who? The top payer? Fuck off.
? I quite literally don’t have this. So either I disabled it or it wasn’t there. I don’t remember it anyway and I can’t see it now either.
As others have mentioned - and to add my own opinion: In terms of Writer (Word) and Calc (Excel), LibreOffice is by far better than M$ for everyone who isn’t for some reason an absolute fan of searching for buttons that have the function they need by looking at tiny icons.
A friend’s response to me yet again trying to push Linux on them, all unprovoked:
“Windows is getting increasingly shit. I’ve had a login problem for most of the year on my work machine where the cloud stuff won’t sync. I can’t even use Notepad now because it’s cloud-connected. I have to use Excel in the browser for similar reasons. I’d love to be able to move to Linux for everything, but I also cannot be fucked to maintain a Windows machine let alone a Linux one haha.”
This is exactly the kind of person SteamOS is going to capture, I think. The same way, Mint helped kill that whole “my operating system is my hobby” vibe.
I’ve not used SteamOS as a desktop. I own a Steam Deck, but I do think SteamOS is nearly there as an everyday user platform. It’s just a bit more aggressive with settings resets and data overwrites compared to something like Bazzite, which makes it not great for full desktop use yet. I’ve deep dove into nix this month and been making my own tools to bounce off the way NixOS works, like tests before switches and auto uploading to GitHub made a little webui control center etc. I could see Valve doing something similar with their OS to overcome current SteamOS’s issues and improve things for an end user
Why do you think Bazzite isn’t great for full desktop use?
You mis-read or I wrote it badly, I think Bazzite is awesome for everyday desktop (see my post history) Steamos isn’t as it stood when it was an unofficial release as it was purely designed for the deck so it would do things like overwrite settings when it updated. Bazzite was the steamOS for normal everyday desktop and non-deck builds for me.
it’s fine for average users but if you really want to use it for something other than browsing or gaming you really have to use it with Distrobox. And that’s fine, bit of extra work to set up but honestly if you’re going to use something that is beyond web browsing, streaming, and gaming you’re probably going to go with a different distro anyways.
Distrobox isn’t really an option I went with for day to day, I’d use it to keep my projects and dependencies under control. Flatpak was fine, app image was fine, I actually spun up my own template after a bit https://github.com/Sirico/bazzite-dev. Beyond adding a couple of programs and theming, I couldn’t see why I’d need to be in the files silverblue/ublue lock off.
I’m now on nix because I have a lot of stuff to do at work that I was playing about with bluefin for, but nix has more support etc. Knowing that hitting the power button will get me to the desktop every morning bar a hardware issue is for me the biggest win. Making something I can just update throughout a whole fleet and doing it all within GitHub or code is a game changer. So for me immutable are no different to convent distros great for basic stuff like you said browsing etc and good for the high-end stuff it’s this middle ground where people have to learn a new way of doing something it feels like it falls apart I think.
I feel like I see this comment every time immutable distros are mentioned (of course Bazzite most of all).
Sorry but you’re wrong.
please, tell me why I’m wrong. I’m not a fan of immutable distros as I feel they’re limiting but I’d love to be convinced otherwise.
With immutables you can do pretty much everything you do on a normal distro. I code, flash microcontrollers, design and print 3d parts, write documents, draw, manage my servers, consume media… What exactly do you think you can’t do? You can install pretty much anything, actually with distrobox you can install more stuff than you would without it: you can install packages for one distribution that may not be available on some others. Flatpak works, and you also have AppImages of course.
The biggest limit with Bazzite & C is that you’re limited to KDE or Gnome mostly, but if you really wanted you could layer something else on top of the base image.
I put SteamOS on my handheld and turned it into my main PC. I haven’t missed Windows even slightly.
if they sell easy install one/low click installs they’d make a killing.
I’d bet a lot that it’ll be easy to install. Any Linux distro I’ve tried is a breath of fresh air after using the Windows installer. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they make driver management even more seamless and automagic than the best Linux distros, stuff like that might be why it’s taking so long.
If all the games I had worked on steam os I’d switch to Linux in a heartbeat.
Which ones don’t?
The ones with kernel level rootkits. I think they call it “anti cheat detection”
Its crazy to me, because if these games were designed from the ground up to have server side validation, and to share information on a needs to know basis, you wouldn’t really need any advanced client side AC and the process could just monitor itself and not spy on you as a complete black box.
Yes, this would cost money up front to develop differently such that this happened, and yes it would make the miniscule server costs slightly increased (and still miniscule), but its completely doable and they don’t want to, because thats more money and no one is forcing them to.
I love this comment because it’s hubris in a nutshell
Battlefield 6
Helldivers 2
CoD
Helldivers 2 works just fine on Linux…?
it does
I have hundreds of hours in Helldivers 2 and I haven’t played a single minute on Windows.
I played Helldivers 2 on Linux literally last night
Crappy sweaty games I do too enjoy respawning simulator but I just stick to bf one that I paid a fiver for
Cool, me to.
Been waiting years at this point. Hope it happens soon.
