Shower thought: Valve could do the ultimate boss-move this year

I see all of these “Why SteamOS and why not another distro?” comments and it kinda blows me away how much the idea of approachability designed by a trusted name seems like a foreign concept here.

Then again, we’re talking about Linux fanatics who probably also argue over whether emacs, vim, or vi are the best text editor lol

VIM is the best because once you try it you are unable to quit.
- Just like meth! :D
- I keep seeing this, is it actually hard to close? Surely Linux has a version of alt f4, does that also fail?
real linux users don't need a graphical session!!! everything can and should be done on the terminal!
/s
- I love running Elden Ring in the terminal. Hells yeah, foul tarnished
Those editors are toys. Use something with real power. Use nano.
- Nano's a knockoff, use pico.
- edlin or bust
It's actually ed .

OP clearly overestimates how many people would use SteamOS or any other Linux distro for that matter. Most users are casual gamers these days, they are not changing OS just because there is a forced Windows update.

This isn’t about people not wanting to use Windows 11 this is about people not wanting to purchase a new computer
- They don't have to purchase anything if they just keep using an unsupported OS.
  Most people don't care enough to change.
They are if they can't afford a new computer.
- Windows 10 won't just stop working. I still see businesses rocking Windows Vista occasionally.
I don't know, I think you're clearly underestimating how many people would install Valve's OS. The number of people with a Steam Deck that don't know that what it's running is a Linux distro is pretty high. The other piece to this is that it's not just a forced Windows update for a huge chunk of users, it's a forced device upgrade. Valve offering a free upgrade that negates the need to buy new hardware would absolutely capture people's attention.
- Yes and no, people can still use win10, it just won't receive patches anymore. And in this particular case, my best guess is, that most people would rather use and outdated OS for a long time, rather than changing the OS altogether. Not every game is on steam, also not every non game programm is easily available for Linux. Humans are lazy.

SteamOS would be a particular poor choice as a desktop operating system compared to basically any other Linux distribution. It uses an immutable file system and reverts all system changes upon every update. That's nice if you don't want to fuck up your handeheld gaming device with some dumb changes, but it's generally not what you will want on a device you use for all kinds of things. Of course, with some effort you can work around this, but then, why don't use a system that doesn't just use such a paradigm in the first place and won't roll back your workaround to make it usable with the next update?

As someone who uses my desktop for gaming (and maybe web browsing) exclusively, and as someone mildly but not very familiar with OSes, I read this as “SteamOS is bad because of reason I personally don’t like that many people don’t understand, so do more research about Linux”
The barrier to Linux as an OS is not how good it is but how understandable it is. After Pewdiepie’s video went up I’m confident the search phrase “Linux OS download” skyrocketed in popularity because people don’t know let alone understand what a distribution is.
SteamOS is a great intro to Linux for the majority of PC gamers because it’s not only basically ready to use as soon as you boot it up, but also because it is being maintained by a team of people intent on making it the optimal PC gaming platform.
Once Windows users are introduced to a basic Linux experience why not let them take their time learning more about the variables in distros?
Maybe SteamOS is not the perfect distribution because
<list your gripes here>
but is there a perfect distribution?
- Maybe you don't understand it, but that doesn't mean you don't rely on it. If I said an OS was unusable by 99% of people because it didn't support multithreading, it doesn't matter if 99% of people know what multithreading is, that's clearly a true statement. Similarly, if you've ever expected your PC to have the same files on it tomorrow that you put on it today, then you might find it annoying when that's not the case.
- I read this as “SteamOS is bad because of reason I personally don’t like that many people don’t understand, so do more research about Linux”
  It's easy to dismiss this as something that won't ever matter to you, but this is something that can cause problems in all sorts of ways even for gamers. The first thing that came to mind is not being able to install custom drivers to support weird hardware, like a racing wheel or something.
I use Bazzite on my main laptop (basically SteamOS) and it's fantastic.
It's really not that difficult to learn his immutable works, and it's really not that limited at all, just different.
- Hows it work with rtx(looks supported now?) and vr? last time i tried and said i had nvidia it said "Go away!"
It doesn’t revert things stored in /home according to my experience, that’s good enough for most users
- Yeah anything I put in /home has always stayed there, and things like customizations to KDE and whatnot always persist. I'm sure it changes a bunch of system files being an immutable OS, but I really don't think it'd be anything a layperson coming fresh from Windows would ever really notice.
Not true. Steam OS is not the only immutable distro. Lots of people actually prefer that for their desktops.
I'd personally prefer to have an OS dedicating to playing, one I can't broke by installing too many stuff or, on the hand, I could reinstall quickly without having to reinstall all the other stuff (printer, cloud syncing, etc...)
So having a multi-boot for gaming and regular (although rare) computer use. There's a good chance I'll still sadly have a Windows boot option for some multiplayer online games (anticheat 😐)
Fedora bluefin is a much bigger project and a much larger paradigm shift in how Linux distros can be understood than what you make out to be. Tweaking system files might be a good choice for users who need to go beyond what comes with the standard, but it's not something a wide majority of users will or should need.
- When you can easily spin up virtual operating systems with distrobox, you never need to. You might, for some hardware support reasons, need to layer in some additional packages, but I'm curious how true even that is.

That could be what they're waiting for.

However, I do not believe SteamOS is going to be the silver bullet people think it is. I'm somewhat of a fanboy of Valve but SteamOS is really only good for a console-like PC experience.

People who want to ditch Windows need to look at Linux as a whole, not just SteamOS.

Michael Horn talks about this in greater detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4g1dZfF5KA

If people want to ditch Windows then the gaming industry needs to stop gating the community. Either get rid of the shitty anti Linux anticheat or tell them to turn on Linux support naturally. For fucks sake I can't believe I find out most anticheat just needs a simple email to turn it on for Linux.
- I agree entirely. An argument could be made about native Linux releases being too much but most games run with Proton if the devs don't intentionally cripple it through kernel anticheat or other arbitrary limitations.

Reminder that supporting a single GPU is a lot simpler than supporting all of them...

Also, SteamOS would make a dogshit desktop OS. It’s designed specifically for Steam’s Big Picture Mode. It has Arch running in the background, but that’s not the primary focus of the OS.
It would be great for something like an arcade cabinet or a family TV, but not so great for a desktop.
- They can make SteamOS Lite at any point.
- Yup.
  I've spent a good while running Deck in desktop mode compared to my laptop running Manjaro, and so far the only thing I've noticed is that the Deck has that handy "add to steam" context menu item that automatically sets a 3rd party game to run in proton through steam.
  And there's an AUR package for that.
  So unless there's something major I've managed to miss, Manjaro + that package gets you the entire desktop SteamOS experience on any device.

The thing is, I don’t think valve wants to become a desktop OS provider. Becoming the provider and maintainer of an OS for hundreds of millions of users is so far beyond their scope as a company. They’ve got a third the employees of Canonical and a fiftieth the employees of RedHat, the companies behind Ubuntu and Fedora. Maintaining a limited scope console/handheld OS that runs on a handful of hardware set ups is one thing, but supporting a fully fledged daily driver desktop OS meant to operate on any system is something else entirely.

Right now, most of their users are on windows, which makes them nervous because Microsoft is a known monopolist and has been slowly creeping deeper in to the PC games space. That’s why Valve has put so much effort in to software to support compatibility on Linux, so there is a viable alternative if Microsoft try’s to push them out. I think the steam deck and steamOS were a means to that end, create a business reason to develop and support those tools, not a first step towards becoming an operating system developer.

A better route forward for them would be to use their reach and public trust to help people make the switch to other extant distros. For example an all in one utility on the steam store that helps people select the right distro for their use case and set it up, have a hardware scan and a little quiz to choose a distro, a hard drive partitioning tool to set up dual boot, a tool to write the ISO to a USB drive (or maybe even just set up a bootable on the disk using the partitioner IDK), and migrate important files over using their cloud system.

If the issue is that people trust stuff with the valve branding on it, but are not willing to try Linux on their own, then Steam acting as a guide is much more practical than Valve taking on all the work needed to maintain a proper distro.

That is an excellent suggestion!
I recognise that for almost any one task, Linux has a solution that works better than Windows. My issue is just getting Linux to run not only one specific thing but all the dozens of programs with each having their own dependencies and possible quirks without losing my mind, weeks of my life, data or all three.
If Valve (or really any other large entity capable of handling this for tens of thousands of users) stepped in to act as the guide for setting it all up in a safe manner and such that it just works without constant need for tweaking (unless you want to stray from the "installation wizard"), I could see Linux gain a big surge in users.

If they wanted to "make a splash" they could have released it 3 years ago. I don't know what they're waiting for. With the launch of Steam Machines it was made available to everyone on day 1.

They are actively monitoring for "HL3 confirmed" and adds a hour to the release time for each they find.
The current release date is in the year 252525.
- That's dumb. The only technology in 252525 will be a rusty sword for practicing proctology.
It's not as simple as just releasing something. They need to develop it first, and making it a good experience with arbitrary hardware is actually pretty hard.
- Not hard enough that it hasn't already been done for years by volunteers with zero budget.

Isn't SreamOS already available for download? It has been for months actually... What do you mean by "release a desktop version of SteamOS"?

SteamOS has been available for years but no general purpose desktop release as of yet. Or anytime in the near future.
- That's a different iteration of SteamOS than the current Arch-based immutable image the Deck uses.
The new version on the Steam Deck isn't available - the old version of course is, but you might as well use Bazzite.
I dont think Valve would bother trying to convert people to Linux - regardless of where people's OSes are, they are the gaming store. Plus, Valve really doesn't think developers should develop Linux native ports, so I dont think they're really push people to use Linux - just use whatever you want and play shit with Proton if needed.

SteamOS is a nice modified version of Arch, however and for good reasons it has its limits regarding installing new packages/software. I am not sure this is the best for linux newbies.

I would argue that using an image based system with flatpak is one of the best ways for newbies to transition to Linux. Whether that's SteamOS, Bazzite, Bluefin or Aurora, that doesn't matter all that much.

They should go for it.

The Commodore 64 was the highest selling computer model of all time, until around 2020, because of it's game library.

SteamOS probably has the best easily accessible game library of all time.

The Commodore 64 taught us that games will carry a personal computer to massive popularity and sales, even if the computer has trade-offs.

I agree with others who have commented that there's better versions of Linux for the average user.

But I don't think it matters.

A Steam machine with a cheap keyboard and mouse would be hugely popular this Fall, and would make it's users fall in love with Linux, in spite of issues - because we all love video games.

Fuck. I would have to seriously consider that if they did. But imagine valve running kernel design and security support. There's no way they would do that as a competitive alternative to Windows. None. No way. It would ruin them and so much of what makes them special and a positive influence to everything.

Valve wouldn’t be running kernel design. SteamOS is just a heavily modified version of Arch. Arch runs the kernel design and security, while Steam just runs on top of it.