this post was submitted on 12 May 2025

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Shower thought: Valve could do the ultimate boss-move this year (discuss.tchncs.de)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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If Valve really wanted to make a splash, they could release a desktop version of SteamOS in October, right when support for Windows 10 ends. For additional damage, they could bundle in Half-Life 3. Just imagine the coverage this would get.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They can make SteamOS Lite at any point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

My point is that it already basically exists... It’s called Arch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

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.

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