Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 19 hours agoWhy do you want SteamOS and not just linux?
I swapped over to pop a couple months back and things just work. Gaming stuff outside of steam works too.
There’s other immutable distros for people afraid of messing up their system but in the modern world of flatpaks, lutris prefixes and wine/proton I have found I really don’t need to mess with my system too much. I find it hard to justify the immutability because of that.
I doubt SteamOS will ever support most hardware versions. Nvidia by itself is still not where they need to be on the linux side, and that’s the majority of gamers’ hardware today (and why all steam hardware is AMD gpu based.) Then there’s all the weird audio and network gear that has very limited support because a system integrator chose some oddball model or brand that nobody else uses.
tal@lemmy.today 18 hours ago
I’ve seen other people request SteamOS-as-a-general-OS on here too, which also surprised me.
I’m thinking that it’s one of two things:
People just want something that they’re sure is easy to use.
People want an HTPC-oriented configuration.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 17 hours ago
I think there’s also some overall ignorance about how linux works with drivers too. They assume they’re going to have a steam deck-like experience that is easy and just works, but they don’t realize the valve chosen hardware’s drivers are built into the OS by valve.
Everybody wants an OS that “just works” - it’s the least interesting part of computing for users. It’s simply the thing that lets you actually do what you want to do with comptuers. Be it a HTPC, a console-like experience or something else. Drivers ruin all of it though especially when you’re bringing your own hardware.
I don’t see any likelihood that we’re gonna leave the existing driver-hell for a more streamlined experience either. It’s definitely gotten better over the years but for all of microsoft’s attempts at getting it to “just work” on their own OS, it constantly breaks. They released AMD drivers earlier this year with weird fucking versions that fucked people with AMD GPUs, requiring some manual intervention of DDU + Reinstalling a proper driver version. I’ve seen the same thing over and over again in userland for Intel graphics, intel audio and wifi and other popular and unpopular brands too. It’s one of the biggest reasons I swapped to linux, because there’s no fucking windows update lol.