Comment on Steam Hardware [new Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and VR headset Steam Frame, coming in 2026]
tal@lemmy.today 17 hours agoI’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:
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People just want something that they’re sure is easy to use.
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People want an HTPC-oriented configuration.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 16 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.