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
Almost never. Whereas SteamOS almost always just won’t work, regardless of tinkering.
This is not a Valve product. SteamOS is the same, because they’re not developed together. Valve changes stuff in Steam all the time and it sometimes breaks functionality of Decky Loader, a third party software.
That’s nothing to do with Bazzite, that’s entirely done in Steam.
In steam on windows the devices onboard controller actually works as intended. I dual boot so I’ve tested this extensively.
Your experience of “almost never” and my experience of “happens sometimes” create a null, my friend. This is what is called anecdotal evidence.
None of that anecdotal evidence (yours or mine) actually undermines the main point which is that bazzite started out telling users to install their skew of fedora at their own risk on hardware they didn’t directly provide a guide for. And that’s part of the fun of Linux for some people.
But there are a lot of people who don’t do PC gaming full stop specifically because they don’t want to fiddle with anything, they just want to play a game, and steam is courting those people. That’s my point. They don’t want to give those people a bad experience, and they are spending time attempting to make their experience as clean and positive as possible.
Sure but we’re not talking about Windows. The Linux Steam client is not the same as the Windows one, obviously.
That was a long time ago.
What does your point have to do with SteamOS vs. Bazzite?
You brought up bazzite like it and steam OS are the exact same thing. So you tell me what it has to do with bazzite.
I did not. I brought it up like they serve a similar function but only Bazzite, with their team of volunteers, seems interested in improving compatibility across various hardware.
So what you’re saying is that you don’t think steam has any interest in providing compatibility across various hardware?
I’m saying it’s obviously not a priority for them.
Is it weird that a group of volunteers who aren’t charging for the privilege can and do implement a software skew across multiple different hardware, vs a company (who are charging for the privilege) to focus on one piece of hardware to get that working as good as they can for paying customers before moving on to allow their software on other hardware?
Because as you said yourself that’s the difference. Even if that’s not what you meant, that’s literally the difference here. When you are using the software volunteers made you are more willing to give them grace. When you are paying for a product, you are less likely to give a company grace (even if that company is one you like). Because when you pay for a product you expect it to be polished, usable, and generally with little to no flaws.
I’m sure you can and will argue that steam isn’t selling the OS. But the thing is, to a certain extent that’s exactly what they’re doing.
So in response to your question “what does your point have to do with steam OS vs bazzite”, I’ll ask you what this means:“how is it strange that they’re working so hard on this when bazzite/similar will run on anything”.
Because from my view of things there wouldn’t really be a bazzite without steam OS. Steam OS walked so Bazzite could run.
If your argument is that steam OS has flaws and bazzite doesn’t, then I think that’s probably not how I took it. Even if your argument is that both have flaws, that’s not how I took your initial comment.
On the steam deck, the hardware where steam OS launched initially, and where it has lived for the better part of almost 4 years, it’s a pretty polished thing. Steam OS focused first and foremost on making sure that it ran on that hardware because they are a business selling a physical piece of hardware coupled with an OS to provide an experience that people pay for.
When it officially started expanding to other handhelds, it obviously had some teething problems but all in all it’s still improving.
So if you think it’s not a priority, then I guess, but, at the end of the day what you mean is that it’s not their main priority and that’s not “weird”.
Yes. It’s weird. That’s what I said. Their “paying customers” are paying for games on the Steam platform. The more devices running Steam’s Game Mode, the more money they make.
Exactly, so why does the first-party product from the billion dollar company require more grace than the volunteer-led one?
Exactly. Valve created SteamOS, so it’s weird that they’re having so much trouble porting it to other hardware while other, volunteer-led communities are having no such problems.