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
Strange that they’re working so hard on this but Bazzite and similar will run on anything…
I wouldn’t considered this strange. Bazzite definite has some downsides that involve tinkering to get things working on some hardware.
Valve is trying to deliver both a hardware product that just works, and a software product that just works without that tinkering. They’re trying to bring Linux to your mom who wants to play terraria and you uncle who plays overwatch with his kids. They want them to have an experience that’s console like in how easy/intuitive it is to use, without anything that’s finicky or confusing.
Every time I do an update on bazzite it breaks deckyloader for me and I have to go in and fix it. I’ve had to change controller type on bazzite to get certain games to work.
I have back buttons on my device that still don’t map reliably in bazzite. This is not the experience valve want their customers to have.
They’re shooting for a seamless experience.
Almost never. Whereas SteamOS almost always just won’t work, regardless of tinkering.
This is not a Valve product. I can tell you SteamOS will be the same because they’re not developed together.
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 bill, 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.
Having a company like Valve behind it is major, getting people on Linux is the important first step, then once familiar they can try other distros.
Don’t you think better hardware compatibility with their first party OS is important for getting people on Linux?
What do you think they are doing???
I just explained that they’re not doing a good job at that.
You said it’s strange they are working so hard on it. Are you lost?
JFC, that’s what they said, not me. Are you lost?
Even if I did, hard work is not the same as good work.
No, I’m not lost, that’s literally the comment you made that I responded to.
They are working on it, a major software company with the means and funds to infinitely back Linux.
If you prefer Bazzite or some other OS, that’s great, but Valve building and supporting their own distribution is a good thing for more mainstream adoption of Linux.
Maybe English isn’t your first language, so you didn’t mean exactly what you said?
Did you not read the OP? I was repeating what they said.
I know they say they’re working on it. That’s the problem. What’s the hold up? Why is the team of volunteers able to make it happen and the corporation with “infinite” funds isn’t able to make it more on more than a couple of devices after a decade of development? Why isn’t that strange to you?