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Valve takes another step toward making SteamOS a true Windows competitor
- weird_trousers 1y agoVery good news! I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days, so it is definitely time for Valve to jump in and win some percentages in the market. We know for sure that Windows shares will not drop drastically based on this move, and that the tendency will progress among years (not months). Now, we have to make sure that Valve is not evil... and I do not believe they are angels they claim since the beginning. To me Valve is like Google was in beginning of 2000s : invest on open-source, have a good fanbase, ... and once you have a significant percentage of the market share / users then you can move evil.
- coffeebeqn 1y agoI think they’re showing us how mature user-facing Linux in 2025 really is. With a little focus and investment on the UX for the end user on top of the open source core OS it has already beat any console OS by a mile.
- Manfred 1y agoSteamOS actually does the opposite. It does not use any of the popular desktop environments (unless you drop into Desktop Mode). It heavily curates hardware, kernel, and drivers to keep the platform from breaking and install with sane (performance) defaults for gaming. It doesn't rely on a common package manager. Beside a Steam Deck I also use a Linux PC for gaming and even with 25 years of Linux experience I still struggle sometimes to keep hardware acceleration working after a driver update, sometimes spending an evening of troubleshooting instead of gaming. Certain parts of the desktop environment sometimes lock up to the point where I have to SSH into the PC to fix it. It's like owning a vintage car in a certain way. And yes, I prefer all of that over the Windows experience, but it's not seamless and not simple enough for anyone to just jump into.
- selivanovp 1y agoQuit using Arch. Normal linux distros have no such problems.
- Manfred 1y agoThat's a pretty weak argument given that I use Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, and Debian and have had these issues with all of them. You can look for things like "nvidia drm broken" and find thousands of threads of people all types of problems spanning decades, meaning; old and new. Some of them are pure driver issues caused by NVIDIA but that doesn't matter because we're not trying to assign blame, but we're trying to see if the ecosystem is "mature".
- Gigachad 1y agoThey have a custom window manager because they had to build a controller friendly UI from scratch since one didn’t exist already. Not because existing DEs are broken. Their package management also isn’t that exotic. It’s a lot like Fedora Silverblue where the OS is an immutable image and user software is installed with Flatpak.
- Manfred 1y agoI'm not saying existing desktop environments are broken, my point is that SteamOS does not show that KDE / Gnome / etc are "mature" because it doesn't actually use them. In the same way that we know all dogs are good dogs but my house doesn't show that because there is no dog here.
- Ygg2 1y agoLinux biggest problem as a consumer OS was rarely tech and mostly just the schizoid amount of options, and lack of consensus on what to use. In essence Linux suffers from a Lisp curse. Whenever two OS nerds disagreed on something they made their own slightly different distro. This means wasted effort on multiple DE, window managers, app flavors, installed libraries. To this day, almost no two distros can agree on baseline libraries every Linux must have.
- spookie 1y agoI love how in this context people call it wasted effort while in other areas is just competition.
- ashdnazg 1y agoCompetition works because the more successful a company is, the more resources it gets (money from the customers). If a free Linux distribution is more successful, its resources don't scale accordingly.
- Affric 1y agoCooperation/Symbiosis: win-win Predation: win-lose Competition: lose-lose This is how dynamically coupled systems work.
- Ygg2 1y agoYeah, duplicating/triplicating/n-cating bugs, feature development and support effort, really paid off for the Linux desktop ecosystem. Which year will be the year of the Linux desktop? One, when we get brain to brain communication and abandon desktops entirely?
- ekianjo 1y ago> Linux biggest problem as a consumer OS was rarely tech and mostly just the schizoid amount of options, and lack of consensus on what to use. It's only a problem if you think it is. In practice I use at least 3 or 4 different distros on a daily basis and I never have any issue juggling between them. For most of the typical use cases it does not even matter, and on the desktop side flatpak resolves many issues.
- Ekaros 1y agoBy in essence using none of desktop Linux... Steam Deck shows just how bad things are. Regular users will spend their entire time in very limited application launching other applications. Distant way from any traditional personal computer model.
- nfg 1y ago> I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days. I’d be interested in hearing you expand on that! Disclaimer: I work there :-)
- Aleklart 1y ago[flagged]
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- petepete 1y agoI suspect it's not about Gaming not working well on Windows but that gamers are likely enthusiasts and Windows 11: * is difficult/impossible to install without tying up a Microsoft Account * has ads baked in * is trying to force feed everyone Copilot when most people just don't care * comes preinstalled with bloat It's a pity. There's a great OS hiding in there somewhere. A consumer version of LTSC would probably make gamers very happy.
- charcircuit 1y ago>is difficult/impossible to install without tying up a Microsoft Account Gamers probably already have a Microsoft account as its required for games like Minecraft or services like Gamepass. A Microsoft account is needed for Windows Hello to function. >has ads baked in Do you have an example. I think it's more likely the user installed malware if ads are showing up unexpectedly. Gamers are more likely to install malware like this and Windows's security is not good enough to stop it especially when gamers use admin accounts and disable uac. >is trying to force feed everyone Copilot when most people just don't care How is it being forced? I haven't seen it on my machine. I assume people who don't care could just ignore it or disable the feature if they don't want it. Being able to look up help for games using Copilot seems like a feature that gamers may find valuable. >comes preinstalled with bloat Bloat is subjective. Actual performance issues caused by unneeded things running while in games would be. The mere existence of unused pteinstalled applications doesn't necessarily cause problems to gamers.
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- bitmasher9 1y ago> I believe that Microsoft does not care about Gaming those days Have you seen the Microsoft Merger and Acquisition list for the last ten years? They are spending money like they care about gaming.
- BlueTemplar 1y agoSpending billions to buy Activision-Blizzard-King ? I haven't heard about Microsoft giving up on Xbox ? And in the last few months Windows 10 has started nagging (via notifications!) about Game Pass. Valve is a private company led by Gabe Newell. Once he's gone and Valve goes public, Valve will become evil too. And people who relied too much on Steam will be sorry.
- weird_trousers 1y agoMeanwhile, in the Mac world... https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1kpggmu/the_state_of_steam_on_macos_is_astonishingly_bad/ https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/1kpggmu/the_stat...
- loehnsberg 1y agoIf Valve was serious about Mac as a platform, they would port their Source games, like they ported Portal 1&2 for the Switch. To some extend I understand this, because Apple isn‘t serious either, no matter how often they show me a Dual Sense loitering near a Mac screen.
- mschuster91 1y agoThe problem is, Epic is not going to tie themselves to the arbitrary deprecation whims of another company again, and Apple is truly infamous for that. No matter if there could actually be some serious money to be made from the huuuuge catalog of titles that already have a Nintendo Switch port.
- jillesvangurp 1y agoThere were some volunteers working on this topic that kind of backed away from this topic. But they got quite far with this. What I don't get is why Valve isn't backing such efforts financially. There are millions of wealthy mac owners out there with pretty capable hardware. That should translate into quite a bit of steam purchases. I just got a shiny m4 max laptop. I run Steam on a much less capable crappy old Samsung laptop (via manjaro). Would I run that on my mac if I could? Yes. Would I be tempted to spend a bit of cash on some fun games. Probably. Am I doing that currently? No, because that crappy old Samsung is too old and most games don't run on it. And I'm not in a mood to buy a dedicated gaming machine. I might at some point but just not a priority. But I don't mind dropping a few euros on a game to entertain myself once in a while.
- Frederks 1y ago>What I don't get is why Valve isn't backing such efforts financially I remember reading something a few years ago about how Valve basically gave up on Mac due to Apple being a complete pain in the ass to work with.
- fracus 1y agoWindows is losing the market. People don't care about programs anymore, everything the common person needs is online. Gamers want to game, and browse, and use discord. For non gamers, Ubuntu covers everything with no threat of viruses or getting cluttered with ads.
- johnisgood 1y agoAchem, Ubuntu had ads before, I am not sure if this is still the case, but I would not be surprised. Why the down-vote? Do I need to flood HN with links? It actually had ads. Go ahead and search for it (or ask me), there were ads in more than one places. It even had ads in its motd (and gnome notifications, and somewhere else I forgot)... I do not care if it is your favorite Linux distribution, it ACTUALLY had ads (and might still do) in more than one places. So "not getting cluttered with ads" is not so certain. Only if they got rid of all ads, but the future is still not certain with regarding to it, as they have done it before without blinking an eye. See some links https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44079458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44079458 for Amazon ads. Also https://askubuntu.com/questions/1083504/how-to-disable-the-advertisements-when-sshing-into-an-ubuntu-machine https://askubuntu.com/questions/1083504/how-to-disable-the-a... for bit.ly links in motd. If you need more, I am willing to provide.
- Gigachad 1y agoThere “ads” and then there’s “ADS”. Ubuntu might show a bit of text in the ssh motd promoting their own services, but it’s very unobtrusive compared to the ads on other platforms.
- johnisgood 1y agoIt was not just their own services, mate. It showed Amazon ads, too. https://www.thefastcode.com/en-idr/article/how-to-disable-the-amazon-search-ads-in-ubuntu-s-unity-dash https://www.thefastcode.com/en-idr/article/how-to-disable-th... (How To Disable the Amazon Search Ads in Ubuntu's Unity Dash) https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/10asnf/ubuntu_will_now_have_amazon_ads_preinstalled/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/10asnf/ubuntu_will_n... https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/10hmmb/ubuntu_privacy_blunder_over_amazon_ads_continues/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/10hmmb/ubuntu_privac... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-am... So yeah, no. To all the down-voters, they were actual ads, and they actually were in Ubuntu. Sorry.
- barbs 1y agoI wonder if Riot Games will ever make their games run natively on Linux? AFAIK some of their games ran via wine but they introduced an anti-cheat system that now prevents that from working.
- guax 1y agoOnly market share will change that. The Proton making linux gaming this good is an incredible trojan horse to a more open OS market. The more people use it, the more incentive companies have to support it entirely, not only by making the game run well on the compatibility layer but making it native. My pipe dream is that Proton becomes so successful that it kills itself by making linux gaming profitable enough to be first party supported. My long wish of having a decent gaming and development environment will finally come true, just in time for me to not care so much about one or the other.
- danpalmer 1y agoI can't wait. I recently built a gaming PC and installed Windows on it, having only used macOS/Linux since about 2008. People decry the fall in quality of macOS, but damn did using modern Windows make me appreciate macOS more. I'm still now, 6 months later, finding new places I need to disable Edge, new adverts I need to disable, new dark patterns, new subscription trials to dodge. I look forward to the day I can run Steam OS on it and never touch Windows again.
- xnickb 1y agoNothing is stopping you from switching right away. It's not as hard. You can check whether the games you are interested in are supported on protondb
- danpalmer 1y agoI know, I have a Steam Deck and enjoy Steam OS on that, but what I want is as close to a console like experience (which is what Windows is not giving me). Right now it seems that DIY installs of Steam OS are not yet as simple as I want for that sort of experience, and I'm not looking for another Linux sysadmin hobby machine, I've got enough of those. I'm waiting until there's a big download button on a Valve page, and ideally a supported upgrade path from an existing Windows install.
- constantcrying 1y agoThere is nothing Steam OS will give you that isn't available right now. Use any low maintenance Linux distro and install Steam through flatpak and you got the exact experience you want. There is no difference. You are waiting for something which might never come out so that installing might be 10 minutes faster. That is totally absurd. Steam OS ist not more maintenance than any other low maintenance distro.
- danpalmer 1y agoI've used low maintenance Linux distros, and they're not comparable to Steam OS in my experience. It's not about a 10 minute install, it's about the hour here and there to update, to fix, to browse the Arch wiki to figure out why my bluetooth mouse doesn't work today. Linux is a lot better than it was 10+ years ago, but to say it's as low maintenance as a game console (which is what my Steam Deck is to me), is actually absurd.
- legitster 1y agoI'm not a Windows hater, but for the last several years I have been attempting to operate a usable gaming HTPC and the experience could not have been a lousier waste of time. The thing that sucks the most (and SteamOS doesn't fix) is that the PC ecosystem is fracturing out of control. Steam alone can't do it for me - I have games now in Oculus, Meta, and Xbox. Or my favorite game (Anno 1800 being locked behind a POS Uplay launcher). Windows is the only game in town if you want to do everything, but they can't get out of their own way.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoI'm having a very similar experience here. I finally got a Windows box, hooked it up to my TV, and assumed that everything would just work since I'm on Windows for once. In fact, lots of games will crash on launch, or glitch the display so bad they're unplayable, or ignore my Windows Night Light settings, or not offer the controller support which was promised. Ironically, the games which work best are the ones that worked on Mac/Linux anyway. Presumably, those are the ones where the devs actually put in the work to ensure broad compatibility. I think there is an opening for SteamOS to create console-type compatibility guarantees for a machine which also doubles as a general-purpose PC. Honestly if Valve doesn't get their act together somehow, I might just switch to a traditional console. I love Steam's Big Picture Mode, but if half my games don't even work, what's the point? (And don't get me started on how they killed the Steam Controller...)
- BlueTemplar 1y agoYou shouldn't have expected this from a general purpose computer. If you want something that just works, get a console (though looks like even Nintendo has fallen to the "some games require an Internet connection" issue with the Switch 2, weirdly because of too big storage cards). But you will be limited by what the manufacturer mandated. If you want diversity and freedom, use a PC. But you will have to tinker to make it work. P.S.: I guess that there's also MacOS / iOS / Android / ChromeOS / ..? in-between, but they perhaps provide even less options foe gaming...
- larodi 1y agoSo Steam OS is not based on Wine and other OSS libs? What does it mean really that Valve takes steps forward to making some OS windows-compatible? is it only ever a single company doing it?
- LeoPanthera 1y agoSteamOS is an Arch Linux derivative with a games compatibility layer called Proton, which is indeed based on Wine. It has a proprietary launcher for games, but also comes with Plasma Desktop.
- Gigachad 1y agoThere’s like a million little bits of software valve has created over many years all bundled together that make steamos incredible. It’s hard to properly do justice because it’s all tiny bits of polish that are individually fairly uninteresting but all stack up. I’ve tried using Fedora as my TV gaming rig but steamos is much better as it out of the box has everything you need. No installing extra drivers for things like Xbox controller support. And it has a fully controller navigable OS that lets you do a lot of advanced system management stuff that you’d otherwise need a mouse and keyboard for. Also for a while now Valve has been the main contributors towards wine and other gaming on Linux projects.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoI would love to see Valve partner with hardware companies to sell "Steambooks" which run SteamOS out of the box. I'll bet they could capture a significant fraction of the market for gaming laptops, and expand the market for Linux preinstalls. Linux is nicer than Windows for developers and power users; the main issue is hardware compatibility. Preinstalls address that.
- michaelt 1y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Machine_(computer) Valve tried “steam machines”, OEM devices intended to provide a console-like experience. It wasn’t a big success (although that might have been a botched implementation rather than something fundamentally wrong about the concept, IDK)
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoFair point. I still think they'd have a shot if they explicitly marketed it as a dual-use work/play device. Here's one way to think about it. The Steam Machine was asking gamers to buy a new device so they can game on their TV. Its failure shows that most Steam users were happy to keep gaming on their PC. But, almost everyone wants to buy a laptop every once in a while. And as long as you're buying a laptop, if you're a gamer, you might as well buy the gaming laptop which is running SteamOS and has really strong gaming compatibility. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.
- BlueTemplar 1y agoIf you go as far as identify as a "gamer", you will be probably better off with a cheap laptop and a midrange desktop, rather than an expensive laptop that you had to buy all at once, which will age poorly, and which will be heavy and/or thermally limited.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoThat's an argument against gaming laptops more generally. But I understand that gaming laptops are fairly popular: >I've been hearing gaming laptop manufacturers tell me for years that gaming laptops are the future or whatever, but now that a laptop GPU is sitting securely at the top of the Steam Hardware Survey, I'm actually starting to believe it. https://www.ign.com/articles/gaming-laptops-are-apparently-more-popular-than-ever https://www.ign.com/articles/gaming-laptops-are-apparently-m...
- thor-rodrigues 1y agoIf you're serious about using SteamOS for your gaming computer or home theater PC, I highly recommend Bazzite. Bazzite is a Linux operating system, built on SteamOS, that's designed to make it easy to use with different hardware and controllers. It simplifies the installation process and works really well with other game launchers that aren't on Steam, and you can set it up to look like a game console with the SteamOS interface or a regular computer with a desktop. The only real problem I had was with competitive multiplayer shooter games require kernel-level anti-cheat software, that doesn't work with Linux. But if playing online multiplayer isn't your main thing and you’re sick of windows being as intrusive as it is, Bazzite is an outstanding choice for a gaming or home theater computer. https://bazzite.gg/ https://bazzite.gg/
- Hasnep 1y agoOne small correction, Bazzite isn't built on Steam OS, it's based on Fedora.
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- constantcrying 1y agoI HIGHLY recommend that you do not install niche distros. Larger distributions give you more stability and more features, they are better maintained and supported.
- tmottabr 1y agoBazzite is a spin on Fedora Atomic.. It ia a larger distribution better maintained and supported underneath.. All that bazitte does is put steam os interface in front of it..
- constantcrying 1y agoI know. Every single person would be better served by just using Fedora. The addition layer is either so thin that the value added is zero or it creates a drastically worse user experience, as the layer around Fedora is poorly maintained by a few volunteers and very little testing is done. Bazzite is pointless and a total waste of time. Nobody should use it. All of these "layer around actually popular distro" projects are pointless and make using Linux on the desktop a worse experience.
- jokoon 1y agoI wonder how Microsoft will react to this. I also think that nvidia might not like it, and I wonder if there are actors who can undermine steamos.
- HelloUsername 1y agoInstalling SteamOS on other devices: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2BB3#testingsteamos https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1B71-EDF2-EB6D-2B...
- npteljes 1y agoThis is great. The more players are on this, the more visible this effort is, the more the bugs will get fixed and developers incentivized to support SteamOS. Valve is in a real position to dethrone Windows as the de-facto PC platform. Such an excellent company for user value.
- thefz 1y ago> Valve takes another step toward making SteamOS a true Windows competitor Oh, ok > Valve still hasn't said whether its long-term plan is to offer a "generic" version of SteamOS that can be installed on any PC hardware, a la the original release of SteamOS back in the early 2010s, or if it will just offer the software directly to PC makers. So what is this article about then
- CodeArtisan 1y agoUntil valve find a solution to the anti cheat problem, gamers will stay on Windows.