I made this topic because I don't know if it belongs in it's own topic or in the Steam Machine topic. It has important details that I think are completely separate. Yes Steam Machines run on SteamOS but this is for SteamOS only.

Another detail that caught my attention yesterday was regarding SteamOS. Ever since the rumors showed up right till the announcement there was lots of speculation what the OS would be. An Ubuntu that boots up into BPM? Custom made distro? Would I have to use Steam or it isn't mandatory at all?

In the announcment Valve said you can do whatever you want with the software (and hardware), so I assumed it would have a desktop environment and if there were Linux versions I could install Origin, Uplay, Battlenet etc on it. The OS could be a good neutral ground for devs who don't want middlemen. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/128078-Notch-SteamOS-is-Saving-the-Entire-Gaming-World, http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/09/25/ken-levine-steamos-is-a-brave-and-powerful-idea/ and http://timothylottes.blogspot.hu/2013/09/steamos.html certainly seemed excited.

So, when reading the http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/04/valve-steam-machine-hands-on/article I was disappointed in how limited the OS actually sounds:

Of course this might not be final yet and there's still a beta period, but right now I dunno. Maybe it wasn't realistic to expect a small team to maintain, support a full-blown OS.

The source where I got it from is NeoGAF. VALVe said SteamOS will be open source but it looks like it wont be as open source as Linux is. VALVe really knows how to separate the gaming community :/. I hope it fails badly. SteamOS is as open source as TiVo.

Looks like SteamOS won't really be a big hit for VALVe because most gamers wont care about this only enthusiasts from what I am seeing what SteamOS does I do not care to use it Windows for life for me. SteamOS sounds extremely limited.

Any thoughts?

Valve had the opportunity to do something really awesome and chose not to.

Well, I'm back to hating them, I guess.

Steam OS gaming centric only? Say it ain't so!

Actually, isn't it the whole point of the OS? Raise of hand of how many here have ever wanted to strip down Windows to bare bone components for gaming only?

As much as I despise Valve I think a lot of this is going to be wait and see.The "steam box" comes across as little more than a branded unit which you could install Windows on, essentially paying for a label.The OS? Too early to say. Just sounds like a company pissed at Microsoft and trying to split the market though. Makes sense, companies like money and it would fit Valve's prior behaviour.Far to early to say for sure though. As long as it's not mandatory then there's little reason to restrict choice of OS, it's just coming across as a branded flavour of Linux more than anything.

I thought Steam was supposed to fail because of online DRM too? Fact is Steam just keeps growing.. and Ive no reason to believe it doesnt grow even faster when SteamBox is out. Just drop it guys, Steam cant fail.. PC market is huge and Valve is gonna hit that like a one ton truck.

This is all because of Microsoft and their damn Windows store. Gabe Newell is pissed off that Microsoft siphons money from Steam. Even though I don't think anyone really uses the Windows store. I wish Microsoft got rid of the Windows store Microsoft should be earning money only from copies of Windows sold. The PC community is gonna get so fragmented in a few years if Gabe Newell and Microsoft fight each other LOL. I just wish Microsoft would patch the Windows store out.

I see why console gamers like playing on consoles only they don't really have to worry about all the crap we PC gamers worry about LOL.

Sigh. Whatever.

No one is saying Steam is gonna die or for Steam to die it's about the fragmentation in the PC community that's happening.

Yeah. If someone want to replace Windows there are loads of options, such as http://www.linuxmint.com/, and they will be able to run any game SteamOS can. Valve is making a specialised operating system to fill a niche that nothing else does.

I'm not sure that's the only reason. There have been rumbles for at least five years that Valve was going to do something like this. The Windows store might have given them that last little push, but they were going to move ahead with something like this regardless. I don't think they view the store as much of a threat as it functions now. It's far too clunky and cumbersome and annoying to be enticing to people. More likely, they've got Apple envy.

I didn't think Steamboxes and SteamOS were really intended to replace your PC, the idea was just to bring Steam into your living room.

Edit: And to be honest, I would guess only the tiniest fraction of PC gamers would ever even consider replacing their PC with a Steambox, Valve certainly knows that. For PC gamers, it seems more like it is intended to be supplemental to their main rig.

As I recall, they were more concerned about the move towards closing things off and making a bottleneck to innovation by having tight controls over everything (meaning that anyone who wants to do anything having to go through Microsoft).

I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzn6E2m3otg sheds a bit of light on Newell's mental workings.

Pretty much this. I'm really disappointed in what they're doing.

As opposed to anyone who wants to do anything having to go through Valve?

Not sure I understand...isn't this what we were expecting? If you want a full-on PC OS there are plenty of Linux distros to use...there's no point in making another one. The whole idea behind SteamOS is to create a simple, console-like experience that runs on any PC hardware. That's what they did. It's intended for use in a living room setting plugged into a TV...not as a desktop OS. Controller rather than keyboard + mouse.

Also, from what I understand the idea isn't just to run Big Picture Mode (not in its current form, at least). Valve has already mentioned adding streaming media clients and other multimedia functionality as well as game streaming from another computer. Am I missing something or is none of this news?

Did somebody think that?

Kind of my thoughts.

Personally, I might be moderately intrigued to check this out once it's released. Obviously it's designed with Big Picture Mode in mind, but I don't see that it wouldn't work plugged into a computer monitor either. I would imagine that a dedicated OS for gaming could possibly give a slight bump in performance, and if you're running a game designed with SteamOS in mind, it could help with the compatability issues that are kind of the bread and butter of the PC gaming experience.

So I could see some merit in installing it to dual-boot on my current PC as an option (assuming that would work, of course. ie, booting the PC up for "gaming mode" or into Windows, depending on what I'm using it for at the time.)

Software's not really my specialty so I could be wrong on all of those fronts of course.

But yeah - it appears it's going to be what they said it was going to be. My own knowledge of how operating systems function in the first place notwithstanding, it seems to be pretty much what I thought it would be.

The Source code will be avaible though. Someone will probably make a desktop enviroment for it.

Hmm, they asked for it.. Everyone complained how hard PC is to build etc. Now you dont need to. Consumer would rather buy it, plug it in and play, now you can. All games and programs are available easily from Steam, like Virus Protection. If anything it makes PC-community more whole. Thats the main point of what Im trying to get through here.. PC-market is scattered, Steam is gonna be the one who unite PC-gamers. Thats why fail is impossible. Sony and MS decided to make own pond to play, Valve went straight to the sea.

Just you guys understand it.. SteamOS gets better over time.

Except no has to unless they want to use the Steam service. SteamOS is a living room-focused Linux distribution; much of it will be open source (the interface may not be -we'll have to see- but the vast majority of underlying stuff will be open), and therefore hackable. What's more, you don't even have to use SteamOS: anything that runs on it will run on any other Linux distro.

Sure, they are pushing their Steam client and related services as part of it, but it will have a flow on effect by 1) getting developers used to Linux, and 2) increasing the demand for Linux-native games.

Or you could use another distro for your primary OS and have SteamOS (and Windows) as virtual machines to start up whenever you feel like it .

Running SteamOS, to get better performance in games, on a virtual machine, sounds a bit counter-intuitive, don't you think?

Is late, and it was a tiring day .

Valve will be placed as the primary source of distribution for any Linux ported games. By examining their past we can predict what happens at that point.

Developers who produce Linux based games, in order to get access to that distribution, will 'choose' to include SteamOS in the activation process, so no matter what Linux you use or how you purchase the game you will need SteamOS too. Eventually, to gain access to the even larger distribution that their previous 'choice' has created, developers who produce Linux ports will start 'choosing' to have their software not only activate through SteamOS, but refuse to run if it is not present.

This would sound like the paranoid fantasy that Steam fans will call it...if it were not exactly what Valve has done with Steam.

Alright, so...

There's 3 threads on here with Steam at least as a tertiary topic. I understand keeping "on topic" in these cases is a tad muddy.

But we do already have a long-running topic specifically for discussing DRM as well as how it pertains to Steam. So talk of that likely belongs in that thread and not here.

LOL...once again, in predicting what Valve will do with their next product we are told not to consider what they did with their last one.

Is what they did with their last product really so terrible that we should not look? Oh, yeah, actually it is. I see why some people wouldn't want us to go there.