A few months ago, it was announced that Lenovo was pushing its way
into the handheld gaming-PC market with the release of its 'Legion Go'
device. Essentially a 'SteamDeck' clone, its biggest difference was
that it ran Windows 11 rather than SteamOS. This allowed it to run a
wide range of apps and games, but on the other hand... Windows 11,
amirite?

But recent reports show that the Legion Go is getting a refresh, and
will be offered (as an option) with pre-installed SteamOS, bringing
the device closer to Valve's own platform.

Now, personally I couldn't give a damn about the Legion GO... or
SteamDeck, for that matter. I just don't really have an interest in
handheld PCs, except as a nifty gimmick/toy. I barely can stand to use
a laptop. When I computer, I want BIG screens, BIG monitors, and BIG
power. I want sound that can shake the windows, more on-hand storage
than Google, and more hardware peripherals than... erm, something that
has a lot of hardware peripherals (sorry, ran out of steam there at
the end with my comparisons).

A handheld -or laptop- gives me none of these things. But I am excited
about that SteamOS thing. Because Legion Go is the first third-party
OEM to use it since the ill-fated SteamMachines debacle of ten years
ago, and the first to use the modern SteamOS-with-Proton that has
proven to be amazingly (even if nowhere near perfectly) capable of
playing most games.

I don't want a portable device with SteamOS; I want a desktop running
it!

Now, technically, you /can/ run SteamOS on your desktop today; if not
the official version, then near-clones of the OS like Bazzite and
others. The problem is, these distros are all very AMD biased, with
poor support for Nvidia. This isn't entirely the fault of the distros
--or SteamOS, for that matter-- as Nvidia has been extremely petty
with open-sourcing its drivers. GeForce support has been a rough spot
for all Linux distros. But if SteamOS starts getting wider-spread
adoption, the hope is that Nvidia might be forced to reconsider its
policy.

[It's not so much that you can't run SteamOS/Bazzite/clones
on Nvidia hardware, but all the advantages of doing so
--especially regarding Proton support-- are largely limited
to AMD GPUs. If you use a SteamOS/clone on the desktop with
Nvidia, you're just getting a sub-par Linux desktop]

And that's my biggest take-away from the Lenovo announcement: that one
day we might see SteamOS actually become something that runs on a
wide-range of commodity PC hardware, and not just the tiny subset it
runs on today. Like many, the primary reason I still use Windows at
all is because it's the platform for gaming on PCs. I'd happily switch
over entirely to Linux if it were a better option. I think a lot of
people would too. But right now it's Nvidia's recalcitrance that is
hampering that change. Maybe if more OEMs like Lenovo start pushing
SteamOS, the pressure from customers and OEMs will finally make Nvidia
change its tune.

Am 10.01.25 um 18:45 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
> Now, technically, you/can/ run SteamOS on your desktop today; if not
> the official version, then near-clones of the OS like Bazzite and
> others. The problem is, these distros are all very AMD biased, with
> poor support for Nvidia. This isn't entirely the fault of the distros
> --or SteamOS, for that matter-- as Nvidia has been extremely petty
> with open-sourcing its drivers. GeForce support has been a rough spot
> for all Linux distros. But if SteamOS starts getting wider-spread
> adoption, the hope is that Nvidia might be forced to reconsider its
> policy.
Basically you just need to run any linux distro which supports your
hardware really well in wayland and push steam in big picture mode on
top of it.

SteamOS is basically just like that, it is a stripped down linux driver
wise which runs steam on top and uses proton (which comes with any steam
linux installation anyway) in wayland!
The funny side is that you even have to switch to desktop mode to add
third party games to your steam lib, Valve still has not added this
feature yet to the big picture mode!

What I described is basically just what those third party "Steamos like"
distros do they just integrate the ideas and the puzzle pieces valve has
layed out themseves instead of letting Valve doing it!

As for steamos, many expect a revival of the idea of Steam machines next
year and also a new model of the steam controller. I am really looking
forward to both, especially the next Steam Controller, because Valve
really has ironed out the deficits the first model had. As for a new
Steam machine, it just will be some kind of generic embedded AMD based
pc running steamos on top, nothing you cannot do with standard hardware
already! But I guess this time they might be more successfull, they
already have an established user base by the Steam deck and Steamos is
nowadays miles better than it was with the first iteration, also small
formfactor pcs are way cheaper now and also way more powerful!