German mag pcgameshardware (translation):

Following the excitement surrounding the surprise announcement of the Steam Deck OLED, which has now been officially released, more questions have been raised about the possible release of SteamOS for other systems. Several Valve developers commented on this topic to the website Gizmodo and said that SteamOS 3.x for other systems would be “at the top of the list”.

…

The developers also announced that the free operating system, which is based on Arch Linux, known for its timeliness, and the highly customizable desktop KDE Plasma, will be released first for other handheld PCs and only then for other systems such as desktop PCs and notebooks.

We’ll probably start by making it [SteamOS] available for other handhelds with a similar Gampad controller. And then beyond that, for any device.

- Lawrence Yang, Valve -

The background is basically self-evident, SteamOS in its current form is customized for handheld PCs in general and the Steam Deck in particular. Most of the work is on the drivers for hardware support, which is one of the reasons why Windows 11 is still struggling with handheld optimizations.

I think the biggest issue is driver support and making sure it works on every PC it lands on.

- Lawrence Yang, Valve -

Source (German): https://www.pcgameshardware.de/SteamOS-Software-258049/News/SteamOS-auf-anderen-Systemen-1434178/

  • iindigo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    There’s nothing special about a wee PC in a box, it’s literally just a more inconvenient gaming platform at that point for most.

    For those of us who are technically inclined, sure. We can toss together a custom PC with great bang for buck in our sleep or if strapped for time, find a semi-competent prebuilt on sale and fix whatever inadequacies it has in short order.

    For those outside that sphere however getting into PC gaming is more daunting than one might think. To them PCs are an unintelligible soup of acronyms, with the sheer number of price points, options, and manufacturer gimmicks/marketing being daunting and making it difficult to ascertain value. You see it all the time in peoples’ posts on Reddit and elsewhere asking about those things, and the ones who post are a small percentage of a much larger group.

    This doesn’t even get into how lately MS has been turning everything it touches in Windows to shit, which leaves an increasing number looking for alternative or how some newcomers to PC gaming get bitten by overpriced low-spec gaming PCs that perform far worse than their price would suggest.

    If Valve can manage to produce an SteamOS-based settop/desktop device that’s console-like but with the flexibility and freedom of a PC at a reasonable price point with a large library of games vetted to work, they’ll have a healthy market with this group.