Fair point. But even so I think SteamOS has the most viable potential to achieve something like a 5-10% adoption rate that could get entities like nVidia to pay more attention.
Steam apparently has about 130 million monthly active users and about 70 million daily active users. About half the planet has a computer at home. So, Steam users are somewhere between say 2% and 10% of the world’s active PC users.
If someone is a daily active steam user, they spend a lot of time on the computer. If they have to make sure their drivers are up to date and their frame rate is high enough to support their games, they’ve probably developed a bit of knowledge about the system. My guess is that people who play Steam games tend to be the tech support people for their friends and family more often than not.
So, it’s a small group, but it’s an influential group. If enough of that group becomes comfortable with SteamOS, they may be comfortable setting it up (or a variant of it) for a friend or family member, even if that friend or family member only uses their computer to watch videos, check emails, etc. In a world where Windows was free and just worked, that might not happen. But, in this world Windows 10 is about to lose support, and Microsoft is suggesting that if your computer can’t run Windows 11 you should just throw it away and upgrade. In that world, more people might end up switching to Linux.
Maybe. I just mean once(if) there becomes an OS that reliably runs Steam and the games on Steam, there will be a viable alternative to Windows for a significant population of users.
I think once Valve polishes SteamOS for desktop environments there will be actual largescale migration.
Will ValveOS be useful for anything besides playing games?
If it is useful at only playing games I think it will be a popular option nonetheless.
Sure, lots of people mainly use their computers for games, but I would think even they would demand at least a web browser and/or social media apps.
I thought the holdup was the graphics drivers (Nvidia mostly) not the de. Normal desktop mode with KDE works fine on my steamdeck.
Fair point. But even so I think SteamOS has the most viable potential to achieve something like a 5-10% adoption rate that could get entities like nVidia to pay more attention.
Lol can’t disagree with you there, they just need to release it already!
Only a small fraction of people use Steam so I don’t see that happening.
Steam apparently has about 130 million monthly active users and about 70 million daily active users. About half the planet has a computer at home. So, Steam users are somewhere between say 2% and 10% of the world’s active PC users.
If someone is a daily active steam user, they spend a lot of time on the computer. If they have to make sure their drivers are up to date and their frame rate is high enough to support their games, they’ve probably developed a bit of knowledge about the system. My guess is that people who play Steam games tend to be the tech support people for their friends and family more often than not.
So, it’s a small group, but it’s an influential group. If enough of that group becomes comfortable with SteamOS, they may be comfortable setting it up (or a variant of it) for a friend or family member, even if that friend or family member only uses their computer to watch videos, check emails, etc. In a world where Windows was free and just worked, that might not happen. But, in this world Windows 10 is about to lose support, and Microsoft is suggesting that if your computer can’t run Windows 11 you should just throw it away and upgrade. In that world, more people might end up switching to Linux.
Maybe. I just mean once(if) there becomes an OS that reliably runs Steam and the games on Steam, there will be a viable alternative to Windows for a significant population of users.