Making an OS easy to use in everyday life is the key to mass adoption. If the EU wants to get away from Microsoft’s garden, that means advertising valid options to people who aren’t attuned to Linux.
Money isn’t the issue for SteamOS, it is awareness and making it available as an pre-installed option on consumer PCs. The EU could create standardized pamphlets about Fedora, Red Hat, and SteamOS, mandating stores to present that digestable information to consumers so that they know what flavor is best for their usecase.
I don’t see any reason to have SteamOS preinstalled on anything other than a Steam Deck or Steam Machine. Valve is only motivated to ship what it needs to run games, it has no motivation to make a general purpose OS.
That’s why projects like Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE have value, they are motivated to make a general purpose OS. The difference between those and Steam OS for running Steam games is minimal, and the overall experience on those distributions will be better.
There IS reason for preinstallation, there are many people out there who lack the passion to research Linux, and would gravitate towards the familiar - Steam, in the case of gamers. The point is to make a switch away from Windows as unproblematic for as many people as possible. Also, Valve is developing a desktop version of Arch SteamOS.
Making an OS easy to use in everyday life is the key to mass adoption. If the EU wants to get away from Microsoft’s garden, that means advertising valid options to people who aren’t attuned to Linux.
Money isn’t the issue for SteamOS, it is awareness and making it available as an pre-installed option on consumer PCs. The EU could create standardized pamphlets about Fedora, Red Hat, and SteamOS, mandating stores to present that digestable information to consumers so that they know what flavor is best for their usecase.
I don’t see any reason to have SteamOS preinstalled on anything other than a Steam Deck or Steam Machine. Valve is only motivated to ship what it needs to run games, it has no motivation to make a general purpose OS.
That’s why projects like Fedora, Debian, and openSUSE have value, they are motivated to make a general purpose OS. The difference between those and Steam OS for running Steam games is minimal, and the overall experience on those distributions will be better.
There IS reason for preinstallation, there are many people out there who lack the passion to research Linux, and would gravitate towards the familiar - Steam, in the case of gamers. The point is to make a switch away from Windows as unproblematic for as many people as possible. Also, Valve is developing a desktop version of Arch SteamOS.
That project already exists for those than want it: Bazzite and Nobara. Both of those are about as simple as you can get to get up and gaming.