Comment on Valve Announces New Steam Machine, Steam Controller & Steam Frame
utopiah@lemmy.world 1 day agoFWIW been using SteamOS on the SteamDeck for ~3 years now and from gaming to tinkering, no major problems. Never had to tinker hard or re-install. A couple of time it didn’t suspend properly or I had to hold power button of to force a shutdown but that’s about it.
I doubt Valve would back of from the openness because that’s their one single advantage.
tb_@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not on the short term, but who knows. If SteamOS becomes a major player in the PC space, at a post-GabeN Valve–
But that will take many more years, if ever it does happen. I do think it is a legitimate reason to be somewhat cautious.
utopiah@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Right, better be safe than sorry. The important point though IMHO that with Proton and now FEX they have shown that compatibility layers are not that costly or complex :
So… I don’t want to diminish how amazing that is, technically speaking, but we now all know it’s feasible. Initially it looks like supporting an entire OS architecture was ridiculous (and it was, emulation was just “good enough” for games that were some years old and for much more powerful machine) until somebody tried “just” swapping or fixing the right API (i.e. DirectX) and … that was actually OK.
Again, it’s a TON of work. A lot of it also comes from Wine. But… now we now why it works and how to do that. Even if Valve were to lock SteamOS, that knowledge wouldn’t be lost on the broader community.
tb_@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I have a reasonable amount of faith in Valve. I think their rising tide lifts Linux as a whole, so that’s good.
utopiah@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Me too, they just keep on investing in interrop and I’m all for that.