Oh crap, i just installed some updates day or two ago for my W7, I hope Valve will speed up their linux OS so i can get rid of M$ trash
tl;dr version: If you're looking for a console-like experience, SteamOS works great. If you want a full-fledged desktop, you're better off using a different Linux distro
Full version: SteamOS already exists, has for a while now, as for whether it's ready for prime time, that part I'm not sure of. The last time I tried it, which was sometime very early this year I found the actual implementation of Steam Big Picture Mode to work quite well. If all I was looking to do was to use it like a console, then it was good to go back then, it worked great. What I didn't like was their desktop implementation. It used (likely still does) GNOME 3 by default, a desktop environment I don't particularly like (keep in mind that this is a personal preference, lots of people like GNOME 3 just fine) and the default selection of software available, while sufficient for most tasks, was rather minimal (as a long time Linux user, I'm used to having a billion choices for all standard desktop programs readily available at my fingertips out of the box). I couldn't install my beloved XFCE desktop because it wasn't in their official repos, so I had to add repos myself, then repos for other programs I wanted. Then I altered lines in config files to make sure SteamOS chose official SteamOS repos over the repos I installed myself, since there may have been some overlap and I wanted to make sure I didn't run into version mismatch problems (probably an unnecessary step, but a safeguard). It was at this point that the thought occurred to me: Why jump through hoops to get a desktop I like in SteamOS when I can just use Xubuntu and have a desktop I like out of the box and only do a little bit of tweaking to dial it in just so?
Anyway, I am curious to give it another shot, just to see how it has progressed in the half a year or so since I last tried it. I would expect their official repos are probably a lot more robust now, so there would be a lot less adding of 3rd part repos necessary. I'll likely install it on my laptop (which I barely use these days) to see how it's progressed, since I'd have to resize partitions to make room on my desktop to set it up in its own partition, and I'd rather not do that when I can just pop it on my laptop and then later replace it with a clean installation of another Linux distro (there is nothing much of value on my lappy, so I don't need to take careful care to avoid writing over home partitions or anything).
My own experiences with SteamOS (granted, a while ago) was that it worked quite well as a console OS. It booted straight into Steam Big Picture Mode and playing games was quick, easy, and seamless, just like you'd expect from a console. It had more or less the same limited computer functionality that modern consoles have, plus a little more, so compared to PS4 or XBone (yes, I still call it that, I refuse to change) or Wii U, it compares quite well. As a full fledged desktop, while it can be made to work, you're much better off just installing one of the other Linux distros of your choice in whatever variant you desire (one of the Ununtu, Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, etc.) and simply installing Steam. Whatever performance improvements Valve make to the Linux kernel to maximize game performance will always get backported into the kernels other popular Linux distros, such is the way of open source.
Hopefully Steam Machines officially coming out in a couple months further pushes publishers and developers to port existing games to Linux and, more importantly, develop for Linux from the get go, so that it become s a more viable gaming platform. It has made great strides since GabeN, our Lord and Saviour, has put his conductor hat on and started driving the Linux gaming train, but it's still far more limited than Windows in terms of choice.
Hmm not sure how i feel about that. Not that I use my PC for much more than gaming, internet, media player and occasional word/excel work but what is Steam Big picture mode?
when should enhanced edition be released? tempted to get it for some reasonable price
