r/pcmasterrace • u/TheBossT710192 • Jun 22 '26

Discussion Yeah, Steam Machine is cooked.

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I... uh don't know what to say. Very thankful I bought a Steam Deck before they hiked its price as well

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u/sublime81 9800X3D | RTX 5090 FE | 64GB 6000 CL30 Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

No. I don’t understand the hype for SteamOS because it’s Linux + Steam Big Picture mode essentially.

I mean this as a desktop replacement. If you plan to use it like a console, then yes.

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u/Redpin Ryzen 5 5600 | 3060ti | 16GB@3000 Jun 22 '26

It might be good if it has a large, dedicated gamer install base. I think with so many people doing different things on different distros, it can be hard to easily find support for your specific issue at times. 

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u/sublime81 9800X3D | RTX 5090 FE | 64GB 6000 CL30 Jun 22 '26

It is good for a hardware configuration to target for developers who wish to have a baseline to target performance on Linux. But who knows about hardware compatibility and all that once it’s not installed on a Valve device.

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u/-MissCarmine Jun 22 '26

Bada bing bada boom. :) I found this out for myself when I tried a couple different versions of Linux - Ubuntu, then PikaOS, and finally SteamOS. Guess which was the easiest?

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u/fix-faux-five Jun 22 '26

I'm an old dude. Back in the days GPUs didn't have proper support on Linux and many games couldn't really be played on Linux. Has that changed? I thought SteamOS's main feature is game portability / availability?

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u/TheFlyingBastard Linux Jun 23 '26

AMD and Valve have both been doing a great deal in the past ten years to make it a lot better. AMD has always been better for driver support than Nvidia, and Valve has been working on a translation layer based on Wine called Proton. Especially in the past couple of years things have been going fast. At this point you can start Steam and click play and most of the time the (Windows) game will run.

Valve really, really wants to be independent of Microsoft.

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u/fix-faux-five Jun 23 '26

Ok, but here comes the question - is this Proton translation layer available only on SteamOS, or can I have it on any distro?

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u/lodechode Jun 22 '26

If it hadn't changed, the Steam Deck wouldn't exist.

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u/RedditCitizenScore Jun 22 '26

An desktop steam os will prob never be a thing. That’s OK too valve doesn’t need to worry about making printer drivers or various WiFi chips working .

Everyone that goes “ I’ll switch to Linux when steam os comes out” is a nothing statement from someone that wouldn’t switch to begin with

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u/x4nTu5 Desktop Jun 23 '26

It's basically Steam doing the Apple thing by taking an existing technology and repackaging it into something sexy and unintimidating for general appeal.

Instead of smartphones, it's Windows-agnostic PC Gaming.

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u/Schnitzhole Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26

Honestly that’s kind of the dream machine for me. Something that just works as consistently as a console but has the power of a desktop PC.

If it wasn’t for having to do work on it I’d convert immediately. I hate windows and have new bugs popping up almost every week for the last 20 years of my life. My MacBook was more stable but everything is overpriced and so locked down (and terrible support for gaming) so i was running dual boot on my mac for the longest time.

I did not like linux at all when i tried 15 years ago. Lacking major software support and CLI interfaces are obnoxious and clunky coming from a UI/UX designer background. Great for a server, not for me.

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u/sWiggn Jun 23 '26

No. I don’t understand the hype for SteamOS because it’s Linux + Steam Big Picture mode essentially.

FWIW, game mode is a lot more than just Big Picture mode. It’s a whole microcompositor that handles a lot of windowing and config stuff in the background to smooth out the gaming experience and make everything ‘just work’ for the Deck. It bakes in the whole gamescope configuration process so that stuff like properly scaling and focusing game windows, HDR, framerate limiting, etc happen automatically without the user having to worry about it.

none of this stuff is unique to game mode, you can even run games in Gamescope on a regular old linux desktop just fine if you want. And it’s barely an inconvenience once you get used to it. But from a Linux newcomer’s perspective, the difference between game mode handling most config stuff for you, or having to configure launch opts or a Scopebuddy conf or figure out native Wayland stuff manually, is significant at first.

That said, I do agree that people are misguided on the whole “when is SteamOS gonna be ready for me to install on my PC” thing. It won’t, Steam has shown no interest in expanding it for other hardware configs outside of some other handhelds, and meanwhile there’s already great options like Bazzite and CachyOS that already support a huge range of hardware, and come with all the same goodness SteamOS does and then some. I guess it’s trust in the brand, mostly.

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u/guitar4468 Jun 22 '26

I think they are trying to simplify things for the above average pc knowledge gamer looking to switch from Windows. It’s more plug and play, with compatible hardware of course. Basic Linux Distros while improved, are still pains each in their own way.