I won’t be getting one (because I don’t need one right now) but I’m hyped for 2 reasons.
First is getting a company to come out with an official Linux gaming OS. Not because I want some kind of a corporate OS-s but because bigger game developers have a reason to target Linux as they will see there’s not only a market but a supported market.
And the second is standardized hardware for a Linux platform. It will make game development easier because you can target specific hardware and (together with the previous point) specific OS to make games for Linux. I can’t find the link anymore but a developer once said that the majority of their bug reports came from Linux while Linux was also the smallest platform they supported and most of the probably comes from the fact that you can have so many combinations of hardware and software that offering Linux support costs more than offering Windows support. If that can be reduced to specific hardware and specific OS that would give more of an incentive for developers to try out supporting Linux (even if it’s only SteamOS on a Steam Machine).
I don’t care what Steam Machines and SteamOS can do when they release, I care what they can do 5-10 years down the line. It’s all about getting the ball rolling and once it’s rolling it’ll get to the destination, making gaming on Linux as good as it is on Windows, on its own. I know, I know, gaming on Linux is already pretty good. But gaming on Linux is still dependent on Windows and if MS wants they can screw proton over (for example making UWP mandatory) so getting native games on Linux should still be a goal. And there’s also the lack of official support from other companies in the gaming space. The most obvious is most popular online games not working on Linux due to anti-cheat but there’s also the fact that some more niche peripherals are hard to use due to no official drivers. It took some tinkering to get my Thrustmaster steering wheel to run, which instantly is a no-go for the average gamer. We’re like 90% of the way there to make Linux a great platform for gaming but that last 10% is going to require collective effort to achieve and that’s really difficult to achieve.
I won’t be getting one (because I don’t need one right now) but I’m hyped for 2 reasons.
First is getting a company to come out with an official Linux gaming OS. Not because I want some kind of a corporate OS-s but because bigger game developers have a reason to target Linux as they will see there’s not only a market but a supported market.
And the second is standardized hardware for a Linux platform. It will make game development easier because you can target specific hardware and (together with the previous point) specific OS to make games for Linux. I can’t find the link anymore but a developer once said that the majority of their bug reports came from Linux while Linux was also the smallest platform they supported and most of the probably comes from the fact that you can have so many combinations of hardware and software that offering Linux support costs more than offering Windows support. If that can be reduced to specific hardware and specific OS that would give more of an incentive for developers to try out supporting Linux (even if it’s only SteamOS on a Steam Machine).
I don’t care what Steam Machines and SteamOS can do when they release, I care what they can do 5-10 years down the line. It’s all about getting the ball rolling and once it’s rolling it’ll get to the destination, making gaming on Linux as good as it is on Windows, on its own. I know, I know, gaming on Linux is already pretty good. But gaming on Linux is still dependent on Windows and if MS wants they can screw proton over (for example making UWP mandatory) so getting native games on Linux should still be a goal. And there’s also the lack of official support from other companies in the gaming space. The most obvious is most popular online games not working on Linux due to anti-cheat but there’s also the fact that some more niche peripherals are hard to use due to no official drivers. It took some tinkering to get my Thrustmaster steering wheel to run, which instantly is a no-go for the average gamer. We’re like 90% of the way there to make Linux a great platform for gaming but that last 10% is going to require collective effort to achieve and that’s really difficult to achieve.