Handheld PC makers are slowly losing touch with Valve's successful Steam Deck template of affordability, and that's very concerning
Stop pricing gamers out
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If only there was something to be done to slash the price while not losing anything important like using an OS that is FREE... But alas, there's no such thing, I guess we'll have to stick with windows, adding the license price to a hardware that is already expensive...
Technically the OS isn't free: Valve pays a team of developers to maintain the SteamOS and also donates money to Arch and Ubuntu foundations as well as to the Proton and Wine dev teams as well as contributes code to the linux kernel. All costing them money, that they eat but could easily find a way to charge the end user
I mean... bazzite? ChimeraOS? You don't need to go to steamOS to find a free linux distro that works well with games. Hell, you could even customize one based on any of those so you don't have to pay for a windows license for your products.
Both of those heavily rely on Wine and especially Proton, which is funded by significant donations from Valve software, so you are arguing a trivial cost versus a subsidized cost.
So, instead of paying to license widows in your device, pay to support a system that ditches windows so you can stop relying on it and reduce costs of your products?
Every other company is free to sponsor FOSS development too. You're saying that like Microsoft and Windows aren't already a defacto monopoly. Charge a FOSS contribution fee instead of the Windows license, done, Linux development sponsored by the manufacturers is solved and they too get to not get steamrolled by Microsoft.
Technically the OS isn't free
And practically, that doesn't matter. Valve isn't charging anyone a licensing fee for the software they've developed, so as far as the cost of the device goes SteamOS is free. Just because they could charge for it doesn't change that.
All it would take is for GabeN to die and a corporate takeover for Valve to change their tune. They are a corporation pursuing profit, not some fucking benevolent NGO, so stop idolizing them.
A lot of it is FOSS so no, they can't take it back even if GabeN dies and a hostile takeover happens. They can stop giving out updates, which would be disappointing but far from the end of it.
They might not be benevolent, they're still a major breath of fresh air compared to basically every other gaming company out there.
Where do you get that I'm "idolizing them" from my post? Whatever Valve pays to get this development done, it's not pushing up the price of a device that runs Linux/Proton vs one that runs Windows, because Linux/Proton/etc don't attract a licensing fee, while Windows does. That's just objective fact. Meanwhile you're over here speculating your tits off about stuff that might happen, so you can yell at me. The fuck did I say to warrant this aggressive bullshit from you?
I was rhetorically speaking, so if you feel targeted, it's you projecting some sort of guilt, home slice.
If GabeN is any sort of decent leader, he should be planning for retirement/death/etc.
A basic lesson of leadership is to start training your replacement ASAP and ensuring that things will run smoothly without you.
Any device that come with SteamOS by default, is a device that doesn't come with both Windows and Xbox game store by default. Basically Valve isn't paying for the OS, it's paying for devices that run Steam Store by default (instead direct, unfair, competition from Microsoft)
Can Windows PC come by default with Steam Store? Of course... if Microsoft allow them to.
The only part they could realistically charge for is the Steam store access. Everything else is open source and portable
Do you pay to download it?
Do you need to pay for a license to use it?
If not, it's free.
Tip: (F)OSS aint free. The devs working on those programs also donate their time to the project
Steam has the steam store to recoup this cost. This is the same model MS and Sony follows to sell the hardware at or below mfg price.
But MSI, Asus and others don't have their own platform, so they have to sell for more to maintain their bottom line.
If they ditch windows, their products can cost less without reducing profits, selling more units because of reduced price.
There is no reason for them to go with windows instead of linux if in neither case they are profitting from the OS.
Not only that, Windows machines need more raw CPU power to account for the increased overhead compared to Linux
MS could be offering marketing fund deals, I'm not privy to such business decisions. But even if we assume they don't, these manufacturers are in a clear disadvantage compared to Valve.
They won't be able to compete on price with the deck even if they go with linux.
Naturally they should choose linux IMO, but they not neccessarily have the same interests as me.
Who supports that?
At least Windows is only one plattform in comparison to the bazillion linux-distros.
Same issue devs face with consoles vs PCs.
Tell me you know don't jack about linux without telling me you don't know jack about linux in 25 words or less.
Well then: Clear it up.
I run headless debian VMs at home on a proxmox HV and another NUC with Debian that does Docker tasks.
My steckdeck runs the stock OS and am not scared to tinker within it.
Never assumed to be a pro and would consider an amateur at best that isnt scared to tinker.
It's just that I prefer convenience most of the time.
So then. These are my cards. Explain what I learned wrong about the fractured linux ecosystem.
So far I know that Arch, Debian and RHEL the biggest distro families are.
Edit: Very helpful. Downvoting instead of telling me where I am wrong.
(Yes my comment was provocative but @AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works should just tell where I am wrong if they are so sure of themselve).
The other answer from @Natanael@infosec.pub tells you that now
Noticed and will be reading now.
Steam on Linux defaults to providing a container based standard Linux environment which is independent of the underlying OS, providing access to all the expected software libraries and OS calls that games need to run.
This is integrated into SteamOS. It's also available via Steam on any other Linux distro. (And if you wanted to you could cut that part out and run it without Steam.)
When running Windows games it even runs Proton within this container environment.
That gives you a single very predictable and version controlled software environment.
Meanwhile Windows randomly deprecates stuff that somebody might have invested tons of development effort into (silverlight, mixed reality, etc)
When talking about a container environment you are talking about WINE, arent you?
But if we are talking about native developed games, how would that look?
That sounds to me like 1st priority-development will be continued using Windows as a base + DirectX and reliance that WINE will somewhat manage that.
How would native Linux look for game devs in terms of platform targeting?
No, Wine (and Proton) is a compatibility layer (API translation, etc). Containers is an isolation method which hides the details of the OS from the software and gives it a standardized environment.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime
No matter what Linux distribution you run Steam on, the only thing you need to do is to get the container system up and running. Once that runs, all software that runs in these containers will run on that device.
So something akin to flatpak/snap?
Isnt that the purpose and source of controversy vs distributing them the usual way of repositories?
Edit: Had some time to read the README.
Very interesting. But that sounds, like a vendor lock-in. Essentially devs are forced to use the Steam SDK to make it executable on Linux or face the issue of checking the compatibility of every distro, no?
No, the container environment uses default open source libraries. You don't add any Steam dependencies to make software run in that environment. You can run it without Steam too. It's just that Valve are the ones maintaining and updating this particular packaging of containers. When Valve releases new versions of their container (including updated default system libraries), you have to test compatibility with it or stick to using an older one. Similar to how Windows software versions would work best with different Proton versions.
You can use the Steam SDK when using it, and you can also choose not to.
Flatpack is a separate thing, which only handles Linux software within the regular desktop environment (a different method for packing software dependencies, managing system permissions, etc). The main difference is that Flatpack software can integrate with the regular Linux desktop environment, but the container based solution is fully separate from it (runs in gaming mode).
Sounds interesting and eases my concern about the dependency on large corporations.
PS: What I meant by comparing Flatpack with the packaging from the SteamSDK is the general idea behind it (e.g. containerizing and isolating from the OS).
You don't need to use Steam to run games though...?
So what if Steam stops development of the SDK or turns evil?
What other choices do devs have if they want to keep their systems compatible with all distros?
It looks to me as if you can either rely on proton/WINE or be stuck with the SDK if you run native.
Proton often works better than native Linux versions of the same game.
Just use Proton. Seriously, if you haven't gamed on Linux in a long time, it's mind blowing how well it works.
Like I mentioned: I am gaming quite a bit (lately more on it than on my regular PC) on my SteamDeck.
You might want to catch up on a decade or so of Linux gaming progress before wading into a conversation about it with controversial takes...
Why?
A discussion can't happen.
And you don't really expect everyone to be knowledgeable about every 500 aspects of every OS that can execute a program, do you?
If I was invited to a discussion round, I will obviously get myself up to date on the essentials.
But I already do sysadmin stuff at work, configuring multiple systems, administrating my home stuff the best I can.
I really don't have the mental energy to keep up with an OS I currently only use as a server OS and as a (basically) gaming appliance.