Valve has underlined how it’s improving SteamOS to allow gamers to make their own version of the Steam Machine should they wish, which is already prompting some excited chatter on Reddit about abandoning Windows 11.
The Verge reports that Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais (an engineer who often gives interviews) made it clear that the company is busy “rolling out improvements to [SteamOS] so it’s more compatible with desktop hardware” and also “collaborating with Nvidia very closely” on ensuring better compatibility with Team Green’s GPUs.
Before you get too excited, though, the caveat that Griffais attached is that Nvidia support isn’t coming anytime soon – meaning not this year – but that it’s “certainly something that we’re working on in the background”.
Valve just released SteamOS 3.8 which prepared the ground for the new Steam Machine, arriving with some key changes to ensure a better experience with Intel CPUs, as well as Nvidia GPUs (or indeed all discrete graphics cards, which will benefit from “greatly improved video memory management”).
The introduction of KDE Plasma version 6.4.3 with Wayland support is important, too, very much upping the desktop game and bringing in better support for external displays and VRR in SteamOS, among other boons.
In short, with SteamOS 3.8, Griffais notes that “you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want.”
All of which is paving the way for more PC gamers who are fed up with Windows 11 and Microsoft to make the switch over to SteamOS as an alternative operating system (especially those who aren’t running an AMD-powered system).
Despite it being still relatively early days in this effort (as noted regarding the work with Nvidia GPUs), some gamers are already happily declaring that they’re ready to ditch Microsoft’s platform for SteamOS.
One Redditor tells us: “Decided to go all in and wipe my main 2TB drive and install this [SteamOS]. Just got it installed and tried a couple games, working very well so far. Going to make myself stick with it instead of slithering back to Windows.”
Here’s another gamer who says: “The minute SteamOS gets Nvidia support, there is going to be a large mass exodus of users in the gaming space off of Windows.”
In a similar vein, a further Reddit thread informs us: “I found that some of my Steam games which played fine on Windows 10, actually played far worse on Windows 11. I decided to switch back to Linux Mint and give Steam another go on that after having tried it a few years ago, and to my surprise, those games all worked great now. So I’ve stuck with Mint and every game I have in my Steam library runs well without issue. Value has really been doing a great job of bringing gaming to Linux.”
And in that same thread, a Redditor observes: ” The instant this [SteamOS] becomes stable with driver[s], I’m jumping out [of] Windows.” (Not literally).
Analysis: Steamy Windows
It appears this is prompting more than a few gamers to reconsider their position with Windows 11, but we clearly shouldn’t get carried away yet. SteamOS has a long road ahead of it as a rival to Windows 11, as it remains very much a niche proposition, but clearly Valve is pushing hard to make it a much more compelling alternative.
The good thing is that even if you don’t intend to go near the Steam Machine – and you believe it’s well overpriced, as many do (thanks to the memory crisis) – the launch of the device could still benefit you, as SteamOS continues to take strides forward. As Valve observes, you can just build your own Steam Machine-style PC, or to avoid the RAM crisis price hikes, simply repurpose an existing rig you have (perhaps with a choice upgrade or two grabbed in a sale).
With notable strides being taken here – and some progress being made in terms of getting anti-cheat games to run, too, in certain cases, although there’s still plenty of work to be done here – we can be hopeful that SteamOS adoption could be accelerated considerably.
However, Windows 11 remains dominant by a long, long way in the PC gaming world, although SteamOS gaining traction could worry Microsoft for the longer-term, and prompt further efforts to make Windows 11 better for gamers – which again would be a win, albeit an indirect one.
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