For SteamOS to become the defacto OS for this form factor, they’ll need much more driver support across hardware configurations is my thinking. SteamOS has focused explicitly on the deck and they’ve done a great job with it. If they can extend this to other hardware configurations and convince other hardware manufacturers to go with SteamOS, I see an opportunity here for Valve, which frankly the size of which hasn’t existed since the earliest days of smart phones*. The windows experience that I’ve seen in this form factor is a joke (on top of how bad windows is just out of the box). Its night and day with SteamOS. However, what windows does have going for it is the driver support for all the wacky and wild hardware combinations companies are sticking in these handhelds. Its very much the wild west, which maybe puts Valve in a weaker position.
I would be interested to know how/if people are trying SteamOS on these other handhelds.
*In terms of the opportunity, I’m looking at ARM based chips like the M4, and seeing a direct path towards an actual, top tier or at least upper mid tier / next gen gaming experience coming from a handheld. The steamdeck sure AF ain’t that. But I see a technical path towards ‘something’ like that, where you have one of these hyper efficient ARM based chipsets in a handheld, and its performance competitive with some of the current (as in the meme this post is about) hardware like the mid to high tier (comparable to say a 4080). Like, before the deck, the only meaningful handheld with any market penetration was the switch, and that things so anemic, I think my toaster has a higher FPS. And the deck really isn’t even that great. The ROG ally is way better in terms of raw horse power, but the problem comes back to Windows. If you have to run windows on these things, its basically a non-starter, at least in terms of penetrability.
Oh, I get what you mean now. In an ideal world, hardware manufacturers would all contribute and write them like they do for Windows. We should strive for this type of first party support, and popularity might do the trick. Meawhile, I think it’s good enough that we have pretty wide support and growing.
I think it’s about convincing them Linux is not Valve’s the same way Windows is Microsoft’s, and most of the work is already done. Since we are talking about x86 hardware they can always support Windows too if the customer desires, not like we haven’t been doing this for years on laptops.
Why? They do contribute to the kernel driver, and I was under the impression it is polished?
For SteamOS to become the defacto OS for this form factor, they’ll need much more driver support across hardware configurations is my thinking. SteamOS has focused explicitly on the deck and they’ve done a great job with it. If they can extend this to other hardware configurations and convince other hardware manufacturers to go with SteamOS, I see an opportunity here for Valve, which frankly the size of which hasn’t existed since the earliest days of smart phones*. The windows experience that I’ve seen in this form factor is a joke (on top of how bad windows is just out of the box). Its night and day with SteamOS. However, what windows does have going for it is the driver support for all the wacky and wild hardware combinations companies are sticking in these handhelds. Its very much the wild west, which maybe puts Valve in a weaker position.
I would be interested to know how/if people are trying SteamOS on these other handhelds.
*In terms of the opportunity, I’m looking at ARM based chips like the M4, and seeing a direct path towards an actual, top tier or at least upper mid tier / next gen gaming experience coming from a handheld. The steamdeck sure AF ain’t that. But I see a technical path towards ‘something’ like that, where you have one of these hyper efficient ARM based chipsets in a handheld, and its performance competitive with some of the current (as in the meme this post is about) hardware like the mid to high tier (comparable to say a 4080). Like, before the deck, the only meaningful handheld with any market penetration was the switch, and that things so anemic, I think my toaster has a higher FPS. And the deck really isn’t even that great. The ROG ally is way better in terms of raw horse power, but the problem comes back to Windows. If you have to run windows on these things, its basically a non-starter, at least in terms of penetrability.
Oh, I get what you mean now. In an ideal world, hardware manufacturers would all contribute and write them like they do for Windows. We should strive for this type of first party support, and popularity might do the trick. Meawhile, I think it’s good enough that we have pretty wide support and growing.
I think it’s about convincing them Linux is not Valve’s the same way Windows is Microsoft’s, and most of the work is already done. Since we are talking about x86 hardware they can always support Windows too if the customer desires, not like we haven’t been doing this for years on laptops.