Valve Confirms Linux Steam Box Will Be Open Platform

Valve's Gabe Newell has confirmed their Steam Box will be Linux-based and will be open for its users and not a locked-down piece of hardware.

Aside from showing off mini PCs built for Steam, Gabe Newell is at the Consumer Electronics Show this week and is talking to some of the press.

In an interview with The Verge, he confirmed "We’ll come out with our own and we’ll sell it to consumers by ourselves. That’ll be a Linux box." That's nothing new and something I've been yelling about for months. They plan to ship the Linux-based Steam console in 2013.

More interesting to users will be that Gabe Newell reaffirmed that the gaming console will be "open" and not some locked-down gaming console. Back in December, there were rounds on the Internet that the Linux gaming console would be fairly locked down... Meanwhile, I stated the contrary. Back in the 9 Decmeber article I wrote, "From the Kotaku information though, I do have one point to make. While the author says 'Valve's hardware might not be as open-source or as malleable as your average computer' and 'will be a very controlled environment', do not expect it to be locked-down. If you take those comments to mean that Valve will be making a TiVo-like device and block users from making software modifications, you will most likely be proven wrong."

In Gabe's interview with The Verge today, he has affirmed what I had stated last month. "...if you want to install Windows you can. We’re not going to make it hard. This is not some locked box by any stretch of the imagination." Just another accurate piece of Linux gaming information from Phoronix.

Gabe also reaffirmed his hatred towards Microsoft Windows 8, Valve's focus on creative input devices, and other Valve hardware efforts being connected to the future of Steam.