It's Been Three Years Since Valve Announced SteamOS, Steam Machines

[thechef]

Valve cannot boot this up alone - and if you look at Steam machine vendors: Their background is PC-assemblers - how sexy can this be? Not very, because people don't want something that is only marginally better than a Windows PC.

To exploit Linux you need proper infrastructure. The only player who can deliver proper and compact gaming hardware is AMD and AMD is yet in early preparation of its comeback.
Once AMD is properly up and running again there is a first chance to get a reasonable gaming experience and Sony/Xbone fixed function crap can fall to dust.

[Spidey]

Don't forget that in this 3 year time frame Microsoft released Windows 10 as a free upgrade, even from pirated earlier versions. That definitely hindered SteamOS and Steam Machines traction.

[Nille]

even from pirated earlier versions.

But a pirated version is still a pirated version.

[Deavir]

Great for the ports. No improvements with netflix/hulu/amazon prime. They wanted to take over the living room but they stopped themselves at games. Why they didn't integrate these always confused me. As it is, it is a limited device compared to Xbox. They needed feature parity with free online and they would have done a lot better. Also officially supported hardware builds, maybe barebones kits to bring cost down would have been nice.

[dungeon]

As always, the biggest steam linux problem are the games that aren’t there and again

[b8e5n]

After being annoyed by my ubuntu breaking after so many upgrades, that because I have a GCN1.0 I cannot use the proprietary drivers that at least works decently... I tried solus, because it was supposed to be fast and cutting edge, etc, etc. There was few bugs that annoyed me, notably every time I close a game that was started in big picture, it would send me back to the desktop... I decided to give steamOS a shot. And that's been a while now. Besides that the graphics performances are not as good as on windows, games run pretty good, and for other basic stuff I still have access to the desktop (not fan of gnome3, but nvm) and can do other things as well. I am pretty happy with the OS, sure there is nothing too crazy about it, but it just works and it's stable. You cannot expect too much about it, and that was the point, making a stable system that just works and run games smoothly. It happened few times that I had to go through the terminal to kill rocket league that crashed for some reasons.
I play on linux as much as possible, just because I prefer to.
I was planning to buy a steam machine to support them and the linux gaming industry, but it was just an occasion for the companies to sell overpriced hardware, albeit sometimes with a nice custom case.
I am now waiting for the SMACHZ (former steamboy). They promote gaming on linux, even though they will give the possibility to install windows. I believe they will be the most successful steam machine, simply because you cannot build your own portable gaming pc. Also they have a modular system that will allow people to exchange most of the hardware including the cpu, ram, rom. The price tag is 300-500 euros, sure the pro version seems a bit expensive, but regarding the hardware, it's actually cheap.

And we still have to thank valve for pushing other companies to invest a little bit in developing gaming stuff for linux. It will just take longer that we've hoped.

[Screech]

But a pirated version is still a pirated version.

If the Windows 8.1 was activated via emulating the Microsoft activation servers (which is actually the most popular activation method used on pirated windows 8) then the Windows 10 upgrade installer will say that windows is genuine and will automatically activate Windows 10 after installation. So your cracked Windows 8.1 will magically turn into a genuine Windows 10 PC permanently activated on the Microsoft servers. So yeah even people using pirated windows 8 copies were upgraded for free by Microsoft.

[Passso]

It works so well, that steam is not starting with a recent Gallium3D Driver (e.g. on stock Ubuntu 16.04 ). You still has to delete manual some of the old Libs that Steam ships in its Package (and redo this after a update ... )

Those Problems of libs are not new and unfixed since years. So, i doubt that Ubuntu has much more interest in GNU/Linux.

#FIXED

Anyway, I love Steam on Linux, there is enough good games for me to play so I do not feel the need of Windows nor Wine.
Whatever haters write here: TY Valve!

[Passso]

Great for the ports. No improvements with netflix/hulu/amazon prime. They wanted to take over the living room but they stopped themselves at games. Why they didn't integrate these always confused me. As it is, it is a limited device compared to Xbox. They needed feature parity with free online and they would have done a lot better. Also officially supported hardware builds, maybe barebones kits to bring cost down would have been nice.

Nice point on which I fully agree.If Valve wants to enter the console market Steam machines need Youtube and Netflix.

[Passso]

As always, the biggest steam linux problem are the games that aren’t there and again

I have 30+ very good games bought for 10$ on average. I can only play 10 hours per week so for me there is much more games than I need.