Steam Box
Steam Box
I've been paying attention to what the "Steam Box" is and what they're going to be, but i'm not totally convinced yet. For one, it runs a heavily modded version of Linux. Now before someone points out that it's superior, I recognize that it may be in some applications, but for gaming I honestly can't see the benefits. Mainly, the lack of games available for Linux, because at the time of writing this, Steam only has 472 games for Linux. Moving on, I honestly don't know why a developer would want to spend the extra time and money to port it over to Linux. There's hardly any support for OSX, so I don't know why devs would develop for Linux. Lastly, and as far as I understand, drivers are not optimized for Linux in any way shape or form. People have to hack and mod their own drivers in just to get some functionality. TL;DR: Not enough games, poor support for Linux, more money to develop for it, no driver support. Opinions, thoughts, ideas are welcome
Linus boasts a larger number of distributions than users, which seems to be the issue. I'm teasing you before you react.
The challenge lies in the limited current support (uncertain if it will improve). The concept aimed to strongly promote Linux with a console-like feel (like Steam Controller and interface), while retaining PC benefits such as upgradability and extra features. Personally, I wouldn’t create a Steam box just for gaming, but would consider it if it were a compact PC, affordable enough for streaming and also serving as a media center. In short, it’s useful when you already have a solid gaming rig and want a media solution without sacrificing performance. Of course, perspectives differ, just a tiny fraction of the cost.
It seems they’re attempting to sell it as a gaming PC for your home, which I believe is a significant error on their side.
I should have mentioned the success on Linux as well. Linux gamers are relatively small, so I wouldn't expect much popularity there. The developers are also increasingly releasing versions for Mac. I only noticed recently that War Thunder is now available on Mac too.