So with the dust settling in about Valve's new SteamOS it's time to take a quick think about it all.
SteamBox & SteamOS
SteamOS should hopefully give Linux a boost in usage numbers as well as making Linux itself better overall. Through Valve helping projects in the Linux sphere and talking to AAA developers and hardware manufacturers it should hopefully be a big boon for Linux.
As long as they don't eventually go the route of Android then desktop Linux has had nothing else really come close to helping it along in the gaming space. I don't honestly see why they would lock the rest of it down to the point of being incompatible with desktop Linux since they already have their closed platform as Steam itself.
Today AMD seem to have some big Linux announcement too:
AMD is pledging an announceme tomorrow that should make Linux lovers and game developers quite happy... #GPU14
— Chris Pirillo (@ChrisPirillo) September 24, 2013
Could they be partnering with Valve to power the first Steam box processor wise or graphics wise, it's certainly a possibility.
It's not surprising that NVIDIA is now going to open up some code and provide some help to the nouveau open source graphics stack for NVIDIA chips (source), maybe they want to get in on all this action and have a friendlier face to Linux if it gets more popular.
Official Group
A group has popped up on Steam called Steam Universe for discussion about SteamOS, Beta Hardware, and Big Picture Mode. So, we should see some pretty interesting discussions happen there as well as where I am sure we will see more info trickle in after the three announcements are done with.
Next Announcement
It's quite likely one of the next announcements will be a form of SteamBox considering the tag-line of the new official group including the words "Beta Hardware", then again it could just be an awesome new controller anything is possible it is Valve we are talking about after-all.
We know that Left 4 Dead 3 and Source 2 are coming as they where leaked from their offices:
This picture was taken during the DOTA2 tournament on a visit to Valve's offices.
I doubt we will see any game related announcements until later in the year though considering this text on the SteamOS page:
QuoteWatch for announcements in the coming weeks about all the AAA titles coming natively to SteamOS in 2014
Well only 9 hours to go now, the excitement is building in me and I'm sure in you too!
QuoteCan I hack this box? Run another OS? Change the hardware? Install my own software? Use it to build a robot?
Sure.
Can I download the OS to try it out?
You will be able to download it (including the source code, if you're into that) but not yet.
I think this sounds about like what we were hoping for. I'm a little disappointed the public hardware won't be available till next year, but the open beta first does correspond to how they released Steam for Linux with a call for beta testers. Will be interesting to see the lineup of hardware coming out next year.
Next announcement really does sound like a controller one like people were speculating earlier.
Quoting: berillionsAAA games will be available on Steam Linux too or only on Steam OS ?Steam OS is Steam Linux, so I don't think you need to worry. I don't see Valve somehow restricting it's linux games to one specific distro, and even if they're silly enough to do that, I'm sure that will be sorted out pretty quickly by people like the Arch community, who got Steam running when it was only mean for Ubuntu, back at the start.
I don't want to buy SteamBox to play at AAA games in 2014...
I personally want so badly to see info about AAA games coming to linux.
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