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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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If the Frame is as open as the Deck it will be the perfect device for VR devs to play around with and make awesome stuff with. i think one of the things holding back VR was that almost every headset was super locked down.
If the Quests had been more open we'd have had much more experimental games. Maybe the Metaverse would actually be a thing. But Meta prefers to keep everything under their control not realising that this hampers development and adoption.
Look at the article that I edited the OP to post. It sounds like Valve is intent on keeping this thing as open as possible. I agree that it could lead to really interesting developments, not to mention when you consider the SD card slot and the high speed accessory interface that will allow external cameras and who knows what else. This thing is going to be crazy.
Interestingly enough, when Quest first released the hand tracking functionality I remember seeing some really interesting developments using that, but I guess the developers never took it all the way to publish games with those concepts.
It's so weird considering how differently their approach is to like pytorch and LLAMA
LLAMA if I recall correctly was closed source until the source code was leaked online. After that Meta decided to just open source it.
Huge win for Linux. Steam Deck was the first volley, but this hardware is an all-out assault on Windows' gaming dominance. MS is asleep at the wheel and making worse and worse software. I'm a 20 year Windows user and I'm planning my exit. If I were a gaming executive, I would assume 5 years from now that a smaller percentage of Steam users will be on Windows than there are today. I would want a damn good reason for my company's next game to not have full Linux support.
Microsoft will either:
My money is on #4. Windows will probably be the #1 desktop/laptop OS for the next 20 years, but we could enter a world where Linux and MacOS are each 10% or more of the market. Steam shows 95% Windows but that's for a gaming-focused market.
Valve isn't perfect. They're still a corporation. But if every company was as evil as Valve, we would achieve near world peace. They've contributed amazing things to open source through heavy investment.
I’m planning my exit.
How can I help?
Embarrassingly, make a Windows 10-like OS. (More specifically, a window manager, probably.) Or have an affirmative vision for the future (non-Windows 95-derived) like Niri or (fascist-adjacent) Omarchy. 15+ years ago I booted my first distro. I ran Ubuntu with Unity on a side PC for years. Good for single screen use. I daily drove Debian for 3 months in 2018 but never got it to look more modern than Windows 2000. I never "enjoyed" it. This matches my thoughts. https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/10/deduplicating_the_desktops/
Going to try out https://www.anduinos.com/ and Zorin. Have done distro hop roulette for months and a lot of them are unsatisfying. KDE looks close to how I want but runs slow e.g. https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/58790510
I'm big on super+arrow to move windows from one screen to another. I rarely need more than 4 active windows per display. But my big problem with tiling is that I like seeing the windows I have open at the bottom of my screen. (this was for my laptop but similar points https://lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz/post/58681232 )
My side OS on my main PC is Mint with MATE, but I also don't gel with it. Ran it on a family PC for years and it did the job for casual use. Random gripe off the top of my head I think applies in MATE: sorting is in byte order, not in brain order. Many linuxes sort 10, 1, 2 instead of 1, 2, 10. MATE and Xfce (iirc) have terrible file operation handling compared to Windows or (the gold standard?) Teracopy in Windows.
Every default GUI archive/extract program in Linux sucks, that I could find. I prefer Peazip but even 7z-gui (the stock one) is good. Even native windows zip support feels more pleasant. This goes back to a bazzite/omarchy philosophy of shipping software that is good, instead of defaults that suck.
Oddly enough I kind of respect AntiX + IceWM, as well as Lxqt / Lubuntu more than most of the crap modern WMs I've used.
SSH key exchange / setup is a fucking nightmare and I don't know why I'm copy pasting keys into text files or piping multiple commands together for the 50% odds that my OS setup allows it. I still don't really understand the Linux threat model where passwords on a local account make sense. (Is it to prevent local scripts from escalating to admin?)
I've run Linux servers for 5 years and I run WSL, but nothing clicks per se. I'm always more at home in Windows. Niri feels close to what I want, but too high a learning curve. I may make a post about it someday.
Win through innovation
Has Microsoft ever innovated?
Don't be such a ridiculous fucking hater you blind yourself to reality
Barring literally everything else, this steam box shares its lineage with the Xbox, not Sony or Nintendo's products. Speaking as one who ran xbmc on their classic first-gen it's nice to see things coming full circle to "everything is just a media center pc, bitches".
They were innovative in hiding their money from the tax man
The effort they are putting towards x86 emulation will definitely help the broader Linux community. I saw a bit about 24 min in on gamer nexas video. That would help down the line on all sorts of devices.
Yeah, pretty sure it was called "Fex" translation layer for emulating x86 binaries on ARM64, and to me that was absolutely the biggest takeaway, because that's a massive game-changer for eventually moving the industry away from x86 exclusivity and into wider adoption of other architectures.
Steam Machine
If the Steam Machine really takes off, I see way more people moving to Linux on their main rigs and laptops, and in turn making companies stop ignoring it, if it becomes a massive success I imagine:
Steam Frame
Steam Deck
Other
Could this somehow help...Linux phone efforts?
I thought about this but the biggest problem with Android is lack of adoption from developers of third party app stores and UnifiedPush, and similarly widespread adoption of Play Integrity API. This won't solve those problems.
There's certainly the possibility that Android apps begin being distributed on Steam. But probably only gaming apps.
For sure.
I am excited to see more arm-based Linux devices for consumers. And the Snapdragon-based VR is exciting on that front.
It definitely won't change anything for tomorrow or next year, but it does make me hopeful that better support is in the relatively near future.
I'll drop what I said about this in another thread:
I think you probably need to understand the underpinnings of what Valve accomplished over the past few years to understand why the Frame is useful.
Essentially, it's a Deck strapped to your face. Same OS, same everything, just different hardware platform.
Valve spent the time to revamp SteamOS in order to make it more portable to various devices, which are now launching. Couple that with their efforts on Proton, and you have an entire ecosystem with very little in the way of preventing people from adopting these devices with their ease of use.
Steam Deck was just sort of the appetizer and test launch to gauge interest and build a fully functional hardware development and support vertical in the company, and it was wildly successful. I guarantee (if they can get the price right) that the Frame will sell WAY more units than the awful Vision Pro. I honestly think people might adopt this over buying another version of the Deck if it's comfortable.
Some things I expect to happen with the Frame launch:
Interesting comments, thanks!
I fully agree that this will sell way more than Vision Pro. I think this is pretty much guaranteed. The highest price I've seen estimated for the Frame is $1200, so it will much cheaper and much more versatile.
I also think that Theater mode for media is pretty much a guarantee at release, given that they've already demoed playing regular non-VR games in Theater mode.
I've also seen some mentions of Linux desktop on it, but haven't seen any concrete details about it.
Desktop is a built-in feature of SteamOS. They'd have to actually work to remove that by default. No reason for it not to be there.
To be fair, I think they're slightly different markets.
The AVP is a "Productivity" device and seems more focused on "Mixed Reality" use with it's super high quality passthrough and what not, vs the Frame which is more focused on gaming, has black and white passthrough and (I'm assuming) no Real World mapping so you can't have floating windows that stay where you put them in your physical space for example.
That being said I think more sales than the AVP is a guarantee, on the price alone.
If anything, the real question is if that "VR Productivity" market that Apple is targeting really exists. (didn't the HoloLens fail?)
They also have been tapping Code weavers or just serendipity but there is a lot of movement on the open source x86 to arm translation space too. Which for games on VR headsets is a big deal. https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2025/11/6/twist-our-arm64-heres-the-latest-crossover-preview
They've already said they'll be using FEX: https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/vr-hardware/steamos-launching-for-arm-fex-translation-layer/
like steam-input but VR
That's already a thing, I saw a video of someone streaming a VR game to a Quest 3 via Steam Link and using it to map hand gestures to regular VR controller actions, allowing him to play games with no hand tracking support controller-free
I thought it was obvious, 2026 is going to be the year of the Linux desktop.
year of the linux goggle headwear apparatus
Having a Linux machine, with decent hardware as a common target for developers will have huge implications for gaming in Linux. The SteamDeck has already inspired more devs to make native Linux versions of their games, rather than relying on Proton. This should expand the appeal for devs even more so
Interesting points, thanks!
A standalone VR headset that I don't have to give money to the zucc to enjoy? I'm buying like 12 of these things as soon as they'll take my money
Steam frame could be big for vr on linux. Before steam deck came out I dualbooted windows for gaming because gaming didn't work well on linux. Nowadays its great. Steam vr is super buggy on linux right now and doesn't even have feature parity with steam vr on windows. Hopefully steam vr becomes good on linux because I would imagine the steam frame needs it to be good
The frames might be the first VR I buy.
Depending on price, likewise.
It will help with linux on macs for the few (including me) blokes running it
Wasn’t the issue there that there are no drivers for the specific Apple silicon hardware, so someone needs to invent them? Because we’ve had raspberry pi for ages. Software for ARM is a solved problem AFAIK.
I'm replying to you from Asahi Linux on an Apple Silicon Macbook. The drivers are definitely there!
FEX emulation of x86 on ARM CPUs has made many x86 games playable on my Macbook.
I know what you asked about is the Machine and Frame, but I'm super excited about the controller. I love my old steam controller I got on fire sale, but its an extremely flawed device. If they can polish that to the standard of the Deck, I'm so in, especially since you know it'll work well on Linux with no firmware BS.
As someone who previously owned a GameCube and a G4 Cube, I'm definitely getting the Steam ~~Cube~~ Machine.
I prefer GabeCube
Maybe the Arch Linux "ports" RFC will finally be of use...
Also, box64 works better in my experience when all of the depending libraries are installed properly, and they are guaranteed to be there in this scenario given that there's the Steam runtime.
Fınally, year of the Linux desktop is here!
All 3 of the new hardware seems really cool. I'm very excited. These probably won't be sold where I am, but I'm considering getting a steam controller from a 3rd party seller if it turns out to be cheap enough for me.
I'm surprised that they kept the "Steam Machine" name. I thought they would choose a different name to avoid any negative connotations. It is a very cool name though.
Also this goes to prove again that Steam/Valve is not a monopoly. If this "small" team of 350~ people in a private company can casually beat Microsoft's market domination, Every other game launcher/storefront + The 17 Billion dollars Meta burned into their VR Hardware and "The Metaverse", this is nothing but a case of crippling incompetence from their competitors.
The biggest issue with Linux phones, is that basically every hardware manufacturer refuses to support Linux in any kind of way. Chipsets, and radios in particular. Linux itself needs a little optimization for mobile but it's mostly hardware.
It's really difficult to port Linux to any android device, despite being perfectly compatible in every way outside of drivers.
The x86 to arm is very cool. I do some stuff like this on my phone by running winlator. It works better on snapdragon because it has a better video translation layer.
Yeah, like you said, significant development of VR on Linux. But that also depends on the price tag.
VR on Linux is functional, at can work. But it requires a bunch of set up and can also just break down very easily too. VR on Linux is almost like what gaming on Linux was before Proton. If Valve can do to VR what they did with Proton then I'm sure I can convince a whole bunch of people to switch to Linux.
If there is an easy way to extend the desktop to the virtual big screen it will put it higher on my list.
I still love my Index, but I'm 100% buying the Frame when it comes out. I haven't tried the Index on Desktop SteamOS yet. I should do that. The groundwork for Linux and VR has likely already been laid out.