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Comment by reef_sh | Hacker News Reader

Steam OS is very much just a general purpose OS. It easily allows you to switch to desktop mode and just use it as a regular linux PC. It just boots into steam by default.

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So I can deploy steam at any random company? or if I'm a graphic designer can I use it to replace my macos? is it a good distro if I'm working on embedded sofware development? Should I use it as a web server? it can after all run nginx or apache on it. If I have a VPS with 1GB ram, is this a good OS for it? or a laptop from 2011? all I'm saying is it can do lots of things, but it isn't built to support all those things. it's built for gaming. if it really is a general purpose OS, the litmus test (in my opinion) is that someone starts shipping it with general purpose computing hardware and people actually start using that.

Say you want to play Outer Wilds on an airplane. Your options are Windows or SteamOS. Which do you prefer?

No one in that scenario cares if it's easier to run Office on Windows.

I'm not disagreeing, that's in fact exactly what I'm saying. Purpose built OS' serve their purpose best. Don't compare them with general purpose OS. I would prefer a vanilla debian or ubuntu myself since I'm not a gamer.

The Steamdeck is a general purpose computing hardware device shipping with SteamOS, it's just an x86 APU with a handheld form factor and SteamOS is just a customized linux distro (but not a proprietary one). Install Windows on it if you'd like, or install SteamOS on any other hardware you'd like (though it's not really meant for this, just go get a more generic linux ISO)

But you already can, though not for macos but for regular pc hardware with amd chips. just download the installer and copy it to a usb drive with rufus to create a bootable installer, then boot the installer to replace your windows installation with steamos.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-42...

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