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Comment by jjcm | Hacker News Reader

As strange as it sounds, I think Valve is extremely well-positioned to ship what becomes one of the first true Linux desktop experiences. There's a huge demand for gaming x ai development, both of which have similar hardware requirements, and Valve is already polishing their linux experience with Steam Deck. If they launch their own desktop with a properly managed OS and hardware, I think it would legitimately become a contender among a very wide range of users.

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The problem is still the desktop itself. Basically none of the existing Linux desktop components are mature, either design or technical wise and more often than not, both.

Deck works because most games are self contained, allowing them to have a default game mode that bypasses the desktop entirely.

They can ship the same destop/window manager combo they ship on the Steam Deck, where you can switch between the "full screen mode" (don't remember what it's called) and a proper desktop. I'm sure most people stay in the full-screen mode, it has all the settings and everything, even works with an cursor if I'm not mistaken, but can fallback when you need a terminal or whatever.

As I understood GP's comment, the crux is "a very wide range of users."

Right now Steam Deck works because of a focus on a very specific use and users. A general purpose desktop requires a lot more, and right now even the most mature linux desktop (GNOME, Plasma etc) have their rough edges and learning curve.

Steam deck is currently my primary computer. You just try to not use sudo at all. So I use nix to install all my software. From firefox to htop. It can get annoying because one of my scripts was trying to detect Mesa the other day and didn't work with nix installed mesa, otherwise it's perfect.

10 years ago Linus pointed out that most distros willingly break application compatibility all the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc

I'm not really following desktop Linux, is Linus' assessment still accurate?

Linux had mature stable desktop stacks in the past, but they kinda sucked.

Churn (and consequent ongoing immaturity) seems to be the price we've paid in the last 10-15yrs of "progress" making them suck less. I hope it settles down a bit soon and we get to enjoy more longer term polish on these improvements though.

> Basically none of the existing Linux desktop components are mature, either design or technical wise and more often than not, both.

What do you have in mind specifically? GNOME 3 is very mature, and has a consistent, polished design that far surpasses Windows 11. In fact, in view of recent macOS redesigns, I am tempted to say that it surpassed it too.

I mean, yeah, sort of. But a lot of the design is still really bad. I am saying a lot, because I found one I like, Zorin. It is a properly pretty Linux distro. They are the first Linux distro that I feel actually have understood the value of spacing between icons and other places. Every single other Linux distro I have tried feels cluttered and messy. It is so simple, just a little more room for things, balance margins and padding just a little bit better. Gah. (And yes, I feel liquid glass on mac is a huge setback in terms of UI beauty)

I think that comes with risks, they will need to do a lot of work to manage expectations which is likely to be an unending uphill battle getting users to read and absorb any notice you put in front of them. If there's ever an official version of SteamOS that installs as broadly as most other linux distros along with a general/minimally trained audience, they can't do Deck certified on how well each game works on your system, and I can see challenges for "why does this game I bought on the steam store not work on my steam system?" especially if it's the hot new multiplayer game that targets windows with windows-only anticheat.

PC does have a fair amount of users that want it to operate in a console-like way when it comes to usability, the moment you tell them to fiddle with a runtime or experiment with the command line variables you lose them. That's to say nothing about handling stuff that lives outside steam, because PC gaming shouldn't equal Valve. The Deck is a nice manageable subset to deal with and fairly small enthusiast audience

I assume jjcm was talking about Valve shipping dedicated hardware, e.g. a Valve-branded gaming laptop which boots into SteamOS. That could help them achieve the same level of "Just Works" that Apple gets with macOS.

Valve, the monopolist, should not have more control over the Linux ecosystem.

If they make their own distro, though, they're not really gaining more control. They're just enabling even more choice for someone who's looking for alternatives.

Let's say, hypothetically, that Valve releases SteamOS to the general public, and it's received generally well, and it becomes much more common for people to use "that Linux thing" than it is today. Then let's say, hypothetically, that Valve turns evil and... I dunno, starts charging money for updates? At that point you've got a large population already using Linux, I'm sure there would be a pretty big migration to Ubuntu or some other mainstream Linux desktop.

Valve, the monopolist, is releasing their secret ingredient (Proton) as open source, and actively maintaining it. I can't see how that could make Valve a monopoly on Windows-on-Linux gaming, actually the opposite.

I'm totally on board with a gaming-focused distro from Valve. I'll switch the second they get proper Nvidia GPU support. So far, no luck with that.

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