Steam OS available 13th December to everyone.

The console peasant's "lean operating system" advantage disappeared this generation and now even coding to the metal with AMD mantle... no advantages, except one good game every 6 months... if that.

The verge:

On December 13th, Valve will ship a prototype Steam Machine to 300 lucky fans, including a powerful upgradable chassis, a Steam Controller, and the Linux-based SteamOS, the company announced today. The rest of us get a consolation prize, however: Valve will also make SteamOS available for everyone when the prototypes ship.

While the company suggests that the new operating system won't necessarily be easy to install — "unless you're an intrepid Linux hacker already, we're going to recommend that you wait until later in 2014 to try it out," says Valve — it means that we should get a deeper look at how it works and how it performs ahead of the company's CES announcements.

Only a matter of time before the consoles lose even more franchises to the PC.

Its possible. As SteamOS uses OpenGL, same as Playstation. All this will do (if anything) is claw games from Microsoft... and increase compatibility and ease of game creation for Linux and Playstation. Can't really complain at that

Useless to me since my pc is not just for gaming.

I am sticking to windows.

may try putting it on one of my spares, to see what its like...

SteamOS includes Valve's Direct3D-to-OpenGL wrapper i.e. might as well include a modified Direct3D driver on Linux....

I would like to try on a seperate partion and see what happens, but maybe I will wait and hear from others.

It looks like this is a beta and is said to be pretty difficult to install.

The hobbyist part of me will probably install it to see how Left 4 Dead, Half Life, and Metro Last Light work but outside of curiosity not much use at this point. As I've said before though the real test is to see weather or not Valve can convince developers to start using OpenGL instead of DirectX for PC games. Of course it doesn't help that Xbox One only supports DirectX, but then again I think PS4 only uses OpenGL.

Either way it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Only good things can happen if Valve succeeds with Steam box and Steam OS.

All jokes aside, probably the only smart choice.

Don't see the benefit yet and the work I do requires Windows in some way. SteamOS long-term could change things, but we're talking years by my estimation. And MS won't stand pat and not prepare to match certain advantages as time passes.

there is always duel boot and it's free.

Isn't steam os suppose to free up resources from your computer so they can actually be used for gaming?

I'm mostly interested in trying out the controller.

I don't want that on my PC though. The freeing of those resources means getting rid of multitasking, running a video on the side, music in the background, quickly alt-tab to the browser without any lag. Yeah all that takes up resources but I'm fine with it. I want it like that. Going back to PS2 era of OSs is not something I'm looking forward on my PC.

SteamOS is a console oriented OS.

It may end up being part of the Xbox One's OS in some form.

http://whilstinarrakis.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/gabe-microsoft-ceo/ - old blog article, but a good read.

"So I am expecting Valve to be bought by Microsoft very soon, possibly this year during the new Xbox announcement or the first reporting quarter of the next OS, for a price of about $4.5 billion cash upfront and up to $3 billion in long term incentives. (Microsoft had $66bn in cash and short term investments as of September 2012.) I further expect Gabe to be promoted to CEO once Ballmer is pushed. Because, let’s face it, that’s one man who is never, ever going to quit."

Pretty cool that it's so early, but it's a shame I don't have any spare parts around to build my own prototype machine.

thats from march, So if it was true i would expect more new would have came out already.

It would be insane deal if it did happen lol

true

Good a time as any to strike though. Between the backlash from Windows 8 and the younger generation being exposed to multiple operating systems, namely Droid (Linux Based), iOS, and Windows I'd say the time is right. Though you do have a point. Work wise until something, most likely free, replaces Microsoft Office as the preferred office suite Windows will remain king.

PC beggars and Steam beggars will still be petitioning, and pining for console games to be ported. Pc inferiority continues. :)

If you need to "free up resources", you're doing it wrong.

I was just reading this and the URL caught my eye - http://www.tomshardware.com/news/microsoft-steam-box-steam-machine-linux,25005.html - which reminded me of that blog article and this thread I posted. Step 3: ??? Step 4: Profit.

Friday the 13th? What could go wrong?

apart from the fact that Balmer left..... i wouldn't expect Valve to be bought by MS, i mean that are currently creating their own OS.... makes no sense