the machine will be priced as a pc and not as a console (whatever that means)

Steam Machine 2: DOA 2

Does anyone know if they have worked on controller & splitscreen support or if it is in the roadmap?

Yes.

We are the niche of a niche. We need more content, as long as it’s relevant.

Cost aside. If they don’t price it competitively between the Xbox and the PS5, the Steam Machine will be DOA.

The Deck is a perfect example of what they should try to replicate. If they don’t do that, it will flop.

Microsoft must be pissing their pants right now.

Can it do video and audio calls?

… I use Bazzite btw

Well, they already did that with the Deck, they earn very little from the hardware. Chances are they’ll do the same.

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:

• Mainstream games like FIFA supporting Linux
• Apps like Affinity Studio being distributed through Steam officially supported via Proton.
• Epic games will be the last company to keep ignoring Linux.
• Valve adopting Waydroid for SteamOS (for Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, etc)
• NVIDIA will redouble their Linux efforts.
• Greatest than ever VR support in Linux

Steam Frame

• Lots of Linux apps will work on Android desktop mode, like LibreOffice, Inkscape, etc.
• Linux phones will receive a lot more maintainers and funding.

Steam Deck

• Android apps on the Deck via Valve’s Waydroid
• Steam Deck 2 on ARM

Other

• New use cases for ARM will motivate RISCV to speed up it’s growth.
• KDE & Arch will receive more funding from Valve
• More contributions to the Kernel
• More Linux developers
• Increased security for Linux
• Flathub will grow

This could mean great news to Linux WhatsApp users.

Does it support VJOURNAL?

It could be right out of the box. Happened to me with 2 controllers.

Does Briar ask for anything ?

Xbox controllers need a Windows PC to update their drivers.

The paywall is a problem.

I don’t know the solution to your funding, I just know that this one doesn’t work for me.

AFAIK Proton-GE uses VLC and Valve is from the US, where VLC is considered to breach some codec licenses I believe h264 decoding in particular. But I’m not sure, it’s been a long time since I’ve read about it.

I would go with Aurora or Fedora Kinoite. Atomic + KDE is unbreakable and easy for Windows casuals.

The only thing I dislike about Aurora is the illustrations baked into the distro. SDDM & Bazaar have them and can’t be changed. But it’s a freaking awesome distro.

I use it daily on my work laptop through an external USBC M2 NVME caddy. Today I had to move to a new work laptop and I just plugged it to the new one and that was it, my OS and all my stuff on my new work laptop in just a few seconds. No downtime. No drivers to update. Nothing.

The laptops have their factory Windows untouched. No warranty is void. IT is happy and I get to use Linux at work.

Plus, I can plug the drive to my home desktop PC running Bazzite and open files as if it was a regular thumbdrive.

This setup makes me so happy.

To fix the missing videos, use Proton-GE. Easiest method: Download it with Proton-up QT (bundled with Bazzite) then chose Proton-GE from the game’s Steam compatibility settings.

It’s because they use proprietary codecs that Valve can’t freely distribute.

This is awesome, I want it. But it’s way beyond my technical level. I wish there was a Proxmox helper script.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with your POV. I guess you could post there anytime your question could be applied to a homelab.