Personally, beyond HDMI CEC I’m heavily considering picking it up if I get a slot as Valve has a great track record of supporting their hardware, it is quiet and relatively low power consumption, and I will likely not have to tinker much to get a solid experience.
To me it’s similar to 3D printers, you can either pay less and the hardware becomes part of the project/hobby itself. Or you can pay a bit more and just get to reliably use the hardware.
and I will likely not have to tinker much to get a solid experience.
I’m sure the Steam Machine will be fine, but I reject the notion that that differentiates it from any other AMD-based PC running Linux. My AMD-based Linux PC as built a year ago (which is faster than a Steam Machine, BTW) didn’t require much tinkering, and neither did my previous AMD-based Linux PC built about eight years ago. Proton didn’t exist back then, but as soon as it came out it basically had zero problems related to the hardware (as opposed to incompatibilities caused by the lack of maturity of the software itself). With AMD, Linux basically Just Works, and has done for many, many years.
(Also, you don’t have to spend a lot to get a reliable 3D printer. You just have to pay attention to product reviews and such. I’ve got a Creality Ender 3 V3 SE, which was generally considered to be the “best” inexpensive printer as of a few years ago, and it’s been fine. The tradeoff for the low price is lack of fancy features like an enclosure or multiple extruders, not reliability.)
AMD Fine Wine Technology ™️ is definitely a thing with their opensource drivers. Value helps a bit now too but rising tide and all. I think the creature comforts of steamos do stand out. Easy menu for system level FSR for example. Resume game from shutdown looks great too.
Those make it compete to game consoles at least. If you can tinker it’s about the same (with ups and downs) to any other distro.
Exactly. The “made easy” part is a pretty big sell for a lot of people. Heck it’s a sell for me and I love tinkering, but I have plenty of other projects lol
Also, some people are willing to pay a premium for good looks and/or HDMI CEC.
Personally, beyond HDMI CEC I’m heavily considering picking it up if I get a slot as Valve has a great track record of supporting their hardware, it is quiet and relatively low power consumption, and I will likely not have to tinker much to get a solid experience.
To me it’s similar to 3D printers, you can either pay less and the hardware becomes part of the project/hobby itself. Or you can pay a bit more and just get to reliably use the hardware.
I’m sure the Steam Machine will be fine, but I reject the notion that that differentiates it from any other AMD-based PC running Linux. My AMD-based Linux PC as built a year ago (which is faster than a Steam Machine, BTW) didn’t require much tinkering, and neither did my previous AMD-based Linux PC built about eight years ago. Proton didn’t exist back then, but as soon as it came out it basically had zero problems related to the hardware (as opposed to incompatibilities caused by the lack of maturity of the software itself). With AMD, Linux basically Just Works, and has done for many, many years.
(Also, you don’t have to spend a lot to get a reliable 3D printer. You just have to pay attention to product reviews and such. I’ve got a Creality Ender 3 V3 SE, which was generally considered to be the “best” inexpensive printer as of a few years ago, and it’s been fine. The tradeoff for the low price is lack of fancy features like an enclosure or multiple extruders, not reliability.)
AMD Fine Wine Technology ™️ is definitely a thing with their opensource drivers. Value helps a bit now too but rising tide and all. I think the creature comforts of steamos do stand out. Easy menu for system level FSR for example. Resume game from shutdown looks great too.
Those make it compete to game consoles at least. If you can tinker it’s about the same (with ups and downs) to any other distro.
Sure, but you can (allegedly – I haven’t actually tried) get that on any AMD system, not just the Steam Machine.
Exactly. The “made easy” part is a pretty big sell for a lot of people. Heck it’s a sell for me and I love tinkering, but I have plenty of other projects lol