OEM interoperability/functionality guarantee

The last big game dev holdouts will agree to target Linux if the PC userbase jumps significantly and Valve guarantees a standard expectation with technology with things like rolling kernel, latest libs, steam functionality, etc.

A general image for SteamOS is not going to solve this. If you buy a PC from Dell and install SteamOS on it, there is no difference than if you installed Fedora. Secondly Valve is building from the the same sources as every other distro, if SteamOS supports it, every other distro does. In the cases of things like gamemode and gamescope, you can install these or they come with Bazzite and friends too, because Valve already devs these in the open with community and groups like Collabora.

There’s still a lot of stupidly annoying things that are missing like proper wayland (valve->frog) and its resultant features like HDR, VRR, etc.

Gamescope is open so any distro can use it. Desktop compositors are shipping these features already (SteamOS already uses upstream KDE). Not sure what the problem is

The linux packaging problem from 20 years ago is still a problem (albeit much less) which Torvalds himself mentioned Valve would just say “screw it” and bypass/solve the problem via Steam (which they did). The issue is the remainder. Kernel updates are all over the place depending on distro. Everything Ubuntu is technically out of date because SteamOS uses Arch. Fedora gets you closer at least.

SteamOS uses flatpak, every other distro uses flatpak. Ostree atomic distros (Fedora Silverblue/Kinoite. ublue (bazzite and friends) use flatpak. Modern kernels are on every distro, especially Fedora and Arch. Non-existant problem IMHO

It’s really just that OEM guarantee that would get it moving quicker. Although it might not even happen tbh, Valve said they weren’t that interested in competing against Microsoft which makes sense because its still the primary OS of their customer base.

Again, a SteamOS general release is not going to get you any more OEM support than installing any other distro