Steam is the only reason I have a Windows desktop, I'll probably just get one of these next time I want a hardware refresh (which admittedly will probably be many years).
Interesting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop
> Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.
So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?
Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.
In 2026 we should be getting Windows on a Xbox console with the Xbox skinned version of windows. This would be a direct competitor to that since most PC gamers have the majority of their game library on steam.
"Yes, Steam Machine is optimized for gaming, but it's still your PC. Install your own apps, or even another operating system. Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?"
Holy shit, it's the Year of The Linux Desktop, for real this time. It's happening. It's actually happening.
A standard Arch Linux/KDE[0] PC for every home, in a polished, vendor-supported package. Like Apple, it's a single standard hardware/OS pair, so, FOSS' fatal hardware-support hell might well be made obsolete. The vendor is a household name corporation. There's an incredibly fortuitous (for Linux) market dynamic at this point in time, of "commoditize your complement"—the dynamic that Valve has incentives to invest massively in giving away a nice thing for free, because that does bad things to its competitors. And Steam is... the killer super-app to end all killer apps.
The only thing I'd like to know, if the CPU/GPU will be replaceable? The specs say "Semi-custom AMD Zen 4" and "Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3", but I don't see "soldered" anywhere, so I guess maybe they'll be switchable? If not with off-the-shelves components, maybe Valve will offer their own upgrade kits in the future?
Video games were the only reason for me to use Windows, now that Steam solved this problem no reason to look back anymore. I am also not big fan of multi-player games, so not being able to play games with anti-cheat system buried deep into their binaries isn't an issue.
Pretty much the only reason I boot to Windows anymore is to play games with my kids and family. The direction of this thing is dangerously close to being all I'd care about from a desktop computer.
If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
I recently got a tiny and mighty GPD win mini. I booted windows once to shrink the data partition and installed Bazzite Linux. Painless install, never even considered booting in win again, and so far all games I tried worked flawlessly. I know there are issues with anti-cheat, but I usually don't even like those games..
> If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
SteamDeck is out since February 2022 and does all that. You can use a BT mouse&keyboard, plug a USB-C screen or dongle for HDMI. I did live presentations with that quite a few time. It's just a computer with another form factor.
It's not "dangerously close", it's been there for years now.
Basically only competitive gaming with kernel level anti-cheat are problematic.
Only reason I even had a windows machine too. I got rid of it because I realized after a long tiring day sitting upright, I really did not find sitting even more upright and playing games relaxing. I wanted to plop down on the couch and do it. And it was a gigantic tower that was taking up too much space in my office
If I could have a machine like this instead, I'd happily buy it instead. Windows has zero use for me other than playing games
> If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
The Steam Deck is kind of close to this although the screen isn't the best. I think the closest you can get to this right now is adding a graphics card module on a Framework laptop.
In this big hardware refresh, honestly most excited about finally getting a new steam controller [1], which feels like it might finally give us a better, more extensible standard than the extremely outdated XInput protocol (which still doesn't even support motion controls)
I just hope they give us an option to buy a controller with the face buttons in the "Nintendo" order rather than the "Xbox" order. Like how the 8bitdo pro comes in two versions. The only console I actually still care about these days is the Switch/Switch 2, so it would be nice to not have the button placement suddenly reversed when switching between controllers.
Being able to play PC-ish games without Windows (all on its own) makes this pretty interesting. Looking forward to seeing its real world performance. The fact that it doesn't take up the space of a household appliance is a plus too.
A mainstream desktop PC that supports most games without windows is actually a massive deal in the long term as I know plenty of people who don't like windows but didn't have an alternative
> Who are we to tell you how to use your computer?
i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest
it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025
it is somewhat depressing that it's this novel to expect a piece of hardware to actually exist to make my life nicer vs the default of being an abomination that tries constantly to extract money and information from me like a fucking vampire
(and i guess, not having used this yet, this also speaks to valve being one of the last companies that i have any trust in to be capable of making a business decision that makes them less money in the short run in order to deliver a better product)
If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...
I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?
Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
The steam machine has a bespoke wireless connector for the (new steam) controller so it doesn't pollute the Bluetooth network and cause lag.
Yes, the controller is charged through usb-c, but you can just use any charger around to charge that. I mean, the battery should last for 30+ hours so you only need to charge it on a weekly or biweekly basis with heavy usage.
Very interesting! The one killer issue that jumps to mind is anti-cheat. I switched away from gaming on Linux via Proton to gaming on Windows because Battlefield 6's anti-cheat won't work under Proton. Many games are like this, particularly some of the most popular (Rainbow 6 Siege for instance). And BF6 made this decision only recently despite the growing number of Steam Deck players (and other players on linux - in fairness I don't think there would have been that many BF6 players on a handheld).
Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.
I'd have Secure Boot, and then one root for an user-modifiable regular Linux installation, and another root that is read-only, signed, custom kernel etc.
A bit of topic, but I was wondering how much bigger is the steam machine compared to the mac mini m4, since that's what I have and is my frame of reference. Obviously comparing apples to oranges and only talking about physical volume, not features, compatibility, price, personal preferences, etc.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadInteresting that it uses KDE Plasma for the desktop
> Steam Frame is a PC, and runs SteamOS powered by a Snapdragon® 8 Series Processor. With 16GB of RAM, Steam Frame supports stand-alone play on a growing number of both VR and non-VR games without needing to stream from your PC.
So Steam + Proton works on aarch64? Is this something already available/supported, or is this an announcement?
[1] Steam Frame, which is the VR Headset releasing alongside the Steam Machine. Dedicated discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45903325
Hmm. Not that it is big deal, but I would be somewhat worried about true longevity with the VRAM. Not sure if SteamOS helps there, but on PC some new titles are going over the 8GB VRAM.
The HDMI Forum yet again rearing it's ugly head by continuing to block GPU manufacturers from implementing HDMI 2.1 in the Open Source drivers
Holy shit, it's the Year of The Linux Desktop, for real this time. It's happening. It's actually happening.
A standard Arch Linux/KDE[0] PC for every home, in a polished, vendor-supported package. Like Apple, it's a single standard hardware/OS pair, so, FOSS' fatal hardware-support hell might well be made obsolete. The vendor is a household name corporation. There's an incredibly fortuitous (for Linux) market dynamic at this point in time, of "commoditize your complement"—the dynamic that Valve has incentives to invest massively in giving away a nice thing for free, because that does bad things to its competitors. And Steam is... the killer super-app to end all killer apps.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SteamOS
This is real life!
If Valve pivoted into making a well-supported laptop with good hardware that ran Linux and played games...
SteamDeck is out since February 2022 and does all that. You can use a BT mouse&keyboard, plug a USB-C screen or dongle for HDMI. I did live presentations with that quite a few time. It's just a computer with another form factor.
It's not "dangerously close", it's been there for years now.
Basically only competitive gaming with kernel level anti-cheat are problematic.
if you have an AMD GPU, Linux Mint does everything - including installation, bluetooth and printing(!) better than Windows
if you have an AMD GPU, Linux Mint does everything 'gaming' - on top of installation, bluetooth and printing(!) better than Windows
Unless they remove fans, or have limited hardware, but that's already a steam deck: just add a keyboard and a larger screen.
If I could have a machine like this instead, I'd happily buy it instead. Windows has zero use for me other than playing games
The Steam Deck is kind of close to this although the screen isn't the best. I think the closest you can get to this right now is adding a graphics card module on a Framework laptop.
NOTHING
EVER
HAPPENS
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steamcontroller
https://www.8bitdo.com/pro2/
i'm having a hard time describing the feelings this makes me feel. like i've been stressed, bedraggled and worn down, and suddenly there's a moment where i can just rest
it's nice to be excited about something for once instead of the baseline expectation of a horrible adversarial experience, which is the case for most tech in 2025
it is somewhat depressing that it's this novel to expect a piece of hardware to actually exist to make my life nicer vs the default of being an abomination that tries constantly to extract money and information from me like a fucking vampire
(and i guess, not having used this yet, this also speaks to valve being one of the last companies that i have any trust in to be capable of making a business decision that makes them less money in the short run in order to deliver a better product)
With some luck it would be easy to upgrade ourselves.
- 2 USB3-A on the front
- 2 USB2-A on the back
- 1 USB-C on the back
If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...
I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?
Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.
Yes, the controller is charged through usb-c, but you can just use any charger around to charge that. I mean, the battery should last for 30+ hours so you only need to charge it on a weekly or biweekly basis with heavy usage.
Edit: I specifically use a gaming-only PC. The hardware is used for nothing else. Hence, discussions of rootkits don't really bother me personally much and on balance I'd really rather see fewer cheaters in my games. I think it would be the same with any of these machines - anything Steam-branded is likely to be a 99% gaming machine and their users will only care that their games work, not about the mechanisms of the anti-cheat software.
Mac Mini m4: 127 x 127 x 50 mm = 0.8 L
Steam Machine: 156 x 162 x 152 = 3.8 L
That's 4.76 times more volume.