New information: Steam simply isn't saying what they are basing their OS upon. They have access to the Unbuntu stack and the Gentoo stack and are getting "fully developed" brand new FAST accellerated video driver support directly from Nvidia and the other graphics suppliers. Likely their Steam OS is a frankenstein of whatever code works fastest and best (you can see how Gentoo code could creep into the mix as it is completely optimized by its very nature).
Valve/Steam is the 800 pound gorillia in the gaming industry and
they can get fast 3D driver support from their direct suppliers that nobody else can get. But likely they have to sign non-disclosure agreements to get that total support level, just like anybody else would have to do to get the root code from the state of the art 3D graphics accellerator guys.
Apparently there are going to be some legal restrictions on dispersing these very fast brand new custom Linux video drivers that will cause the need for a closed "Steam OS". Steam is also going to be enforcing a level of consistency in hardware & I/O that so far has not been possible in the ARM Linux world.
Hardware vendors hopefully will embrace these new consistent hardware & I/O standards as part of their upper end products as they will want Steam ability in their products as a major selling point.
The cheapie Chinese guys unfortunately will continue to chase lower cost as more valuable than any set of standards and they will continue to do so just as long as the device will run on the chopped up, tweeked and customized Android version that they cook up for it that will run OK at the time it is sold. This will keep their products at the throw away device level going on out into the future.
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Look for the GPL loving mass of Linux hackers to start up some pure open source equivalents of any new drivers that Steam is given within 6 months of them being shipped inside Steam OS. Rest easy that secrets will out faster and better going out into the future.
I think the GPL people will allow Steam to do its closed source thing for a year or so before asking politely for the all of the code officially as Steam is using GPL liscenses to use the core Linux system no matter which flavor they are basing it upon. And core drivers are part of that agreement if they choose to enforce it.
Then Steam will have to open up, or shut down.
There is sort of an unoffical grace period while the code is "solidified" to be stable enough for GPL inclusion. Even Google uses this same grace period of time to fix and fiddle with things before releasing Android code for each version completely. So things have a year or so to shake out.
The hackers will likely have any worthwhile GPU tricks desiminated long before then, so it likely won't really ever become an issue.
If Steam can get VR graphics to really cooperate with them, that will be a first.Also realize by the time 2 years elapses, we will be so far down the ARM road these current Steam video drivers won't even be relevant for much anyway.
ARM moves just that fast .....
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..... question becomes, where will Microsoft be inside that 2 years down the road time frame? Intel is building low cost Bay Trail and low cost Haswell to primarily run on Android and Linux primarily (and incidentally to run on MS as well). The latest low cost Intel New Unit of Computing systems all run on Android/Linux (Microsoft isn't even mentioned until you talk about last year's high end expensive NUC devices with older, bigger processors).
Wintel is over, finally.
Can Microsoft come up with anything compelling to sell the world for $100 a year in MS 365 tax? All their core tricks are moving into Android/Linux OSs even as we speak .....
http://liliputing.com/2013/09/ixonos-multi-window-for-android-runs-apps-in-re...You got a whole crew of brand new groups proposing new replacement OS products, including the Android mod groups, the Linux distros, Mozilla/Firefox, Tisen, Sailfish, etc. etc. etc. And they SHARE tricks with each other, freely, so whatever is neat and good soon gets used by all.
You got Google itself, building Chrome OS now with full windowing type features including a natural Office eqivalent that has also been released to the Open Source community. Chrome OS laptops are selling better & better now that they have hard drives and HD based apps.
You got Oppo and Xiaomi each buying up some key Android engineering personel and making up deals with the existing Android Mod teams to make up a new phone and tablet OS of their very own. Cyanogen is becoming an independent OS company with open roots quite quickly now.
You got Steam and Ubuntu, each now proposing a new OS system to replace Windows.
Windows devices just cost way too too much for what you are getting. At least the high priced Apple can claim with some justification their closed world "just works better" because they can control all the aspects of that world.
Issue for Apple is they are falling behind the functional curve with features, speed, etc. etc. and they haven't innovated anything really new for much ever since Steve Jobs died.
Google is now your driver for "new stuff" and they currently rank #1 in both tablet and phone space OS products.
..... fun fun fun for everybody next year, I suspect ,,,,,
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