In an IGN interview, Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais said that “[they] want [SteamOS] to be at the point where at some point you can install it on any PC”. Below is a transcript of the interview. I tried to clean it up to my best ability.
Just like Steam Deck paved the way for Steam OS on a variety of third-party handhelds, we expect that Steam Machine will pave the way for Steam OS on a bunch of different machines in either similar form factors, different perf envelopes, different segments of the market, and get to a good outcome there. We definitely want to encourage people to try it out on their own hardware. We’ll be working on expanding hardware support for the drivers and the base operating system. Just last week, we fixed something that was preventing us from booting on the very latest AMD CPU platforms. Last month, we added support for the Intel Lunar Lake platforms. We’re constantly adding support and improving performance. We want it to be at the point where at some point you can install it on any PC, but there’s still a ton of work to do there.
If the embedded video doesn’t take you to the correct part of the video, the correct timestamp is 5:37.
EDIT: Here’s the written article of the video:
https://www.ign.com/articles/valves-next-gen-steam-machine-and-steam-controller-the-big-interview
It’s got a use case. I mean, I know not everyone has a dedicated gaming PC, but some people (myself included) do. I don’t keep any personal info on it, it’s just for gaming. I have a separate mini-PC for general use. It’s a good option for a “consolized” PC at the TV for gaming, in lieu of the typical gaming console. Many already use Bazzite for the purpose.
Either way, I’m glad to see it as an option. And that’s all it is. I doubt I’d use dedicated SteamOS (I like my gaming rig to be fully up-to-date on the latest kernel so I use Endeavor), but it’s a simple and straightforward choice. There’s Bazzite, Cachy gaming, and plenty of standard and immutable distros, SteamOS is just one more.