A Linux console ... LOLWOT (Score 1)

I'm skeptical. I would like a set top box to play my media, since I don't have one yet. (The AppleTV and 360 are not compatible enough) and if it can run the latest vidya on my TV... well, that would be great! However-- Since SteamOS would be a modified version of GNU/Linux, only the games that currently support Linux in the Steam Store would run on the box, which means fewer games. Linux ...... 185 Mac ....... 509 Windows..2149 I like the idea of a Steambox that gives developers a standard platform, so the games can be tweaked for best performance. I don't like it that it would limit my choices of games. Developers would not be incentivised to port to SteamOS unless there were a large enough install base. And even if Steambox with its 185 games took off --- entirely possible, if Half Life 3 was an exclusive, it *might* do for the system what Halo did for the XBox --- there is no "shift to Linux" possible for gaming. That is because there is no such thing as "Linux". There is only the infinitely fragmented GNU/Linux miasma with 1000s of incompatible distros. Valve wisely chose a single variant to support (Ubuntu 12.04 LTS). We already have enough compatibility issues with Windows and Mac, which exist in only a few versions, XP/Vista/7/8. GNU/Linux is a million times worse. Steambox will have no effect on Linux market share, as much as the Lintards want to hold the world's lusers hostage to their evolving shitpiles, so that everybody has 100 problems and has to lick their arse in forums to get the simplest of shit working -- it ain't happening. Lusers ain't stupid, people who spent 3 days getting suspend/hibernate working on a 5 year old netbook are just silly. Throw it in the bin already and go do something fun/productive! Software is always lagging hardware. John Carmack bemoans the fact that a PC that is 10x as powerful as a PS3 struggles to keep up, because of all the abstraction layers and drivers and whatnot, JC wants to use a pointer to directly target a pixel but the Windows architecture won't let him. Wouldn't Steambox/Linux be the same or worse? I think the entire Linux graphics subsystem is kludge built on kludge, there should be a way for programmers like JC to get full hardware access without the OS getting in the way.