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Its the form factor and power consumption.
I could build a steamos machine, but whats the point? I would still want my favorite flavor of linux with steam on in instead.
Remember everything in the cube is done for you, including the power supply inside. You can build similar, but this is a very compact single fan system.
Gabe cube also has cool hardware features you can't get on a PC like background updates and HDMICEC.
Hardware features? Background updates? Sorry, could you elaborate?
Edit: Man, this deserved a downvote? Hilariously thin skinned, ain't ya?
Not sure how to more than I have. A web search might clear it up?
I mean, how is a background update a hardware feature?
Because it requires special hardware...
I don't know about the background updates, but the HDMI CEC allows for the device and the TV to sync with each. Think like adjusting the volume on the TV adjusting the volume on the soundbar, or your Steam machine to turn on when you turned on your TV. To my knowledge this required specific hardware normal consumer motherboards don't support.
You can get hdmi cec working. It just requires some tinkering at the moment. I do see valve improving it for custom builds though.
Gabecube is very nice and open compared to a normal console, but if you're coming from a pc, it's the opposite in some ways. I personally would not want an os built around an online login.
Or atomic.. I love tinkering too much
You can have immuability without loosing tinkering possibilities. I do that on NixOS.
The more I learn the more I don't want flatpaks on my machine so of course I am requiring something else than SteamOS or bazzite.
Yeah that's another one I'm fine with flatpaks depending on the application but in most cases give me my native packages
The thing is that Flatpak failed at providing good sandboxing. Some flatpaks are well made such as as Firefox, Mozilla really put effort into getting something well packaged but unfortunately that's not the standard. Most of them are packaged like shit or for the better ones they are not as well packages as the distro official packages that have stronger quality assurance. Of course many apps only have debian or arch support and flatpaks does bring wider Linux based OS support which is cool and I do run some flatpaks on my devices.
But I hope we will have something better that will properly be sandboxed and have stronger requirements for packager to offer a global GNU/Linux publishing experience regardless of the distro, even if it comes with some drawbacks like size.
I am not hating on flatpaks but I think people over estimate the sandbox aspect and simply don't see how poorly most of them are packaged.
I use NixOS but I have a few flatpaks. They're not my preferred packaging option (nix is) but they work decently well.
Same, however it's worth noting that flatpaks are not giving us the proper sandboxed experience it promises to offer and many are packages like crap.
The OS is not built around any login. It just boots straight into Steam by default. This is the experience consumers expect from a console. But of course you can just exit it, and since it's Linux you can even disable it entirely.
Does not need an online login.
The OS requires an online login?
I don't know if the OS exactly requires an online login, but it basically boots into the Steam client, and that won't do you much good without a Steam account.
Yeah this is incorrect the OS doesn't require a steam login to work. You can bypass the steam login at boot if you want to and only need it to play steam games.
Require? I'm pretty sure you can get to desktop without, but how about big picture and gamescope? I've never seen steam ui without logging in.
You click "offline mode" if thats what you want.
Couldn't you just do that with any PC? Are there some specific benefits?
I have an Xbox one. With the somewhat recent cracking of them, would it be possible to install on that?
Maybe? You probably already can install Linux, but the compatibility would probably need some elbow grease, and some level of modding your system.
Sounds beyond me already. 😆
I’m hoping someone comes up with a tutorial one day. Why not turn old Xbox Ones in to underpowered Steam Machines, amirite?
Well that's why so many people were keen for the PS3 supporting Linux way back when, but they had to remove it because people such as the US military were using them for cheap computing clusters.
You can either have an open system that lets you do what you want, or a cheap system subsidised by the company selling it, but you can't have both unfortunately.