Jokes are not received on lemmy.
Be prepared for a deadly serious carefully crafted soapbox post.
this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2026
-12 points (43.0% liked)
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I made a huge mistake
theres a reason /s has become a thing to indicate sarcasm.
and its because true stupidity has become so extreme that its impossible to tell from sarcasm in the tone free medium of text.
and its because true stupidity has become so extreme that its impossible to tell from sarcasm in the tone free medium of text.
Eh. There's some sarcasm where it's so subtle that it better fits into an example pf Schroedinger's Asshole
That's the best kind.
Do you want Nazis? Because that type of sarcasm is a major contributor to getting Nazis
I thought your joke was funny 👍
Appreciate it 😭
What a very strange way to say "I don't want to". Some people are very odd.
The people downvoting this don't understand how intimidating building and upgrading PCs is to the average person. Like seriously, there's a reason prebuilts exist. Building a PC may seem easy if you're used to doing it, but most people aren't.
A lot of people see a PC as this magic box that runs games and other programs, and they don't dare open it up for fear of breaking something. Heck, a lot of people don't even understand that an operating system is just a piece of software that can be swapped out for other software, and not an integral part of the system they're using.
I know a number of people that have demonstrated all of the required skills at work but the mere thought of plugging unique shapes into the matching sockets scares the fuck out of them.
Having the electrician at work watch me build a computer and ask "how do you know you won't electrocute yourself?" made me facepalm thermal paste between my eyebrows. He even solders but he seemed serious, confused, and a bit defensive when I said something like "oh fuck off ya turd".
I think about that every block in the square hole video with the girl crying a lot. At first it feels like its pointing out lousy and exploitable design, but I start thinking that a lot of people won't be able to solve it and it's actually showing how most people think and the girl is the outlier dying from trying to teach people incapable of brain cell.
It pains me that people are like that. Working with computer hardware really isn't that scary unless you're cracking open a CRT monitor or a power supply for whatever reason.
I'd like to think that more people would be able to work with computer hardware if they simply set aside their fears and preconceptions and were willing to learn a few things, but like I said before, there are plenty of people who see computers as "magic boxes".
When I asked on the subreddit for pc building ages ago, people seemed genuinely helpful and friendly?
You can get other pre built PCs
a. pcpartpicker checks compatibility for you so you dont get parts that dont work together
- there are tons of videos explaining how its done on the internet
Personally, I understand the appeal of the Steam Machine, it's also cheaper than a standard prebuilt which helps. The fact it can basically be a nice, cute form factor machine is great! There is room for optimization in the future to make it run games and shit better too.
Personally, I would rather buy a prebuilt over putting a computer together myself because...While I can get a distro installed and use the package manager and command line to set stuff up. I am ever afraid of actually plugging and screwing things in. As my goose on the loose energy is LEGENDARY for causing random fuck-ups. Random sneezes, itches, all manner of odd occurrences will distract me to the point of not being able to reasonably complete the build correctly. I can change thermal paste, and do little things. Nothing as big as making my own computer from a bunch of parts boxes.
Edit: I still might try and fix my busted BIOS PC anyway, but, first I will get a mini-PC that will be a guarantee that I can play some games that I have been missing out on.
Yeah thats completely fair. I love the small cute form factor. I think there is also a social aspect to it, with communities that are going to form around it, similar to how they did around steam deck.
Yeah there is also the social aspect to consider. Which can provide a tech support system aside from Valve's, and in general connection with others that happen to have a Steam Machine or other Valve branded device!
Haven't seen that come up a lot. I have seen "I want official support from valve" and "I want to support valve". Not so much of what you've suggested.
I mean rather kill themselves is a bit harsh. You could buy a computer and install bazzite but I get the appeal of a vendor warranty that covers both the machine and the os.
I don't think you really need those forums. However, why not just slap Ubuntu on a second hand PC, put a decent GPU in and install Steam from the app store? Isn't SteamOS Linux-based anyways?
Yea but how would someone who isn’t into PC hardware know what a decent GPU, nevermind a decent second hand PC would be, without going to forums, watching reviews, etc.
The whole appeal of the steam machine is it being a console-like PC for people who don’t have the knowledge and/or patience to build their own.
I wouldn’t buy it because I enjoy building myself a bang-for-the-buck PC from used parts and ain’t scared of installing Linux myself. But if you want the benefits of a PC (game availability and prices, flexibility, compatibility) with the benefits of a console (plug-n-play, couch game friendly), a steam machine is pretty much it.
the guys from the forums don't know those things from the forums themselves. those things have specs. most in numbers. you can read system requirements of games you like to get an idea and then look up PC parts or complete PCs that exceed them. there are standards that say what parts generally fit together. when you know one part you want, that narrows down what other parts can be connected to it. for example, if you think the GPU is most important, it will determine the mainboard must have a certain connector for the card and also the power supply needs to fit, as well as the case dimensions to fit it inside. this is how you build/upgrade a PC. Some stores let you select only components that fit together for a configuration, like this German store for example will only let you choose a mainboard with an AM5 socket, if you selected a CPU that requires one and so on: https://www.alternate.de/PC/PC-Konfigurator
I know, I myself enjoy building PCs. But I know a lot of people who don’t. And they’d rather pay some amount of money more to not have to look up hardware comparisons, find out what works best together, install operating systems, etc. It’s a hobby not everyone enjoys and for those people a pre built and configured system with manufacturer support is great, even if it might cost them a little more.
yeah, but the OP thinks they must visit a forum to built a specific setup. but that forum is just a pool of second hand info. it can help, but OP doesn't have to, if they dread it.
But you do need to get that info from somewhere, be it forums, tutorials, etc.
And if you have no idea about what makes a computer good (for gaming), that’s quite a hurdle that many would rather not need to get into, by buying something prebuilt/pre-set-up like the steam machine
How are you supposed to learn anything if you don't make the effort of actually learn anything? Do you expect to get everything served on a silver plate? :)
You don’t have to learn everything. People have all kinds of hobbies and not a lot of time.
And I don’t expect anything to be handed to me. I expect to pay extra for people who know what they’re doing to do it for me.
I personally would never do that for a PC because I do have the know how because I enjoy bargain hunting for hardware and building my own rig.
But when I have an issue with my car, I bring it to a mechanic because I don’t have enough time and interest to teach myself how to repair it myself. I‘d rather put my little time into my existing hobbies.
Fair point. I can't argue with that. :)
Idk, I still think it has some merit. It can reduce a lot of troubleshooting when something not playing right. There's 1001 things that can go right and wrong with PC gaming. Reducing the hardware to near zero with a standardized rig takes a lot of headache off IMO.
Some people just want to play games from Steam without all the pc gaming hobby's baggage. They probably already have other fulfilling hobbies they learn from. What's wrong not adding another hobby to go down a rabbit hole?
~~Maybe I'm too optimistic~~
Lol, have fun with the metric ton of shit that is the Snap Store and Ubuntu. You'd immediately run into problems doing what you just said, and the performance wouldn't be the same either (assumming similar hardware). Not even mentioning the metric shit-ton of garbage you may run into with Nvidia.
So many enthusiasts don't even realise how much work and knowledge goes into setting something up that works as well as the Gabecube. If you believe it's just "pick random distro and install Steam" you're painfully mistaken.
I myself run CachyOS on my daily driver and have the Gamescope Session installed which they provide, which is as close as you gonna get (as Cachy brings most kernel optimizations, better scheduler yada yada yada). But that still led me through the CLI and has some caveats, which is absolutely 100% nothing most gamers want or even have the time to inbetween e.g. family + job.
OP may be out of line with language, but they're right.
Can confirm, if you search steam in Ubuntu, it automatically gives you their buggy 3rd party snap. I didn't realize it until steam link didn't work, and all the file paths for debugging were really weird.
Also installing Ubuntu on hardware runs the same risk as installing windows on hardware: hardware may or may not be supported or easy to get going.
CachyOS is most definitely not "as close as it gets" to SteamOS. Cachy is performance driven whereas SteamOs much like Bazzite is compatibility driven. Valve's main goal is for their distribution to run on everything, performance is a low priority.
better scheduler
That's not a thing, the words you're looking for are "scheduler optimized for gaming at the cost of performance in other domains like power consumption", you also don't need it because common programs like gamemode already do this.
Valve’s main goal is for their distribution to run on everything, performance is a low priority.
Are you trolling or something? This is categorically false, Gabe Newell himself expressed that with the Steam Deck (and therefore SteamOS, which was designed specifically for it in this modern version) their focus absolutely was performance as well as user experience. It had to so they could squeeze every last frame out of the AMD SoC. They literally developed their own micro-compositor (Gamescope) instead of utilizing e.g. Plasma (despite it being pre-installed for Desktop mode) for higher performance and quicker feature availability. Not to mention Nvidia GPUs still not being fully supported by SteamOS despite it being technically possible if they wanted to. Your claim about SteamOS' priorities is nonsense.
the words you’re looking for are “scheduler optimised for gaming at the cost of performance in other domains like power consumption”
So a better scheduler for gaming distros, which indeed was the context. Though I'd argue there are schedulers who're even objectively better for general desktop and gaming use as the one that treats every process equally isn't optimal to make either a GUI feel snappy or prevent microstuttering in games, but rather optimised for server workloads.
Gamemode is cool, however if you want to build your own Gabecube with some random distro it's absolutely not guaranteed to run during a Gamescope session or even at all, not all distros ship or enable it by default or you have to put "gamemoderun %command%" into every game's start parameters. Not to mention most users most likely neither know what that is nor do they want to, they want to play games and just use the computer.
So a better scheduler for gaming distros
CachyOS is not a gaming distro, it is a performance distro, and this is from the mouth of its own developers. Everybody thinks their scheduler is the best - there's probably a meme about it somewhere, you'd probably get more aggressive scheduling with gamemode than regular cachy because gamemode expects you to be playing a game when you start it... and fyi gamemode is used by default in applications like lutris.
SteamOS is a desktop distribution now, that means full compatibility - at least once they start supporting nvidia. Maybe when they supported only the steam deck they could afford some targeted optimizations, but the more systems start running SteamOS the wider the target will have to become.
I kind of got your frustration, I also would love for more options in the marcher for “steam machine-like” consumer hardware, almost like a “console” version of the steam machine.
Isn't the whole steam machine not supposed to appeal to the console crowd?
I don't think that's true. For one thing it's marketed as a living room/couch gaming "console".
For another, it's not a PC that comes with a dedicated keyboard and mouse type setup, but instead is clearly marketed as being used with a controller.
I wouldn't say Valve assume that people will switch from consoles to this hardware, but I do think it's being marketed in the same/similar niche.
Why would it not?
Unless the form factor is really a must i would still recommend just getting a more generic prebuild. That way it leaves the door open for you to upgrade some parts later if you feel up for it.
Most people have "a nerdy guy" in their lives they can ask for help. And since you're posting here.. I'm almost certain you're that guy for your people 😉