SteamOS

[AJCopland]

That enough to make me drop everything steam and go some where else. Although I thought that was a Valve project - no?  I am used to being wrong these days.

Also, this Steam idea has one fatal flaw. Being tied to linux means I will most likely never go there. I hate linux with a passion. I would rather work with Windows!

I think you've misunderstood a few things:
- Steam (the program) runs on Windows/Linux/Mac/Android/PS3/etc,
- SteamOS is a Linux derived operating system _probably_ with Steams Big Picture mode as it's user interface,
- A SteamMachine is basically a customised PC running SteamOS (like XboxOne & PS4).

We don't know enough yet to say exactly what SteamOS or these SteamMachines are actually going to be like. What their UI will be etc, but Big Picture mode does seem like the logical answer, along with whatever their final announcement will be on Friday.

I'm interested in it all, will probably install SteamOS to try it out, maybe even build or buy a SteamMachine at some point in the future.

Generally though I think it'll be good to scare the pants off of Sony and MS since anything Valve/Steam do in this area is going to cause a massive upset simply due to the number of loyal fanboys they have.

[AJCopland]

@Ajcopland
So SteamOS is built similar to C=OS, just a GUI over linux?

No, that would be too great a simplification.
Also we don't know exactly what any of these things are yet in truth we're just speculating at this stage.

What is known is that Valve have been working closely with GPU manufacturers to improve their drivers. You do this with high-end games development anyway but it's usually Windows focused. Driver bugs are found, cases which produce them are submitted and then a bug fix will appear in the next driver release.
The difference with the Linux work that Valve/Steam have been doing is that there has been a lot more of the low hanging fruit to gather.

There's other things to consider. For example Linux is a stack of software rather than any one distinct thing. What we think of as Linux is actually "GNU Linux" and the GNU part is what provides a lot of the functionality. "Linux" itself is just the kernel and you don't even need a window manager, X Window system or much less above that for something to be "built-on-Linux".

So whereas C=OS has taken a distro and just changed the theme, added a wallpaper and called it a day SteamOS could be absolutely anything from basic theming and boot into Big Picture mode through to removing the window managers, replacing the software stack and providing a direct rendering interface and API layer. Who knows.