Can someone explain the potential viability of a bootable Steam Linux distro, probably based on Ubuntu? I guess device drivers would be the main issue but if there was ever anything that could get manufacturers to pay more attention to Linux it would probably be this.
I can't imagine Valve want the extra work of maintaining a Linux distro. Even if it was just a rebranding, they'd still have to deal with thousands of bug reports about hardware and software problems.
There was a vague rumour that they might build a Linux-based games console. That sounds more plausible - by controlling the hardware, they could avoid a lot of problems, and if it doesn't look like a PC, people don't expect to be able to install Windows software. But moving to hardware would still be a significant change.
There probably is no point in it, since there are enough general purpose distros already, which can be perfectly used for gaming, and benefit from improved drivers.
It would seem largely pointless for them to build their own distro from scratch.
On the other hand it should be relatively trivial to make a spin of say an Ubuntu LTS that boots directly into Steam "big picture mode" directly on top of standard X11 without a Window Manager.
In theory I suppose they could ship this with a standard set of hardware that was subsidised and end up with something that looked more like an Xbox.
If it were to happen today or in the near future, there would barely be any games for it, and nothing too interesting that would make people want to buy one. Only Valve's recent games would be ported to Linux while almost all third party games would not be port (look at Mac Steam's games).
