The box in question is tiny: about the size of a GameCube. Extremely portable, light, and quiet. Valve has a strong profit motive to ensure games can actually run on it without Windows, doing nearly all of the troubleshooting for you. Yeah you could install Linux on a system you built yourself. You can eat the responsibility of expensive mistakes you could possibly make in building it and setting it up. But if the steam machine doesn’t work ALREADY, straight out of the box, without the expectation for you to fuck with it, it’s valve’s problem. For grown ups who have a job and limited free time, not having to waste that time on unfucking shit may in fact be worth it.
The box in question is tiny: about the size of a GameCube. Extremely portable, light, and quiet. Valve has a strong profit motive to ensure games can actually run on it without Windows, doing nearly all of the troubleshooting for you. Yeah you could install Linux on a system you built yourself. You can eat the responsibility of expensive mistakes you could possibly make in building it and setting it up. But if the steam machine doesn’t work ALREADY, straight out of the box, without the expectation for you to fuck with it, it’s valve’s problem. For grown ups who have a job and limited free time, not having to waste that time on unfucking shit may in fact be worth it.