14 DAY TRIAL // The father of the Linux project, Linus Torvalds, talked about Valve and its potential role in the Linux ecosystem with the upcoming gaming consoles.
Not many users will remember this, but Linus Torvalds said a few years back, in the same Q&A where he gave NVIDIA the finger, that he considered the Linux desktop one of his failures. He said he started Linux as a means to get a proper desktop experience, and Linux is the least successful in that area, 25 years later.
Valve is making a push with its Steam Machines, which will be powered by a Linux distribution names SteamOS, based on Debian. The last three years have been a wild ride for the Linux platform, and more progress has been made than in all of the years combined. If you had said that Linux would be a major entertainment competitor five years ago, no one would have believed it. And they would have been correct in doing so.
Linus has high hopes from Valve
During a very interesting interview Linus gave for slashdot.org readers, he was asked if "Valve is capable of making Linux a primary choice for gamers?" He answered in a rather conservative way that shines an interesting light on Valve.
"'Primary'? Probably not where it's even aiming. I think consoles (and all those handheld and various mobile platforms that 'real' gamers seem to dismiss as toys) are likely much more primary, and will stay so. I think Valve wants to make sure they can control their own future, and Linux and ValveOS is probably partly to explore a more 'console-like' Valve experience (ie the whole 'get a box set up for a single main purpose, as opposed to a more PC-like experience), and partly as a 'second source' against Microsoft, who is a competitor in the console area," wrote Linus Torvalds.
Valve is planning to release the Steam Machines in November, along the SteamOS operating system. It's a big step for the company, but it's not like it won't support Windows anymore. In any case, the amount of effort that's been put into this platform has transformed it, and it's clear that Linus also thinks that it's going to raise the usage for the desktop as well.