SteamOS - A potential headache and game changer for Microsoft

In their relentless drive to dominate everything in our gaming lives, Valve has recently announced their next big thing; the SteamOS. But to properly discuss it's potential impact on how we use our computers, let's take a trip down memory lane.

I've been building my own computers since college - or high school in American terms for you Yanks that keep wandering over here on my blog - ever since I discovered it was way easier than I thought and way cheaper then buying a whole unit. Computers had a mystique around them that building my own was the first step into breaking it.

Now the operating system you'd have ten plus years ago was a bit of a given. Yes, Linux and Apple existed, but neither were anywhere close to Microsoft's dominance with Windows. Linux remained in the hands of the few that truly got and understood computers, and I felt at the time it was seriously beyond my capabilities. Nowadays I find Linux a lot less intimidating, but that's because if a Linux device starts going wrong I have plenty of web-enabled device to search for a fix. Back then, the computer with Linux on would be the only device you owned that could traverse the internet so if shit happened... well, let's just say it involved a lot of travelling back and forth to your friend's house, or to be specific, your friend's internet connection. Mac's were there, but I only ever saw them used by media professionals, not everyday usage.
(For the record, I acknowledge the existence of iOS and Android but I won't be focusing on them on this article as they're newcomers, and not had a great impact on the desktop market.)

There was also another reason for Window's dominance; video games.

Oh yeah, look at me cater to the Ultima crowd like I have a clue what's going on.

If you wanted your video games on a PC, and I did, then Windows was pretty much the only way to go. Mac's had Warcraft... and that it. Linux had even less than that for the triple-A titles. Windows was the only way forward if you wanted to play, and I've used Windows almost exclusively on home rigs because of this. Between cornering the home video game enthusiast market and the gigantic business market, Windows was, and still is, top dog in the operating system producers.

But Microsoft's hold on that title had not exactly been absolute. They are perfectly able to fuck up along the way. The seemed quite happy to fuck up every other iteration of Windows, from ME, Vista and now 8. And 8 is a whopping fuck up. A real whopping fuck up. Most laptops don't come with touchscreens, let along desktops, which screws over Windows 8 something awful. Every person who I've ever asked about Windows 8 has come back quite clear - don't go near it, it's dog-shit awful, stick with 7. I despised it as I was forced to resort to Google search to help me find basic things like the Control Panel and the fucking option to turn off the fucking laptop. So it's fairly said it's not the most intuitive of OS's...

I get some of the ideas presented. I mean, looking at it for half a second, a unified interface across all platforms seems like a good idea. Of course, the next half a second of thought would of brought up that phones, desktops, tablet and games console not only do vastly different things but have require vastly different input from the user, which just goes to show why you should plan things for a whole damn second. Phones and tablets are primarily used for media consumption and entertainment, with input that's designed around small screens and inaccurate thumbs, where desktops straddle a myriad of tasks from work related spreadsheets, programming, rendering, data crunching and media consumption, with highly accurate and precise mouse manipulation input. There's a slight fucking difference there. Could you imagine trying to use an accounting spreadsheet on your iPhone, or trying to render an 3D animated object on a Galaxy's tiny CPU?

It doesn't help that I don't feel like Microsoft recognize their error, and would rather force it down everyone's throats with the attitude of, hey, we're the top dog. What else you got? All rumours point to more of the bad, more apps, more walled gardens, more 'no Start Menu' crap. And me, who wants my games, would sigh. Triple-A titles don't come to Macs often, even if I could afford their lubricious price tag, and Linux is a non-standardized mess, which is also shunned by the gaming development community - regardless of the irony that most games were likely programmed on a Linux computer.

But now SteamOS is here.

Sort of like the moon from Majora's Mask slamming into Mircosoft's Hyrule.

Oh. Fuck. Yes.

For starters, it's Linux with political muscle behind it. Steam is a massive distributor of games, and if anyone could say to developers 'Here's the OS baseline you're working to - not Ubunto, Red Hat or anything, this,' it's Valve. They're already pushing the porting of video games to Linux before this all went down, and with the Steam Box, they offer home network streaming for any game that isn't compatible. Plus they're already a Triple-A content producer anyway... when they get round to it.

In fact, I highly expect to find many games slowly but surely starting the port to Linux if this takes off. We've just seen Nvidia turn around and start pledging more Linux support from a historically poor stance of Linux support, and I doubt that SteamOS being and Nvidia's turnaround are not somehow related. One of the biggest issues I heard about Linux thus far is the sheer lack of support from companies like Netflix - and considering that SteamOS has already been stated to want to be big on all media, specifically mentioning streaming media, I remain hopeful that a breakthrough in support is around the corner.

As it's Linux based and designed to run on a smaller console, it'll also be mercifully lightweight on your system resources. No more of the whole 'I'm using over 33% of your entire system resources to sit here idling' nonsense, which I've come to resignedly expect from later iterations of Windows.

If they come out and say that they're also going to get some office programs on there as well...

Oh.

Oh boy.

Oh, and it'll be free by the way. Yup. Free.

That's some serious competition to Microsoft right there. While in yesteryear if someone mentioned picking up a new computer you wouldn't ask about what OS they intended to have because it was assumed Windows - in 99% of all cases - today we're looking at a very different market. I hear people express disappointment and dissatisfaction with the latest showing from Microsoft constantly, and I have often heard people with lower experience in computing voice idea of going over to Apple - even with their hefty price, their slimmed down OS experience is becoming quite attractive.

Microsoft's latest offerings have, in a serious understatement, not been good. I trashed Window's 8 enough so we'll pass that mess. We've seen the disaster of the Surface, and now we see the Surface 2, which is exactly the same but with HD. So that will be the next big disaster. And that was after the humiliating climb down and backtracking of the Xbone, which unfortunately for many of their core audience was too little, too late. Whilst Microsoft are unlikely to backtrack again and reintroduce such hated policies, many of their audience has been turned off by the toxicity of the Xbone and become vulnerable to Sony who has been exerting serious effort to woo Microsoft's unhappy possible customers. It's got so bad that Steve Ballmer didn't so much as step down as was pushed.

And here's SteamOS. It'll be free, and it'll be striking at that lucrative gaming market. While it may not have shots to fire at Microsoft's colossal earning ability from the corporate market, it is worth considering that increasing the amount of home users comfortable with using a different OS cannot be good for Microsoft in the long term. If the next generation of employees are happy and able to use a free OS on their work computers, how long will that money hold for Microsoft?

So what's next for Microsoft?

Well, if SteamOS can deliver, I for one won't really care. And coming from a person who's been married to Windows for well over ten years, that's got to be alarming.

Er. Come back tomorrow?

This is awkward. I mean, I recently changed the blurb up there with 'updates Sunday' and everything. Ah. Hmm. Look, I have something, it's nearly written out, quite close to being done, but... I've shit to do tonight. Yeah. Um. Sorry. But it will be done tomorrow! I promise! And I'm actually going to work on tagging posts, improving layout and stuff as well! Really! Honest!

...please come back tomorrow.

For me?

For my numbers?

And what I am going to be talking about tomorrow? Well, here's a hint of the original subject before tangents happened!

Dun dun duuuuunnn!

UKIP and the sound of me laughing

You know, sometimes its nice when the bad guys just go all asshole on you. There's little worse then spending years nursing and feeding a powerful grudge to only find out later that the target for your hate is, in fact, a rather nice person and you've been wrong and petty all along. For this reason I avoid all news or interviews about Ricky Gervais, for I utterly despise him yet I am secretly worried that in real life he's an alright person, so I keep my knowledge of him severely limited to be sure I can continue justifying my hate to myself.

I refuse to Google 'Ricky Gervais charity' in case it turns out he's a prolific donater, the dick.

I note this today because it's always enjoyable when UKIP goes out there way to be pricks.

Oh, Godfry Bloom. Your fall from whatever grace you'd ever mistakenly managed to obtain is delicious. So for those of you not in the know, a Mister Godfrey Bloom, a Member of European Parliament and UKIP politician referred to the women in his company on a panel as 'sluts.' His own UKIP women members that is, in front of a live panel audience.

Now, he's come out and said that he was referring to the older usage of the word 'slut,' meaning dirty, not promiscuous, and that no one present took offence. Weeeelll... look, I'll give you that perhaps the women you were referring to didn't take offense. Maybe they knew you and found it funny, and this is all out of context hilarity. I've called my friends worse. However... you're an MEP buddy, in front of people with recording devices. And you sit on, of all things, the... wait for it... the European Parliament's Women's Rights and Gender Equality Committee. Ho boy. That was never going to go down well. And I won't defend you on the older usage of the word thing, because there's plenty of words that are unacceptable to use now that had obscure, non-offensive original meaning - but that doesn't wash nowadays. Explain all you like that you were calling that man an olde reference to being a Nigerian fellow. It won't get you far.

In absolute fairness, the whole 'sluts' thing is really been brought of of hand when you consider he's also just hit a journalist, something I find a lot more interesting. He hit him for the funniest thing as well; upon being question why a UKIP brochure was 'changing the face of politics' but only had white people on the cover, old Godders called the journo a racist and hit him with the brochure. Ah. Wut. That's a fair fucking question, and you can't just sling the word 'racist' in a hope to deflect it. Also you can't hit journalists. Because they're the media. They have this tendency, the media, of telling everyone everything. It's this thing they do. It's almost like it's their whole fucking point of being. You can't trust them to be quiet, for some reason, and isn't that weird? 

He's like Victor Meldrew, only perhaps racist, sexist, more grumpy, and insane.
 So, in fact, nothing like Victor Meldrew. 

Anyway, all this is really is just another thing on olde Godders and his party. We'll add it to the pile, with the Bongo Bongo Land stuff, the anti-feminist remarks and the women in workplace crap. While he's been suspended, we've seen his leader, Nigel Farage have to explain about some pro-fascist leanings in his past. Whee. You know, that pile of problems seems to keep growing, doesn't it? I mean, that first article I linked to that a side column of fuck ups, of hideously offensive things you UKIP people just keeping saying. On the one hand, UKIP strives against political correctness, seeing it not as basic human dignity but as censorship (which really says something about their world view...) but perhaps if they censored their own yaps once in a while they might do better. And censor some of their thoughts too, whilst they're at it.

Hell, what am I saying? Keep saying stupid shit. More rope to hang you with. You know, hanging, the thing you want back. Whee.

The Tories must love UKIP, deep down. They're saying all the thing that many Tories would love to say and do, but don't under that pesky need to be 'electable.' When the equal marriage debate started rolling along, you could see Cameron sweat under the sheer effort it was taking to keep his party member from saying deeply unpleasant stuff, and he didn't manage to contain it all. Then he sees UKIP on the horizon, relieved that no matter what vile filth comes out of one of his back benchers mouth's, within five minutes UKIP will say something far worse and distract the whole issue.

In fact, for a lot of this government's ruling they've been very fortunate about that sort of thing. In the early days, anger was neatly deflected over any policies by chucking a hapless Lib Dem outside to defend it, so the mood turned on the Lib Dem's treachery. Now, we're all used to the Lib Dem's unreliability, and thus it doesn't shield the Tories no more but up sweeps UKIP. Cameron must have a monkey's paw or something, continually raining down disposable shields for him. He must rock as support classes on first person shooters, only as a Tory, I'd expect him to only heal his friends, not anyone who actually needs it.

But still, it's nice to know that once in a while the people you believe are bastards go out their way to go, yes, it's true: we're all bastards.

And they did it without resorting to chemical weapons. Which is nice.