The word on the street in Germany is that Valve’s “Steam Box” PC will launch later this year, and it won’t be rocking Windows.
It’s no secret that Gabe Newell isn’t a fan of Windows 8, and so it probably won’t come as too much of a surprise to folks who pay attention to such things that Valve’s Steam Box will be based on a different OS. That’s the word out of a Google-translated report from German site Golem.de, which quoted Valve engineer Ben Krasnow as confirming that the unit will be Linux-based.
Krasnow also said the pseudo-console will be out in 2013, and it apparently won’t be alone. “The Hardware Lab also has a few secret projects that will be published in 2013,” he said. “We have a good group of electronic and mechanical engineers, and we look forward to some… cool stuff.” Alongside the Steam Box, Valve has been working on virtual reality and augmented reality projects, including some early-stage 3D goggles we heard about in September 2012.
Valve big dog Gabe Newell said in July 2012 that bringing a meaningful selection of games to Linux could help make it a serious competitor to Windows, but resistance to the idea came from a rather unexpected source: Free Software Foundation and GNU Project founder Richard Stallman, who said that the advent of closed-source, non-free games on Linux are “unethical because they deny freedom to their users.”
Source: Golem.de
