I mean with desktop OS systems you've got

* macs, which cost an arm and a leg and aren't necessarily better if you've got an axe to grind against corporations with dark patterns

* chromebooks, where you have even less choice over the matter

* various flavors of Linux, which have never quite gotten to 'grandma uses it and it just works with the apps she likes'

Interestingly SteamOS is quite nice, but will it be something outside of gaming on a Steam Deck?

> Interestingly SteamOS is quite nice, but will it be something outside of gaming on a Steam Deck?

Considering their website[1] still says it's Debian derived but they switched to Arch some time ago, I doubt it's in their plans to do more than enable their own hardware.

[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/steamos

Maybe not enough, but certainly some. I'm not a software person, and yet my personal machine now runs linux, exactly _because_ of Microsoft's wankery with no local accounts, uninstallable Edge, Cortana, news on the fucking taskbar, and the shitty Windows 11 with its shitty taskbar. Fuck all that noise. Life is calm and great in linux land.

That's because they have backroom deals with the manufacturers.

Its impossible to compete when the manufacturers are actively hostile and don't provide the firmware/code/specs in a way that the hardware can be supported independently. Some even use this to spy under an umbrella of plausible deniability, there was an article just recently about Qualcomm chips that did this (checked in) at the firmware level.