With the Steam Frame and Steam Machine launching with SteamOS Linux this year, we’re going to again see a nice boost for Flatpaks and desktop Linux overall.
Linux has, historically, been quite messy when it comes to software distribution. We have various distribution-specific packaging formats like .deb (Debian / Ubuntu), .rpm (Fedora) and the list just goes on and on. Canonical also went their own way with Ubuntu for the likes of Snap, but the real winner is going to end up being Flatpak and the main Flathub store.
I expect the machine to sell much less than the deck, and even less than the frame.
Personally I’ll get the frame, I can’t justify full price for the machine (unless it’s under 500, which won’t happen with RAM as it is priced)
Even without the RAM prices being mad, there is no way it would ever be under $500. I think most industry estimates were ~$800 iirc
Anything over 600 is dead on arrival IMO.
In that case it would be valve having learned nothing from the failure of the previous steam machines largely owing to obscene pricing.
For the specs described 600 would be the most sold computer of the year. Even 800 would be reasonable seeing the prices around. I can’t justify because I already have a much more powerful & expensive desktop.