Trilarion: I never said that anyone should abandon anything. However I think that Linux is not very popular at the moment. Therefore it isn't clear if people will readily use it. It's risky. I agree that it's an expansion.
Linux is immensely popular, it runs a large percentage of Internet infrastructure out there, major Internet services, people's home routers, your smart TV, the majority of smartphones, tablets and other devices and all sorts of other appliances. Every single person uses Linux every day if not directly, indirectly with or without knowing it.
If you mean "popular as a desktop operating system" however, then I'd agree with you that it is not popular as that, but that is somewhat irrelevant to what Valve is doing with SteamOS. Valve's Steam Machines are being marketed as a console which is just the guts of a PC inside of it. The fact it will run Linux is just a minor detail for the most part and the popularity of Linux is somewhat irrelevant. Almost every new console coming out from any video game company runs a new operating system that has never been used in anything before and wont ever be used in anything ever again except that one console and the popularity of the particular OS they put in that console is 0 before the console goes on the market. People who buy consoles buy them for the games they have on them not what OS they run inside traditionally. By using Linux instead of writing an OS from scratch, a company gets the benefit of all the work put into Linux already without having to reinvent an OS for themselves which is quite an advantage.
One of the reasons IMHO why Linux hasn't been used more for this in the past is that the traditional companies that make consoles want their systems intentionally to be proprietary and exclusive and do not want to share with other companies the technology nor have to contribute their changes and customizations back due to the GPL license for example. For those companies that are more open about what they're doing however Linux is perhaps the best choice available for a company to roll out their own custom appliance if they are embracing this openness as Valve is. Valve unlike other console makers - does not want to be in the hardware business, they want to merely provide a prototype for other companies to use to make hardware, and Linux is a great thing to use for interoperability with an open platform.
The "console" minded people out there largely wont even know what operating system is under the hood nor will they care. The other people who are likely to care about Steam Machines are people who are
already using, or interested in Linux in some way. The "popularity" of Linux to the unwashed masses out there as a desktop operating system is rather irrelevant as a deciding factor for people who already use the system or have some other personal interest in it.
Valve isn't just creating a system for themselves, they are creating a new ecosystem with which a multitude of vendors can and will provide hardware, and a number have already stepped up to do so. There are also people who will just want SteamOS itself without buying hardware and they're another market. And then of course are the rest of the existing Linux userbase who do want games and are happy to just use the Steam client on their existing Linux OS and will benefit from the multitude of game titles being brought to Linux.
While there is risk of course, with Linux already outpacing Mac according to Valve and they haven't even released SteamOS or Steam Machines yet, I'd say the risk is rather low. As the number of titles rises for Linux it is likely to only outpace Mac even more, split between existing Linux users and people just interested in the Steam console when it comes out, or running SteamOS on their existing PC. It will be interesting to see the numbers.
Trilarion: It's just business. If you make a wrong decision than surely it can mean the end of the world to some of your employees. However I advice GOG to also support Linux in order to be prepared if Windows should go down.
Windows is not going to vanish overnight. A company like GOG isn't going to ignore something like Linux blindly just because they don't talk about it publicly much. They probably have all sorts of Linux machines in use internally already, and probably are actively doing things with Linux already but not yet to publicly commit to anything or really say much about it. I'd be shocked if this wasn't the case. It's unrealistic to think that Windows will just go down suddenly and one must have a Linux backup plan ready to go immediately. Windows will continue to lose market share to tablets and other mobile devices, and probably some market share to Apple and to other systems like Linux but it's going to happen over time slowly with plenty of time for people to take notice and plan a business strategy for the computing paradigm du jour, be it on desktops, tablets or consoles etc.
Trilarion: What this needs to make sense is: I think, the scale. GOG supporting Linux with some of their games is a small operation. Valve developing a Console based on Linux is a much bigger operation and requires a larger chunk of the investment money, even if you have much more money from the beginning.
Indeed, and I don't think GOG's place would be to attempt to do what Valve is right now.
Trilarion: So I think it's risky for both and there is a reward for both so they should both try it, but for Valve there will be much more at stake. I don't want GOG to develop a GOG-OS.
All things considered I don't either.
