Scripts and packages moving from steamos- to holo-. "holo" is the internal name for the base OS layer. Pulling the product brand out of the plumbing is what you do when the plumbing is going to run somewhere the brand doesn't apply.

Version jumps - Kernel 7.2 while stable SteamOS is on 6.16, and Plasma 6.4.3 straight to 6.7.3 — three desktop releases swallowed at once. The driver (heh) is probably compatibility.

Valve also reversed course on their adoption of iwd (Wifi), and are going back to wpa_supplicant for compatibility with various networks (They ported iwd's fast-resume trick over for parity).

All of the above changes point to maximizing OS compatibility with various devices.

+1. Most games, once shipped, completely disband their development team.

If you require game developers to even so much as recompile their game, they simply cannot do it. If you want the game to keep working, you have to guarantee ABI compatibility in perpetuity.

I don't think Steam being 64bit stops you launching 32bit games, just reduces the need for all the 32bit dependencies to use Steam at all.

It's awesome as a desktop. Way better than modern windows. It's like a weird Linux laptop you can unplug from your dock and use comfortably laying down which most computers can't.

SteamOS is Arch Linux under the hood. Mine is setup as a desktop with 4K monitor, keyboard, mice and webcam. Upgraded internal ssd, added an external drive. 16GB ram, cooling fan and AMD unified gpu. It’s designed to tolerate close to max cpu+gpu load indefinitely and runs my Vulkan simulation code overnight.

Haven’t used mine to play games in ages, not sure. Haven’t installed the update yet because I don’t want my dev environment to get accidentally borked. But yes, the previous version couldn’t even play videos full screen.