The sentiment that "Linux is only free if your time has no value" may not have aged well, but the wisdom behind that remains. When you're fifteen years old and have all the time in the world, the idea of charging people money for your expertise and time, and then using that money to pay for goods and services, is often misunderstood. I didn't understand shit about money or business or people at that age, and I'm sure I'll look back at me now in twenty years and also see how stupid I am being. At the root of it, though, is that we could do a better job of teaching the kids how the world works. If people want to build it themselves, more power to them. When they come to understand the exchange of money for (someone else's) time, so they don't have to spend the time learning it themselves, they'll be a little less salty.
In my case, I already have PC, a laptop and a gaming handheld, all running Linux, but I still want to buy a Steam Machine just to support Valve, and also to increase the market share statistics - even if it's just by one count. We need to buy these to show the world that there is a market for Linux gaming devices, and who knows, maybe some day the market will grow big enough for publishers like Epic to admit they can no longer ignore Linux.
They will keep ignoring Linux, because SteamOS plays Windows games, and everyone seems to appreciate being a second class user, that only gets to play thanks to Proton.
Even though Unreal supports Linux, studios will keep using Windows workstations, targeting Windows gamers, using kernel drivers, and let Valve do whatever they need with Proton to make it work on SteamOS.
Now if Valve actually made studios care about Linux, then yes, SteamOS would be interesting.
> Now if Valve actually made studios care about Linux, then yes, SteamOS would be interesting.
But that's exactly is what is happening - albeit at a small scale - but it's happening nonetheless. I recall Marvel Rivals for instance name-dropping Bazzite in their changelogs not too long ago[1], which was a first. I can't recall any major game mentioning a small distro, ever. Another big name is Baldur's Gate 3 - not only did they explicitly add support for Proton initially, they even released a native Linux version[2]. There's a bunch of other examples as well, but you get the drift.
We can only expect to see more such examples with the release of the Steam Machine. These are exciting times for any Linux gamer, and also Windows gamers looking to part ways with Microsoft.
I probably could, but maybe i no longer have the time to spend sourcing overpriced parts that turn out to be used or fake.