Is is viable? You think it may catch on, or is doomed?

Will MS eventually take enough control away from the gamer/user, as they have been doing, that Steam OS may see broader adoption?

Pointless? I don't know, kinda heard little to nothing about it since it came out. Wouldn't hold my breath on that one :)

As it is with most things Valve does, they rely too much in other peoples making the push for it.
While to be fair, Steam worked well for them and for the PC gaming market, their recent efforts come in a different period for the market.
Iterative consoles, Virtual Reality, the dwindling down of the pre-built PCs sales, and so on.

Would've been great if Steam OS (i.e. Linux) had more backing from both users and publishers. But it's always the same catch (no userbase because no games, no games because no userbase). Situation is better than ever, still far from practical use for a significant part of the market.

As for the SteamBoxes, I see their point (having easy access to PC gaming for the folks that aren't willing/can't learn), it's useless to me. I'm a believer of the customizable nature of PCs, and while some of their "flavours" allows that, why would I pay more for something that I can do myself for less? Some packaging and small form factors are quite nice indeed, I give you that, other than that, meh.

probably dead
they dont seem to be doing anything
valve is too busy swimming in the filthy lucre made by steam and that steam streaming thing to give a fuck or to care to even make an effort
there is little incentive and no real target demograph for it

its just sitting dead in the water
hell even the wii U which is a certifiable lame duck is doing better

Steam Machines and SteamOS are dead. They are not selling well at all.

It was like in April or May of this year I went and asked two GameStop managers in my area how many they have sold.

In that seven or so months one GameStop sold only 22 Steam Machines, another one sold like five? And the third GameStop sold none.

One of the GameStop managers also told me what he heard of theme selling all over the USA is that they weren't even selling much at all.

The GameStop manager also told me he feels VALVe has burnt a bridge between them.

I also went to a BestBuy and asked a manager there and he said that that BestBuy sold like only 30 or so Steam Machines and all over the country it was even worse.

about half a million units have been sold
i think its quite fair to say that the steam machines are a failure

team OS could gop anyway but i doubt it will make any inroads either

there apparantly is an portable version of the steam machine incoming
http://www.polygon.com/2015/8/10/9128997/steam-machine-portably-smach-zero-steamboy

the smach zero
...sounds like a low calory spam equivalent ( spam is called smac over here )
new smach with zero fat and low calories !

i dont see how that thing will make any difference though it wil have to fight the 3DS the nx the vita and mobile gaming

edit : oh great its on kickstarter
http://smachz.com/

yeah that boosts my confidence i dont think anybody remember the ouya ?

You're not a big fan of Valve and Steam I take it. :-P

If anything, I was kind of hoping that the Linux user base would see a bigger market share from it, in the hopes that there would be some more interest from third party developers and hardware vendors.

tell that to the 416 steam games i have ;p

im just being realisitc here
there is no real demograph for steam machines
console gamers will shrug and continue to play consoles
linux gamers will continue to linux
and most people vaugely interested will buy steam link to stream instead

and valve doesnt even bother to push steam os or the seam machines

Whoa, 416? I no longer feel ashamed. :-P

I wonder if GOG now wishes that they hadn't started to support Linux. Perhaps it doesn't cost much to support it, I don't know.

Dead by the sounds of it. Our local indie retailer started selling some Steam Machines from Alienware in February and the manager said that to date, (as of last week) he's sold just two units.

I do use Big Picture on Steam, but there's no way I'd buy a dedicated Steam Machine or install a dedicated SteamOS. For Linux gaming, I have the infinitely more versatile Linux Mint. I've been tempted to buy a Steam Link and Steam Controller, but to be honest, I don't buy enough games on Steam to warrant the expense, and I have a Bluetooth keyboard/touchpad handheld controller (costing a meagre €15) that does just fine for non-twitch KB&M games in front of a TV.

I'm hoping that Valve might eventually give us a "Steam Link" standalone client for ARM-based devices so that I can run it off my Raspberry Pi 3 (which mainly gets used with DOSBox, ScummVM & Retropie - I'm amazed how well DOSBox runs on the Pi 3 actually - it does fine with most games that would run well on a 486).

somebody has to support linux
valve has the muscle to enforce linux gaming they just cant be arsed to do so beyond ehh we got a steam machine
no ?
okay

I think it's the case of less is more: people were interested in a genuine Valve-console like machine, like that one they sent various people right in the beginning of the initiative.

It would be a standard and something a marketing department could get behind and push forward and sell. Third parties would know exactly what to produce for.

In other words, it would be a console.

The problem is it isn't. It's just a bunch of random machines full of expensive names attached to them. So it doesn't strike a chord in any of the demographics it was trying to please.

its the 3d0 all over again
and we all know how well that went didnt we ?

hint : it flopped and sold around 1.5 million units

Well, I very much doubt that Valve was trying to make a statement in favour of Linux. They positioned themselves as "Linux-friendly" for no other reason than they wanted a cheap way to say "Fuck you, Microsoft". Let's face it - if you want the best gaming performance from a PC, the best way to achieve this is with a dedicated OS built from the ground up. You can't ride on the coattails of an existing OS and expect to be able to code to the metal.

But they didn't want to go to the expense of creating a whole new gaming OS - Valve has long been about cheap and nasty (just look at the Steam Controller) - so they decided to latch onto Linux and develop a half-assed, barebones distro that was barely fit for purpose.

That's all SteamOS was ever about - sticking it to Microsoft and the Windows Store.

and like most half assed half baked attempts it failed miserably and rightfully so