You will probably have already read the recent announcements from Valve about SteamOS, Steam Machines and Steam Controller. Designed to take over your living room and your free time, let’s see what the fuss is all about.

SteamOS is a Linux-based operating system developed jointly by Valve and Nvidia to deliver an open gaming experience. With Microsoft, Sony and Apple increasingly closing off their operating systems, the time is most definitely ripe for more open source options. Enter SteamOS.

While details are still vague right now, we know the main thrust is to make Linux more user-friendly and combine its power with Steam. The result should be a seamless system that allows you to play games, stream television channels and movies and do everything you can currently do on a PC or console.

Valve has also announced that Steam Machines will be released specifically to act as consoles in the living room. As SteamOS is based on Linux, you should also be able to load it onto your PC and dual boot if your hardware is compatible. To round off this offering, the Steam Controller is a different take on handhelds and is designed to work with SteamOS.

The main issue I see now is that Steam’s vast games library of over 3,000 games is built for Windows. While there are Linux-compatible games available, the vast majority of them won’t work natively with Linux. I’m hoping that they will have a system in place like Wine so you can play all your library games on SteamOS.

This announcement has the potential to break the console market wide open, literally. Many gamers aren’t happy with the increased restrictions of their consoles and will welcome the openness SteamOS offers. Only time will tell if the execution matches expectation.

Jesmond Darmanin is a technology enthusiast who has his own blog at www.itnewsblog.com.