Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, has shared his opinion after recent pushback from users online that are becoming frustrated with Copilot and AI on Windows. In a post on X, Suleyman says he’s mind blown by the fact that people are unimpressed with the ability to talk fluently with an AI computer.
His post comes after Windows president Pavan Davuluri was recently met with major backlash from users online for posting about Windows evolving into an agentic OS. His post was so negatively received that he was forced to turn off replies, though Davuluri did later respond to reassure customers that the company was aware of the feedback.
So steamOS is in fact not an operating system it’s just a program that runs on plasma. Or is steamOS actually an operating system, but just quite a limited one, and you dual boot into plasma.
KDE Plasma is just the desktop environment. It’s not an OS. SteamOS is a full OS, built off of Arch Linux. It has both a Gaming mode, which looks a lot like Steam Big Picture does these days, and a desktop mode that uses Plasma as the graphical shell/interface. It doesn’t matter OS-wise which one you “boot” into, as both are SteamOS.
SteamOS is a linux distro based on Arch Linux, similar to any other. It’s a amalgamation of different pieces of software, including a traditional desktop environment (plasma). But it does not boot into the desktop mode by default, instead it boots into their own graphical environment (gamemode) by default, running their steam client.
That’s because their main focus is gaming machines, and that’s why they want gamers to be greeted with a consolized, 10-foot UI.
I think you’re confused because you think of steamOS being the UI (i.e. “Desktop Environment”) that welcomes you when you boot into it, instead steamOS is the entire package, including a “traditional” desktop environment (which is KDE Plasma), as well as their own (gamemode), etc.
A desktop environment is not a prerequisite for an operating system.