I've been closely following the moves Valve has made, and this has been hinted at before. I remember reading a The Verge article on the route Steam will take, and this doesn't deviate that much from it. I do think it is a great move to enable pc game streaming. That way my $800 gaming rig won't go to waste. The next announcements will probably be the Steam Box itself, and hopefully a new game to accompany it with.
This has me more excited than most video game releases. Perhaps that's because I don't have much time for video games any more and I have a penchant for new OSes.
I agree. Linux is a great toy just in itself and it's about to get better : )
Ditto. I'm excited not just for SteamOS itself but for the exposure this will give to Linux in general.
It will be available soon as a free stand-alone operating system for living room machines.
This is the best part of their announcement in my opinion. I was afraid that they would be tying their Steam OS implementation to specific hardware. The ability to try the Steam OS on different hardware will make it much more likely for me to try it out and may be a boon for smaller hardware manufacturers.