You're missing the point of what and who they are for. If someone has an NVMe just lying around, they probably also have a PC at least comparable in performance to a steam machine. Even more so for the RAM.
They are for people who have consoles and maybe a laptop, but want something just a turn key to game on. At their tv.
I personally love it, and would hate to go back to a tiny screen like a 40inch TV or whatever people have these days. Especially if you're more than 2m away on your bed/couch. There are drawbacks, depending on how you use your TV they might be massive or completely irrelevant. For example having it on in the background is less practical. It doesn't inclue (useful) speakers, but I have a pretty decent stereo system setup there anyway. A great positive is that you usually want a screen (not just a blank wall), which just goes away when the projector is off (rolls up, usually motorized) and you don't have a large black frame just standing around somewhere. In my case it comes down in front of the bedroom wardrobe. The projector itself is basically a box mounted to the ceiling on the other side of the room from that, so also out of the way.
The projector is connected to a PC as a primary source in my case (many use AndroidTV sticks or FireTV boxes), which plays whatever I wanna watch (streaming, local videos, youtube/twitch, ...), but I would never watch actual TV as in broadcast television. If you do, you still need some form or receiver that turns the TV signal (internet, cable, satellite, ...) into HDMI. Many more modern projectors also have some of that network stuff just built in similar to a smart TV, but generally don't have true receiver for cable/satellite.
Finally, there's light management. Typically you don't want real sunlight coming in through a window while actively watching something (movie), but it's fine for background or casual/party watching (sports or maybe youtube). How much ambient light you can tolerate while watching depends highly on your preferences and how you watch "stuff". For a real movie night we do usually lower the blinds for just a more immersive experience. But it's incredibly subjective how much darkness is needed. Projectors these days all have sufficient light output to produce a picture even with significant ambient light, but the contrast and just quality of course improves significantly with a darker environment.
I agree that that's a perfectly fine reason for container base images, but has nothing to do with my normal desktop system. Or 99% of peoples normal desktop systems. The question there is only "does my stuff work", and at least for me the answer is "yes". That's the context of this thread (at least how I understood it).
Maybe that really is the real source of the instability claims. I mean I'm not setting up my KVM virtualization server on a CachyOS-install, but honestly even if I did I'm not sure I'd actually run into issues. Or just use Arch directly for that, which quite a few people also do. I have no idea how often those have issues, I assume they wouldn't stick with Arch if they did, but I truly have no idea about the practicality of that.
The reason I'm asking is that literally every source you look at for comparison of linux distros will tell you "unstable" for CachyOS and/or Arch. It has been the literal opposite experience for me: I have significantly fewer issues getting stuff to work (which is also a form of stability) compared to Debian on my servers. I wouldn't say I'm angry about being misled, but I'm certainly still confused where the claims can come from...
I also have a laptop that runs CachyOS, and I use that very infrequently. So whenever I do, it's a sizable update (still runs through faster than a normal windows update though). That system also never had any issues, and also "just works". Like you say, you also never had any (real?) issues. Just having a "feeling something might break" doesn't actually means it's unstable either, just that you're scared it might be, while it actually isn't. It's obviously fine if that then isn't a distro you want to use, but don't call it unstable if it has been perfectly stable for you? Do you know why you have that feeling, and could it maybe just be that it's people always just saying "it's unstable", perpetuating that "feeling"? I can also imagine that it was much less stable in the past, or there may be phases that are less stable, but I just got lucky and the last year happened to be rather stable in comparison.
I personally don't have an issue with the reading of PKGBUILDs when I'm using the AUR, as I have like 2 packages from there or something, which also update comparatively infrequently. Everything else is base repo (CachyOS or Arch) and if there are Arch news you should obviously read those, but that happenes so rarely it's really not an issue either (for me), and usually it's there for a good reason like the recent AUR vulnerabilities. As for normal changelogs, I assume for packages in the main repos, I don't even know where to find them. Never needed to read them either.
I can't understand where this "unstable" image comes from. Just because it's a rolling distro? I've been on CachyOS for over a year now. I update on most days I'm using the system (which is also most days). I had basically no issues. I have significantly less issues with it than I have with Debian on my servers!
Did you have a negative experience with CachyOS or arch in general? Or are you just repeating what you heard?
Haven't had a TV in like 2 decades. Do have a projector though. Screen size used to be like 4m diagonal, now due to space constraints down to a little under 3m. Always in the bedroom: comfortable and the only room with enough space, honestly.
That's also a rather massive price difference what seems to be similar devices?
That screen is absolutely tiny.
Some can be controlled through a local API, but often you still need a gateway to facilitate access (it can reach out to the cloud, but it can be disabled and used local only).
Some that were in very good standing (Hoymiles) recently had security flaws where the manufacturer refuses to acknowledge or fix them, leading to essentially anyone to control them at any time with a few dollars worth of equipment (source in German). They basically broadcast their own encryption key.
Unfortunately the nature of getting a distributed system makes them much more vulnerable to issues like that as some form of communication is needed for everyday operation. This is much simpler with a central system.
Yea not even remotely close. The correlation would be "it's in space", which is pretty good, but doesn't make it "like" it either.
Works great as a static image. Would probably be better if it actually played...
Of course it costs valve something to offer more versions. It's all inventory that has to be created, tracked, shipped, warehoused. Going from 2 to 4 versions in hardware configurations at that scale isn't cheap, and most certainly not free.
And yes, their stock is also limited. How limited exactly we don't know, as I don't think they've said that publicly. You also have to decide on some number of devices to not equip with memory/storage to sell as barebones, which will have some margin of error that is now sitting around unsold, or everything sells out and they could've sold it just as well with memory/storage and made more money.
But the point isn't to become a vendor for cheap-ish computers. The point is to sell computers so they can sell games, and offering a barebones version is unlikely to justify the considerable overhead that would require.
Finally, they are trying to create a somewhat default/reliable platform for steam games in terms of performance. Game studios are going to make presets for this so the players can expect a certain performance. If you only pop in 4 GB (or they get resold on the used market for with 4 GB) it might perform way worse or even crash. They probably also don't want to inflate or encourage the number of devices that fall into that category.