Oh, I like the idea of itchOS! If it's lightweight and boots fast, provides all necessary drivers out-of-the-box (graphics, sound, controllers, VR?, etc) or downloads them automatically, comes preloaded with itch app, runs from usb dongle and doesn't make user touch command line (unless they want that themselves), that might be a good step towards more Linux gaming.
Bear in mind that this is just a draft idea. I am not skilled enough to produce/maintain a linux derivative dedicated to gaming. So, also part of my knowledge can, even, be sort of misleading.
Providing working driver and stuff out-of-box it's the very core idea: this appeal to the awesomeness of have your complete pc-gaming experience to be run on virtually any PC capable to boot: being at home, using a pc in public library, internet café (quite popular in asia) etc.
Collect most of driver shouldn't be a problem: a basic PPA with all driver in the same fashion SteamOS does would be enough for almost everything.. only possible fail would be with some exotic win-only hardware: but gaming is a lot more restricted into need.. you don't need compatibility with some shitty 10~20 years aged win-only printers and stuff like that.
GPU drivers are the most critical issue: but AMD and Intel deliver stable and decent drivers... Nvidia proprietary stuff can be delivered in the same way SteamOS does.
VR is a bit trickier: OEM are responsible for deliver decent Linux driver; but ATM they are too busy forcing themselves behind Microsoft and MS natural defeat vs Sony. Anyway, once some serious OEM provide some decent Linux's driver/support... wouldn't be too much of a issue to add driver and stuff in the repositories (also, add a separate unstable ppa branch is always one simple click away ;) )
Just got an idea about re-using butler/wharf's binary patch support for updating itchOS. I mean, does even any existing linux distribution support binary patches for updating? As far as I know all package managers (apt, yum, pacman) always downloading full packages. itch app is essentially a simple package manager already, so extending it to be able to update system quickly and smoothly may be interesting.
Linux provides lot of different options; it's long way gone the time in which you had to compile everything ala Gentoo (with some app that would require a *whole day* of compiling from soruce!!).
Distribution method integrated with the OS can be in any fashion, some example are:
- separate ppa repository for free and commercial games (idea: free games can be installed/updated from itch desktop app without even need to login... while commercial/bought apps require you to login, with valid key-registred account, to enable installation from commercial ppa.
- rsync: rsync don't just download binary only file... but it does actually download only the single bytes who are updated on the server (not the whole file)
- appimage package: http://appimage.org/
- snap packages: https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/14/universal-s...
- a separate sandboxed folder where install/update packages
- ...
the most simple/easy to maintain is to maintain a ppa and let the apt protocol (example apt://gimp) package manager to install/update everything needed