I bought one during the clearance sale for the price of shipping, assuming that it would be abandoned but maybe still useful as a low-power linux server. I guess I ought to set it up and take advantage of it.
Thanks, Valve, for not letting these things become instant e-waste.
I thought this too, but unfortunately in terms of modding and general use they are very limited, afaik. When I looked into it, it boiled down to: There's an sdk to develop stuff for it and you can get root access but good luck trying to replace the os or anything like that.
That being said, this is what I remember from ~2 years ago, so if it can be customised more now, please let me know. I kinda bought 2 in hopes of being able to do that :D
Honestly, I wouldn't bother replacing the OS. It'll more than make up for the cost in labor to just buy a raspberry pi and install the steam link software on it. The steam link hardware is not nearly beefy enough to do anything interesting with.
I just let mine be a little magic box for couch gaming.
I thought you could literally install sunlight/moonlight on it and have an even better experience. I never got around to trying after it got recommended to me
It seems to be more for if you actually want something that makes use of the screen and gamepad input and then you can launch it from the UI. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamlink-sdk