All that being said, I don’t think SteamOS on PS5 would work for multiple reasons. It’s extremely difficult to get the process simple enough for the average consumer, especially with Sony quickly patching any exploits required to boot it. It’s also not in Valve’s business interest to make it easier and explicitly supported to buy a cheaper and more powerful standardized machine. As they would just be creating a direct competitor to the Steam Machine.

There have been some recent discoveries that potentially make jailbraking a PS5 permanently easily possible, but yes right now it is too complicated and requires old firmware versions.

As for it being a competitor to the Steam machines… doubtful at the price they now announced. It is rather more likely that if they can get people with second hand jailbroken PS5 hooked to the Steam ecosystem that they are likely to upgrade to a Steam Machine 2 in the future.