A Steam OS?

From what I understand, consoles are able to make better use of their hardware because they do not have to run backround processes while running a game, could it be possible for a dominant pc gaming platform, like steam, to release a different operating system where the computor basically performs like a console, starts up to a screen similar to steam big picture. Could someone explain to me if this is possible and if it is why it hasnt been done.

You can do it yourself by customising windows a bit. Just set up a "Steambox" in your lounge, and get Steam to open at boot-up in to big picture, hook up a controller and you have a console powered by a pc powered by steam.

Windows would still be in the background using resources, which I believe is what the OP is trying to avoid.

If they ever do this it will probably be a very heavily modified Linux, and that would be great because then people would want to develop for it.

Well, there are already alot of arcade/emulator OS's built with linux

Yeah, there are ways to change that, like customising the registry and such other hacks, but I was trying to keep the comment short.

I don't think my wallet could take a Steam OS. All the sales would be devastating for my bank account.

Consoles may be able to utilize their hardware more effeciently, but our PCs are much more powerful than consoles anyway -- the performance improvement probably wouldn't be noticable.

Pc ganes would run better with direct hardware access to the gpu and not having to run through direct x.