If I don't get a Steam Machine right away, is there anything else I can do?
Thanks to the openness of the PC platform, there are lots of options for devices that will allow you to run games natively or streamed to your TV. There are many PC sites and communities out there that can help you with that. For our part, we are continuing to work toward enabling SteamOS to be used on more hardware than just ours. In fact, with the newly-released SteamOS 3.8, you can run the same code and operating system as Steam Machine on your own living-room PC using whatever PC parts you want: learn more here. Right now, only AMD GPUs are supported, but we're working on expanding support for the future.
What issues did you encounter? i had problems when trying to use Flatpak for everything - Heroic didn't recognize Gamescope or Mangohud, even when installing the demanded versions. The moment i ditched the flatpaks and went for native packages everything started working without a hitch. The hard part was finding out that the issue was using flatpaks.