The Steam Deck is poised to be one of the more disruptive forces in handheld gaming, but all I’m hearing is “what’s a Steam Deck?”
How can Steam Deck change Linux gaming?
For years I’ve been a Linux gamer. One of the of the greatest pleasures I have, aside from wasting copious hours playing video games, has been trying to get whatever game I’m obsessed with at the time running on a Linux machine. From League of Legends to Arma3, I have spent hours tinkering with custom Wine installs just trying to get the game to run. Many times I’ve been rewarded for my perseverance, running a AAA title on software it was never meant to work on. But what I have a passion for is also a very large hurdle for noobies getting into Linux.
Valve has been working very diligently to fix that. Incorporating their Proton compatibility environment into their Steam client. Valve has enabled simple one click installation of games that I used to have to tinker with for days. Valve with the help of the hard work of the Wine, OpenGL, and even the likes of Nvidia is opening the door to a future of AAA cross-OS development that been the dream of many a gamer.
And here’s where the Steam Deck comes in. Very few people know about how far Linux gaming has progressed. What better way to show them then with a console. Valve tried this with SteamOS and SteamMachines, but it’s been a hard sell. Why build a gaming-capable computer and then throw a unfamiliar operating system onto it? Steam Deck has the potential to crack this reasoning to bits. Bringing users the unique gaming experience of a powerful handheld with a custom tailored OS, and that’s just the beginning.
Portable all-in-one pc.
With Unity now supporting Linux, you’ll be able to develop video games on the console you want to play them on.
A hackable, mobile powerhouse.
Want to change how SteamOS runs? All yours. The only limit is your work ethic ;D