Like yes it is Linux. But SteamDeck is a completely different beast from desktop Linux. They might as well be entirely different OS’s. Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!
It's really not; SteamOS is just another GNU/Linux, and pretty close to vanilla Arch Linux for that matter.
> Especially if the SteamDeck is being used to play Win32 binaries!
Proton works fine on other distros.
if you are a gamedev considering support for SteamOS and considering support for generic Linux desktop they really really really REALLY are not the same. At all.
SteamOS is so very much linux that even WebOS and Androids pale in comparisom.
It's "just" immutable Arch that defaults to Steam's console mode interface.
Bazzite and a few others provide a similar console-style experience.
Absolutely not. If you ever actually used it you would know that the only difference is a custom big picture mode like interface. Anything else is literally the same code.
In all your posts I haven't seen you actually explain what it is that's so different about it.
SteamDeck is a very specific set of hardware running a very specific OS with a specific runtime. This is very easy. The fact that it is Linux is almost immaterial. If it were not Linux at all it would require a similar amount of effort. Might as well be a Nintendo Switch.
Now let’s imagine you want to support generic Linux desktop with a native Linux exe. May God have mercy on your soul. Deploying pre-compiled binaries that run on an infinite number of hardware variations running an infinite number of local variables env permutations is an unfathomable nightmare.
Once upon a time I shipped a native Linux binary (Planetary Annihilation). Somewhat infamously our Linux users were less than 1% of users but ~50% of bug reports. And no it wasn’t because Linux users simply report more general gameplay bugs.
These days you can support Linux by just giving them a Win32 binary. Which is objectively hilarious.
In any case. It would be profoundly fascinating to know the number of gameplay hours played across OSs. And I would imagine that SteamDeck accounts for over 90% of Linux gaming hours.
The Year of the Linux Desktop is still not here. Not yet. IMHO. YMMV.
Pretty sure I kickstarter'd that! But also never actually played it.
One of the interesting consequences of Kickstarter is you get hard locked into “promises” even if those ideas turn out to be bad. Naval was so bad but it was a stretch goal so had to ship it. Lesson learned!
You're right about native Linux binaries, but the rub is that you don't need to create generic binaries, there's a bunch of options that use containers to deal with environmental permutations and given the Linux version of Planetary Annihilation uses the Steam Linux Runtime environment, you know this.
It is funny that supporting Linux is as easy as providing a win32 binary, but it's not a joke. This is the case because it works.
I think your experience is a little out of date, or you've somehow been missing what's been happening over the last half decade, because in practice gaming on Linux is now absolutely fantastic. Not just on Steam Deck, as since Valve is using the same general software stack that every other distro uses, all the improvements they've made have permeated out to the rest of the ecosystem. On my CachyOS PC with an RTX 3090, the only games that consistently give me problems anymore are titles that ship with kernel-level anti-cheat. Otherwise when I buy something from Steam I simply assume that it'll work.
Steam Deck sales have actually softened quite a bit over the last couple of years, all this recent explosive growth has been driven by desktop users.
I've been following this all pretty closely, it's been exciting. The year of the linux desktop is kind of a punchline, but it's sort of a misnomer anyway. It was never going to happen in the span of a year. But it has been happening; when online discussion spaces can never seem to shut the hell up about all these new idiot users asking all these stupid questions, that's when you know you're seeing a lot of growth.