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The line between console and blurred significantly lately. Consoles became X86 machines running PC OSs but locked down. PCs gained options for console hardware with the same OSs.

These days the only difference between PC and Console is having a locked down OS. Which makes consoles seem purely a worse product, but the difference used to be a lot more.

The deck is a standard configuration they can test for, the “works with Steam Deck” badge sells product, game publishers covet it. Problems with Proton get worked out.

I boot into a video games only interface. To update I click a single button. This is exactly a console interface and user experience

SteamOS is basically just a Linux distro with Steam preinstalled and set to autorun in Big Picture mode at boot. Everything you are describing is available in the plain Steam client because SteamOS runs the same client. You can just set your PC to boot into Steam and get 99% the same experience.