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Games: "Windows handheld owners are switching to Linux" and how Steam Deck changes a lot
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XDA ☛ Windows handheld owners are switching to Linux, and here's why it's a game-changer
Just how important is an operating system to the overall experience of a device? Is it about how well your desired software runs on it? Is it about how cohesive and responsive the user experience feels, or is it about how effectively the OS leverages the hardware it ships alongside it? The answer is almost always a yes to all of the above, and there is no doubt that it's precisely this set of questions that Windows handheld owners have been asking themselves over the past few years.
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XDA ☛ The Steam Deck didn't make Linux gaming viable — it made Windows gaming look bloated
The Steam Deck is often cited as the watershed moment for Linux gaming. Valve's previous iterations of SteamOS had failed to gain traction due to poor performance, limited game support, and a lack of polish, each of which the modern SteamOS 3.0 solved on the Steam Deck. The Steam Deck did wonders for Linux gaming, pushing its market share to new heights, but its biggest impact was breaking the myth that Windows was the best platform for gaming. Linux users had already abandoned Windows' bloated environment, but the Steam Deck brought millions of additional eyeballs to the mess that Windows users were dealing with every day. It finally made a large section of gamers realize how good things could be. It may not have led to a massive rise in Linux's market share, but it paved the way for Valve to bring SteamOS to every device one day.
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XDA ☛ Linux on the desktop isn't winning, but Linux on my handheld already has
The Linux desktop debate has been ongoing for a couple of decades now. The narrative changes every few months with the release of a new kernel, architectural improvements or integrations, but the conclusion remains quite the same: "It's promising, but not quite there." Sometimes it's due to too many compatibility gaps, a departure from traditional professional workflows, or just plain and simple usability. That conversation remains ongoing, but the problems aren't being resolved anytime soon.
The conversation, however, consistently misses the fact that Linux has decisively won somewhere else entirely. The Steam Deck runs SteamOS, which is a Linux-based OS, and has delivered an experience that Windows-based handhelds have not even come close to matching. While the desktop may still be Windows territory, Linux reigns in the handheld space. Here's why.