Valve’s upcoming Steam Deck will be based on Arch Linux—not Debian

Like other recent Valve hardware efforts, the Steam Deck will run a custom Linux distro by default. Today, we're going to explore how Valve's Linux approach will transform by the time Steam Deck launches—and what that will mean for gaming on Linux as a whole.

Although the Steam Deck is capable of running Windows—currently the premiere PC gaming operating system—it won't ship that way. Like Valve's earlier Steam Machine effort, the Deck will ship with a custom Linux distribution instead.

Shipping on Linux cuts manufacturing costs for Steam, insulates the company from competition with the Microsoft Store on Windows, and avoids exposing Steam Deck players to the world's premiere malware ecosystem—which also runs on Windows.

Valve's custom Linux distribution is called "SteamOS." In earlier versions (such as those shipped on the Steam Machine), SteamOS was based on Debian Linux. But the Steam Deck's SteamOS 3.0 is abandoning Debian to rebase on Arch Linux instead.

When it comes to the features that define a given Linux distribution, Arch and Debian are just about diametrically opposed. Debian aims to provide a relatively generic base and strives for maximal stability via a conservative approach—current stable releases are composed of software that sysadmins tend to describe as "proven" but enthusiasts are more likely to describe as "stale."

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