Why it is important the FOSS / Linux community is prepared for the Steam Deck
As I am sure any Linux user, that hasn’t been hiding under a rock, would be aware of by now, Valve recently announced the Steam Deck (or as I have taken to calling it recently, the Arch Konsole), which runs a custom version of Arch Linux. As well, Valve stated that the console would give full user control of the system, also announcing that Proton would be receiving a heap of love, finally even supporting anti-cheat softwares (or maybe anti-cheat allowing Proton, idk).
I am sure you can all understand why this is important news; we will finally have a major, mainstream (hopefully, if the hype I am seeing is not just in my bubble) piece of hardware running Linux, and demonstrating Linux’s ability to game. Now, obviously, for the majority of normies, they probably won’t notice the fact it runs Linux (if Proton runs as well as Valve promises), but this shouldn’t change how important it is for our community that it does run Linux.
Firstly, if this device sells the millions that Valve is hoping for, this should improve Linux’s gaming marketshare by quite a significant amount. As well, if it is popular, Devs might want to target this machine, and by extension will be supporting at least Proton gaming, and may even make native ports if they want further optimisation.
