Steam Deck hits a sweet spot. You can make it more powerful, but it’ll cost significantly more. You can make it cheaper, but you’ll cut out too many games people want to play.

Also, anything like this with a resolution higher than 720p is wasting pixels and GPU power, IMO.

The other answer from Natanael tells you that now

Steam on Linux defaults to providing a container based standard Linux environment which is independent of the underlying OS, providing access to all the expected software libraries and OS calls that games need to run.

This is integrated into SteamOS. It’s also available via Steam on any other Linux distro. (And if you wanted to you could cut that part out and run it without Steam.)

When running Windows games it even runs Proton within this container environment.

That gives you a single very predictable and version controlled software environment.

Meanwhile Windows randomly deprecates stuff that somebody might have invested tons of development effort into (silverlight, mixed reality, etc)

1. you couldn’t make it more powerful, it had the best of the best.
2. my eyes work, and I still I don’t think clearer text and UI is a waste

valve can optimize their games for a steam deck. The steam deck isnt theirs?

When a games developer make a game for Switch Nintendo has a say in how it must perform before you’re allowed to release it. Valve have no such requirements on games put on Steam - it’s up to the developers whether to require a lot of performance or not. Thus, while Valve sells the Steam Deck that doesn’t mean games on Steam necessarily run well on it.

When talking about a container environment you are talking about WINE, arent you?

But if we are talking about native developed games, how would that look?
That sounds to me like 1st priority-development will be continued using Windows as a base + DirectX and reliance that WINE will somewhat manage that.
How would native Linux look for game devs in terms of platform targeting?

1. you couldn’t make it more powerful, it had the best of the best.
2. my eyes work, and I still I don’t think clearer text and UI is a waste

I just want something that I can play up to say Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 level emulation

There are several competitors that are more powerful, like the ROG Ally. They also need a bigger battery to support it, or they have worse battery life. And they’re more expensive.

Clear text and UI is an issue because games don’t scale their shit properly.

No, Wine (and Proton) is a compatibility layer (API translation, etc). Containers is an isolation method which hides the details of the OS from the software and gives it a standardized environment.

GitHub - ValveSoftware/steam-runtime: A runtime environment for Steam applications

A runtime environment for Steam applications. Contribute to ValveSoftware/steam-runtime development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub (github.com)

No matter what Linux distribution you run Steam on, the only thing you need to do is to get the container system up and running. Once that runs, all software that runs in these containers will run on that device.

they’re also forgetting the touchpads. the touchpads are so fucking good, and they add so much usability and flexibility. so much, I think, that no amount of superior performance, resoution, or battery life can make up for the lack of them.

When talking about a container environment you are talking about WINE, arent you?

But if we are talking about native developed games, how would that look?
That sounds to me like 1st priority-development will be continued using Windows as a base + DirectX and reliance that WINE will somewhat manage that.
How would native Linux look for game devs in terms of platform targeting?

So something akin to flatpak/snap?
Isnt that the purpose and source of controversy vs distributing them the usual way of repositories?

Edit: Had some time to read the README.
Very interesting. But that sounds, like a vendor lock-in. Essentially devs are forced to use the Steam SDK to make it executable on Linux or face the issue of checking the compatibility of every distro, no?

they’re also forgetting the touchpads. the touchpads are so fucking good, and they add so much usability and flexibility. so much, I think, that no amount of superior performance, resoution, or battery life can make up for the lack of them.

You might want to catch up on a decade or so of Linux gaming progress before wading into a conversation about it with controversial takes…