STEAM DECK NEWS – A new beta version of the operating system designed for Valve’s handheld PC is ready to open up to a competing device.

The Steam Deck comes standard with this operating system, which brings down the price because it’s based on Arch Linux, so you don’t have to pay for a Windows license. However, one of the new features of the new SteamOS beta is “added support for additional ROG Ally keys”. Will Valve’s development also support Asus handheld PCs? That’s fair, they’re opening up to competitors. Of course, that doesn’t automatically mean we can drop Windows 11, but this update does suggest that Gabe Newell’s company might be making the gesture to other major competitors, so the Lenovo Legion Go, for example, could get its due. Or there’s the Ayaneo Kun. Et cetera…

SteamOS 3 will therefore be worth taking a closer look at, because if it can run properly on other devices, if you’re not keen on running Windows 11 on your machine (especially if you have an Intel-based machine, such as the MSI Claw), it could be a way to get more performance out of your portable PC with a lighter OS instead of Microsoft’s, with the help of the Proton support layer.

Lawrence Yang, the device’s designer, told PCGamer at the launch of the Steam Deck OLED last November: “The standalone SteamOS installer is very high on our to-do list, and we are working on it. But a lot of the people who would make the general install of SteamOS available are the same people who are making Galileo [Steam Deck OLED] work. We hope to do it soon though, it’s very high on our list and we want to make SteamOS more widely available. We’ll probably start by making it more available for other handhelds that have a similar gamepad-style controller. And then beyond that to more arbitrary devices. I think the biggest thing is just, you know, driver support and making sure that it works on whatever PC it ends up on. Because right now it’s very, very tuned for Steam Deck.”

So its time has come…

Source: PCGamer, Steam