Valve knows this, and they’re paying numerous developers to improve the technologies they depend on.
Arch Linux
The Steam Deck comes with an operating system known as SteamOS.
There are many ways to configure and distribute a Linux-based OS.
Valve uses an existing distribution known as Arch Linux.
Vulkan
Vulkan is an open standard for rendering 3D graphics.
There are various standards floating around.
On Windows, the most well-known standard is Microsoft’s Direct3D.
Direct3D is part of DirectX, a closed-source collection of multimedia APIs all exclusive to Microsoft Windows.
Unlike Direct3D, Vulkan is open-source and cross-platform.
This allows lower-powered mobile hardware to handle more graphically impressive games while offering better battery life.
Mesa translates Vulkan code into something your hardware can understand.
Intel and AMD are two of the largest users of Mesa.
Both companies produce open-source graphics drivers for their hardware that utilizes Mesa.
Mesa isn’t only relevant for gaming.
Modern display servers for Linux use OpenGL to display your desktop interface.
So all graphics, whether in-game or navigating your Steam Deck’s desktop mode, utilize Mesa.
Valve develops Proton in collaboration with CodeWeavers.
But these two companies didn’t create Proton from scratch.
Proton is a fork of Wine, a compatibility layer designed toenable general-purpose Windows software to run on Linux.
Linux users have long used Wine to play Windows games.
The challenge has been configuring Wine in precisely the right way for each game to run.
This includesmany of the games that are Deck Verified.
But the more you look around, the more differences you find.
Instead, the interface you’re looking at is known as KDE Plasma.
It’s a desktop environment for free and open-source operating systems.
These days, you might even put KDE on certain phones and televisions.
This includes distributions like SteamOS that aren’t intended to serve as general-purpose operating systems.
you might download many of the apps you might want from a site known as Flathub.
you might use your Steam Deck as a Linux PC or install games from sources other than Steam.
