I hope Windows does try to challenge Steam. Competition is good, it should strongly drive PC game optimization.

That is a bit surprising, because I have used a Legion Go (non S) with both Windows and Bazzite and performance seemed pretty comparable across both. I certainly didn't notice double the battery life at any point. Maybe I just didn't bench the same set of games, this seems very specifically to yield best results on CDPR games. Or maybe it's because these benches are just for the Z2 and not the Z1 Extreme version, and this is very specific to that chip.

It could also be the memory management/config is different on the SteamOS side and some games are getting different amounts of VRAM across OSs? How do these stack up to Bazzite on the same hardware? Is there an advantage to brand name SteamOS?

I want to see more benchmarks from more people with more configs. Everybody in the tech industry is busy fawning over overengineered fans over in Computex and this actually interesting release isn't getting the right amount of coverage.

Seeing this with Bazzite, Garuda, "vanilla" distros like Mint, Arch, Manjaro, etc. would be really interesting, I agree.

My amateur guess from the outside would be, that SteamOS is perhaps stripped down in a way, that "normal" Linux background stuff only gets booted up when switching into Desktop mode, which would explain the massive improvements for battery life. But that is a guess, cannot be sure about that at all.

So far it seems to be an issue with the Legion itself. The ROG Ally sees no meaningful improvements with SteamOS.

I hate to say it, but if MS released a competitor, it will probably outsell the Deck 5:1 regardless of quality, if only because of the advertising reach. Your average non-gamer has never heard of Steam. Everyone and their grandmother know MS and would therefore be more willing to get one for their kid.

Edit: I suppose I should explain a bit. People here are comparing Steam DAUs to console DAUs. That’s not the same as sales.

All of those users are already playing on a computer. Also, many of the most popular games on Steam I are free and low-spec. A lot of Steam users are not spenders.

Compare the 3.7 million Deck sales to the 2.2 million Switch 2 preorders (and the 150 million Switch 1 sales) before it even hit shelves. You can’t even buy a Deck in a store and you won’t see an ad for one. If MS makes a handheld, they’ll have billions at their disposal in advertising.

Meanwhile in reality, Xbox as a console ain't doing so great.

Your average non-gamer

Isn't a target market. Gamers range into their 60s and onward now. If someone 'isn't a gamer' chances are they're aren't even going to be.

Did you know that Steam's monthly active user base dwarfs any single console out there? At this point, it's almost as large as PlayStation and Xbox combined; definitely bigger than the combined install base for each of their current gen consoles. Steam is more mainstream than PlayStation at this point. (However, the caveat is that the Steam Deck can't be purchased at Walmart.)

I wonder if this same concept would apply to desktops. If you could install both SteamOS and keep windows for when you wanted to run something other than a game. This could be huge.

Dual booting has existed for a long time. Microsoft keeps making it more annoying to do. For my next PC, I'm not even keeping a dual boot around as a safety net; I'm just doing Linux.

when Windows "challenges" others, they don't compete on merit... it's easier to blackmail game developers by threatening to kick them out of Windows / Xbox platforms if they develop for Linux... this is how we ended up with "windows is the only os for gaming" back in the 90s

Do you have a source for that? As far as I know, Microsoft never gave much of a damn about making Linux versions of games. They did have an Xbox parity clause for games that came to other consoles, but that's pretty different than what you're saying.

Dual booting has existed for a long time but this same boost in performance when using SteamOS might not appear on desktops.

I haven't tracked the performance in Proton for a long time, because I already used that information to make my purchasing decisions, but single digit percentage improvements in performance when running games via Proton has also been the case on desktops for a long time. If there's any further improvement to be seen from SteamOS's game mode rather than regular desktop, you should see it in Bazzite as well.

The imagine if their cloud runs the game using proton. The provider with the lowest overhead would have lower costs and thus a cheaper service. If Microsoft doesn't do it, someone else could.

I would rather bet that most people have no clue what an operating system is and that the one they (unknowingly) use is made by Microsoft. On the other hand if they play games (on that PC), they will know Steam, because they actively had to install it and click its icon frequently.

I learnt most of the story from this book Renegades of the Empire

The story is summarized here: https://gist.github.com/kirkegaard/1055336

It's all about how DirectX/Direct3D was launching and competing with OpenGL (the open standard).

In a nutshell, MS literally ported games for free to Windows (Doom95 being the flagship example) and/or subsidized the development of games for Direct3D so there would be no appetite for OpenGL.

This is equivalent to Amazon or Walmart selling their stuff at a loss until all competitors go bankrupt

Well, the truth of that is quite a bit different than how you put it, and it's also more carrot than stick. There were efforts to make Linux versions of games after this adoption of DirectX, and they didn't take; I have a Linux disc for Unreal Tournament 2004 that came in the same box as the Windows one. What Microsoft did surely sucked for everyone, but fortunately, we live in a world where their recent efforts to do similar things aren't working. They didn't manage to siphon PC gaming over the Windows Store, and Windows handhelds are demonstrably worse and sell worse than the Linux ones. Consoles' walled gardens are slowly crumbling from natural market forces to the openness of PC, and that includes a PC where almost all of those games work on Linux.

Microsoft does not have a position of strength here right now, and they know it, so they instead pivoted to just being an enormous publisher with a subscription service that's lucrative but has already plateaued.

Funny how much ms bitches that secure boot is REQUIRED for win 11. Then you can just turn it off after installing

Well, the truth of that is quite a bit different than how you put it, and it’s also more carrot than stick.

True, I misremembered... however, this is anti-competitive practice 101 anyway

What Microsoft did surely sucked for everyone, but fortunately, we live in a world where their recent efforts to do similar things aren’t working.

But the fact they keep trying these anti-competitive strategies and have no consequences for them is a problem. We cannot rely on "it didn't work for them this time" as if that is a solution because next time it would work for them and then we are all fucked for another few decades

That's the magic of proton, and all of the tools that make it work.

DXVK alone is incredible.