Liam Confirmed writes by way of The Register: Steam OS is the Arch-based distro for a handheld Linux video games console, and Valve is aggressively pushing Linux’s usability and Home windows interoperability for the machine. Two uncommon corporations, Valve Software program and Igalia, are working collectively to enhance the Linux-based OS of the Steam Deck handheld video games console. The machine runs a Linux distro known as Steam OS 3.0, however it is a completely totally different distro from the unique Steam OS it introduced a decade in the past. Steam OS 1 and a couple of had been primarily based on Debian, however Steam OS 3 relies on Arch Linux, as Igalia developer Alberto Garcia described in a chat entitled How SteamOS is contributing to the Linux ecosystem.
He defined that though Steam OS is constructed from some pretty normal elements — the conventional filesystem hierarchy, GNU person house, systemd and dbus — Steam OS has fairly a number of distinctive options. It has two distinct person interfaces: by default, it begins with the Steam video games launcher, however customers may select an possibility known as Swap to Desktop, which ends up in a daily KDE Plasma desktop, with the power to put in something: an internet browser, regular Linux instruments, and non-Steam video games.
Clearly, although, Steam OS’s raison d’etre is to run Steam video games, and most of these are Home windows video games which can by no means get native Linux variations. Valve’s resolution is Proton, an open-source software to run Home windows video games on Linux. It is shaped from a group of various FOSS packages, notably: [Wine, DXVK, VKD3D-Proton, and GStreamer]. The result’s a outstanding diploma of compatibility for a number of the most demanding Home windows apps round […]. You possibly can view Garcia’s 49-page presentation right here (PDF).