SteamOS, made popular by a single small device, has started to interest device manufacturers.
SteamOS was developed for Valve’s Steam Machine device series that started in 2015, but it flopped. The operating system’s popularity allowed itself to wait until the 2020s. undefined
Steam Deck, released in early 2022, has been a success by many measures. According to estimates, the small handheld console developed by game studio Valve has been sold in the millions, although Valve has kept the exact sales figures of the device under wraps.
The success of Steam Deck has also prompted a number of other manufacturers to target gamers with their own similar products.
However, all competitors’ devices have one but: they have Windows inside. Steam Deck, on the other hand, relies on its own Linux-based SteamOS operating system.
At least not Windows of PC World magazine according to the assessment, it is a particularly good alternative for a hand console operating system. The issue has not gone unnoticed by hand console manufacturers either.
Lenovo Legion Go is one of the Windows-based handheld consoles released in the wake of Steam Deck. However, the next version of the device, Legion Go S, changes the operating system to SteamOS.
And Lenovo isn’t the only one. PC World points out that Asus is also working on a SteamOS-based handheld console.
Valve also plans to make its operating system available for download later this year. Even now, you can install a Linux distribution called Bazzite instead of Windows on an Asus or Lenovo console, which makes the user experience quite similar to SteamOS.
SteamOS’s “secret ingredient” is named by PC World Proton compatibility layer. Thanks to it, the games run on a Linux-based operating system, even if they were originally developed to run only on Windows.
While SteamOS is becoming available to more and more users, Microsoft is having significant issues with Windows. Users have been slowly transitioning to Windows 11, even though support for Windows 10 ends at the end of this year.
According to PC World, SteamOS is not a sure sign that Windows’ days as the number one operating system are over.
– But [SteamOS] Oh to be it. And you’d think this would really, really worry Microsoft, PC World editor Michael Crider writes.
PC World also points out that Microsoft has already failed in a similar struggle once before.
When phones using Google’s Android operating system appeared on the market, Microsoft started to compete with them with its own Windows Phone operating system. However, the company failed miserably, and Microsoft has withdrawn from the world of mobile devices almost entirely.