The State of Linux Gaming - 1 Year After the Steam Deck

Co-published on Publish0x and Zirkels.

Time sure flies as the Steam Deck is already over a year old. Sporting a custom Zen 2/RDNA2 APU in a small handheld form factor, the device can play thousands of games on the go while running on an Arch-based operating system. Obviously, it's not a perfect experience as some games do not have anti-cheat support for Linux or simply cannot run for various reasons. However, consumer experience has been rather positive.

According to StatCounter, Linux has a 2.86% overall desktop marketshare and has been maintaining at around that number when it previously had a 2.4% baseline in 2022. I would reference the Steam hardware survey, but its most recent numbers are completely wonky. For some reason, simplified Chinese language users represented over 50% of all users when on average, they represent around 25%. Regardless, Linux seems to be holding steadily.

During the Akademy 2022 conference in October, KDE's David Edmundson stated that Valve shipped over 1 million Steam Decks. While it appears to be small potatoes compared to the likes of PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo consoles, it should be noted that the logistics are substantially different. The Deck can only be purchased on Steam and is not available on mainstream brick-and-mortar stores and online retailers. Additionally, the device is only available in select markets.

It was not until earlier this year when Valve began selling the Steam Deck to Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan via Komodo. Just last month, Komodo has begun selling the Steam Deck in retail stores in partnership with Acer. This is not only significant in terms of cutting down the waiting time to acquire the handheld, but also in terms of getting hands-on experience with the device.

According to market research firm Omdia, it projects the install base will exceed 3 million during 2023. It estimates the Deck sold 1.62 million units and predicts by the end of this year, it will sell another 1.85 million for a total of 3.47 million. While that is still a small number compared to the mainstream consoles, it is a very dedicated niche. According to Valve designer Lawrence Yang, 42% of Deck users spend the majority of their time on the device.

Until proven otherwise, I think 2023 will be a "boring" year for Linux. Other than further improvements to SteamOS, other distros, Proton, and the Mesa driver, we won't see any major developments. System76 did release its new Pangolin laptop which sports a respectable Ryzen 6800U APU which offers more performance than the Steam Deck's chip. Framework now offers the option to use AMD's Zen 4/RDNA3 APUs as well as using modular discrete GPUs on the upcoming 16 inch model. However, like the Deck, these are niche products and with Framework, you have to DIY installing Linux. It would be cool if Framework and Valve work together to ship the laptops with SteamOS preinstalled, but there has not been a single peep about the desktop version of SteamOS.

As of now, expect just further refinements and incremental upgrades.