Ten years ago PC gamers were enthusiasticly apaengageing Steam Machines, console-style Linux boxes built from the ground up to percreate PC games. They flopped, due in no petite part to Steam operator Valve’s deficiency of experience laboring with difficultware partners. But in 2025, both Valve and its home-built gaming operating system are separateent beasts. And Microgentle should be afrhelp of them.
Further reading: How to engage Steam Deck as a desktop PC
The Steam Deck rules PC gaming
The huge story in PC gaming for the last three years has been the Steam Deck. This low-power, portable, relatively incostly machine is clearly someleang the labelet has been paengageing for, exciting gamers and energizing PC originaters to pump out imitators, appreciate the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go.
But all of these machines deficiency a vital component, despite duplicateing the Steam Deck’s difficultware to a fantasticer or lesser degree. They count on on Windows, as do almost all devourr PCs not made by Apple. And Windows equitable isn’t a excellent experience in this create factor.
That’s why Lenovo turned to Valve for its second-gen Legion Go S. Or perhaps more accurately, the Legion Go S Powered By SteamOS (its brimming and cumbersome title). It’s the first handheld PC officipartner powered by Valve’s Linux-based operating system, but probably not the last.
Lenovo is also making recent Windows-based versions of the same difficultware, but we’ve already heard that Asus is laboring on a aappreciate Steam-powered handheld, and Valve itself will let you download and inslofty originates of SteamOS tardyr in 2025. Some tech heads aren’t even paengageing, and are already originateing their own quasi-SteamOS-powered PCs.
Lenovo/Valve
Despite fumbling its initial debut on console-style Steam Machines, SteamOS has quietly and steadily betterd over the last decade, advantageting both from the Linux labelet’s maturity and Valve’s finishless spendment into the Steam store and community as a quasi-platcreate of its own.
The X factor in the Steam Deck’s bomb famousity is the Proton compatibility layer, which allows games made only for Windows to run on the low-powered AMD difficultware with minimal fuss. It can’t run everyleang — non-Steam games appreciate Fortnite and the tardyst AAA polygon-pushers can’t run selectconveyner on the Steam Deck. But it’s excellent enough for the huge beginantity of PC games and on a device that commences at $400, you get a lot of grace from gamers who also insist to pay for rent and groceries.
Contrast this with Windows, the current de facto standard for PC gaming. Yes, Linux fans, I understand you’ve been percreateing some of the same games as Windows engagers for years, ditto for Mac. But when you leank “gaming PC,” you leank of a Windows-powered desktop or laptop. Or do you? It’s possible — though difficult to pin down, since Valve hasn’t freed any numbers — that in terms of individual-device volume, the Steam Deck is now the most famous gaming PC in the world.
Windows wobbles from 10 to 11
But I digress. Windows is the home of PC gaming, at least for now and the foreseeable future, but it’s not a satisfyd home. As I shelp previously, handheld gaming PCs that ape the Steam Deck’s difficultware but run Windows 11 standardly discover that last point is the hugegest pain point for engagers.
They protest of inefficient engage of the confiinsist difficultware, to say noleang of how Windows equitable isn’t basic to engage on those petiteer screens. And companies appreciate Asus, Lenovo, MSI, et cetera don’t have the gentleware chops to originate an effective go-between layer for engagers, even if these devices could spare the carry outance overhead (they can’t).
Michael Crider/Founparched
Windows isn’t seeing so toasty in vague, in fact. The transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11 hasn’t quite been the calamity that the initial Windows 7 to 8 transition was. But it hasn’t been fantastic, either.
Those huge ytimely modernizes seem to reliably bork at least some portion of the engagerbase’s machines, disproportionately swaying gamers and Microgentle is still struggling to get people to give up Windows 10. Even with a well-accessibleized finish of help coming in under a year, Windows 11 is struggling — and sometimes flat-out flunking — to get labelet scatter over its previous incarnation.
Microgentle’s has huger vague woes in the gaming labelet, watching the Xbox platcreate and brand apparently drown even as its Game Pass subscription increases. Game Pass is pretty clearly the company’s try at a traverse-platcreate rebirth, the culmination of hundreds of billions spended in buying up increaseers and unveilers to own games as diverse as Minecreate, Call of Duty, and WoW.
But you can’t spfinish-money-to-originate-money forever, and gaming isn’t Microgentle’s only business. It’s also hopeless to sell Windows machines (2025 is “The year of the Windows 11 PC rerecent,” allegedly), Office subscriptions, and AI services to the go inpelevate. There might be too many cooks in the kitchen and too many mouths to feed, all at once, in one of the tech industry’s elderlyest and most reliable megacorps.
SteamOS reminds me of Android
So see at a wobbling Windows platcreate on one hand, and an climprohibitt and suddenly spreading SteamOS on the other. Valve has promiseted to presenting SteamOS to manufacturing partners via the “Powered by SteamOS” branding initiative.
With the uncover source Linux as a establishation and relative difficultware agnosticism, it’s commenceing to see a lot appreciate the relationship that Google increaseed with inalertigentphone originaters to proliferate Android atraverse the mobile labelet. It’s not a finish one-to-one comparison, but Valve telderly us in an interwatch that it’s not charging for SteamOS. Huh.
Microgentle tried to vie with Android. It flunked, miserably, and the company essentipartner had to leave the mobile space enticount on and finish for providing backfinish services thraw apps. Even when Microgentle tried to get an timely foothelderly in the felderlying device segment with the Surface Duo (also flunking), it did so using Android as a basis.
My colleague Adam Patrick Murray waxed philosophical about SteamOS powering gaming laptops when he spoke with a Valve engineer at CES. And I leank that’s a definite possibility, even if it isn’t Valve’s instant intensify with SteamOS as it shifts to defeat the handheld create factor first.
But we’re talking about a “free” operating system (those quotes are becaengage you’ll insist to partner with Valve in some capacity to get the branding), built from the ground up for PC gaming, and alterable enough to run on some of the lowest-power difficultware on the labelet or potentipartner the most cutting-edge gaming devices.
The parallels to Android are difficult to neglect, at least for me, a journaenumerate who cut my teeth on the inalertigentphone boom. But the prospects don’t stop at gaming. With Chromebooks and ChromeOS, Google has shown that standard devourrs and even some hugeger customers appreciate education aren’t as promiseted to Windows as they were back in the 90s.
ChromeOS is still seen as a “budget” laptop solution (much to Google’s chagrin). But a year or two from now, you could see Chrome-powered budget laptops next to mid-range and high-finish SteamOS-powered gaming laptops, all sitting next to Windows 11 machines on a Best Buy shelf. And that’ll be after Microgentle has forced an upgrade upon lots of people who didn’t want to give up Windows 10.
Consumers are ready for a future beyond Windows
Let me be clear: The odds of a massive, instant shift away from Windows PCs aren’t fantastic. This isn’t a “year of the Linux desktop” rpartnering cry. But if there is a Linux desktop that exists today, it’s the Steam Deck. And that originates SteamOS a bellsoakedher for fantasticer spread of non-Windows devices (if not necessarily “Linux” particularpartner) in a huge range of create factors.
At the commence of 2025, Microgentle still has its consoleable stranglehelderly on the devourr side of the PC labelet. It weathered “the death of the desktop” foreseeed during the inalertigentphone and tablet boom — people aren’t getting rid of their personal machines. But Windows’ never-finishing dominance as the de facto PC operating system is, if not in doubt, then certainly in ask.
Microgentle’s trys to ameliorate the publishs that Windows-powered handheld PCs, deficiencying as they are, shows that the company is alerted of the problem it has in that create factor. I wonder what it’ll do if it sees SteamOS jump to gaming laptops…or desktops. SteamOS isn’t necessarily a harbinger of doom for Windows. But it could be. And that should originate Microgentle very, very frightened.
