Happy four years to the Steam Deck – still the top PC gaming handheld
Happy four years to the Steam Deck – still the top PC gaming handheld
Publish Date: 2026-02-25 05:17:00
Source Domain: www.gamingonlinux.com
Four years ago today, the original Steam Deck LCD released, with it going on to change how everyone sees handheld gaming PCs and Linux for gaming.
Valve have continued to show that Linux can be a great gaming platform thanks to all the work that goes into SteamOS, Proton, Mesa graphics drivers and everything related to show the power of open source. Thanks to all the work we saw that Steam Deck Verified crossed over 25,000 titles playable just recently too.
While last year was a nice celebration, this year is a bit different due to the ongoing hardware stock and pricing situation thanks to all the AI companies sucking the air out of the room. The Steam Deck has been constantly out of stock in various regions for weeks now! Hopefully the situation will calm down so Valve can get more stock out. On top of that, Valve have also now discontinued the LCD Steam Deck to focus on the OLED Steam Deck which is a shame since it was a great value entry into handheld PCs with Linux.
Since last year, SteamOS has seen some great improvements that continue to show how the Steam Deck has constantly evolved. Some of the articles of note:
We also have the Lenovo Legion Go 2 confirmed to be arriving with SteamOS sometime as well.
Proton, the compatibility layer to run Windows games on Linux, has also continued to evolve during this time. Valve are constantly rolling out updates via Proton Experimental for early adapters to test and since last year we’ve seen the release of Proton 10.0-3 and Proton 10.0-4. With each new Proton release bringing many more playable games and lots of bug fixes for other games. And, with the NTSync driver support to come noted above, we should see some more performance and accuracy improvements to come this year.
On top of that another highlight since last time was seeing Linux on Steam finally hit over that 3% mark, a lot of it thanks to all the work Valve puts in to improve things everywhere.
There’s still a huge amount to look forward to, not…
