{"id":224012,"date":"2026-03-15T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/15\/youre-underestimating-steam-decks-powerful-desktop-mode\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T23:30:11","slug":"youre-underestimating-steam-decks-powerful-desktop-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/15\/youre-underestimating-steam-decks-powerful-desktop-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"You&#8217;re Underestimating Steam Deck&#8217;s Powerful Desktop Mode"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bgr.com\/2121077\/steam-deck-desktop-mode-underrated\/\">You&#8217;re Underestimating Steam Deck&#8217;s Powerful Desktop Mode<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bgr.com\/2121077\/steam-deck-desktop-mode-underrated\/\">https:\/\/www.bgr.com\/2121077\/steam-deck-desktop-mode-underrated\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-15 14:47:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.bgr.com\">www.bgr.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    <span class=\"gallery-image-credit\">Serenko Natalia\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"disclaimer\">We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">There&#8217;s a joke in the Linux world that each year will be the &#8220;year of the Linux desktop.&#8221; While Android made this phrase a reality, thanks to its Linux underpinnings and its 72% share of the mobile market, another contender has helped usher the operating system into the mainstream: Valve with the Steam Deck. Thanks to the company&#8217;s hard work with Proton\u00a0to get Windows games running on Linux, the handheld PC now accounts for 21% of Linux gamers, with the OS use steadily growing, from 1.2% of PC market share in 2020 to over 4% in 2025. In other words, the Steam Deck is a viable option as a portable PC, thanks to the recent growth Linux has seen, leading even more users to switch.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">You see, the Steam Deck offers a Desktop Mode that jumps from the console-like default interface to a proper computer running KDE. Valve likely chose this desktop environment for the Steam Deck because of its versatility and polish, and it runs on a custom read-only fork of Arch Linux, an\u00a0immutable OS that prevents unauthorized changes. KDE, at its core, offers a wide range of settings that make it easy to configure and customize, whether you require a familiar Windows-like layout or prefer something closer to macOS.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, the Steam Deck ships with a complete, highly customizable desktop OS that many aren&#8217;t aware of or often underestimate, since the machine defaults to a much slimmer console-like interface. But by docking&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bgr.com\/2121077\/steam-deck-desktop-mode-underrated\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;re Underestimating Steam Deck&#8217;s Powerful Desktop Mode https:\/\/www.bgr.com\/2121077\/steam-deck-desktop-mode-underrated\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-15 14:47:00 Source Domain: www.bgr.com&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224013,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bgr.com\/img\/gallery\/youre-underestimating-steam-decks-powerful-desktop-mode\/l-intro-1773248768.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99,71],"class_list":["post-224012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-arch-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224012"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224014,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224012\/revisions\/224014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}