You don't see because you aren't looking.

I'm not supporting it either, i.e. I'm not using Steam. But for me it's pretty obvious that they have the best chance to advance pre-install user base in significant numbers. Monopoly isn't good for sure. But who else is going to do that? So far other Linux hardware vendors didn't make a big dent.

I see the Steam Deck OS as something similar to Android, even if it’s closer to a regular GNU/Linux distro (at least for now). What is going to happen is a wider adoption of SteamOS 3, not a wider adoption of regular GNU/Linux. Counting these as Linux users would be like counting Android users as Linux users. While technically true, it is not comparable to desktop PC Linux users.

By the way, if you look at the Steam store they do not advertise games supported on GNU/Linux but on "SteamOS + Linux". With only the SteamOS logo shown, making it quite clear that the Linux support is nothing more than a side effect and could be dropped at any time when they decide that SteamOS 4 is not going to use a GNU/Linux base.

I wouldn't go so far as to compare Steam OS 3 with Android. Android has been customized year over year for the past decade. Steam OS 3.0, on the other hand, could be considered 95% Manjaro Linux. Who can say. But whatever changes are made to the OS, it wouldn't be to the point where software developed for the Steam Deck would be incompatible with Linux. It's in Valve's best interest to ensure that more gamers switch to Linux as opposed to Windows, since Microsoft is heading in the direction of a walled garden ecosystem, especially with ARM.

Sure, they can do whatever they want obviously. But for now they are allied with Linux ecosystem and do a lot more than anyone else to advance it. So I see Steam Deck as a positive move, not as Android-like one.

at least they use manjaro probably the best distro atm, so thats a + even if i got a problem with it disappearing desktop , which was wayland dieing , dunno why they wrote it is rdy now ,clearly isnt

You can not be sure of that ;)

I do not believe that. It’s in Valve’s best interest to ensure that more gamers switch to SteamOS rather than anything else. And for that is does not matter if SteamOS is built upon Linux, some *BSD or even Fuchsia, the new Google OS.

All they want is an exit plan in case Microsoft no longer gives them full access to Windows users. But until then, they have no issue at all with Windows. SteamOS is used as a pressure tool against Microsoft, not as some way to help Linux users they never did care about.

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I’m quite sure you remember that a lot of Linux users were saying exactly that about Google not so long ago ;)

Maybe it's more of a feature request than a discussion, don't you think? I'd upvote it, plus there would be a counter to show the admins how many want this.

I remember some saying that Google will increase Vulkan usage which will make Linux ports easier. But that's hard to quantify.

Unlike Google, Valve actually are quite actively advancing Mesa and Wine for the purpose of Linux gaming. So that's already a very tangible benefit.

Let's put it this way. If not for Valve, Cyberpunk 2077 that you can buy on GOG wouldn't have been playable on Linux today. It's not perfect that it requires Wine, but it was playable and even at release time.

Oh, I was not talking about Google with Stadia (I guess this is what you are referring to with the Vulkan comment) but several years before that, when Google used to pretend to be some friend of Linux users. Before their launch of Android, Chrome OS and their other products based on Linux that are actually relying so much on vendor lock-in that the openness of the underlying components no longer matters.

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Then this is another thing to put against them ;P

More seriously, I doubt your claim. WINE has been existing since the early 90’s, years before Valve actually split from Microsoft.

Ah, I've never looked at Google as a friend of Linux gaming. I think Aaron Seigo who was one of the lead KDE developers in the past called Google the best friend and the worst enemy of Linux. In the sense of creating that deep rift with Android. That's a rather precise way to put it.

Valve are doing things for their own needs of course, but I don't see them creating such rift. So what they do is actually beneficial for Linux I think.

Wine existed for a long time for sure. And you could play a lot of games with it even before Valve got involved. But Codeweavers have different needs, they don't focus on gaming primarily. So progress of many things was slow. What Valve contributed was focus and fast progress which practically makes a huge difference. It's impossible to ignore that dxvk, vkd3d-proton and other contributions they made to Wine ecosystem made many games playable much faster than Wine project alone would have achieved that.