After 20 Years Away, SteamOS Brought Me Back to PC Gaming

Earlier this year, before it went out of stock on Steam and before the major price hike, I was able to secure a 1TB Steam Deck OLED. Even with the original hardware being nearly four years old at the time of purchase, it ended up being all that I expected and more.

Having been out of the PC gaming ecosystem for nearly two decades, my biggest fear was returning to a world of PC gaming optimization, where a lot of time is spent on game configuration and settings. I’ve primarily been a console gamer all of my life, however, PC gaming has always been part of the journey. I was lucky enough to experience late '80s and early '90s Sierra Online games on an old Tandy 1000. 

I also joined the FPS revolution with a first-generation Pentium processor back in the '90s. I had various PCs from that point on, with the final round being a custom-built PC in 2004 so I could enjoy Doom 3 and Half-Life 2. Then, in late 2005, after I got tired of Windows XP and the constant optimization, I got an Xbox 360, a Mac Mini, and never looked back.

To my surprise, many of the more recent games on Steam have pre-optimized settings for handhelds, which alleviated my optimization fears. The fiddling around has been minimal, and when necessary, I was able to figure out how to get a game playable using the resources at my disposal. Outside of online-only titles that use anti-cheat software like Easy Anti-Cheat, I was able to get the majority of the games I threw at it to be playable at the very least.

None of this means SteamOS has eliminated the traditional PC gaming experience entirely. There are still games that require tinkering, games that simply don't work because of anti-cheat restrictions, and situations where the desktop environment is unavoidable. The difference is how rarely I've had to deal with those problems compared with what I remember from PC gaming.

And from what I’ve gathered, this is all thanks to Valve’s now-mature SteamOS, which was introduced in 2013, around the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One. Thanks to investments in its Proton compatibility layer, the majority of Windows-based games can run on Linux. I had originally dabbled in Linux in the early 2000s, but went back to Windows due to its lack of a locked-down OS and low-key gaming support, which Valve seems to have corrected with its Proton initiative.

SteamOS is what I consider to be the best thing about the Steam Deck. Each update has made the aging hardware better, with a smoother interface, better compatibility layers, etc. It has gotten so good that I would consider Valve’s family of devices, which includes the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame, to be reference points for SteamOS, much like how Google’s Pixel devices are to Android.

Why do I think it is so good? For starters, as soon as you boot it up, you are thrust into a user interface that is so akin to modern gaming that it makes you instantly forget you are on a gaming PC. Its functionality and usability are nearly on par, and arguably better, than what we currently see in modern console gaming. Competitors should take notice, because they could easily be surpassed in the next generation.

However, if you want a PC-like experience, you can leave “Big Picture Mode” (what Valve is calling its custom gaming overlay) and go into desktop mode to experience Linux in all of its glory and use the operating system like you would on a standard desktop machine.

Even Microsoft, which has been in the desktop business for nearly five decades, can’t manage to hide Windows 11 from its users. They’ve managed to improve the experience with “Xbox Mode” on devices such as the ROG Xbox Ally, however, you are constantly reminded that it is built on top of Windows thanks to update reminders (which literally brings you into Windows to update things like the Xbox app) and virus check notifications. If Project Helix, a Windows/Xbox hybrid unit, is their future, they have a long way to go with presentation and usability.

Since we’re comparing both operating systems, Windows 11 uses more RAM than SteamOS to run effectively, thus leaving fewer resources for gaming. From what I’ve gathered, SteamOS requires around 4GB of RAM on the Steam Deck, while Windows 11 requires about 8GB. In theory, you could make a device like the base ROG Xbox Ally run better by simply installing SteamOS instead of Windows 11, which has been done by many based on the number of videos I’ve seen on YouTube.

One thing Valve needs to improve on SteamOS is the Steam storefront and how it functions on a handheld PC. It has gotten better since I first got the unit, but it is still difficult, or nearly impossible at times, to navigate with physical controls. You must default to using the touchscreen for a better overall experience. Until it drastically changes, I’ve moved to making purchases on my iPhone beforehand, then the new purchase appears as a new item in “Big Picture Mode.”

SteamOS is definitely the right move from Valve, seeing that we’re heading into an all-digital gaming landscape. If they can continue to hammer out usability and performance updates that improve overall playability, I could see the operating system becoming central to PC gaming, similar to how Android is pretty much on the majority of smartphones today.

In the end, what surprised me most is that I rarely think of the Steam Deck as a PC. Despite everything happening underneath SteamOS, my experience with it has been much closer to using a traditional console. I returned to PC gaming thanks to the Steam Deck and realized Valve built the PC gaming experience I always wanted.