this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Steam Deck
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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.
Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
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The following is a list of suggested flairs:
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Some more Steam Deck specific flairs:
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I'd still take this with a grain of salt. Not many games tested, and the SteamOS build might've been tweaked and worked on more to be more optimized.
Does this look optimized to you, Windows side?
While I get it, it does look pretty damning, skepticism when we haven't been presented with rigorous documented testing is always good. I don't think ex: gamersnexus is going to find different results, but I'm pretty damn sure they'll at least be comparing chipsets to ensure the hardware actually is identical (and making sure that things like system settings are configured to be as fair as possible). Lets not be apple fans and leap to the top of the superiority heap just because a good looking infographic said we should.
No, because Windows isn't optimized for games. It is for general use, including games.
What does that mean? Of course it was. Why would I take that with salt?
Well, SteamOS vs base Windows isn’t really a good comparison. Best would be optimized Windows vs gaming only distro, or base windows vs base distro
What is "optimized Windows"? Windows is Windows. There's no gaming-focused version.
There's no such thing, to my knowledge.
What is a "base distro"?
Removing / disabling useless services, tweaking registry…
SteamOS sure looks like one. Gaming focused if you prefer. I’ve seen a couple on Linux, though I don’t remember their name rn.
Something like Ubuntu or Mint, which would be more comparable to a desktop experience like windows, ready for productivity
That's the opposite of comparable since none of that was done on Steam OS.
"Gaming Focused" distros aren't anything special outside of having some pre-installed software.
SteamOS has all of those same productivity tools but I'm not sure how that's relevant to performance.
"Xbox OS" isn't any better, while the XBox Series X is more powerful than the standard Playstation 5, it still ends up being outperformed as Digital Foundry found.