From my understanding Steam Decks come with SteamOS preinstalled on them. Yet when you look at the list of games on steam that are compatible with Linux + SteamOS, its a small fraction.
But what confuses me is this page
https://store.steampowered.com/steamdeck/mygames
It shows your games that are compatible with the Steam Deck which has a Linux based OS. And almost my entire library is compatible with the Deck. Can someone help me understand how this is possible? If games are compatible with the Steam Deck, why wouldn’t they also work on Ubuntu for example?
“Linux + SteamOS” compatibility is a bit legacy. It mostly refers to games that have a native linux client (I believe some of the early Proton Validated games are included as well.
The Steamdeck (and generally speaking, any linux system) uses Proton as a compatibility layer with windows, and the “Steamdeck Verified” system is more relevant today. That said, even the Steamdeck verified system isn’t perfect. There are a number of titles that, while verified, have some problems with the deck, typically later in the game or after running for some number of hours. There’s also a vast number of games that while not “Steamdeck Verified” work perfectly on the deck and linux via proton (though you do have to enable it in the settings).
Games that have native Linux versions are uncommon, but Steam on Linux includes a program called Proton, which provides a Windows-compatible environment so that games made for Windows can run without being manually ported. It isn’t exactly the same, so some games don’t work quite right, which is why not every game is compatible with Steam on Linux.
Any game that’s compatible with the Steam Deck should run fine on any other Linux system, as long as the underlying hardware is powerful enough.
What limitations are there from running a game in Linux within a Windows environment?
Im Linux inexperienced and just curious and drunk and like blahaj.zone people they seem to know their shit
If the game is reasonably well-coded, there’s not going to be any obvious difference between a game running on Windows, a game running native on Linux, and a game running using Proton.
I mean yeah, you could have some performance impact (usually light, occasionaly not so), maybe video not playing (some games use video formats for cutscenes which can’t be distributed on Linux installs), or maybe issues with windowing (Tropico 6 has an weird bug where the game mouse pointer has a bit of offset compared to the real one, until you change screen size).
But in most cases, if it works, it works the same.
