system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
&gt;What Valve did is fantastic but if they didn't plan on releasing a steam deck this would not have happened. 

Valve has been pushing for Linux since long before the Steam Deck, SteamOS is like a decade old now. It was originally used in their previous console, the Steam Machine. They went in that direction in the first place because Gaben is a Linux fan himself. So it's the other way around, the Deck likely wouldn't have happened if Valve wasn't interested in promoting Linux.
gpt
It happened because the windows store happened in windows 8, and valve saw the MS store potentially rendering steam irrelevant. They wanted to push competition. Which yeah, great. Im of course all for it. I remember walking up and booting my PC in the middle of the night to see if i got a steam client invite back in 2012. Man what a time! It didnt work out as well as id hoped. But ive been free since 2012. Windows was insane. Downloading drivers from here, there whatever strange site at times... viruses, etc. 



I get people need some software, but i didnt so i gtfo out. I made gimp work. Which wasnt easy, and still isnt (work with model photography), but i aint going back. I saw windows 10 this year and it looks ok, but yeah, im out. I appreciate all MS does for linux, and all they did, MS BASIC was where i started as a kid. But MS cant make a better product than MS, Samsung, intel, sony, LG, Google + many others all working together &amp; contributing to linux. Just numerically impossible.