Valve Releases the Steam Deck

Valve began shipping the Steam Deck in February 2022. The handheld used a custom AMD “Aerith” APU with Zen 2 CPU cores and RDNA 2 graphics, paired with a 1280×800 display and controls designed for both games and desktop-style input.

SteamOS 3 was based on Arch Linux, but Proton compatibility was the key to the software catalog. Proton translated Windows APIs and DirectX calls so many games designed only for Windows could run on Linux with little or no developer modification.

Valve also used shader pre-caching to reduce stutter and validated games against the device’s controls and screen. The Deck became more than a console-like PC: it created a large standardized Linux gaming target, encouraging driver, compatibility, and anti-cheat improvements across the ecosystem.