Note This article has been rewritten and replaced due to a number of errors that were in its contents. We apologize for the errors and appreciate the feedback that we received from our readers. This article was rewritten by Matthew Connatser with a marked section contributed below by XDA Lead Technical Editor Adam Conway.

Although I've been a Windows user my entire life, I've never really liked it, just tolerated it. It's buggy and irritating in many ways, yet I've always put up with it despite there being a clear competitor on the PC: Linux. Until the Steam Deck came out, I wasn't really interested in Linux for anything I do on the desktop, but now I'm not so sure that Windows is the only OS that I could use. Still, it remains the easiest option for me and probably will for some time, though perhaps not forever.

The problem with Linux and why I can't switch

My experience with Linux has been pretty limited, having only used Steam Deck OS and HoloISO, a clone of Steam Deck OS made for PCs in general, and both of these OSes are based on Arch Linux. I've only used those OSes for gaming and benchmarking, and not my entire desktop experience which includes writing articles, writing things down in Microsoft Office, browsing the internet either for fun or for my job, and some other random stuff. While I think Linux could do 90% of what Windows does for me, that 10% is pretty important.

The biggest reason why I haven't ditched Windows is that it mostly just works (emphasis on mostly). I've always been able to launch games, download and run apps that I need, and not have to worry about whether I won't be able to find or won't be able to use specific pieces of software. That's been a big selling point touted by Asus of the Steam Deck's chief rival, the ROG Ally: it uses Windows and can harness the power of the Windows software library. At least for games, that can be a pretty big deal, because not everything runs well on the Deck. In the case of the Deck, it uses Proton to translate games made for Windows into a form that can run on Linux.

To make matters worse for some people who may want to use Linux, some games that run through Proton don't just perform poorly, but they can't be played at all because of restrictions like an anti-cheat.

For gamers, Windows is often just... better

This section was written by XDA's Lead Technical Editor Adam Conway, who was not a contributor to the previous version of this article

As a gamer, I love my Steam Deck. I bought one a few months ago with 512GB of storage, and I play it a lot. Obviously, the Steam Deck uses Linux, and that's something that works really, really well. In fact, thanks to the reduced overhead of Linux and the incredible proficiency of Proton, some games actually run better on the Steam Deck through Proton than on Windows when it's installed on one.

Having said that, though, for me, there are some games that I simply cannot play on a Linux-based machine, and because those games are the ones that consume the most of my time, it's impossible for me to use Linux on my primary desktop. Games such as VALORANT, Counter-Strike (on competitive third-party services like FACEIT), and Escape from Tarkov make use of anti-cheats that cannot run in an environment like Proton. These are the games I play the most, and I'd rather use Windows on a daily basis (an operating system that I grew up with) than have to constantly reboot to another OS just to play a game.

In fact, this dilemma is exactly why I ended up purchasing a MacBook Pro after using a Huawei laptop that I used Ubuntu on throughout my university years. It's not so much that I don't like using Linux on a desktop, it's that I don't like using it on my primary desktop. In the case of the Steam Deck, Steam OS is a much, much better operating system than Windows, which I experienced firsthand in testing out the Asus ROG Ally.

As for the reason why games that make use of extensive anti-cheat software won't run on Linux, there are a multitude of reasons for it. The biggest (and arguably most important) is that it becomes significantly easier on Linux for cheat developers to bypass anti-cheat software. Developers can easily build Loadable Kernel Modules (LKMs) that can interact with games and be hidden from an anti-cheat, whereas on Windows, this is substantially harder.

To take a look at one anti-cheat with a native Linux client, Easy Anti-Cheat, one could harden /proc so that running applications can't view the process list, and then modify the running game externally with system calls that transfer data between process address spaces. Easy Anti-Cheat on Linux runs in userspace only, and giving it root access would simply be too much of an overstep for many. What's more, anti-cheat software looks for things that are "different", and a Proton environment is certainly that. That's why anti-cheat development is such a sore subject on Linux, and as someone who likes to play a lot of competitive titles that require these anti-cheats, Linux isn't a viable platform for me on my desktop.

The Steam Deck proves Linux can exceed Windows

The Steam Deck, despite my issues with it, has really proved that Linux can be 100% of Windows and more. One of the key issues with Windows is that it's not open source, and this is a big problem if you ever want to use Windows in a way that Microsoft doesn't really support. Linux on the other hand is open source, and anyone or any company can make their own take on Linux, and this is why Valve chose Linux for the Deck, because the Deck is only possible on Linux.

One of the things that I enjoy the most about the Steam Deck is the streamlined UI, which can be navigated with a controller, touch screen, or even keyboard and mouse. Of course, a good UI can't make up for a lack of software to actually use, but my experience with the Deck when it comes to game support has been almost perfect. I've only encountered one game that didn't run well because Proton couldn't make it work, an old game that actually didn't run perfectly on Windows either when I first played it. Maybe I just got lucky with the games I tend to play, but if I wanted to switch to Linux, my gaming experience probably wouldn't be impacted that much, assuming it plays nice with my Nvidia GPU.

By contrast, Windows simply isn't up to the task of doing what the Steam Deck does, and that's very clear when you look at the Asus ROG Ally. I've already written up a list of the key reasons why the Ally has a hard time measuring up to the Deck, but the key problem is that Windows is borderline unusable for a handheld gaming PC. Windows was made for keyboards and mice, not controllers, and Asus (or any company) can't do anything about that because Windows is locked down. Ultimately, the Ally's software has to exist on top of Windows as a workaround. Even HoloISO, which is an imperfect clone of Steam Deck OS, still does many things much better than Windows 11 for my Steam Machine.

The Deck has made me more interested in distros like Ubuntu, which is one of the most popular Linux installations for those that want an alternative to Windows. I plan on experimenting with Ubuntu at some point, and while losing Windows's software library is bad in theory, it's never been perfect. I remember when Speedfan went out of development, a true successor didn't come along until recently in the form of Fan Control. As an open-source OS, maybe Linux could one day end up with the superior games library, it just needs the users to justify it.