SteamOS Manager is supposed to be a standardized way for Linux distros to interact with the Steam Deck’s hardware features. Should help with other distros supporting the Deck’s hardware.
It also mentions a “download mode”, which is a low powered mode for downloads. It’s not clear if this is a work in progress feature or something that’s already on the deck, but it definitely sounds like something that users have been requesting a long time.
Valve’s goal with it is to “have a standardized interface so that SteamOS specific features in the Steam client, e.g. TDP management, can be exposed in any linux distro that provides an implementation of this DBus API”
Some companies are trying to move core features under their closed source umbrella and Valve is exposing their features so that other Linux distros can make use of it.
Gigachad behavior
Some companies are trying to move core features under their closed source umbrella
This right here is why I fucking hate Google. They aren’t closed source per se but why the fuck didn’t they make Chrome OS just another Linux distro. They could have made a whole desktop environment usable on any other Linux distro. But no why give back when they can just take and take and take. The only time they give back is when they contribute to the kernel but that’s just for them
Oh wow download mode would be great! Waking up the deck to find all my games already up to date would be a really nice convenience.
Download mode is definitely not a thing yet.
One of the things that’s a bother with the deck is having to leave it on and probably on the charger, if you want to install a couple hundred gigs of games.
Once that’s done, updates don’t take long on my connection so they haven’t been a problem.
But even better if they can pull off a mode where it can do updates while near-sleeping.
It’s not a thing in game mode, but in desktop mode it can kinda do this already.
