Comment by pluc
2 years ago
I think you're missing the connecting lines here: with the Steam Deck, Valve made significant investments into WINE emulation and Proton development and all of those dependencies needed for its product that are also applicable to desktop. That convinced a lot of people who were using Windows just for gaming to make the switch, and they all browse the web. I'd argue those types are most of the new users we've seen coming to Linux in the last few years even - and I'd attribute all of it to Valve.
For instance this year I gutted my windows install down to a 20GB partition after moving one game I play over to Linux at a time and testing it works for a while.
Guess what... I did this after I purchased a steam deck and saw how much better proton and wine are.