It may work, but there are software dependencies that will become end of life. The first to go will probably be the GPU drivers. In 10 years or so, Linux will discontinue the GPU drivers and you will not be able to run the latest Linux kernel.
It seems there’s a lot of misunderstanding in this thread about how linux works and upstream drivers being in the kernel works. If it works it works, it will keep working.
Valve can stop develop wtv they want and it won’t change a thing.
It’ll be community-maintained at that point. If it’s worth updating and there’s demand for it, someone will bother, just like any console, and made all that much easier running open software.
I’d actually willingly bet anyone here $1500 that the Deck will be able to boot a mainline Linux kernel in 2035.
Yeah i agree with you, but there is a limit to community support. The Steam Deck specifically has a big community, but most hobbyists don’t like to spend a ton of time maintaining ancient hardware drivers.
I believe my 11 year old Thinkpad T540p still runs mainline kernels too. The GPU is not supported by the 2018 Intel Iris userspace driver though, so I would need to run a legacy driver that does not support vulkan. Its still packaged by Arch, but it does limit my options.
I’d say 10 years until new games stop running with all features, and 20-30 years until it stops running mainline kernels and loses network access to Steam.
Other handhelds with closed-source drivers probably stop running mainline in 5-10 years.
It may work, but there are software dependencies that will become end of life. The first to go will probably be the GPU drivers. In 10 years or so, Linux will discontinue the GPU drivers and you will not be able to run the latest Linux kernel.
It seems there’s a lot of misunderstanding in this thread about how linux works and upstream drivers being in the kernel works. If it works it works, it will keep working.
Valve can stop develop wtv they want and it won’t change a thing.
Weird, my ten year old laptop still works.
It’ll be community-maintained at that point. If it’s worth updating and there’s demand for it, someone will bother, just like any console, and made all that much easier running open software.
I’d actually willingly bet anyone here $1500 that the Deck will be able to boot a mainline Linux kernel in 2035.
Yeah i agree with you, but there is a limit to community support. The Steam Deck specifically has a big community, but most hobbyists don’t like to spend a ton of time maintaining ancient hardware drivers.
I believe my 11 year old Thinkpad T540p still runs mainline kernels too. The GPU is not supported by the 2018 Intel Iris userspace driver though, so I would need to run a legacy driver that does not support vulkan. Its still packaged by Arch, but it does limit my options.
I’d say 10 years until new games stop running with all features, and 20-30 years until it stops running mainline kernels and loses network access to Steam.
Other handhelds with closed-source drivers probably stop running mainline in 5-10 years.