A mention in this week's Steam Deck firmware patch notes has some observers speculating that Valve is preparing to release its well-regarded Linux build for third-party hardware....
Since you're talking about ownership, remember that most "purchases" via Steam have DRM in them. If you really want to own your library then purchase from GoG and have your games downloaded to an external harddrive. You can easily access your GoG library via Heroic on Linux.
That's up to the game developers, not Steam. Many games on Steam don't have any DRM, you can copy the files anywhere you want and just start the exe without Steam even being installed.
I bought Minecraft on pc, downloaded an apk, logged in with my Microsoft account, and I can play on online servers. Seems like it can be shared, but Microsoft doesn't want you to.
Mknecraft pocket edition doesnt even need the microsoft account you connect it to to have minecraft installed
The only protection minecraft bedrock has against privacy is if it cant detect if the game was bought from the play store(at least on android, i dont know about java)
You can also find a pirated version of minecraft on the play store (the exact same game, works even in multiplayer, the only difference is that it comes with a texture pack that you can remove)
Not sure there was ever a "formal" announcement/promise, but yeah, this was mentioned as being the plan since before the Steam Deck was even released. People were expecting a general SteamOS ISO to be available on launch day.
I use bazzite on steam deck. The only kinda irritating thing is the game mode update changelog displays the steamos notes and not bazzite notes. It will be 99% the same for basic users and not worth switching for anyone not needing the additional nerd functionality. If it's a new installation regardless on a handheld computer then bazzite for sure especially because bazzite already accounts for many deck alternatives.
I cannot for the life of me get bazzite to use the Nvidia gpu in my laptop for shit. Like proper 3d games refuse to launch and simpler 2d games run but at like 4fps. The icon in the system tray for gpu selection/info won't let me select dgpu, only integrated and hybrid. Gpu basically never gets touched. I'm sure it's less of a bazzite issue and more of an Nvidia drivers on Linux issue, but can't really test full functionality of bazzite like this.
And that's with the Asus laptop Nvidia gpu specific image of bazzite. Very disappointed because I otherwise love bazzite. I have been keeping the windows drive in the laptop specifically for gaming until I can figure out how to fix this. I wish there were more laptop options with amd dGPUs... Looked at microcenter today and there was only one option. :(
My nvidia card works but is quite old and of little use. Nvidia is traditionally bad on linux and from what I can gather seems like is still hit or miss on normal distros, let alone atomic/immutable distros like bazzite. I would imagine the steam os release will be troublesome for nvidia users too but maybe valve has some more magic tricks to pull.
Or just use Bazzite. Already supports multiple handhelds, desktop, and you can have the same exact experience of opening into big picture like the Steamdeck if you'd like.