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
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.
